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Quote:TTC – The Teaching CompanyNo Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life, 3rd Edition Course Number 437—24 lectures (30 minutes/lecture)Taught by: Professor Robert Solomon—The University of Texas at Austin “[A] very meticulous treatment of a very difficult subject.”—Alexander Milne, Cupertino, CA If you believe that life should be a quest for values, reasons, and purpose—filled with passion and governed by individual responsibility—then yours is the sort of mind to which the existentialist philosophers were speaking. More than a half century after it burst upon the intellectual scene—coming in the wake of turbulent decades marked by global war, massive ideological violence, and the birth of nuclear weapons—existentialism has continued to exert a profound attraction for individuals driven to reexamine life’s most fundamental questions of individual responsibility, morality, and personal freedom.What is life? What is my place in it? What choices does this obligate me to make? If you’ve ever longed to enrich your own understanding of this unique philosophical movement, the visionary thinkers it brought together to ponder these questions, and the prominent role it still plays in contemporary thought, you now have an opportunity to do so by ordering this freshly recorded Third Edition of No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life.Professor Robert Solomon presents his 24 detailed lectures with gratifying lucidity and plenty of illuminating detail. His course enables you to grasp existentialism comprehensively, incisively, and in context. You will trace its roots back to its 19th-century forbears, examine the impact that it made through its reconsideration of fundamental questions, and gain a keen sense of how this profoundly original way of fathoming life continues to exert a profound influence today.Professor Robert Solomon has decades of distinguished teaching at The University of Texas to his credit. You will see why his high repute as a classroom lecturer is so well merited when you buy these tapes and join him in exploring the religious existentialism of Kierkegaard, the warrior rhetoric and often-shocking claims about religion and morality of Nietzsche, the bold and profound fiction of Camus, the radical and uncompromising notion of freedom championed by Sartre, the searching analysis of human historicity and finitude offered by Martin Heidegger, and more. Under Professor Solomon’s clear guidance, you’ll see how these thinkers relate to one another, and to the larger tradition of philosophy itself. At the end of your survey, you may conclude that one of the most remarkable things about existentialism is the way in which its great questions allow room for different routes to the truth, so that this same grand arena of intellect can admit—and even welcome—many seemingly disparate voices.The Third Edition of No Excuses tracks the popular earlier editions closely in terms of content. Professor Solomon has reorganized his lectures into a half-hour format that is designed to make them easier to use, especially for customers who commute. Part ILecture 1:  What is Existentialism? Lecture 2:  Albert Camus – The Stranger, Part 1Lecture 3:  Albert Camus – The Stranger, Part IILecture 4:  Albert Camus – The Myth of SisyphusLecture 5:  Albert Camus – The Plague and The FallLecture 6:  Albert Camus – The Fall, Part IILecture 7:  Soren Kierkegaard – “On Becoming a Christian” Lecture 8:  Kierkegaard on Subjective Truth Lecture 9:  Kierkegaard’s Existential Dialectic Lecture 10:  Friedrich Nietzsche on Nihilism and the Death of GodLecture 11:  Nietzsche, the “Immoralist” Lecture 12: Nietzsche on Freedom, Fate, and Responsibility Part IILecture 13:  Nietzsche – The Übermensch and the Will to Power Lecture 14:  Three Grand Inquisitors: Dostoevsky, Kafka, HesseLecture 15:  Husserl, Heidegger, and PhenomenologyLecture 16:  Heidegger on the World and the SelfLecture 17:  Heidegger on “Authenticity”Lecture 18:  Jean-Paul Sartre at WarLecture 19:  Sartre on Emotions and Responsibility Lecture 20:  Sartre’s PhenomenologyLecture 21:  Sartre on “Bad Faith”  Lecture 22:  Sartre’s Being-for-Others and No ExitLecture 23:  Sartre on Sex and LoveLecture 24:  From Existentialism to Postmodernism