Mer Salcia wrote:Mattopilos wrote:
Mine so far are Stirner and Nietzsche. I am looking into other philosophers with similar ideas as well. Anyone know many philosophers on the subjects of individualism, Existentialism, and nihilism?
Sartre and Camus are the obvious choices, along with Kierkegaard. Dostoevsky is a novelist and not a "philosopher" per se, but he explores similar themes.
There's also Heidegger, who is arguably the godfather of existentialism.
I don't really think Dostoevsky should be so readily grouped in with them. Yes, he does have some very, often overtly philosophical passages in his work, and sometimes he does champion a sort of line of thought along their work, but he can go both ways. He strongly opposed the freethinkers and the idea of quantifying human happiness and turning the individual into a formula with no freewill, but he also strongly opposed "schismatic" individualism (the protagonist of Crime and Punishment is named "Raskolnikov", which means, "schismatic"; he falls into evil in cutting himself off from his humanity and the common conscience, which can be contrasted with Demons, where individuals are turned evil by "the herd"--not just the communist conspirators, but also the mob that murders).
Notes from Underground can, taken by itself, absolutely be read as the first existentialist novel. But, taken in the context of Dostoevsky's other post-exile works, it gets a little more complex than that.