Preparing to Die (at The Existentialist Café)

“I suspect I appreciate At the Existentialist Café more than most readers. After all, my expansive reading of existential philosophers during the decade of the 1990s was critical to the development of my own, personal philosophical approach. After I took up my tenure-track faculty position at a major university in the United States, I began playing catch-up with philosophy. This resulted from my (existential) embarrassment at having a PhD—a Doctor of Philosophy—without having completed one single course in philosophy.”—Dr. Guy McPherson

Planetary Hospice

By Dr. Guy McPherson

“Finding his mind so filled with ‘chimeras and fantastic monsters, one after another, without order or purpose,’ he [Montaigne] decided to write them down, not directly to overcome them, but to inspect their strangeness at his leisure. So he picked up his pen; the first of the Essays was born.”―Sarah Bakewell, How to Live, or a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer (2010)

BELLOWS FALLS Vermont—(Hubris)—December 2023—At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails introduced me to author Sarah Bakewell. The book, published in 2016, represents an overview of the philosophical work conducted by Jean-Paul Sartre and his polyamorous partner, Simone de Beauvoir, along with many other philosophers. The writings of Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and many others are critically evaluated by Bakewell in this capacious romp through the world of modern philosophy. If you seek an overview of philosophical writing with implications for your own life, this is the book for you.

I suspect I appreciate At the Existentialist Café more than most readers. After all, my expansive reading of existential philosophers during the decade of the 1990s was critical to the development of my own, personal philosophical approach. After I took up my tenure-track faculty position at a major university in the United States, I began playing catch-up with philosophy. This resulted from my (existential) embarrassment at having a PhD—a Doctor of Philosophy—without having completed one single course in philosophy. My limited reading of philosophy meant that, like most people with a PhD, I understood a lot about a tiny sliver of the natural sciences. However, I lacked context for my own research-based endeavors. Because I had been reading abundant existential literature without knowing that it was, in fact, existential literature, I was drawn to additional existentialist writers in the books and articles I read in the 1990s. To quote from the first chapter of At the Existentialist Café: “. . .  philosophy was not just a profession. It was life itself—the life of an individual.”

I turned 30 years of age in 1990, which probably contributed to my interest in racism, misogyny, and classism in general. It helped that, as a tenure-track faculty member, I was being paid to think. Another few lines from At the Existentialist Café are relevant: “For those oppressed on grounds of race or class, or for those fighting against colonialism, existentialism offered a change of perspective—literally, as Sartre proposed that all situations be judged according to how they appeared in the eyes of those most oppressed, or those whose suffering what greatest.”

Bakewell refers to the work of many existentialists in this 2016 book, among them, Albert Camus, renowned for his 1955 book, The Myth of Sisyphus. Bakewell summarizes this work in Chapter 7: “If we keep going, it must be on the basis of accepting that there is not ultimate meaning to what we do.” As Bakewell points out later in the same chapter, Camus and Soren Kierkegaard’s positions are consistent with the motto of the British poster that was intended to boost morale in this challenging time: “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

In Bakewell’s earlier work, How to Live, or a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer (2010), the author explores the philosophy of Michel de Montaigne in, as she writes, one question and 20 attempts at an answer. Although I spent much of my time during the early 1990s reading philosophy, I read little of Montaigne’s work. I had focused on the writing of the ancient Greeks and, as a result, I had failed to notice the important work of Montaigne. Bakewell’s clever, question-based approach is engaging. I strongly recommend it, even if you are familiar with philosophy and Montaigne’s abundant writing.

The great question posed by Montaigne is “How to live?” In the chapter dedicated to his first answer, Bakewell summarizes and expands upon: “Don’t worry about death.” Early in the chapter, Bakewell quotes Cicero, writing more than 2,000 years earlier: “To philosophize is to learn how to die.” Bakewell goes on to indicate that not worrying about death makes it possible to fully live.

