Five Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Wednesdays, July 29 - August 26, 2026
7:00 - 8:30pm ET (NYC Time)
$140 Paid Patreon Members/ $160 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
The question of being has haunted philosophy from its inception. In this course on existentialism we will explore some of the biggest and most enduring human questions: what it means to exist, how we face death, how we imagine possibility, and how we understand ourselves and our relationships to others. Throughout, we’ll engage with the work of Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir, alongside selected literary texts that bring these ideas to life.
We’ll begin with Kierkegaard, closely reading excerpts fromThe Sickness Unto Death to explore his ideas about the self and despair, and then connecting these to his reflections on faith and sacrifice in Fear and Trembling. These themes will ground our work for the rest of the course.
In the second week, we’ll turn to Heidegger’s Being and Time, focusing on concepts such as being-toward-death, dasein, facticity, thrownness, and ontological difference. We’ll also touch on how Heidegger’s thinking connects back to the pre-Socratic philosophers.
From there, we’ll move into Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, beginning with “The Origin of Nothingness,” to deepen our engagement with existential philosophy. Finally, we’ll broaden our scope through the work of Simone de Beauvoir, as well as writers such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, Emmy Hennings, and others.
While the course will explore complex philosophical ideas, no prior background in philosophy is required. We do recommend, however, a keen interest in the ideas and literature, and an open minded curiosity is required. A reader in pdf format will be provided with all of the readings covered in the course.
Images: The Scream, ca. 1893, Edvard Munch; The Monk by the Sea, ca. 18th century, Caspar David Friedrich; Alberto Giacometti, Portrait, ca. 1959.
Hannes Charen is an Associate Professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY where he is the Coordinator of the Critical and Visual Studies major and teaches classes on Weimar Film and Culture, Existentialism, Philosophy and Film, Critical Theory and Aesthetics. He received his PhD in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and an MA in Media Studies at the European Graduate School in Switzerland. His most recent published article is titled 'Nihilism and the conservative revolution: from Play to Testament in Fritz Lang’s Weimar Mabuse films' published in Studies in European Cinema in 2025.
Five Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Wednesdays, July 29 - August 26, 2026
7:00 - 8:30pm ET (NYC Time)
$140 Paid Patreon Members/ $160 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
The question of being has haunted philosophy from its inception. In this course on existentialism we will explore some of the biggest and most enduring human questions: what it means to exist, how we face death, how we imagine possibility, and how we understand ourselves and our relationships to others. Throughout, we’ll engage with the work of Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir, alongside selected literary texts that bring these ideas to life.
We’ll begin with Kierkegaard, closely reading excerpts fromThe Sickness Unto Death to explore his ideas about the self and despair, and then connecting these to his reflections on faith and sacrifice in Fear and Trembling. These themes will ground our work for the rest of the course.
In the second week, we’ll turn to Heidegger’s Being and Time, focusing on concepts such as being-toward-death, dasein, facticity, thrownness, and ontological difference. We’ll also touch on how Heidegger’s thinking connects back to the pre-Socratic philosophers.
From there, we’ll move into Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, beginning with “The Origin of Nothingness,” to deepen our engagement with existential philosophy. Finally, we’ll broaden our scope through the work of Simone de Beauvoir, as well as writers such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, Emmy Hennings, and others.
While the course will explore complex philosophical ideas, no prior background in philosophy is required. We do recommend, however, a keen interest in the ideas and literature, and an open minded curiosity is required. A reader in pdf format will be provided with all of the readings covered in the course.
Images: The Scream, ca. 1893, Edvard Munch; The Monk by the Sea, ca. 18th century, Caspar David Friedrich; Alberto Giacometti, Portrait, ca. 1959.
Hannes Charen is an Associate Professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY where he is the Coordinator of the Critical and Visual Studies major and teaches classes on Weimar Film and Culture, Existentialism, Philosophy and Film, Critical Theory and Aesthetics. He received his PhD in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and an MA in Media Studies at the European Graduate School in Switzerland. His most recent published article is titled 'Nihilism and the conservative revolution: from Play to Testament in Fritz Lang’s Weimar Mabuse films' published in Studies in European Cinema in 2025.
