At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.31 (657 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1590518896 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 464 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-04-17 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Named one of the Ten Best Books of 2016 by the New York Times, a spirited account of a major intellectual movement of the twentieth century and the revolutionary thinkers who came to shape it, by the best-selling author of How to Live Sarah Bakewell.Paris, 1933: three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!" It was this simple phrase that would ignite a movement, inspiring Sartre to integrate Phenomenology into his own French, humanistic sensibility, thereby creating an entirely new philosophical approach inspired by themes of radical freedom, authentic being, and political activism. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called Phenomenology. Interweaving biography and philosophy, it is the epic account of passionate encounters--fights, love affairs, mentorships, rebellions, and long partnerships--and a vital investigation into what the existentialists have to offer us today, at a moment when we are once again confronting the major questions of freedom, global responsibility, and human authenticity in a fractious and technology-driven world.. This movement would sweep thro
In addition to writing, she now teaches in the Masters of Studies in Creative Writing at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. . Sarah Bakewell was a bookseller and a curator of early printed books at the Wellcome Library before publishing her highly acclaimed biographies The Smart, The English Dane, and the best-selling How to Live: A Life of Montaigne, which won the National Book Critics
How to live? How to be free? How to be an 'authentic' human being? In her summing-up, Bakewell makes the case that these questions remain as important today as they ever were.” —The Guardian (US)“Bakewell writes with a sunny disposition and light touch…She combines confident handling of difficult philosophical concepts with a highly enjoyable writing style. Even the horrible Heidegger is seen as human in his absurdity.” —The Sunday Times“Engaging and wide-ranging.”—Prospect Magazine“At the Existentialist Café is a wonderfully readable combination of biography, philosophy, history, cultural analysis and personal reflection.” —The Independent“At the Existentialist Cafewill prove to be one of the best books on philosophy you will read this year.”—The Wichita Eagle&ld
Angie Boyter said Weaving history, biography, and philosophy. In the opening scene of At the Existentialist Café, philosopher Raymond Aron says to his friend Jean-Paul Sartre, “If you are a phenomenologist you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it”. After reading this book, I say, “If you are Sarah Bakewell, you can take existentialism and make sense out of it.”The existentialist themes of freedom, political activism, and “authentic being” became watchwords of the middle and late "Weaving history, biography, and philosophy" according to Angie Boyter. In the opening scene of At the Existentialist Café, philosopher Raymond Aron says to his friend Jean-Paul Sartre, “If you are a phenomenologist you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it”. After reading this book, I say, “If you are Sarah Bakewell, you can take existentialism and make sense out of it.”The existentialist themes of freedom, political activism, and “authentic being” became watchwords of the middle and late 20th century. When I first encountered existentialist writing, I was simultaneously entranced, repelled, and confused. (Bakewell tells us that even Beauvoir said . 0th century. When I first encountered existentialist writing, I was simultaneously entranced, repelled, and confused. (Bakewell tells us that even Beauvoir said . Trudie Barreras said Magnificently crafted; an absolute treasure. It is well known that technology has reached the point where we are often better known by the almighty computer than we know ourselves. Although my Amazon Vine queue sometimes mystifies me (WHY as a 76-year-old woman whose youngest grandchild is in high school am I continuously being offered baby products?), it turns out that Sarah Bakewell’s “At the Existentialist Café” is a tremendous gift to my reading experience. It didn’t take me long to realize why I was offered this book, despite my previous total lack of involvement with any formal study of philosophy. I recently purchased several books relating to Edit. Drew Odom said An entertaining but glib reading of an important period in Continental philosophy. Sarah Bakewell's At the Existentialist Café is, like its title, entertaining and glib. It consists largely of anecdotes about and shallow intellectual histories of its major figures. Her heroes are Beauvoir, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, roughly in that order. Her summaries of the various philosophical positions rarely dig any deeper than the familiar commonplaces of each of them: Hussar's epoché, Sartre's existence precedes essence, Heidegger's investigations into Dasein and Being-in-the-World, for example. This is in no way a probing book. It could prove useful as a way of stimulating more insightful or complex readings in the o