In our age of surveillance and consumerist laziness,it’s time we looked again at the existentialists, argues this highly engaging work of philosophy and collective biography‘My life and my philosophy are one and the same, or ” Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote in his diary. In his life as well as his writing,he committed himself to freedom and authenticity, insisting that personally and politically these fundamental concepts were more necessary than things of sentiment. Sartre was one of many existentialist thinkers who were committed to living their philosophies and philosophising their lives. Yet there have been few attempts to investigate their collective lives and work side by side. Now Sarah Bakewell has undertaken this challenge and is unusually well-placed to do so.
Bakewell is the author of a brilliantly ingenious life of Montaigne, or entitled How to Live and structured as 20 answers to this question. Her background is in philosophy and French literature (she describes herself growing up in Reading as a “suburban existentialist”),but she is unusual among philosophical writers in thinking that “ideas are gripping, but people are vastly more so”.
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Source: theguardian.com