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challenging
informative
inspiring
relaxing
What a read! Was difficult at first and kind of tiring to read in long stretches, this is the kind of book one should read in increments, taking time to read and understand. A mix of biography and philosophy, maybe it is best to say that it's a book about people and their ideas, it's definitely interesting.
Regarding the last chapter, I would now love her analysis of generative AI and existentialism as technology has come far since this book has been published.
Regarding the last chapter, I would now love her analysis of generative AI and existentialism as technology has come far since this book has been published.
Numa palavra, brilhante. É com uma enorme admiração por Bakewell que chego ao final da leitura de "At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails" (2016), plenamente satisfeito com o conhecimento e experiência proporcionados. Sarah Bakewell fala a partir de um enorme lastro de conhecimento sobre a corrente do existencialismo, assim como das histórias de vida dos seus autores mais reconhecidos: Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Brentano, Merleau-Ponty, Camus, Sartre e Beauvoir. Bakewell usa as histórias dos filósofos para construir uma narrativa ligeiramente romanceada — usando como personagens centrais: Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre e Beauvoir —, apresentando todo o conhecimento fora do reino da abstração e focado nas histórias, relações, ações e decisões ao longo do século XX. Desta forma, a leitura permite-nos não só compreender os objetivos, alcance e limitações da corrente, como o contexto das suas origens e desenvolvimento. Ao chegar ao final, sentimos conhecer de perto não só aquelas pessoas e o seu tempo, mas acima de tudo as razões que suportaram as suas ideias.
É provável que muito do meu carinho por este livro emane do facto de sentir, num plano mais pessoal do que científico, uma enorme proximidade com as ideias do existencialismo, e ter sempre sentido grande interesse pelos vários proponentes do mesmo. Julgo que isso se deve ao facto da corrente se alicerçar na esfera de interesses da psicologia. Na vontade de estudar e compreender o que somos, como somos e porque somos. Contudo, e apesar desse foco, a corrente apresenta o problema do método que usa para chegar ao conhecimento que diverge totalmente da psicologia, baseando-se na mera análise subjetiva da realidade. Se a análise do comportamento humano é em si mesmo algo já bastante complexo pela impossibilidade de nos colocarmos do "lado de fora", limitar essa análise à mera auto-análise como fez Freud, torna tudo ainda mais irrelevante, naturalmente de um ponto de vista científico.
Ainda assim, não posso deixar de recomendar tremendamente a leitura, porque se aprende imenso sobre Heidegger, o confronto entre as suas ideias e a defesa do nazismo, sobre Sartre, e o confronto entre a integridade das ideias e a dura realidade da biologia, sobre Beauvoir, Ponty, e todos os demais do grupo que passou por Paris, sobre o pensamento da época da segunda guerra, o pós-guerra e depois os intensos anos 1960. É toda uma viagem por entre cabeças cheias de ideias, debatendo-se consigo e com o mundo, num movimento frenético de vontade de chegar a conhecer, saber, dominar o mundo das ideias.
Talvez aquilo que mais me desiludiu foi o próprio Sartre, pois no caso de Heidegger já não esperava muito, ainda que Bakewell faça um excelente tratamento da persona do alemão. O grande mantra de Sartre, de que “A Existência precede a Essência” é de uma enorme fragilidade, tanto que me vi a mim mesmo, a chocar de frente, pois tinha concordado em parte com ele, aquando da leitura sobre a logoterapia de Viktor E. Frankl, quando este diz que a vida tem sempre um sentido, e que nós somos sempre livres de comandar o sentido que lhe oferecemos. Ora isto é apenas verdade em parte, e todos o devíamos saber, pois já Aristóteles tinha demonstrado que temos continuamente de abrir exceções morais de particularização aos postulados da ética. As condições da nossa essência determinam as escolhas da nossa existência, é assim com a sexualidade, assim como é assim com os genes passados dos nossos pais, e ainda pelos ambientes e pessoas que nos formaram. Podemos racionalizar, mas não podemos virar-nos do avesso, não somos uma coisa, somos seres humanos, complexidade feita de corpo e mente em diálogo permanente. No final, sigo Beauvoir e Camus, pois se tenho alguma certeza sobre o que somos, é de que somos feitos da capacidade de ser em cada momento o que conseguirmos ser, e tal acarreta por vezes contradições que não nos tornam menos dignos, antes pelo contrário, nos tornam mais humanos.
