FSEM 157   Existentialism

Faculty Profile for Professor Dudrick

"What is it to be human? How should we live? What difference does it make whether God exists? Students confront these fundamental questions in investigation of the philosophical movement known as Existentialism. Existentialism came of age in 1940s Paris with the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus, but its roots extend at least to Pascal, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. While they insist on rigor, these authors are no friends of abstraction: for them, philosophy must illuminate our actual, concrete, everyday lives. Their goal is always to challenge readers to confront these questions for themselves, a challenge that students seek to meet – individually and collectively. Students who successfully complete this seminar receive course credit for PHIL 216 and satisfy one half of the Human Thought and Expression area of inquiry requirement.

David Dudrick is the George Carleton Jr. Professor of Philosophy and co-author of The Soul of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (Cambridge, 2012). He’s interested in the relationship between philosophy and the Christian faith, the viability of naturalism as a world view, and the profound ponderings of Jack Handey.