The Existentialist's Survival Guide

How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age

By: Gordon Marino

Narrated by: Joe Knezevich

Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

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

Your existence is not the result of a predetermined 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 21st 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 be treated only 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.

©2018 Gordon Marino (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Gordon Marino is an Angel

One of the best professors ever has written one of the most helpful and applicable books ever written.

great philosophy overview

starts slow, ends strong. overview of the literature and philosophy, not a "manual for living"

Good overview of Kierkegaard for modern minds

I’ve been wanting to learn more about the Christian existentialism of Søren Kierkegaard, and thought (based on the publisher’s description) this would be a good place to start. It was better even than I expected. While it is a general introduction to what existentialism has to say about our current, personal challenges — it does tease out some ethical teachings, as well, but Marino freely admits that the existentialists have been slim on the rights and responsibilities of societies and of individuals toward others — it depends heavily and foremost on the writings of Kierkegaard, and then uses Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, and Doesteeyvki to fill in or contrast Kierkegaard’s thought. But the book’s strength lies in approaching the issues of modern life —anxiety, depression and despair, mortality, faith — first (rather than as a straight survey of each philosopher’s teaching) and seeing what the existentialists have to offer as a lens or filter for our sojourn through this life, regardless of a life hereafter.

Glimpse of hope in a desperate and difficult path

Philosophy tends to fall on the shoulders of the cold objective scholar. But Marino's words ring like that of a man who has had to adeptly apply it to his life. personally draw strength from it, and use it in real time, to handle and get thru some truely dark times.

Whether or not one agrees with the author in regards to this philosophers meaning or that writers stance..
one cannot argue that this man has found a way to use Existentialism as a method to handle life at it's most raw.

Mind Bending Theories

Before you read this book let me warn you to get comfortable with being uncomfortable & be prepared to have your mind opened for better or for worse that is the question! :)

This is a fantastic read, so well written, you will not be disappointed.

These topics relate to every human being & if you are seeking answers to life’s biggest questions this is a great starting place.

Hope you enjoy as much as I did, happy reading <3

Mispronunciations

The content is excellent speaking in the first person. I wish the narrators wouldn’t mispronounce Jean Paul Sartre’s name.

Worth having on as I work

I've got a strong interest in the existentialists and as a hobbyist with philosophy I enjoy when a secondary book on the subject is a genuine pleasure to have on while I work at my desk

worth listening to

interesting story with many points to think about yet in the end I didn't feel convinced of the author's belief in God.

Too autobiographical, self-congratulatory, TMI

WAY too much autobiographical content about his BA past (as a wunderkind violent youth, drug/alcohol abuse, etc.) that doesn't contribute to understanding existentialism. By half way through I was 30 sec forwarding through his boorish, self-congratulatory anecdotes. It's a pass in my opinion, there are many other better overviews of existentialism. Also the narrator kept pronouncing Sartre as "Sarch", very annoying.

A bit boring, actually

It could not consistently hold my interest. It would have been better if he had stayed on each philosopher for awhile instead of skipping around. I can take seriously intellectual, but I want the tone to be pretty consistent throughout. I will keep visiting it off an on until I finish it , though it’s an effort more than a thing to look forward to.