Publicado no Virtual Illusion:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com/2021/09/na-esplanada-do-existencialismo.html
É provável que muito do meu carinho por este livro emane do facto de sentir, num plano mais pessoal do que científico, uma enorme proximidade com as ideias do existencialismo, e ter sempre sentido grande interesse pelos vários proponentes do mesmo. Julgo que isso se deve ao facto da corrente se alicerçar na esfera de interesses da psicologia. Na vontade de estudar e compreender o que somos, como somos e porque somos. Contudo, e apesar desse foco, a corrente apresenta o problema do método que usa para chegar ao conhecimento que diverge totalmente da psicologia, baseando-se na mera análise subjetiva da realidade. Se a análise do comportamento humano é em si mesmo algo já bastante complexo pela impossibilidade de nos colocarmos do "lado de fora", limitar essa análise à mera auto-análise como fez Freud, torna tudo ainda mais irrelevante, naturalmente de um ponto de vista científico.
Ainda assim, não posso deixar de recomendar tremendamente a leitura, porque se aprende imenso sobre Heidegger, o confronto entre as suas ideias e a defesa do nazismo, sobre Sartre, e o confronto entre a integridade das ideias e a dura realidade da biologia, sobre Beauvoir, Ponty, e todos os demais do grupo que passou por Paris, sobre o pensamento da época da segunda guerra, o pós-guerra e depois os intensos anos 1960. É toda uma viagem por entre cabeças cheias de ideias, debatendo-se consigo e com o mundo, num movimento frenético de vontade de chegar a conhecer, saber, dominar o mundo das ideias.
Talvez aquilo que mais me desiludiu foi o próprio Sartre, pois no caso de Heidegger já não esperava muito, ainda que Bakewell faça um excelente tratamento da persona do alemão. O grande mantra de Sartre, de que “A Existência precede a Essência” é de uma enorme fragilidade, tanto que me vi a mim mesmo, a chocar de frente, pois tinha concordado em parte com ele, aquando da leitura sobre a logoterapia de Viktor E. Frankl, quando este diz que a vida tem sempre um sentido, e que nós somos sempre livres de comandar o sentido que lhe oferecemos. Ora isto é apenas verdade em parte, e todos o devíamos saber, pois já Aristóteles tinha demonstrado que temos continuamente de abrir exceções morais de particularização aos postulados da ética. As condições da nossa essência determinam as escolhas da nossa existência, é assim com a sexualidade, assim como é assim com os genes passados dos nossos pais, e ainda pelos ambientes e pessoas que nos formaram. Podemos racionalizar, mas não podemos virar-nos do avesso, não somos uma coisa, somos seres humanos, complexidade feita de corpo e mente em diálogo permanente. No final, sigo Beauvoir e Camus, pois se tenho alguma certeza sobre o que somos, é de que somos feitos da capacidade de ser em cada momento o que conseguirmos ser, e tal acarreta por vezes contradições que não nos tornam menos dignos, antes pelo contrário, nos tornam mais humanos.
Publicado no Virtual Illusion:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com/2021/09/na-esplanada-do-existencialismo.html
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
By the end of the book, I could say that I agree with Sarah Bakewell's conclusion. At first, I did not really think that the details of a philosopher's personality or biography were important. It was their ideas that matter. Fast forward to the last chapter of this book, I have changed my view which similarly holds by the author. Ideas are interesting, but people are even more so.
My first flirt with the taste of existentialism was several years ago when I read the first book written by [a:Albert Camus|957894|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1506091612p2/957894.jpg], [b:The Outsider|17213767|The Outsider|Albert Camus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1357519386l/17213767._SY75_.jpg|3324344]. This work from Camus tells the story of Meursault who was charged for the murder of an Arab in French Algeria, to which he defended himself by saying, "It was the sun. I killed him because of the sun." His answer did not make much sense to the people who attended the hearings, much less to the judge. However as the trials proceeded, he's charged further not because of this murder, but more because he hasn't shown any emotion during his mother's funeral. Along in his other works, [b:The Myth of Sisyphus|91950|The Myth of Sisyphus|Albert Camus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347654509l/91950._SY75_.jpg|48339830] and a play [b:Caligula|15698|Caligula|Albert Camus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1341261238l/15698._SY75_.jpg|3139665], he brought similar theme which he termed as his three absurds since they all dealt with the meaninglessness or absurdity of human existence. I got thrilled by Camus' notion of absurdity which helps to explain some questions that I have towards life itself.
Reading this book, it was as though I was experiencing myself sitting at the same table in a cafe in Paris discussing the meaning behind human existence and what does it mean to exist. As I sat back and observed them, it began to dawn on me why, for example, Sartre developed a different form of existentialism from Camus. Sartre's thought of freedom and being was heavily influenced by the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl. Meanwhile, Camus' quest began by reading the earlier version of existentialism written by Søren Kierkegaard.
