ABSTRACT
This book is an attempt to put the case for a post-postmodern existentialism. In this chapter, Robert and I explore Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, as they have been the most influential in our thinking on phenomenology and existentialism. There, we offer some prefatory thoughts. We next introduce some basic ideas from Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Saussure, which have been important also in the development of postmodern thinking and, I now argue, for influencing a new existentialism. It is this opening up of existentialism through aspects of new developments in European thought that I originally called ‘post-existentialism’ and which I hope will develop as a new ‘existential’, though some might prefer the term ‘existential analytic’. The expectation is that this will enable us to decentre the individualism of 1950s existentialism and potentially free us from the oncoming onslaught of neoliberalism’s hypermodernism. However, it must be emphasised that in the book from which this chapter is compiled, we stressed the importance of reading original texts.
