二戰前後的歐洲風起雲湧,眾哲學家用盡生命演出一場哲學饗宴,他們的思想如此精彩,他們的故事更是趣味橫生、歷久不衰!
人生,就是一座存在主義咖啡館。
身處其中,我們可以看到存在主義的誕生與殞落,
而如果你是個存在主義者,眼前這杯杏子雞尾酒,就能讓你大談哲學和自由。
本書講述了存在主義的源起,由「存在主義天王天后」沙特和波娃領銜主演,牽引出當代學術圈中的朋友和對手──卡繆、海德格、胡塞爾、雅斯培和梅洛龐蒂等才華橫溢的哲學家輪番出場。直至今日,他們的哲學讀來依舊發人深省,只因為它攸關生命。
存在主義帶來的不只是哲學的變革,更是一場席捲全世界的革命,戰後的六八學運、反殖民、女權運動等等追求自由、民權的解放呼聲,再再都留下了現代存在主義的烙印。
莎拉.貝克威爾巧妙交織了傳記、哲學思想、歷史、文化分析和個人省思,帶領讀者踏上這段生動而有趣的旅程,與哲學家和他們的朋友們一同經歷這場令人著迷的思想運動。
本文取自商周出版《我們在存在主義咖啡館:那些關於自由、哲學家與存在主義的故事》
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. 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. "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. This movement would sweep through the jazz clubs and cafés of the Left Bank before making its way across the world as Existentialism.
Featuring not only philosophers, but also playwrights, anthropologists, convicts, and revolutionaries, At the Existentialist Café follows the existentialists' story, from the first rebellious spark through the Second World War, to its role in postwar liberation movements such as anti-colonialism, feminism, and gay rights. 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.