Publication Details

Abstract

The paper aims at illustrating two different philosophical views on one and the same activity, namely a waiter’s job performance, in particular a waiter from the famous Parisian Café de Flore. The first view is exemplified by Sartre’s notes about the waiter’s behaviour in Being and nothingness [1943] which he probably wrote down just in that café. The second view offers Bruno Latour in his book Paris: Invisible City [1998] in which he analyzes the operating procedures of a waiter in the same café. These two approaches shed some light on the conditions in this coffee bar.