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A review by bagusayp
At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails by Sarah Bakewell
5.0
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.