About

This is part two of the interview with Jonathan Webber about his book 'Rethinking Existentialism', and in this one we talk about existentialist ideas around freedom and ethical action, which is why I'm calling it I'm calling it 'Freedom and Morality'. I asked him some questions about how he knew that he had a big enough idea to start thinking about the topic as a 'book' project rather than a series of philosophy papers. We also got chatting about the current vogue of contemporary writing about Fanon, Beauvoir, existentialism, and (in contrast) a resurgence of essentialist positions in popular science writing. You can find part one of this interview, which is about what existentialism is, and how to think about 'projects' and 'choices', by clicking here (https://www.generousquestions.co.uk/1). Here are some things that you might find useful – they're the same things that I linked to in episode 1, but here they are again: Jonathan Webber's website (https://www.jonathanwebber.co.uk/). He's on twitter @jonathanwebber. (https://twitter.com/jonathanwebber) His home philosophy department at the University of Cardiff (https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/english-communication-philosophy). The publisher page for his book, Rethinking Existentialism (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/rethinking-existentialism-9780198735908). The project page (http://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/rethinkingexistentialism/) for the book, which includes a YouTube playlist of videos about it. The book / project also has a twitter account, so if you want to keep up to speed with things afoot in the study of existentialism, you can follow it @rethinkexistent (https://twitter.com/rethinkexistent). A blog article (https://blog.oup.com/2018/11/mysterious-case-disappearing-existentialist/) Jon wrote for OUP about the book. The website of the UK Sartre Society (https://uksartresociety.com/). I'd really like you to get in touch if you've any feedback about this episode, particularly if it's supportive and encouraging. Just head over to the contact page. The theme music is from li_serios05 (https://store.broken20.com/album/li-series-05-jack-on-piano) by TVO on Broken20 records (https://store.broken20.com/) under Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/). A transcript of this conversation is available, you just need to click on the button that says 'transcript'. The transcripts for each episode have been beautifully prepared by Becci.