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

  53 ‘Ovation like a storm’: Petzet, Encounters and Dialogues, 75.

  54 ‘I quickly learned’: Calvin O. Schrag, ‘Karl Jaspers on His Own Philosophy’, in his Doing Philosophy with Others (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2010), 13–16, this 14.

  55 It just happened that way: see Arendt & Jaspers, Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 630 (Jaspers to Arendt, 9 March 1966).

  56 Train time: Ott, Heidegger, 26–7.

  57 Jaspers’ seventieth birthday: Heidegger & Jaspers, The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence, 199 (Heidegger to Jaspers, 19 Feb. 1953).

  58 ‘I would have taken hold’: ibid., 200 (Jaspers to Heidegger, 3 April 1953).

  59 ‘Enchanted in a snowstorm’: ibid., 202 (Jaspers to Heidegger, 22 Sept. 1959).

  60 Levinas in the camp: Lescourret, Emmanuel Levinas, 120; Malka, Emmanuel Levinas, 67, and 262 for the taunts (citing conversation with Levinas’ son Michael).

  61 Camp and hiding: Malka, Emmanuel Levinas, 238–9.

  62 Levinas’ family in Kaunas: Lescourret, Emmanuel Levinas, 126–7; Malka, Emmanuel Levinas, 80.

  63 Levinas’ reading: Malka, Emmanuel Levinas, 70–71; Lescourret, Emmanuel Levinas, 120–23.

  64 Notebooks: Levinas, ‘Preface’, in his Existence and Existents, xxvii; Lescourret, Emmanuel Levinas, 127; Colin Davis, Levinas, an Introduction (Cambridge: Polity, 1996), 17.

  65 Horror of ontological difference: Levinas, Existence and Existents, 1.

  66 ‘Are also governed’: ibid., 4.

  67 Dog: Levinas, ‘The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights’, in his Difficult Freedom: essays in Judaism, tr. S. Hand (London: Athlone Press, 1990), 152–3.

  68 Buber: Martin Buber, I and Thou, tr. R. G. Smith, 2nd edn (London & NY: Continuum, 2004), 15.

  69 Face: Levinas, Existence and Existents, 97–9. Also see his first main discussion of the face, in the 1946–7 lectures ‘Time and the Other’, in Levinas, Time and the Other, and Additional Essays, tr. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987), 39–94. It was never clear whether Levinas believed the face must be human, despite the dog story. When interviewers quizzed him about this, he sounded cross: ‘I don’t know if the snake has a face. I can’t answer that question.’ Peter Atterton & Matthew Calarco (eds), Animal Philosophy (London & New York: Continuum, 2004), 49, citing ‘The Paradox of Morality: an interview with Emmanuel Levinas’ (by T. Wright, P. Hughes, A. Ainley), in Robert Bernasconi & David Wood (eds), The Provocation of Levinas (London: Routledge, 1988), 168–80, this 171.

  70 ‘He doesn’t practise Grandpa’s philosophy!’: Malka, Emmanuel Levinas, 240.

  71 Snapping: ibid., 238, quoting a conversation with Levinas’ daughter. Interview transcripts with Levinas bear this out.

  72 Weil in factory: she worked in 1934 in a plant making electrical parts for trams and metro trains. See Weil, ‘Factory Journal’, in Formative Writings, 149–226, and Gray, Simone Weil, 83.

  73 Chlorophyll: ibid. 166.

  74 None of us has rights: Simone Weil, The Need for Roots (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), 1–5.

  75 Marcel on ethics and mystery: Marcel, ‘On the Ontological Mystery’, in his The Philosophy of Existence, 8–9.

  76 Red Cross: Marcel, ‘An Essay in Autobiography’, ibid., 90–91.

  77 Marcel on mystery: Marcel, ‘On the Ontological Mystery’, ibid., 8–9.

  78 ‘Never allowed themselves’: Sartre, Nausea, 173. Also see another early Sartre piece, ‘Visages’ (1939), in Contat & Rybalka (eds), Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, II, 67–71.

