At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails With Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others

by Sarah Bakewell

  18 Heidegger knew what was expected: Petzet, Encounters and Dialogues, 91.

  19 Book-dealers’ windows: Gerhart Baumann, Erinnerungen an Paul Celan (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992), 58–82, this 66; James K. Lyon, Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger: an unresolved conversation, 1951–1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 168.

  20 Poem: Paul Celan, ‘Todtnauberg’, in Poems of Paul Celan, tr. Michael Hamburger (London: Anvil Press, 1988), 292–5 (in German and English).

  21 ‘Desert-like’: Heidegger, Sojourns, 37.

  22 ‘I will be allowed’: Safranski, Martin Heidegger, 401 (Heidegger to Kästner, 21 Feb. 1960).

  23 ‘Hotels’ and ‘set free’: Heidegger, Sojourns, 12, 19.

  24 Athens: ibid., 36, 39–42.

  25 ‘This single gesture’ and ‘knew how to inhabit’: ibid., 43–4.

  26 Cameras: ibid., 54.

  27 Cup of Exekias: ibid., 57, and 70n20. It is in the State Collection of Antiquities in Munich.

  28 ‘Where is it written?’ and ‘According’: Heidegger, ‘ “Only a God can Save Us”: Der Spiegel’s Interview with Martin Heidegger’, in Wolin, The Heidegger Controversy, 91–116, this 106. The interview was published only after his death, in Der Spiegel (31 May 1976). The translation, by Maria P. Alter and John D. Caputo, was originally published in Philosophy Today XX (4/4) (1976), 267–85.

  29 Conversations with Welte: Safranski, Martin Heidegger, 432, citing Welte, ‘Erinnerung an ein spätes Gespräch’, 251. On Heidegger and the theme of homecoming, see also Robert Mugerauer, Heidegger and Homecoming: the leitmotif in the later writings (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), and Brendan O’Donoghue, A Poetics of Homecoming: Heidegger, homelessness and the homecoming venture (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011).

  30 Fritz Heidegger and the Fastnacht speeches: Raymond Geuss, ‘Heidegger and His Brother’, in Politics and Imagination (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010), 142–50, this 142–3. On Fritz Heidegger generally, see Zimmermann, Martin und Fritz Heidegger; Safranski, Martin Heidegger, 8–9, citing Andreas Müller, Der Scheinwerfer: Anekdoten und Geschichten um Fritz Heidegger (Messkirch: Armin Gmeiner, 1989), 9–11; and (esp. for ‘Da-da-dasein’ and ‘supermarket on the moon’) Luzia Braun, ‘Da-da-dasein. Fritz Heidegger: Holzwege zur Sprache’, in Die Zeit (22 Sept. 1989).

  31 ‘It withdraws from man’: Heidegger, Parmenides, 85, cited in Polt, Heidegger, 174.

  32 Suggesting amendments: Safranski, Martin Heidegger, 8; Raymond Geuss, ‘Heidegger and His Brother’, in Politics and Imagination (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010), 142–50, this 149.

  33 ‘For years’: Sartre, ‘J’écris pour dire que je n’écris pas’ (undated note), in Les Mots, 1,266–7.

  34 Sartre By Himself. The film was shot in Feb.–March 1972 and first shown at Cannes on 27 May 1976. On watching it together: Beauvoir ‘A Farewell to Sartre’, Adieux, 85. On watching TV despite near-blindness: Todd, Un fils rebelle, 20.

  35 Refused to be sad: Sartre, ‘Self-Portrait at Seventy’, in Sartre in the Seventies (Situations X), 3–92, this 4.

  36 Strokes, memory, teeth: Hayman, Writing Against, 416–17.

  37 ‘Nothing’: Beauvoir, ‘A Farewell to Sartre’, Adieux, 65.

  38 ‘Sartre, petit père’: Todd, Un fils rebelle, 30.

  39 Pro-Communist views, anti-Semitism book, violence: Sartre & Lévy, Hope Now, 63–4, 92, 100–103. The interviews were originally published in Le nouvel observateur (10, 17, 24 March 1980).

  40 A lesser evil, ‘a thought created’: ibid., 73.

  41 Beauvoir’s opinion: Ronald Aronson, ‘Introduction’, ibid., 3–40, this 7.

  42 Aron’s opinion: ibid., 8, citing Aron, ‘Sartre à “Apostrophes” ’, Liberation/Sartre (1980), 49. Other people also had concerns: Edward Said wrote of meeting Sartre and Beauvoir in Paris in 1979, and being shocked at the extent to which Lévy spoke on Sartre’s behalf over lunch. When Said asked to hear Sartre speak for himself, Lévy hesitated then said he would do it the next day. He did, but from a prepared text that Said suspected was written by Lévy. Edward Said, ‘Diary: an encounter with Sartre’, London Review of Books (1 June 2000). On the wider context of the interview and Sartre’s collaboration with Lévy, see J.-P. Boulé, Sartre médiatique (Paris: Minard, 1992), 205–15.

  43 Photographers: Hayman, Writing Against, 437, referring esp. to a shot clearly taken with a long-range lens in Match.

  44 ‘His death does separate us’: Beauvoir, ‘A Farewell to Sartre’, in Adieux, 127.

  45 Aron’s and Sartre’s deal: Aron, Memoirs, 450.

  46 ‘Touching articles’: Aron, The Committed Observer, 146.

  47 Aron’s death: Stanley Hoffman, ‘Raymond Aron (1905–1983)’, New York Review of Books (8 Dec. 1983).

  48 Beauvoir’s work in late years: Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 611–12; ASAD, 69.

  49 ‘These funny sort’ and ‘such an unlikely thing’: Forster & Sutton (eds), Daughters of de Beauvoir, 19, 17 (Kate Millett interview).

