At the Existentialist Cafe

When I was younger, studying back in China, whenever we were assigned to read an article or a book by the school, my teacher always asked us to copy down the good sentences in a book. I have been always frustrated by the task. Firstly, I did not know what do good sentences mean, what to copy down. Therefore, I always just dropped down those sentences that sound "beautifully"; parallel sentences, metaphors and such. However, I was never impressed by their beautiful words but find them rather extra.

Secondly, I did not know what the purpose was to copy another person’s work. It was not like I would actually remember them anyways; but looking back now, I finally understand the purpose of that task.

I finished the book “At the Existentialist Café” on a quiet Saturday morning. I was enjoying my americano in the outside garden of a boutique Italian restaurant in Pune. It was still early in the morning and the restaurant only had another customer besides me. She was sitting at the table right next to me, reading, drinking coffee and enjoying her cigarette.

I stared at the book for a while and flipped through the pages. I did not know what to say or how to feel. It was not because I had nothing to say but because I had too much to say. I did not know where to start. All I saw as my red highlights scattered across different pages. Now I remember the task that was often assigned by my teacher when I was young. I wish I knew the true meaning of that back then.

I connected with this book in many different ways. The book is written in a chronological order. Therefore, it started with the time when all the philosophers were still young and marked the birth of phenomenology.

Maybe all the young people have the same concern and the same feelings.

Sarah Bakewell wrote in the first chapter of the book that “I also liked the cover blurb, which called Nausea ‘a novel of alienation of personality and mystery of being’. I wasn't sure what alienation meant, although I was a perfect example of it at that time.”

I felt immediately connected with the book when I read the part that describes a character in one of Sartre’s early books. The character “watches the townspeople doing their bourgeois, ordinary-folk things. Life resembles a lump of featureless dough, characterised only by contingency, not by necessity. The realization comes in regular episodes, like waves …”

It was almost my every-day feeling when I was in first-year university. I was constantly bothered by this question, these meaningless scenes and felt trap. And yet I could talk to no one because it seemed like no one else was ever bothered by this question; the question of Being.

I started to constantly blame myself for thinking such nonsense, which even worsened my psychological health. The harder that I asked myself to stop, the further I was trapped by my own thinking. And that was the beginning of my depression.

These questions are still in my head, but I am able to put them down and not let them disrupt my daily life now. Starting from my fourth year in university, after I fully recovered from my depression, I fell in love with reading. Those moments were the rare moments that I felt connected with someone. Though I was not a reading lover since birth, I now love to read how their thinking was evolved and developed. It is almost like I get to cheat on the final exam; I can know the answers of the smartest people at the moment that I got the same question.

Except, philosophy questions were never a one-sentence answer question.

Whenever I finished a book, I felt like I just had a great conversation with someone, but I was still left with this unanswered question, I always laugh at myself. Laugh at my own simplistic mind that thinks there will be a clear answer.

This feeling reminds me of the science fiction “the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”. Human beings on earth trying to figure out the answer to the ultimate question, the purpose of the universe. Therefore, they built a supercomputer which knows the answer to every question. The final moment has arrived.

The supercomputer gave its answer to the ultimate question, what is the purpose of the universe and everything? 42. It was 42.

There are two things in this book that I thought was particularly bold and they were such a relief for me to find out that I was not the only one who acts like this. The first one was a description of Simone de Beauvoir. When Beauvoir met Merleau-Ponty who enjoyed a very happy and loving childhood and therefore is a very peaceful and kind figure, she was first attracted by him but then, she immediately knew that he cannot be her partner in life.

She said “oh, how untormented he was! His tranquillity offended me.” I was this same evil being. I once told my best friend Summer two years ago that I cannot stand people who are just too kind. Their innocent gaze, their simplicity understanding of the world and their sincere attitudes made me feel offended! And I went back to this cycle of blaming myself for thinking such things, of being such an evil creature. I was deeply ashamed and angry.

I now have learned to look at my own thoughts and other people’s behavior from a distant. I realized that if I attach my emotions to my thoughts, I would be caught into it and can never be intellectually thinking about them. Here is also where books come into play.

Reading humanity/anthropology books give me an understanding of why human is the way we are; what made us human. Reading psychology books give me a better understanding of myself. I start to look at myself from a distant. I start to understand my own feelings and my own thinking, where are they coming from and why. That was the moment that I resolve with the world.

