Abstract

Cutting out all reference to the popular and polemical, psychological and ideological resonances evoked in and by Sartre, this study takes up the challenge of considering the impressive work of Sartre as the latest metamorphosis of the Western philosophical heritage. As Professor Hartmann explains, he has included sufficient exposition of Sartre’s views to enable the reader without extensive knowledge of Sartre to follow the interpretation, but expects him to be conversant with Hegel and, to a lesser extent, with Husserl and Heidegger. If this does not suit the generality of English-speaking students of philosophy who usually know of Sartre, Heidegger, Husserl and Hegel in that order of detail, nevertheless the Hegelian bias of the lengthy critical exposition gives us a new, incisive, and it seems to me, definitive treatment of Sartre which will benefit those who have come to him through phenomenology.