'At the Existentialist Cafe' is an interesting footnote to understand the thoughts of existentialist thinkers from the 20th century such as [a:Jean-Paul Sartre|1466|Jean-Paul Sartre|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1475567078p2/1466.jpg], [a:Simone de Beauvoir|5548|Simone de Beauvoir|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1555042345p2/5548.jpg], [a:Albert Camus|957894|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1506091612p2/957894.jpg], [a:Maurice Merleau-Ponty|118600|Maurice Merleau-Ponty|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1226812798p2/118600.jpg], [a:Martin Heidegger|6191|Martin Heidegger|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1217243699p2/6191.jpg], and many others. It digs heavily their personal circumstances, their relationships with each other, as well as about the period in which they lived. Like what Hippolyte Taine has summed up about the three factors which influence our lives: 'la race, le milieu, le moment', three factors which eventually heavily affected our philosophers in this book. It's interesting to see how they developed their ideas differently, falling in, then falling out, and coming into terms with mutual respect upon their differences in political and ethical views on numerous subjects.
If there's anything left out in this book, I think it's more about the precursors to the 20th century existentialists such as Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky who came from the century before that. Since there are many sources from this book which came from the voluminous autobiography written by Simone de Beauvoir, I began to understand why that part has been left out and why this book is focused solely on the contemporary existentialism. I think the author in this sense wants to imply more about how this movement called existentialism impacted the lives of people from the 20th century and in what way their legacies are still relevant to our lives in the 21st century.
To sum up, existentialist ideas and attitudes have embedded themselves heavily into the modern culture that we hardly think of them as existentialist at all. People, at least in some parts of the world, discuss about anxiety, dishonesty, and fear of commitment. They worry about being in bad faith, although this term is rarely used. And the overwhelming force of consumerism and rapid development in technology has been trying to control us more than ever before, posing us with too many choices to make in life and the ethical concerns in that sense.
My first flirt with the taste of existentialism was several years ago when I read the first book written by [a:Albert Camus|957894|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1506091612p2/957894.jpg], [b:The Outsider|17213767|The Outsider|Albert Camus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1357519386l/17213767._SY75_.jpg|3324344]. This work from Camus tells the story of Meursault who was charged for the murder of an Arab in French Algeria, to which he defended himself by saying, "It was the sun. I killed him because of the sun." His answer did not make much sense to the people who attended the hearings, much less to the judge. However as the trials proceeded, he's charged further not because of this murder, but more because he hasn't shown any emotion during his mother's funeral. Along in his other works, [b:The Myth of Sisyphus|91950|The Myth of Sisyphus|Albert Camus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347654509l/91950._SY75_.jpg|48339830] and a play [b:Caligula|15698|Caligula|Albert Camus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1341261238l/15698._SY75_.jpg|3139665], he brought similar theme which he termed as his three absurds since they all dealt with the meaninglessness or absurdity of human existence. I got thrilled by Camus' notion of absurdity which helps to explain some questions that I have towards life itself.
Reading this book, it was as though I was experiencing myself sitting at the same table in a cafe in Paris discussing the meaning behind human existence and what does it mean to exist. As I sat back and observed them, it began to dawn on me why, for example, Sartre developed a different form of existentialism from Camus. Sartre's thought of freedom and being was heavily influenced by the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl. Meanwhile, Camus' quest began by reading the earlier version of existentialism written by Søren Kierkegaard.
'At the Existentialist Cafe' is an interesting footnote to understand the thoughts of existentialist thinkers from the 20th century such as [a:Jean-Paul Sartre|1466|Jean-Paul Sartre|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1475567078p2/1466.jpg], [a:Simone de Beauvoir|5548|Simone de Beauvoir|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1555042345p2/5548.jpg], [a:Albert Camus|957894|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1506091612p2/957894.jpg], [a:Maurice Merleau-Ponty|118600|Maurice Merleau-Ponty|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1226812798p2/118600.jpg], [a:Martin Heidegger|6191|Martin Heidegger|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1217243699p2/6191.jpg], and many others. It digs heavily their personal circumstances, their relationships with each other, as well as about the period in which they lived. Like what Hippolyte Taine has summed up about the three factors which influence our lives: 'la race, le milieu, le moment', three factors which eventually heavily affected our philosophers in this book. It's interesting to see how they developed their ideas differently, falling in, then falling out, and coming into terms with mutual respect upon their differences in political and ethical views on numerous subjects.
If there's anything left out in this book, I think it's more about the precursors to the 20th century existentialists such as Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky who came from the century before that. Since there are many sources from this book which came from the voluminous autobiography written by Simone de Beauvoir, I began to understand why that part has been left out and why this book is focused solely on the contemporary existentialism. I think the author in this sense wants to imply more about how this movement called existentialism impacted the lives of people from the 20th century and in what way their legacies are still relevant to our lives in the 21st century.
