Literature:
Philosophy and Existentialism

"In the darkest depths of our nihilism, I have sought only for the means to transcend nihilism."
Albert Camus


This page is dedicated to my favorite literary writers and works (especially those works dealing with existentialism). It also contains my own works and some important literary terms.

Albert Camus

born: Mondovi, Algeria
died: Jan 4, 1960 in an automobile accident near Paris, France
nationality: Algerian, French
wartime service: member of the French
resistance movement

Works

The Stranger, The Rebel, The Fall, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus

Albert Camus Page

Friedrich Nietzsche

born: Rocken, Prussia: Oct. 15, 1844

father: a Lutheran minister

schooling: studied at Bonn and Leipzig

wartime service: served briefly during the Franco-Prussian war

Nietzsche and German composer, Richard Wagner, had been close associates until a rift split the two friends apart

Nietzsche spent the end of his life in the grips of
madness brought on by an advancing case of syphilis (or maybe by the weight of his intellect?).

Works

Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals, The Antichrist

Nietzsche Page

Jean-Paul Sartre

born: Paris, June 21, 1905

1907 Sartre's father dies

Collaborated on translation of Karl Jaspers’ General Psychopathology.

Obtained a scholarship from the French Institute- travels to Berlin: studies the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.

In 1940, Sartre becomes a German p.o.w.

Refused Nobel prize for literature

Died: age 75 on April 15, 1980

Works

The Transcendence of the Ego, L' Imagination, No Exit, Being and Nothingness, Nausea

Great Sartre Site

continue

Back to Home Page