At the Existentialist Café

Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails

At the Existentialist Café tells the story of existentialism and phenomenology through the lives and ideas of twentieth-century European thinkers including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Sarah Bakewell combines biography, intellectual history, and philosophical explanation to show how their work addressed freedom, responsibility, authenticity, and the experience of being human. The book follows the development of these ideas from early twentieth-century Europe through their wider cultural and political influence.

by Sarah Bakewell