  79 Toleration not enough: BN, 431. Similar points made in Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, tr. G. J. Becker (New York: Schocken, 1948), 55.

  80 Heidegger’s marvelling at Sartre: Towarnicki, ‘Le Chemin de Zähringen’, 30. Beaufret’s five articles were published in the journal Confluences (1945). On his visits, see also Towarnicki, ‘Visite à Martin Heidegger’, in Les Temps modernes (1 Jan. 1946), 717–24. On Beaufret and French reception of Heidegger in this era, see Kleinberg, Generation Existential, 157–206, and Rockmore, Heidegger and French Philosophy.

  81 Little time for reading: Towarnicki, ‘Le Chemin de Zähringen’, 37. Photo of Nietzsche: 47–8.

  82 Towarnicki’s attempts: ibid., 30 (Sartre) and 37 (Camus). Commissioned piece: 56–8.

  83 ‘Feeling for concrete things’: ibid., 61–3.

  84 ‘Your work is dominated’: Wolin, Heidegger’s Children, 88, translating the letter from Towarnicki, ‘Le Chemin de Zähringen’, 83–5 (Heidegger to Sartre, 28 Oct. 1945).

  85 Dreck: Dreyfus told this story to Bryan Magee in an interview for the 1987 BBC TV series The Great Philosophers: see ‘Husserl, Heidegger and Modern Existentialism’, in Bryan Magee, The Great Philosophers (Oxford: OUP, 1987), 253–77, this 275.

  86 ‘Letter on Humanism’: Heidegger’s letter would be hugely influential in post-existentialist French philosophy. On this and other aspects of Heidegger’s reception in France, see Janicaud, Heidegger en France.

  87 ‘In our little hut’: Wolin, Heidegger’s Children, 88, translating the letter from Towarnicki, ‘Le Chemin de Zähringen’, 83–5 (Heidegger to Sartre, 28 Oct. 1945).

  88 Skiing: Towarnicki, ‘Le Chemin de Zähringen’, 63; cf. BN, 602–5.

  89 ‘When we were skiing’: Max Müller, ‘Martin Heidegger: a philosopher and politics: a conversation’, in Neske & Kettering (eds), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism, 175–95, this 192.

  90 Berlin production: FOC, 153–4; also see Beauvoir, Beloved Chicago Man, 155–63 (Beauvoir to Algren, 31 Jan.–1 Feb. 1948). Sartre may also have gone to Berlin less publicly in 1947; the historian Joachim Fest reports meeting him then at a private apartment in Charlottenburg (Fest, Not I, 265). A production of The Flies was put on in the French zone of Germany in 1947: see Lusset, ‘Un episode de l’histoire …’, 94.

  91 ‘For the Germans’: Sartre’s article in Verger, 2 (June 1947), cited in Lusset, ‘Un episode de l’histoire …’, 95.

  92 Coats, trolleys: Beauvoir, Beloved Chicago Man, 158 (Beauvoir to Algren, 31 Jan.–1 Feb. 1948). On terrible winter, which was one reason why people were eager to go to the theatre to warm up even if they had to walk there in inadequate shoes: Lusset, ‘Un episode de l’histoire …’, 93–4.

  93 Sartre’s former lodgings: Sartre, 1979 interview with Rupert Neudeck, ‘Man muss für sich selbst und für die anderen leben’, Merkur (Dec. 1979).

  94 ‘Loud approval’: the debate was reported in Der Spiegel (7 Feb. 1948). See Lusset, ‘Un episode de l’histoire …’, 91–103; and ‘Jean-Paul Sartre à Berlin: discussion autour des Mouches’, Verger, I (5) (1948) 109–23. Several documents are collected here: http://​www.​sartre.​ch/​Verger.​pdf.

  95 Flies: W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, tr. A. Bell (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2003), 35, describing Hamburg and citing Hans Erich Nossack, Interview mit dem Tode, 238.

