There is a famous anecdote Sartre (I think it was Sartre) used to explain some philosophical concept. Roughly, he describes a person ordering a coffee without cream. The waiter explains that they don’t have any cream, but they can make a coffee without milk.
What exactly is this analogy alluding to? What is the philosophical idea behind it? Something about negatives or absence?
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>The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting in a cafe when a waitress approached him: “Can I get you something to drink, Monsieur Sartre?” Sartre replied, “Yes, I’d like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream”. Nodding agreement, the waitress walked off to fill the order and Sartre returned to working. A few minutes later, however, the waitress returned and said, “I’m sorry, Monsieur Sartre, we are all out of cream — how about with no milk?”
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> Zizek often makes that joke in the context of consumption to highlight a paradox of capitalism.
>Basically his idea is that the absence of something is a thing in itself. Nowadays you get products sold with “sugar free”, “Gluten free”, “Salt free”, “Additive or colorant free”, “Casein-free” labels.
A “sugar/gluten free” product is pricier than its less healthy equivalent, meaning that the “non-present” ingredients becomes marketable goods, as much as the actual ingredients. “Sugar-free” is a product in itself that we pay for. We pay for an absence.
>Soon the list of ingredients present (salt, sugar, wheat etc…) will be less long than the list of ingredients not present in the product (“sugar free”, “gluten-free” etc…).
>Maybe we’ll soon pay $10 for a salad because it will be “rubber-free” “petrol residue-free” “excrements-free” “mercury-free”… in the end it’s just some overpriced leaf. A trick to hyperinflate prices in other words.
[source](https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/83houj/can_someone_explain_to_me_this_joke_about_sartre/dvi620h/)
I don’t think the joke is relevant to satre, insofar as just a “philosopher figure”. my interpretation would be it is commentary on capitalist consumerism and its increasing ridiculousness.
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