Abstract

This study maintains that Sartre's work and, to some extent, his life, was dominated by the dichotomy of necessity and either freedom or contingency. His changing responses to religion, art, human relationships, and politics are explored. In politics, existentialist subjectivity is needed to guard against the inhumanity of Stalinist pseudoscience. Thus Sartre's theatre upholds the values of subjectivity as opposed to historical necessity. His Marxism rejects economic determinism and affirms the importance of freedom: under capitalism and Stalin men connive at a servitude from which the apocalyptic revolt of the group in fusion is seen as a deliverance. Through a critique of Flaubert's misanthropy, while recognising his dedication to art, Sartre is finally convinced that man, at his most elemental, is possible. In his autobiography, he sees himself as no longer a demiurge but an anonymous embodiment of the concrete universal.