Sarah Bakewell’s breezy history of existentialism starts with Jean Paul Sartre’s growing interest in the idea in the 1930s. Sartre’s lover, Simone de Beauvoir (author of the powerful The Second Sex), energizes Bakewell’s story with her affairs and her bravery during the German Occupation of Paris during WWII. Albert Camus shows up to disrupt mainstream existentialist thinking. Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology gives the existentialists fuel for their ideas. But it’s the brilliant Martin Heidegger, author of the classic Being & Time, who lights up many of the pages in At the Existentialist Cafe. Heidegger embraces the Nazi movement in the 1930s and then finds himself an outcast in the 1940s. Hannah Arendt, Heidegger’s student and then lover, tried to defend Heidegger’s motives in dabbling in anti-Semitism and becoming a Nazi sympathizer but few bought her arguments. Other key figures in the existentialist movement, Kark Jaspers and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, feud with Sartre and Heidegger. After the 1960s, existentialism slowly faded. The major figures started to die and their movement died with them. Sarah Bakewell’s book showed up on many Year’s Best Books lists in 2016. It deserves all the acclaim it has received. If you’re interested in 20th Century philosophy, At the Existentialist Cafe captures the spirit of those times. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1 Sir, What a Horror, Existentialism! 1
2 To the Things Themselves 35
3 The Magician from Messkirch 50
4 The They, The Call 74
5 To Crunch Flowering Almonds 98
6 I Don’t Want to Eat My Manuscripts 122
7 Occupation, Liberation 137
8 Devastation 175
9 Life Studies 208
10 The Dancing Philosopher 228
11 Croises comme ca 242
12 The Eyes of the Least Favoured 271
13 Having Once Tasted Phenomenology 299
14 The Imponderable Bloom 317
Cast of Characters 329
Acknowledgements 337
Notes 339
Select Bibliography 403
List of Illustrations 423
Index 425
Pass! No surprise there, I’ll bet!
Bob, you’ll like the book I review next Monday. It’s bound to excite your interest!
Ordered it already!
Patti, I also loved Sarah Bakewell’s book on Montaigne.
I’ve read some of the main figures (Camus, Sartre) but do I want to read 400 pages about Heidegger and Nazis? Not really.
Jeff, Sarah Bakewell tells the stories of those existentialist icons with detail and clarity. Heidegger is an interesting case of a guy who thought he was joining a winning moment but ended up being reviled.
When I was in college, I signed up for a course on existentialism taught by one of my favorite professors.
I lasted two classes.
This stuff is WAY over my head.
Beth, existentialism is not ad deep as you think. There was a lot of blah-blah-blah that Sarah Bakewell clears away so you can see what they were really up to.
A little too deep for me, I’m afraid. Not because I don’t think I could understand it, but because I have no desire to, at least at this point in life. Perhaps if I’d come to this book when I was a college student, I would have loved it (or perhaps not).
Rick, back in the 1960s, existentialism was a hot commodity. I used to go on dates with girls who just wanted to talk about Sartre and Camus. I was interested in Something Else.
Yes, George, those fabulous 60s! 🙂
While studying math I also was active as a humanist and fighting against the “old clerical fascist system” that still reigned in Germany, so many old strange laws …
In that “Christian” country you could go to jail for homosexuality, allowing an abortion – even someone who rented out a room to a student like me and let a girl/ woman stay overnight, that was called “Kuppelei” …
Existentialism for us was already a goner – we wanted action!
Wolf, Sarah Bakewell makes the cast that existentialist thought played a role in the social upheavals of the 1960s.
George, I continue to read a lot of 20th century philosophy (and especially spirituality) although I don’t look at it from an existenial point of view because I find the term rather complex and somewhat beyond my grasp. This book looks interesting and one that I might understand easily. While I have read the odd essay by Sartre and Camus, I’m tempted to read their books.
Prashant, Sarah Bakewell’s AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFE provides the context to understand their existentialist writings. This is a good place to start.
Phil really enjoyed this, George, and now Megan is reading it.
Patti, I’m glad Phil enjoyed AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFE. Megan will like it, too! Sarah Bakewell’s book on Montague is terrific!