In later Heidegger’s work, he wrote “we must turn towards things, but in such a way that we don’t challenge them. Instead, we allow each being to rest upon itself in its very own being.”

It took me long enough to understand the meaning of such sentence, but I am glad that I read this sentence at a time when I can start to understand. I am also impressed by how some people can just come to practice this without much extra effort needed.

I always like to share my thoughts with my closest friend, Carina. She is never a weirdo girl like me, but she always listens to my nonsense. There was one day we were casually walking in Masonville and I was sharing my latest thoughts with her.

I was telling her something like some attitudes or behaviors are not good faith or good practice in life. She listened and said: but do you know that you were like this before?” (We have been best friends for almost 13 years by now).

I was embarrassed… and apologized to her for my past-self. She did not even look at me and just casually said: no, but I thought you were very good even back then.

One difference that really stood out to me between me and great thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir is that I always wanted myself to be a certain way and if I was not the perfect person that I wanted myself to be, I would blame myself.

Simone de Beauvoir was offended by Merleau-Ponty’s tranquillity and therefore, she kept Merleau-Ponty as her older brother and have Sartre as her partner; she continued to be herself. I wonder where this vision of “perfect human being” coming from.

One metaphor that is quoted by the book really strikes me. This metaphor is first used by Hegel and then quoted by Beauvoir in her book “Second Sex”. Hegel “analysed how rival consciousness wrestle for dominance, with one playing ‘master’ and the other ‘slave’. The master perceives everything from his own viewpoint, as is natural. But, bizarrely, so does the slave, who ties herself in knots trying to visualise the world from the master’s point of view – an ‘alienated’ perspective.”

Beauvoir believes this is the relationship between male and female. Men’s point of view is the master perspective and as girls, we always try to see the world through the men’s eyes. “Instead of looking out to the world as it presents itself to us, we maintain a point of view in which we are the objects” and we present ourselves to someone.

I do not want to start a debate on feminism here, but this metaphor certainly made me to reflect upon myself; how I was always upset about myself and try to be the “perfect being” which I do not even know where it comes from. I think this might be one of the victims in the popular culture era.

Another thing that I really appreciated in this book was the author’s comment on Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre’ philosophy has changed many times in his lifetime. He can challenge Nazism but defend Marxism in the Stalin period and then become a humanism in his later period. “He was self-indulgent, demanding, bad-tempered. He was a sex addict who didn’t even enjoy sex, a man who would walk away from friendships saying he felt no regret.” Yet, he is good.

“Heidegger intoned that one must think, but Sartre actually thought. Heidegger had his big “turn” – but Sartre turned and turned and turned again. He was always thinking “against himself”.

In psychology, it says that humans have this principle of consistency. We prefer and praise for consistency. For those who are inconsistent, they always have a bad name. However, like Sarah Bakewell said this is not what thinking should be. “Thinking should be generous and have a good appetite.” Our understanding of people, of the world, should be changing as we progress. Each turn we make is a reflection of our thinking.

Not that many intellectuals have the gut to be judgemental these days; even fewer of them these days have the gut to change and challenge their old judgments and argue for each judgment that they stand on now.

And that is exactly the reason why I like Sartre and have many controversial friends in life.

I have long come to the conclusion that life is unintentional. It never meant to do us good nor meant to do us harm. Life just happened. However, our brain, our system 1 is wired to think that everything has to have a causal relationship; everything has to have a because. I disagree.

I thought to myself, well, since I am here already, why not just take the time to see what kind of place or the world that I am born into. That is the reason why I like to travel and like to question everything that I see. Like Sartre told Beauvoir: “we did not pay much attention to God and yet we’ve lived; we feel that we’ve taken an interest in our world and that we’ve tried to see and understand it.”

I have described why I enjoy reading anthropology and psychology books. And now I want to share Karl Jaspers’ description of philosophy as a conclusion of this blog. I felt most connected with this description: “Sea always made Jaspers think of the scope of life itself, with nothing firm or a whole, and everything in perpetual motion. ‘All that is solid, all that is gloriously ordered, having a home, being sheltered: absolutely necessary! But the fact that there is this other, the infinity of the ocean – that liberates us.”

Because philosophy is like waves, always in motion and has no grounds, that is why it is meant a “different thinking.”

-- June 2nd, 2018.

@La Bouchée d'Or café, Pune.