  96 Sartre’s lecture: FOC, 300.

  97 Two second-hand reports of meeting between Sartre and Heidegger: FOC, 301; Petzet, Encounters and Dialogues, 81–2. Petzet says they spoke in German.

  98 Sartre apologising: FOC, 301. Marcel’s La dimension Florestan was broadcast 17 Oct. 1953, and translated into German as Die Wacht am Sein (‘The Watch Over Being’), an allusion to the nationalistic song ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’. See Marcel, ‘Postface’, La dimension Florestan (Paris: Plon, 1958), 159–62, where he says he admired Heidegger but did not like the liberties he took with language. See also Marcel, ‘Conversations’, in Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 243, on the German translation.

  99 Marcel’s attacks on Sartre: Marcel, ‘Being and Nothingness,’ in Homo Viator, 166–84; Marcel, ‘Existence and Human Freedom’, in his The Philosophy of Existence, 32–66, esp. (on grace) 62–6.

  100 ‘With infinite pity’: Cau, Croquis de mémoire, 253–4.

  101 ‘Bouquets of roses!’: ibid., 254. This story also told by Towarnicki, ‘Le Chemin de Zähringen’, 86. />
  102 ‘Four thousand’: FOC, 301. Old Man of the Mountain: Cau, Croquis de mémoire, 253.

  Chapter 9: Life Studies

  1 Origins of The Second Sex: FOC, 103.

  2 On collecting stories: Beauvoir, Beloved Chicago Man, 208 (Beauvoir to Algren, 26 July 1948).

  3 On the shock of reception: FOC, 197–201, esp. Camus, FOC, 200.

  4 Voting and other rights: Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 187; Moi points out that Beauvoir did not leap to use her vote, and even said in 1949 that she had never voted; this may have been for political reasons, at a time when the far left advised people against legitimising the state by voting for it.

  5 ‘One is not born’: Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 293.

  6 Being brave: ibid., 296. Fairy tales: 313, 316. Different roles: 320.

  7 Clothes and fingernails: ibid., 182.

  8 ‘Positioned in space’: Iris Marion Young, ‘Throwing Like a Girl: a phenomenology of feminine body comportment, motility and spatiality’, in her On Female Body Experience: ‘Throwing Like a Girl’ and other essays (Oxford: OUP, 2005), 41 (originally published in Human Studies, 3 (1980), 137–56).

  9 Self-consciousness: Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 354–6. Self-harming: 377.

  10 Genitals: ibid., 296–7.

  11 Sex: ibid., 406. Pregnancy: 409–10. Pleasure: 416.

  12 Housework and ‘dominated by fate’: ibid., 655, 654.

  13 Female writers: ibid., 760–66.

  14 ‘I carry the weight’: BN, 576.

  15 Master–slave: on Beauvoir and Hegel, see Bauer, Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy, and Feminism. Sartre, like many others, had been influenced by Alexandre Kojève’s series of Hegel lectures in Paris in the 1930s, which emphasised the master–slave analysis.

  16 Encounter in a park: BN, 277–9.

  17 Keyhole: BN, 384–5.

  18 Being looked at as defeated people: Sartre, ‘Paris Under the Occupation’, in The Aftermath of War (Situations III), 8–40, this 23.

  19 ‘Hell is other people’: Sartre, No Exit, in No Exit and Three Other Plays, tr. S. Gilbert, 1–46, this 45. For ‘Hell is other people’ explanation: Contat & Rybalka (eds), The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, I, 99: a preface for a Deutsche Grammophon recording of the play. For a different interpretation, in which humans make a hell for one another if friendship and trust are lacking, see Beauvoir, ‘Existentialist Theater’, in ‘The Useless Mouths’ and Other Literary Writings, 137–50, this 142.

  20 Love: BN, 388–93.

  21 ‘Battle between two hypnotists’: Conradi, Iris Murdoch, 271 (citing Murdoch’s journal entry of 1947).

