Philosophies are inhabited and lived in rather than merely followed as rules

Evidence

In short, the existentialists inhabited their historical and personal world, as they inhabited their ideas. This notion of ‘inhabited philosophy’ is one I’ve borrowed from the English philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch, who wrote the first full-length book on Sartre and was an early adopter of existentialism (though she later moved away from it). She observed that we need not expect moral philosophers to ‘live by’ their ideas in a simplistic way, as if they were following a set of rules. But we can expect them to show how their ideas are lived in. We should be able to look in through the windows of a philosophy, as it were, and see how people occupy it, how they move about and how they conduct themselves. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 104

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the reader’s organizing lens for the entire book: ‘inhabited philosophy’ as how existentialism should be read.
• XREF: Echoes the reading purpose of getting an accessible orientation to existentialism — this frames how to approach the thinkers as people-in-worlds, not just doctrines. — connects to: Existentialism holds that philosophy grows out of concrete lived experience — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 54; Existentialist philosophy values active engaged form over abstract speculation — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 38; Existentialists drew on lived experience that philosophy itself had structured. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 99 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Existentialism sought lived experience rather than explaining it away through abstract systems #corroborates (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1025
• Existentialism holds that philosophy grows out of concrete lived experience #corroborates (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 54
• Existentialist philosophy values active engaged form over abstract speculation #corroborates (0.78) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 38
• A philosophy becomes historical and living only through contact with the simple #corroborates (0.74)
• Existentialists drew on lived experience that philosophy itself had structured. #qualifies (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 99