At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails

by Sarah Bakewell

– Existentialists concern themselves with individual, concrete human existence. – They consider human existence different from the kind of being other things have. Other entities are what they are, but as a human I am whatever I choose to make of myself at every moment. I am free – – and therefore I’m responsible for everything I do, a dizzying fact which causes – an anxiety inseparable from human existence itself. – On the other hand, I am only free within situations, which can include factors in my own biology and psychology as well as physical, historical and social variables of the world into which I have been thrown. – Despite the limitations, I always want more: I am passionately involved in personal projects of all kinds. – Human existence is thus ambiguous: at once boxed in by borders and yet transcendent and exhilarating. – An existentialist who is also phenomenological provides no easy rules for dealing with this condition, but instead concentrates on describing lived experience as it presents itself. – By describing experience well, he or she hopes to understand this existence and awaken us to ways of living more authentic lives.