At the Existentialist Cafe - Sarah Bakewell
With the charming Montaigne at its center, Bakewell’s How to Live was an instant crowd-pleaser. Now the one-time “suburban teenage existentialist” presents a more challenging cast, including Heidegger, Merleou-Ponty, Camus, Sartre, and Beauvoir. Aside from Heidegger, about whom “a single documented example” exists of his “actually doing something nice,” Bakewell not only admires, but truly likes her subjects; her profiles are as engaging as they are illuminating. Noting that “all existentialism is applied existentialism,” Bakewell traces the philosophy’s role in feminism, gay rights, and other movements—work sure to continue as technology and neuroscience force us to reconsider the definition of “human.”