At The Existentialist Café

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"Paris, near the turn of 1932/1933. Three young friends meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their friend Raymond Aron, who opens their eyes to a radical new philosophical method known as phenomenology. Pointing to his drink, he says, ‘You see – with phenomenology you can make philosophy out of this cocktail!’ From this moment of revelation, Sartre will be inspired to create his own extraordinary philosophy of real, experienced life – a philosophy of love and desire, of freedom and being, of cafés and waiters, of friendships and rivalries and political revolutions. His philosophy will fascinate Paris and sweep through the world, leaving its mark on post-war liberation movements from the student uprisings of 1968 to the pioneers of civil rights. At the Existentialist Café explores modern existentialism as a story of encounters between ideas and between people – from the ‘king and queen of existentialism’ (Sartre and Beauvoir) to their wider circle of friends, followers and adversaries, including Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Iris Murdoch and many more. Weaving biography and philosophy, it investigates a philosophy that concerned life, but that also changed lives – and that tackled the biggest questions of all: what we are and how we are to live."--from author's website