  50 Cirrhosis: Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 612–13.

  51 Death, funeral and reading: ibid., 615–16.

  52 ‘I think with sadness’: FOC, 674.

  53 ‘One of those cloche hats’: Beauvoir, Old Age, 406.

  54 ‘Childish amazement’: ASAD, 9.

  55 ‘I was born in Paris’: ASAD, 10.

  56 ‘Heidegger: the pursuit of Being’: Murdoch’s Heidegger manuscript (typed version, corrected in her hand) is in the Murdoch Archive at the University of Kingston, KUAS6/5/1/4; a manuscript version is at the University of Iowa. Parts have been published in an edition based on both texts by Justin Broackes: Murdoch, ‘Sein und Zeit: pursuit of Being’, in Broackes (ed.), Iris Murdoch, Philosopher, 93–114.

  57 Clearing: Murdoch, ‘Sein und Zeit: pursuit of Being’, in Broackes (ed.), Iris Murdoch, Philosopher, 97.

  58 Benet’s puzzlement: Murdoch, Jackson’s Dilemma, 13–14.

  59 ‘I am small’: ibid., 47.

  60 Jackson’s last thoughts: ibid., 248–9.

  Chapter 14: The Imponderable Bloom

  1 On existentialism in films, see Jean-Pierre Boulé & Enda McCaffrey (eds), Existentialism and Contemporary Cinema (New York & Oxford: Berghahn, 2011), William C. Pamerleau, Existentialist Cinema (Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), and others.

  2 Malick: see Thomas Deane Tucker & Stuart Kendall (eds), Terrence Malick: film and philosophy (London: Continuum, 2011), Martin Woessner, ‘What Is Heideggerian Cinema?’, New German Critique, 38 (2) (2011), 129–57, and Simon Critchley, ‘Calm: on Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line’, Film-Philosophy, 6 (38) (Dec. 2002), available online at http://​www.​film-​philosophy.​com/​vol6-​2002/​n48critchley. Malick translated Heidegger’s The Essence of Reasons (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1969).

  3 Out of control: for a fascinating example of this genre, see Daniel Kahnemann, Thinking Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011).

  4 Research on belief in freedom: J. Baggini, Freedom Regained (London: Granta, 2015), 35, citing K. D. Vohs and J. W. Schooler, ‘The Value of Believing in Free Will: encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating’, Psychological Science, 19 (1) (2008), 49–54. Subjects who had read a passage implying that behaviour is deterministic were more inclined to cheat on a task than those who had not.

  5 ‘To think is to confine yourself’: Heidegger, ‘The Thinker as Poet’, in Poetry, Language, Thought, 1–14, this 4.

  6 Heidegger lacking heart: Murdoch, Heidegger manuscript (typed version, corrected in her hand), Murdoch Archives at the University of Kingston, KUAS6/5/1/4, 53.

  7 ‘He was born’: Kisiel, Genesis, 287, citing MS transcript of the first Aristotle lecture (1 May 1924), 1.

  8 Heidegger’s life of no interest: Petzet, Encounters and Dialogues, 1. It must be said that Husserl also showed little interest in biographical details; in this respect, they shared a simi
lar conception of the phenomenological enterprise.

  9 ‘Everything that he said’: Fest, Not I, 265.

  10 ‘Against himself’: FOC, 273. For an appreciative assessment of Sartre’s dynamism, see Barnes, An Existentialist Ethics, 448.

  11 ‘If one rereads all my books’: this remark was quoted back to him in an interview by Michel Contat; Sartre agreed with it. Sartre, ‘Self-Portrait at Seventy’, in Sartre in the Seventies (Situations X), 3–92, this 20.

  12 ‘It seems to me’ and ‘To put it briefly’: Beauvoir, Adieux, 436.

  13 ‘And yet we’ve lived’: ibid., 445.

  14 ‘Nothing technological’: Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, 3–35, this 4.

  15 ‘Ultra-rapid computing machine’: Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament, 26, 28.

  16 Internet: Dreyfus, On the Internet, 1–2. On the other hand, Don Ihde has argued that Heidegger’s philosophy is not relevant to modern technologies, since Heidegger was thinking mainly of the industrial era: Don Ihde, Heidegger’s Technologies: postphenom​enological perspectives (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 117–20.

  17 ‘I see something like you’ and ‘The imponderable bloom’: E. M. Forster, ‘The Machine Stops’, in Collected Short Stories (London: Penguin, 1954), 109–46, this 110–11. Originally published in the Oxford and Cambridge Review (Nov. 1909).

  18 ‘Embodied cognition’: see, for example, George Lakoff & Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999), Mark Rowlands, The New Science of the Mind (Cambridge, MA & London: Bradford/MIT Press, 2010), and Shaun Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005).

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Details of other works referred to can also be found in the Notes.

  Archival sources

  Sonia Brownell & Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Correspondence (S.109) in George Orwell Archive, University College London.

  Iris Murdoch, ‘Heidegger: the pursuit of Being’ (KUAS6/5/1/4) and ‘Notes on a Lecture by Jean-Paul Sartre’ (Brussels, Oct. 1945) (IML 682) in Murdoch Archive, University of Kingston.

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  —— Une renaissance Sartrienne (Paris: Gallimard, 2013).

  —— Sartre: a life, tr. A. Cancogni (London: Heinemann, 1987) (Sartre, 1985).

  Conradi, Peter J., Iris Murdoch: a life (London: HarperCollins, 2001).