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there are a number of different strands of thinking that came to be bundled under "existentialism" by people like walter kaufman...so i guess that while there's alot of possibilities for titles and so forth, i wonder what exactly thankyousir is interested in...
anyway, following this kaufman-y line, i'd recommend pascal's pensées because i think they're fabulous. and they fit into the lineage.
kierkegaard is tricky--you can read him a bunch of different ways--thigns really turn around whether you do or don't know about hegel, a comment which may or may not matter.
nietzsche is also tricky--all i'd suggest is don't get fooled by the fragmented style into thinking there are no arguments. there are. don't skip around. if you want a good orientation, check out "history of an error" from twilight of the idols (next to last work) or "on truth and falsity in the non-moral sense" (early stuff). generally speaking, the "existentialist" read of nietzsche downplays some of his more radical claims.
there's a ton of sartre that gets put into this space because he invented the category. nausea is a cool little novel, but from 1938 or so--so from before the meme got started--it's interesting, too, but not necessarily for the reasons you'd think going in. i'll be coy. maybe you'll read the book that way.
merleau-ponty is really interesting, really important--but he gets jumped into this as well. i think he was consistently a far more sophisticated thinker than sartre was. maybe that's another discussion sometime.
heidegger too--but i'm fed up with ole marty. blah blah blah.
this after *way* too much time spent reading him.
i'd recommend reading way too much of him yourself, so that you can get fed up with cause. the cause is important, and is worth getting to. but jesus christ. the lecture courses are good--the basic problem of phenomenology a fundamental starting point. a bit technical, though.
i'll just stop here.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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