Sarah Bakewell/ Andy Martin/ Stella Sandford
Listen to the podcast here or on YouTube
‘Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?’, asks Martin Heidegger in his Introduction to Metaphysics. In this panel, we explore the ideas of being and nothing as described by existentialism’s most famous thinkers: Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus. We ask what is the allure of the existentialists that their reputations should endure in popular and contemporary culture? And how is it that existentialist philosophy can be, at once, avidly consumed by modern audiences and unapologetically esoteric? Coffee, French cigarettes, and black polo necks not provided; intelligent discussion and provocative questions most definitely are.
Speakers
Sarah Bakewell
Author of At the Existentialist Cafe and How to Live.
Andy Martin
Author of The Boxer and the Goalkeeper: Sartre vs Camus and Lecturer in French, University of Cambridge
Stella Sandford
Professor of Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, London
Chair
Shahidha Bari
Lecturer in Romanticism in the Department of English, Queen Mary, University of London & Fellow, Forum for Philosophy
Recorded on 24 February 2017 at the LSE
