A review by tolin_in_search_of_new_stories
على مقهى الوجودية: الحرية والوجود وكوكتيلات المشمش by Sarah Bakewell, حسام نايل

4.0

This book is a bit dangerous, because existentialism is dangerous. Existentialism is dangerous because it makes people feel more powerful than they are. There is not enough attention to social structures. In other words, there is not enough attention in existentialism to power. But the book is extremely well written. The biographies are rich and detailed. The understanding provided of the philosophical ideas, including very tricky such ideas like those of Heidegger, are reproduced well. It does a great job of describing the different forms of phenomenology. But I've stopped re-reading it (I was just reading it on loop for a while) because it makes me lose track of social structure and puts me too much into a mood of individualism.