Book Review: At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell
Published by Vintage
“What you read influences your life […] By feeding feminism, gay rights, the breaking down of class barriers, and the anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles, [existentialism] helped to change the basis of our existence today in fundamental ways.” p. 282
After reading the first chapter of At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails, I immediately sought out Sarah Bakewell’s website and riffled off an email to her, letting her know how thrilled and excited I was to be reading her book, after just one chapter.
Of course, all books should incite such excitement after the first chapter, and hopefully after the first page. But recently I have found myself very disenchanted with reading unknown (to me) works, and have had to push to get past the first or second chapter to the meat of a book. Not so with Bakewell. In fact, with her romantic scene of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Raymond Aron sitting in a Parisian café, drinking apricot cocktails, and discussing the merging works of Edmund Husserl within the first page or two, you are instantly cast into that very café along with the philosophers. And thus begins her compilation of the history and development of phenomenology and existentialism.
I had put off reading this book for a while. Though philosophy has a deep fascination within me, it’s been a while since I’ve read any great volume, and thus I was a little daunted. However, after cracking open the pages, my spark for concepts was fanned, and a new hunger rumbled for which I never knew I possessed: biography.
While the central theme of the book is the development and intertwining of phenomenology and existentialism, the very close secondary theme revolves around the vessels of the ideas. Bakewell focusses on the key players who shaped the concepts which went on to influence French, German, English, and even some American societies. These minds are Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir, Karl Jaspers, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as a few others who worked toward their own ideas as well as preserving the papers of those named.
The book follows this cast of characters and the events which develop their throughs, and their thoughts which develop events. Bakewell’s writing brings to life the very essence of these beings, and puts the reader in the midst of their lectures, scrawlings, arguments and drams.
What I found to be most fascinating was the way she brought to light the horrors of Nazism. Over the years I have devoured essays, articles, and documentaries about the atrocities of World War II, but by following the philosophers through their careers, their jazz and café social lives, and experiencing the fatal absences in such scenes as a result of Jewish heritages and/or beliefs, I found myself reaching a deeper state of empathy to the horrors of those who survived. It forced me to apply their experiences to current events, which drew shocking parallels. I have acknowledged these from a distance, though the possibilities truly came home to roost after reading about the Holocaust in Bakewell’s words.
However, through it all, I was charmed by the relationship held between Sartre and Beauvoir, and the influence they had on their students and those around them. They had a commitment that lasted their lives, through various lovers, and differing yet intertwined ideas. My only complaint with Bakewell is that when she finally seemed to be giving Beauvoir more credit for her writing, her own section as it seemed, she repeatedly compared it to Sartre, and shifted the focus toward the latter of the two. This would seem fine as they were somewhat of a duo, except that with other male philosophers she allowed them their own sections with little intertwining of Heidegger or Sartre in the mix. Beauvoir seemed the only one who needed to be supported, an irony in the section as it was about Beauvoir’s influence of feminism due to her book, The Second Sex.
I absolutely would recommend this book to anyone regardless of your interest or lack of interest in philosophy or biography, as so much of it is vividly experienced through her words that it lacks the dryness that both genres tend to dredge along with them. Her tone is fun, her writing is fluid, and her humor is prominent.
“We can never move more definitively from ignorance to certainty, for the thread of inquiry will constantly lead us back to ignorance again. This is the most attractive description of philosophy I’ve ever read, and the best argument for why it is worth doing, even (or especially) when it takes us no distance at all from our starting point.” p. 241