  22 Self-consciousness and mirrors: Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 6–7.

  23 Object of attraction: ibid., 166.

  24 How to be a woman as existentialist problem par excellence: ibid., 17. On the philosophical importance of The Second Sex, see Bauer, Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy, and Feminism.

  25 Influenced by Being and Nothingness: Simons, Beauvoir and The Second Sex, x.

  26 ‘It was I’: Margaret A. Simons and Jessica Benjamin, ‘Beauvoir Interview (1979)’, in Simons, Beauvoir and The Second Sex, 1–21, this 10 (answering a question by Benjamin).

  27 ‘Fundamental project’: BN, 501–2. Thanks to Jay Bernstein for alerting me to this connection. For a subtle analysis of this aspect of Beauvoir’s work, see Jonathan Webber, Rethinking Existentialism (forthcoming).

  28 ‘Her true nature’ and ‘Woman’s Life Today’: see Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, xxiii. On the background to the Parshley translation and controversy over it, see Richard Gillman, ‘The Man Behind the Feminist Bible’, New York Times (2 May 1988).

  29 Hazel Barnes not simplifying terms: Barnes, The Story I Tell Myself, 156.

  30 Genet’s sympathies with underdog: Genet, interview of 1975 with Hubert Fichte, in Jean Genet, The Declared Enemy, 118–151, this 125–6.

  31 Genet supporting outsiders: White, Genet, 408. Also see Genet, ‘Introduction to Soledad Brother’, in The Declared Enemy, 49–55. An extract from his Baader–Meinhof piece was published in Le Monde as ‘Violence and Brutality’ (2 Sept. 1977), and caused a scandal: White, Genet, 683.

  32 ‘If they ever win’: White, Genet, 592.

  33 Foreword commission: Andrew N. Leak, Jean-Paul Sartre (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), 97.

  34 ‘Freedom alone’: Sartre, Saint Genet, 584.

  35 ‘You’re a thief!’: ibid., 17.

  36 Asserting label: ibid., 23.

  37 Comparison to Beauvoir: Sartre acknowledges the connection: ibid., 37.

  38 Sublime elements: ibid., 558. Saint: 205.

  39 Pastries in La Rochelle: Sartre By Himself, 10. ‘No longer someone’: Beauvoir, Adieux, 355.

  40 Baudelaire: Sartre, Baudelaire, tr. Martin Turnell (London: Horizon, 1949), 21–3, 87, 91–3.

  41 Writing Words: he started writing it in 1953, then left it for long periods, before publishing it in 1963 in Les Temps modernes and in 1964 as a separate book. See Sartre By Himself, 87, and M. Contat (et al.), Pourquoi et comment Sartre a écrit ‘Les Mots’ (Paris: PUF, 1996), 25.

  42 ‘How does a man’: Sartre, ‘The Itinerary of a Thought’ (interview, 1969), in Between Existentialism and Marxism, 33–64, this 63.

  43 ‘Neurosis of literature’ and ‘Farewell to literature’: Sartre By Himself, 88–9.

  44 Labelled an idiot: Sartre, The Family Idiot, I, 39.

  45 Domestic animal: ibid., I, 140.

  46 ‘The acrid, vegetative abundance’: ibid., I, 143.

  47 A ‘perpetual questioning’: ibid., I, 223.

  48 ‘With him I am at the border’: Sartre, ‘The Itinerary of a Thought’ (interview, 1969), in Between Existentialism and Marxism, 33–64, this 44.

  49 ‘Consciousness plays the trick’: ibid., 39.

  50 Publication of The Family Idiot: Sartre, ‘On The Idiot of the Family’, in Sartre in the Seventies, 110.

  51 ‘I do not know how many times’: ASAD, 55.

  52 Translator: see Carol Cosman, ‘Translating The Family Idiot’, Sartre Studies International, 1 (1/2) (1995), 37–44.

  53 ‘Feeling at his expense’: Sartre, The Family Idiot, I, 137–8.

