I didn't spend several days with Bakewell's At the
Existentialist Cafe "to learn how philosophy can be a part of life," as Blinkist would have it.
That's how I encountered Sarah Bakewell's At the
Existentialist Cafe (2016), an unusually philosophical entry on nonfiction lists that are usually filled with history, popular-science and political titles.
In his article "Existentialism: Remarks on Jean Paul Sartre's L'ETRE ETLE NEANT" he adroitly discusses the reasons for the evolution of the
Existentialist theory, thus conveying the idea that though Existentialism has evolved and gained ascendance in an atmosphere of despair, it conveys a strong sense of positivism, in which "reality has the last word"5.
Though I could hardly afford the book, I did not regret the expense, because I had learned from Walter Kaufmann's collection of
existentialist extracts, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (1956), that Sartre's philosophy was a life-changing guide to an emerging and liberating world.
The work is often given an '
existentialist' label and it is this that a new play, Outsiders, by performance poet Emteaz Hussain, seeks to explore.
Aho first contemplates political oppression and shows how the
existentialist focus on concrete situated existence (especially in Beauvoir) resonates with black theorists, such as Franz Fanon.
(1) One of Melancholia's taglines 'A beautiful movie about the end of the world'--alludes to the contradictions between the polished surface of the film and the
existentialist undercurrent that drives the narrative.
Moravia defined himself as "[un]realista di specie esistenziale," which has inaccurately led some to regard him an
existentialist (25).
Also, the
existentialist implications of de Beauvoir's arguments are briefly outlined as follows.
She is said to have counted esteemed
existentialist writer Franz Kafka among her family friends and, more recently, was the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary about her life.
In honor of the 100th birthday of Albert Camus, the Huffington Post Religion section featured an essay about the Nobel Prize-winning
existentialist philosopher and favorite of angsty teens everywhere.
Banks uses this historical event as the platform from which to launch what is, in essence, an
existentialist love story, camouflaged by the characteristics that define a Banks novel - immoral behaviour, political rants, diverse tangents of thought and sexual betrayal.
He mentions God, but also meaningfully engages with atheists like Jean-Paul Sartre and his
existentialist predecessor, Soren Kierkegaard.
Clad in black tights, her slender, weightless figure writhes to the weird moans and rails and rattles of the atonal and a-rhythmic music of an
Existentialist combo ...
Indeed, if we consider that the historians of
Existentialist thought have traced its genealogy to the work of Blaise Pascal in the 17th century, S0ren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche in 19th century and Martin Heidegger in the early 20th century, then we can understand that the liberating skepticism intrinsic in this line of thought is not restricted to the work of Sartre, Camus, Marcel and de Beauvoir post-WWII.
