The Existentialist's Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age

by Gordon Marino Narrated by Joe Knezevich

Overview

Existentialism offers enduring lessons and insight on how to understand ourselves and improve our lives.

Your existence is not the result of a pre-determined set of events, it's the direct result of your thinking and your actions, and therefore, according to Soren Kierkegaard, Frederick Nietzsche, Albert Camus, and other Existentialist philosophers, you have the freedom to control the outcome of your existence—sophisticated "philosophy meets psychology" self-help for the twenty-first-century.

As Kierkegaard and his ilk made clear in their respective works, human beings are moody creatures. Rather than understanding moods such as anxiety and depression as afflictions that can only be treated with a pill, the Existentialists regard these troublesome feelings as instructive, something revealing about what it means to be human. The Existentialists believed that how we negotiate our emotional ups-and-downs plays an important hand in the lives we sculpt for ourselves.

While offering*listeners a useful primer on Existentialism as an animating body of thought, Marino distills and delivers the life-altering and, in some cases, life-saving insights Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus, and other Existentialists articulate for becoming more emotionally attuned human beings. Enhancing our sense of meaning in the midst of an uncertain world, Marino interjects gripping anecdotes from his own experiences to demonstrate how we can use existentialist thought to ignite truly transformative experiences.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

The Existentialist’s Survival Guide is a remarkable book. We can’t think of another writer who so thoroughly understands Kierkegaard and his followers, presents their thought more accessibly than they themselves did, and—crucially— relates them concretely to ​the dark places in ​his own life, and ours.” — Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, authors of Plato and a Platypus Walk Into A Bar, and Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates

“When it comes to living, there’s no getting out alive. But books can help us survive...by passing on what is most important about being human before we perish. Marino has produced an honest and moving book of self-help for readers generally disposed to loathe the genre.” — The Wall Street Journal

 “Marino’s brilliant The Existentialist’s Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age. . . gives existentialism a 21st-century presence more gripping, nuanced, and convincing than in its initial American portrayal 60 years ago. . . The prose is electric, illustrating the point that existentialism is also literary.” — The Los Angeles Review of Books 

“[Marino] brings his life story together with philosophy in this lively account of how existentialism can enhance life and awaken empathy amid the realities of anxiety, death, and depression. . . His disarming honesty and sense of humor make the book easy to read despite its heavy subject matter.” — The Christian Century

The Los Angeles Review of Books 

Marino’s brilliant The Existentialist’s Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age. . . gives existentialism a 21st-century presence more gripping, nuanced, and convincing than in its initial American portrayal 60 years ago. . . The prose is electric, illustrating the point that existentialism is also literary.

The Wall Street Journal

When it comes to living, there’s no getting out alive. But books can help us survive...by passing on what is most important about being human before we perish. Marino has produced an honest and moving book of self-help for readers generally disposed to loathe the genre.

Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

The Existentialist’s Survival Guide is a remarkable book. We can’t think of another writer who so thoroughly understands Kierkegaard and his followers, presents their thought more accessibly than they themselves did, and—crucially— relates them concretely to ​the dark places in ​his own life, and ours.

The Christian Century

[Marino] brings his life story together with philosophy in this lively account of how existentialism can enhance life and awaken empathy amid the realities of anxiety, death, and depression. . . His disarming honesty and sense of humor make the book easy to read despite its heavy subject matter.

The Los Angeles Review of Books-

 “Marino’s brilliant The Existentialist’s Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age. . . gives existentialism a 21st-century presence more gripping, nuanced, and convincing than in its initial American portrayal 60 years ago. . . The prose is electric, illustrating the point that existentialism is also literary.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170327775
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	04/24/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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