Abstract

Following is a minimally edited transcript of a session on Sartre and terrorism from the North American Sartre Society meeting at Loyola University in New Orleans, March 2002. I organized the session as a response to the events of September 11, 2001. Initially at a loss to comprehend what occurred, I decided that this was exactly the kind of event that called for philosophical consideration. The attacks stunned me both in terms of the numbers of dead (I remember that morning hearing estimates of a possible 20,000 dead, now deter- mined to be just over 2,700) and perhaps even more because of the means used and the symbolic and cultural significance of the targets.