3 minutes de philosophie

Over the past sixty years the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre have probably been more influential in the West than those of any other philosopher and literary figure. In his theoretical writings, Sartre laid the foundation for an original doctrine of Existentialism. His concern, however, was to relate his theory to human response and the practical demands of living. To achieve this, he carried his philosophical concepts into his novels and plays, and there subjected them to the test of imagined experience. His uniqueness lies in the success with which he demonstrated the utility of Existentialist doctrine while creating, at the same time, works of the highest literary merit. Thus Sartre became the populariser of his own literary thought. Originally delivered as a lecture in Paris in 1945, "Existentialism and Humanism" is Jean-Paul Sartre's seminal defence of Existentialism as a doctrine true to Humanism, as opposed to a purely nihilistic creed, and a plan for its practical application to everyday human life. This exploration of one of the central tenets of his philosophical thought has become the essential introduction to his work, and a fundamental text for all students of philosophy.

A Short History of Decay (1949) is E. M. Cioran's nihilistic and witty collection of aphoristic essays concerning the nature of civilization in mid-twentieth-century Europe. Touching upon Man's need to worship, the feebleness of God, the downfall of the Ancient Greeks and the melancholy baseness of all existence, Cioran's pieces are pessimistic in the extreme, but also display a beautiful certainty that renders them delicate, vivid, and memorable. Illuminating and brutally honest, A Short History of Decay dissects Man's decadence in a remarkable series of moving and beautiful pieces.

We humans tend to believe that things are only real in as much as we perceive them, an idea reinforced by modern philosophy, which privileges us as special, radically different in kind from all other objects. But as Graham Harman, one of the theory's leading exponents, shows, Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) rejects the idea of human specialness: the world, he states, is clearly not the world as manifest to humans. "To think a reality beyond our thinking is not nonsense, but obligatory." At OOO's heart is the idea that objects—whether real, fictional, natural, artificial, human, or non-human—are mutually autonomous. This core idea has significance for nearly every field of inquiry which is concerned in some way with the systematic interaction of objects, and the degree to which individual objects resist full participation in such systems. In this brilliant new introduction, Graham Harman lays out OOO's history, ideas, and impact, taking in art and literature, politics and natural science along the way. From Sherlock Holmes, unicorns, and videogames to Dadaism, Voltaire, and string theory, this book will change the way you understand everything.