The Philosophers' Cocoon

5 responses to “Reading suggestions for an undergraduate interested in epistemology and existentialism?”

1. BananaSlug

   March 27, 2025

   I don’t work on existentialism, but I was very interested in it as an undergrad and read quite a bit. Here is what I really enjoyed reading back then:
   Existentialism
   Sartre’s “Existentialism is a Humanism” (very introductory); Nietzsche’s “The Genealogy of Morals” and Sarah Bakewell’s “At the Existentialist Cafe” (great historical/philosophical overview written in a very accessible and entertaining way)
   As for epistemology, I would recommend starting with Plato’s “Theaetetus” and Descartes’ Meditations. From more contemporary readings, Nancy Tuana’s “The Speculum of Ignorance” is a really great paper on ignorance and feminist epistemology.

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2. recommendations

   March 27, 2025

   For existentialism, I would recommend: “Existentialism: Basic Writings”, edited by Guignon and Pereboom. See especially the various Introductions (there’s a general Introduction called “The Legacy of Existentialism”, and then an Introduction for each existentialist philosopher). These are very accessible and helpful (especially the introductions for the various philosophers). Sartre’s “Existentialism is a Humanism” is a must read. Nietzsche’s “Twilight of the Idols” is fairly accessible. Existentialist themes have also been explored in literature in interesting ways: Sartre’s “Nausea”, Dostoevsky’s “Notes from the Underground” and “The Brothers Karamazov”, and Camus’ “The Stranger” are all classics.
   Epistemology is trickier, however one thing I would strongly recommend is Barry Stroud’s “The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism”.

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3. Dallas Amico-Korby

   March 28, 2025

   There’s so much exciting work in epistemology these days, but I have tended to find students most excited by work in social epistemology, feminist epistemology, and applied epistemology. Perhaps “Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles” or “Transparency is Surveillance” by Thi Nguyen, “Trust as an Affective Attitude” by Karen Jones, or “Fake News and Partisan Epistemology” by Regina Rini might be nice places to start 🙂

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4. JuniorEpistemologist

   March 28, 2025

   Gettier’s “Is Justfied True Belief Knowledge?” is perfect.
   1) It’s incredibly accessible and infamously short.
   2) It’s a landmark text in epistemology.
   3) It gets them thinking a bit beyond the usual “JTL” shpiel they got in undergrad.
   4) If it gets them fired up, there’s lots and lots of response literature discussing Gettier cases go to through.

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5. Juan

   March 31, 2025

   I’m a bit late to this thread but I thought I would highlight this recent collection that just came to my attention: https://academic.oup.com/book/58891. I haven’t read the essays in it, but I admire the work of many of the contributors.
   If the student is interested in the intersection of existentialism and epistemology, I’d recommend especially work by Moran (‘Authority and Estrangement’), and Marusic’s work (his Imprint piece ‘Belief and difficult action’ is a great place to start. The views are developed in ‘Evidence and Agency’).

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