Five chapters later, Montaigne advises: “Use little tricks.” Bakewell then introduces a thought experiment (a little trick) suggested by the Epicurean writer Lucretius: “[Picture] yourself at the point of death . . . considering two possibilities. Either you have lived well, in which case you can go your way satisfied, like a well-fed guest leaving a party. Or you have not, but then it makes no difference that you are losing your life, since you obviously did not know what to do with it anyway. This may offer scant comfort on your deathbed, but if you think about it in the midst of life it helps you to change your perspective.”

A much shorter summary comes from Bakewell by way of Seneca: “Anyone who clears their vision and lives in full awareness of the world as it is, Seneca says, can never be bored with life.” Finally, in her sixth chapter, Bakewell turns to another of the ancients, the Stoic Epictetus, who wrote: “Do not seek to have everything happen as you wish, but wish for everything to happen as it actually does happen, and your life with be serene.”

Obviously, these responses from Lucretius and Seneca fall into the category of easier said than done. Nonetheless, Montaigne employed the ideas from the ancients to improve his own life: “If I had to live over again, I would live as I have lived.” This no-regrets approach is a model for us all.

Bakewell’s final chapter offers the last of 20 answers to the question, “How to live?” 

“Let life be its own answer” is, as Virginia Woolf pointed out, the final and best answer. Restated, it reads: “Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself.” As Bakewell concludes, this response “has the same quality as the answer given by the Zen master who, when asked, ‘What is enlightenment?’ whacked the questioner on the head with a stick.”

In closing this briefest of reviews, I quote from the final two pages of Bakewell’s 2010 book:

“The twenty-first century has everything to gain from a Montaignean sense of life, and, in its most troubled moments, so far, it has been sorely in need of a Montaignean politics. It could use his sense of moderation, his love of sociability and courtesy, his suspension of judgment, and his subtle understanding of the psychological mechanisms involved in confrontation and conflict. It needs his conviction that no vision of heaven, no imagined Apocalypse, and no perfectionist fantasy can ever outweigh the tiniest of selves in the real world. It is unthinkable to Montaigne that one could ever ‘gratify heaven and nature by committing massacre and homicide, a belief universally embraced in all religions.’ To believe that life could demand any such thing is to forget what day-to-day existence actually is. It entails forgetting that, when you look at a puppy held over a bucket of water, or even at a cat in the mood for play, you are looking at a creature who looks back at you. No abstract principles are involved; there are only two individuals, face to face, hoping for the best from one another.

“Perhaps some of the credit for Montaigne’s last answer should therefore go to his cat—a specific sixteenth-century individual, who had a rather pleasant life on a country estate with a doting master and not too much competition for his attention. She was the one who, by wanting to play with Montaigne at an inconvenient moment, reminded him what it was to be alive. They looked at each other, and, just for a moment, he leaped across the gap in order to see himself through her eyes. Out of that moment—and countless others like it—came his whole philosophy.

“There they are, then, in Montaigne’s library. The cat is attracted by the scratching of his pen; she dabs an experimental paw at the moving quill. He looks at her, perhaps momentarily irritated by the interruption. Then he smiles, tilts the pen, and draws the feather-end across the paper for her to chase. She pounces. The pads of her paws smudge the ink on the last few words; some sheets of paper slide to the floor. The two of them can be left there, suspended in the midst of their lives with the Essays not yet fully written, while we go and get on with ours—with the Essays not yet fully read.”

Many people believe, as I formerly did, that philosophy is simply navel-gazing, an act lacking pragmatism in a busy life. As richly illustrated by these two books by Sarah Bakewell, my conclusion today is quite contrary. Reading and contemplating philosophy offers an understanding of one’s own life. It can help us answer the questions most important to our continued existence: Why are we here? Why am I here? What are my goals in life? How shall I pursue my goals?

If there are meanings to be found in our short lives, then let us find those meanings. I can think of no pursuit more important than this.

Editor’s Note: We embed here for those interested a video featuring Sarah Bakewell and her newest book, Humanly Possible: 700 years of humanist freethinking, enquiry, and hope (2023). 

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