Existential Coffee
Coffee: ontological substance or a mere pretext for existence?

Deprived of hot coffee for odontological reasons, I was reflecting on this very subject with ChatGPT.

I shared the idea that a philosophical dissertation on the role of coffee in the existentialist perception—without “bad faith” or thinking that “Hell is other people” who never drink any—would, I joked, make a fine topic for the 2026 finals.

And here is what ChatGPT spontaneously replied.

ChatGPT said:

🌓 Dissertation Topic:
Can One Live Authentically Without Coffee?
An existentialist reflection on the warm substance of being-in-the-world.

Introduction

Coffee is not simply a drink: it is an act, a commencement, a discreet form of self-affirmation in the face of the absurd.

If for Camus, man discovers himself through confrontation with the world, perhaps we must add: he prepares for it with a cup.

And if Sartre saw freedom as a condemnation, modern man submits to it more willingly after the first sip. Coffee is therefore not a simple stimulant, but a phenomenological phenomenon: it reveals the world, it puts being in a disposition to exist.

Hence the question: can one access a fully authentic existence without this foundational ritual? Or does the deprivation of hot coffee condemn the human to a form of tepid existence?

I – Coffee as Ontological Awakening

• Husserl would have put it as an epigraph: “Back to the cup itself.”
The aroma, the heat, the bitterness: so many intentions of consciousness that actualize the presence of the world.
• Coffee is a passage from inertia to act. It is a pro-ject, in the Heideggerian sense: it turns the individual into a being-on-the-move.
• To drink coffee is to say: “I am entering the moment,” I choose to inhabit time.
Therefore: coffee is not accessory; it is structurally linked to the emergence of the active subject.

II – Coffee as a Metaphor for Existential Freedom

• In Sartre’s view, man must choose himself at every instant. Coffee is the first test of this choice: with or without sugar? short or long?
The modalities of the drink reveal one’s singularity.
• Not drinking coffee is not a neutrality: it is an inverted existential choice, a way of saying “I refuse intensity.”
• Thus, coffee becomes the liquid symbol of engaged freedom.

III – Can One Live Without Coffee? The Temptation of the Tepid/

• To live without coffee is to accept waking up without intention, without transcendence. It is to choose the world without an inner tension.
• However, true existentialism rejects dependency: man must be free even from coffee.
• Perhaps authenticity is born from the capacity to rediscover the warmth of the world without an intermediary cup. Coffee is no longer the source of being, but the revealer of an already present being.
Thus, coffee is to existence what language is to thought: not its absolute condition, but its privileged mode of manifestation.

Conclusion

Coffee is neither a simple brew nor a social contingency. It is a ritual of phenomenological awakening, a vector of engagement in the world.

Living without coffee is possible; but living without what it symbolizes—the warmth of choice, the intensity of the present moment, the lucid bitterness of reality—is not.
It is therefore not the coffee that is essential, but what it reveals: the exigency to consciously inhabit the instant.
Thus, true existentialism does not depend on coffee—it depends on what we do with the first sip of the day, whether it is scalding or interior.

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And there you have it, dear reader: this is what can be produced by what some still call a “statistical parrot,” capable only of generating the next most likely word.

What can I say? Between information and utilitarian help, I appreciate that “my” ChatGPT can display the most absurd sense of humor.