Book Review: How to be an Existentialist or How to Get Real, Get a Grip and Stop Making Excuses

The third book, How to be an Existentialist or How to Get Real, Get a Grip and Stop Making Excuses, is a different kettle of fish entirely. It is the nearest thing yet to an existential self-help book. But if this seems to you like dumbing down, don't let this put you off. Although it is clearly informed by Sartrean ideas, and Sartre is mentioned from time to time the ideas are all talked about in a disarmingly clear way. He takes the central ideas of freedom and responsibility and links them to bad faith and shows how these are endemic in popular thinking. As he says in the introduction, 'If this book doesn't change the way you think, feel and act for the better then don't blame me. I am responsible for writing the book, you are responsible for reading it....'We live in a blame culture, or rather blame everyone but myself culture'. This theme and tone recurrs. The first chapter is called What is an Existentialist? And he reminds us although 'existentialism is a fiercely honest philosophy that confronts human life for what it is', not only is it not necessary know about existential philosophy to be an existentialist, but also that someone may know all about it intellectually but fail miserably to live by it. The second chapter is called What is Existentialism. Brief overview and quick history lesson. It is here that Cox gets into his stride. Although it is important to remember that he is writing for the person who is interested but uninformed, I suspect that those who imagine themselves to be informed would get a great deal from this book if they let themselves. There have been enough philosophy books written for philosophers, he wants to write one for everybody else. Subheadings in this chapter are 'Existentialism and Consciousness', 'Temporality', 'Being-for-others', 'Freedom and Responsibility', 'Freedom and Disability', 'Possible Limits to Freedom', and, 'Freedom and Anxiety'. All recognisable existential ideas that could have come from a standard textbook. But the way he writes about them is a way I suspect you will never have encountered. If you get his sense of humour, and I do, you will find it as funny as it is enlightening. It is funny in a way that at first can appear just crass and deliberately shocking but is actually calculatedly clever and subtle. It makes you question orthodoxy. To make you say 'that's rubbish...or is it...? But superficial it is not. He manages to explain some extremely complex ideas in simple language. This is the way philosophy should be taught. In simple language with examples and prompts so that you see the world and your place in it differently.

Chapter 3 is called 'How not to be an Existentialist' and the set of ideas he expands on here revolve around the many ways we can be and are frequently in bad faith. And there are many. In chapter 4 – 'How to be Authentic' – Cox refers to Sartre's War Diaries. This little known work is pivotal in understanding a crucial change in Sartre's thought because it was written as a response to his time as a prisoner of war and therefore documents the evolving political dimension of his vision of the existential life to which he was to devote the rest of his life.

Nietzsche is referred to in this chapter too in a section called 'Nietzsche on Authenticity – Regret Nothing', where he talks clearly, as always, about the everyday meaning of eternal recurrence. Chapter 5 is called 'Existential Counselling'. This short chapter has the feeling of an afterthought, but a necessary one considering what sort of market the book has in mind and there is nothing in it that is misleading. For a philosopher, he has understood the project of existential counselling well enough. Not surprisingly but necessarily, he draws here on Sartre's life of Flaubert and the significance of the need to re-evaluate ones original project in order to make more context appropriate choices.

I have recommended 'How to be an Existentialist....' to many people and all have gained a clearer understanding of Sartre than they had before. Not only is it easier to write something long rather than short, it is easier to write something complicated rather than something simple. Cox has achieved something extremely impressive here. He has written something short and simple while not losing any of the depth and subtlety.

All three books complement each other well. Sartre and Fiction is a book I always wanted to write sometime. How to be an Existentialist.... is a book I would have liked to have written, but to write them both I would need The Sartre Dictionary.

Martin Adams