To sum up, existentialist ideas and attitudes have embedded themselves heavily into the modern culture that we hardly think of them as existentialist at all. People, at least in some parts of the world, discuss about anxiety, dishonesty, and fear of commitment. They worry about being in bad faith, although this term is rarely used. And the overwhelming force of consumerism and rapid development in technology has been trying to control us more than ever before, posing us with too many choices to make in life and the ethical concerns in that sense.
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
Delightful to read - I don't think I've read anything remotely like it. I sped through the capital-P Philosophy, so I don't know how much of that I'll take away, but that's fine.
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Blazingly brilliant & fabulous fun.
Worthy of every superlative.
Heidegger without headache.
Looking forward already to reread.
Lives up the hype.
Worthy of every superlative.
Heidegger without headache.
Looking forward already to reread.
Lives up the hype.
They were only human, after all…
The positive reviews for this book are right: Sarah Bakewell indeed succeeds in giving a face to the hybrid group of existentialists, making their philosophies comprehensible and valuing them from her personal point of view. Luckily she already has quite some life experience, and that makes her judgment very nuanced and therefore often surprising. For example: before I read this book Sartre to me seemed but a wind-cock spinning around with whatever revolutionary wind would come, and I was much more attracted by the ethical humanism of Camus. As far as the latter is concerned, I still am, but Bakewell corrected the negative image of Sartre, presenting him a bit as a sympathetic anarchist. I could also appreciate her upgrading of Simone De Beauvoir: Bakewell emphasizes the enormous impact of her book 'The Second Sex”, and rightly so. Heidegger as a person does not get a good press, and that is no surprise, but – as Bakewell states – it does not make sense to ignore this 'most brilliant and most hated philosopher of the 20th century'. Only the recurring positive comments on Merleau-Ponty ('the dancing philosopher') remain a mystery to me: her argument that he was the real revolutionary of the bunch, did not really convince me.
Finally, the reader will especially notice how detailed Bakewell deals with the many discussions, quarrels and even outright feuds between the existentialists; from a distance it looks like they were not doing anything else. Maybe Bakewell focuses a bit too much on these differences and perhaps she is sometimes too biographical in her approach, but never mind, I learned that even my existentialist 'heroes' turn out to be people of flesh and blood.
PS. Bakewell does a good job in presenting the existentialist message and in showing it had a tremendous impact on our culture. But she does not really explain why after the 1960's existentialism seemingly was swept of the planet by anti-humanist waves of structuralism and postmodernism. Perhaps these waves in retrospect were just rimplings on the surface and did the deep current of existentialism have a more lasting impact? Or is this just wishful thinking?
The positive reviews for this book are right: Sarah Bakewell indeed succeeds in giving a face to the hybrid group of existentialists, making their philosophies comprehensible and valuing them from her personal point of view. Luckily she already has quite some life experience, and that makes her judgment very nuanced and therefore often surprising. For example: before I read this book Sartre to me seemed but a wind-cock spinning around with whatever revolutionary wind would come, and I was much more attracted by the ethical humanism of Camus. As far as the latter is concerned, I still am, but Bakewell corrected the negative image of Sartre, presenting him a bit as a sympathetic anarchist. I could also appreciate her upgrading of Simone De Beauvoir: Bakewell emphasizes the enormous impact of her book 'The Second Sex”, and rightly so. Heidegger as a person does not get a good press, and that is no surprise, but – as Bakewell states – it does not make sense to ignore this 'most brilliant and most hated philosopher of the 20th century'. Only the recurring positive comments on Merleau-Ponty ('the dancing philosopher') remain a mystery to me: her argument that he was the real revolutionary of the bunch, did not really convince me.
Finally, the reader will especially notice how detailed Bakewell deals with the many discussions, quarrels and even outright feuds between the existentialists; from a distance it looks like they were not doing anything else. Maybe Bakewell focuses a bit too much on these differences and perhaps she is sometimes too biographical in her approach, but never mind, I learned that even my existentialist 'heroes' turn out to be people of flesh and blood.
PS. Bakewell does a good job in presenting the existentialist message and in showing it had a tremendous impact on our culture. But she does not really explain why after the 1960's existentialism seemingly was swept of the planet by anti-humanist waves of structuralism and postmodernism. Perhaps these waves in retrospect were just rimplings on the surface and did the deep current of existentialism have a more lasting impact? Or is this just wishful thinking?
informative
reflective
fast-paced
A wonderful historical/biographical walk through existentialist thought that touches on the ideas and the people who formed them