Scan barcode
A review by highlanderajax
At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails by Sarah Bakewell
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Tough one for me, and I'm going to rank this on its own merits rather than based on my enjoyment.
For what it is - an exploration of existentialist ideas, thinkers, and history - it's pretty damn excellent. It presents a very interesting track through phenomenology to existentialism, discusses the effects of Heidegger and Husserl on thinkers like Sartre, De Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty. It's in-depth but approachable, communicating really quite a staggering amount for the not over-long book. I was very interested, in particular, to see the shift between Camus' perspective and Sartre, especially with regard to Camus' philosophy of the absurd ("Sisyphus happy.") I thought there were pieces here and there of incredible insight and apt explanation of how and why certain existentialist thoughts fit together - the understanding of mauvaise foi, of the existentialist notions of authenticity versus those commonly understood, and the idea that meaning cannot be inherent to anything - we, as humans, can imbue things with meaning and set out own.
However, there are some core negatives, for me.
The first, I will not count in scoring this book, because it's not the author's fault, it's more my lack of understanding. This is very much an exercise in historical analysis that yields existentialist understandings, NOT a book on existentialism itself. I picked this up initially thinking that this would be more of a discussion of existentialist thought applied through a particular setting, but it wasn't. That alone was something that caused me to struggle through this book. It's not what I expected, it's not what I particularly wanted to read, but I'm not unhappy that I did. The other is a bit more annoying. The book jumps around quite a lot, through history and through patterns of thought. It can be hard to keep focus at times, which makes prolonged reading a slog.
The book improves sharply after the mid-point - more time is given to understanding the existentialist principles, though the book is still very much concerned with existentialISTS not existentialISM. There are some fantasitc insights, and overall it's very well-written - Bakewell is a good communicator and a strong writer - but it's at times a little light on the actual philosophies themselves. I'd recommend this to someone who is well-read in existentialism and who wants more understanding of the lives of the philosophers, or to someone interested in philosophical history, but not to someone who wanted to learn about this school of thought.
For what it is - an exploration of existentialist ideas, thinkers, and history - it's pretty damn excellent. It presents a very interesting track through phenomenology to existentialism, discusses the effects of Heidegger and Husserl on thinkers like Sartre, De Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty. It's in-depth but approachable, communicating really quite a staggering amount for the not over-long book. I was very interested, in particular, to see the shift between Camus' perspective and Sartre, especially with regard to Camus' philosophy of the absurd ("Sisyphus happy.") I thought there were pieces here and there of incredible insight and apt explanation of how and why certain existentialist thoughts fit together - the understanding of mauvaise foi, of the existentialist notions of authenticity versus those commonly understood, and the idea that meaning cannot be inherent to anything - we, as humans, can imbue things with meaning and set out own.
However, there are some core negatives, for me.
The first, I will not count in scoring this book, because it's not the author's fault, it's more my lack of understanding. This is very much an exercise in historical analysis that yields existentialist understandings, NOT a book on existentialism itself. I picked this up initially thinking that this would be more of a discussion of existentialist thought applied through a particular setting, but it wasn't. That alone was something that caused me to struggle through this book. It's not what I expected, it's not what I particularly wanted to read, but I'm not unhappy that I did. The other is a bit more annoying. The book jumps around quite a lot, through history and through patterns of thought. It can be hard to keep focus at times, which makes prolonged reading a slog.
The book improves sharply after the mid-point - more time is given to understanding the existentialist principles, though the book is still very much concerned with existentialISTS not existentialISM. There are some fantasitc insights, and overall it's very well-written - Bakewell is a good communicator and a strong writer - but it's at times a little light on the actual philosophies themselves. I'd recommend this to someone who is well-read in existentialism and who wants more understanding of the lives of the philosophers, or to someone interested in philosophical history, but not to someone who wanted to learn about this school of thought.