  54 Existentialist psychoanalysis: BN, 645–6.

  55 Freud screenplay: see J.-B. Pontalis, preface to Sartre, The Freud Scenario, viii. On this story, also see Élisabeth Roudinesco, ‘Jean-Paul Sartre: psychoanalysis on the shadowy banks of the Danube’, in her Philosophy in Turbulent Times (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 33–63.

  56 Sartre and Huston story: Huston, An Open Book, 295–6; Pontalis, preface to Sartre, The Freud Scenario, viii. ‘Suddenly in mid-discussion’: Pontalis, citing and translating Sartre, Lettres au Castor, II, 358.

  57 Manuscript in fire: Beauvoir, Adieux, 273; Sartre, ‘On The Idiot of the Family’, in Sartre in the Seventies, 122.

  58 ‘Statue’: White, Jean Genet, 438, citing Jean Cocteau, Le passé défini, II, 391.

  59 ‘Disgust’, and ‘it’s very enjoyable’: Genet, interview with Madeline Gobeil (1964), in The Declared Enemy, 2–17, this 12.

  60 Sartre on homosexuality: Sartre, Saint Genet, 79. For more on Sartre’s views about homosexuality, see his interview of Feb. 1980 in Jean Le Bitoux & Gilles Barbedette, ‘Jean-Paul Sartre et les homosexuels’, Le gai pied, 13 (April 1980), 1, 11–14, tr. by G. Stambolian as ‘Jean-Paul Sartre: the final interview’, in M. Denneny, C. Ortled & T. Steele (eds), The View from Christopher Street (London: Chatto & Windus, The Hogarth Press, 1984), 238–44.

  61 Genet on homosexuality: Genet, interview with Hubert Fichte (1975), in The Declared Enemy, 118–151, this 148.

  62 ‘We cannot follow him’: Sartre, Saint Genet, 77. On their arguing: White, Jean Genet, 441–4.

  63 Ambiguity: Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 9, 127.

  64 ‘I was in error’: FOC, 76.

  Chapter 10: The Dancing Philosopher

  1 Merleau-Ponty irritating Beauvoir: MDD, 246. Also see Monika Langer, ‘Beauvoir
and Merleau-Ponty on Ambiguity’, in Claudia Card (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), 87–106.

  2 ‘I am a psychological and historical structure’: PP, 482/520.

  3 Sensory metaphors: for more, see George Lakoff’s & Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) and Philosophy in the Flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999), works much influenced by Merleau-Ponty.

  4 ‘All of us are constantly discussing’: Sartre, The Family Idiot, I, 18.

  5 Glass, blanket, bird: PP, 238/275–6.

  6 Seeing an object, and stereoscopic vision: PP, 241–2/279.

  7 Proprioception: PP, 93/119.

  8 Knitting: PP, 108/136.

  9 ‘I will never think’: PP, 100/127.

  10 ‘If I stand’: PP, 102/129–30.

  11 ‘Without any explicit calculation’: PP, 143–4/177–8.

  12 Schneider: PP, 105/132–3. His experience was studied by the gestalt psychologists Adhémar Gelb and Kurt Goldstein. An extraordinary recent case of lost proprioception overcome by sheer force of will is that of Ian Waterman. He has no proprioception below the neck, yet controls his movements using vision and delibeate muscle control alone. See Jonathan Cole, Pride and a Daily Marathon (London: Duckworth, 1991).

  13 Phantom limbs: PP, 83/110.

  14 Third arm: Oliver Sacks, Hallucinations (London: Picador, 2012), 270–71.

  15 Leg injury: Sacks, A Leg to Stand On, 112. Sacks’ experiences attest to how adaptable we can be. Even more extreme adjustments are described in Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, tr. Jeremy Leggatt (London: Fourth Estate, 1997), the story of his near-total loss of movement following a massive stroke. Bauby was able to communicate only through eye-blinks, yet even then he was far from disembodied: he still suffered an excruciating range of phantom sensations. His account does bring us about as close to disembodiment as a conscious human can be, and reminds us of the importance of the whole network of bodily sensation, thought and movement for all of us.