Starting from the antagonism represented by the concurrent projects of JeanPaul Sartre and Michel Foucault in the context of the “sixties”, this article aims to discern the impasses and dilemmas of the theory and the political action in the scope of the contemporary French thought, highlighting the role of intellectuals in the contemporary philosophical time.

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most important philosophical and political thinkers of the twentieth century. His writings had a potency that was irresistible to the intellectual scene that swept post-war Europe, and have left a vital inheritance to contemporary thought. The central tenet of the Existentialist movement which he helped to found, whereby God is replaced by an ethical self, proved hugely attractive to a generation that had seen the horrors of Nazism, and provoked (...) a revolution in post-war thought and literature. In _What is Literature?_ Sartre the novelist and Sartre the philosopher combine to address the phenomenon of literature, exploring why we read, and why we write. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre, at the height of his powers, debates with Italy’s leading intellectuals In 1961, the prolific French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre was invited to give a talk at the Gramsci Institute in Rome. In attendance were some of Italy’s leading Marxist thinkers, such as Enzo Paci, Cesare Luporini, and Galvano Della Volpe, whose contributions to the long and remarkable discussion that followed are collected in this volume, along with the lecture itself. Sartre (...) posed the question “What is subjectivity?”—a question of renewed importance today to contemporary debates concerning “the subject” in critical theory. This work includes a preface by Michel Kail and Raoul Kirchmayr and an afterword by Fredric Jameson, who makes a rousing case for the continued importance of Sartre’s philosophy. (shrink)

The purposes of writing -- The itinerary of a thought -- Vietnam : imperialism and genocide -- Czechoslovakia : the socialism that came in from the cold -- France : masses, spontaneity, party -- Kierkegaard : the singular universal -- Mallarmé : the poetry of suicide -- Tintoretto : St. George and the dragon -- The man with the tape-recorder -- Psychoanalytic dialogue -- Reply to Sartre--Pontalis -- Reply to Sartre--Pingaud -- A plea for intellectuals -- A friend (...) of the people. (shrink)

It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominent European intellectual of the post-World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture was to expound his philosophy as a form of “existentialism,” a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, (...) he was about to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity. The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes. Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind. This book presents a new English translation of Sartre’s 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus’s _The Stranger_, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre’s introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture. (shrink)

Truth and Existence , written in response to Martin Heidegger's Essence of Truth , is a product of the years when Sartre was reaching full stature as a philosopher, novelist, playwright, essayist, and political activist. This concise and engaging text not only presents Sartre's ontology of truth but also addresses the key moral questions of freedom, action, and bad faith. Truth and Existence is introduced by an extended biographical, historical, and analytical essay by Ronald Aronson. " (...) Truth and Existence is another important element in the recently published links between Sartre's existentialist ontology and his later ethical, political, and literary concerns. . . . The excellent introduction by Aronson will help readers not experienced in reading Sartre."-- Choice "Accompanied by an excellent introduction, this dense, lucidly translated treatise reveals Sartre as a characteristically 20th-century figure."-- Publishers Weekly Jean-Paul Sartre (1906-1980) was offered, but declined, the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. His many works of fiction, drama, and philosophy include the monumental study of Flaubert, The Family Idiot , and The Freud Scenario , both published in translation by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)

Truth and Existence, written in response to Martin Heidegger's Essence of Truth, is a product of the years when Sartre was reaching full stature as a philosopher, novelist, playwright, essayist, and political activist. This concise and engaging text not only presents Sartre's ontology of truth but also addresses the key moral questions of freedom, action, and bad faith. Truth and Existence is introduced by an extended biographical, historical, and analytical essay by Ronald Aronson. "Truth and Existence (...) is another important element in the recently published links between Sartre's existentialist ontology and his later ethical, political, and literary concerns.... The excellent introduction by Aronson will help readers not experienced in reading Sartre."—Choice "Accompanied by an excellent introduction, this dense, lucidly translated treatise reveals Sartre as a characteristically 20th-century figure."—Publishers Weekly Jean-Paul Sartre (1906-1980) was offered, but declined, the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. His many works of fiction, drama, and philosophy include the monumental study of Flaubert, The Family Idiot, and The Freud Scenario, both published in translation by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the most famous philosophers of the twentieth century. The principal founder of existentialism, a political thinker and famous novelist and dramatist, his work has exerted enormous influence in philosophy, literature, politics and cultural studies. Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings is the first collection of Sartre's key philosophical writings and provides an indispensable resource for readers of his work. Stephen Priest's clear and helpful introductions make the volume an (...) ideal companion to those coming to Sartre's writing for the first time. (shrink)

This is one of the best written and most comprehensive studies of the development of Sartre’s thought yet to appear in English, which is not to say that it covers every facet of his variegated career. Written by the former editor of Yale French Studies and current chairman of the Department of Romance Languages at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, it emphasizes Sartre’s literary works and thus belongs most properly in the category of literary criticism or the history of ideas. (...) Still, McMahon does not ignore Sartre’s philosophical writings. Indeed, he gives particular attention to The Critique of Dialectical Reason, a volume often avoided by authors who approach Sartre from a literary tradition. But the philosophic sources are usually consulted to explain or illustrate the literary, which provide the object of the author’s prime concern. McMahon underscores three concepts which measure Sartre’s intellectual growth, viz., freedom, love, and history. Regarding freedom, Sartre has "completed" the unfinished analyses of Being and Nothingness with their excessive individualism by his growing awareness that freedom is more than the ability to say "No" to the Other; it has a positive content and requires collective action to be maintained. Likewise, love is now conceived as a bond of promises which envisages the achievement of common projects. McMahon labels this rather cold-blooded concept "pragmatic love." Finally, history, which emerges as Sartre’s absolute, is now understood as a force conditioning men and limiting the availability of their choices. Sartre has come under the sway of Engels’ dictum: "Men make their history themselves, but they make it within a given milieu which conditions them." Sartre relies heavily upon the power of dialectic to keep individual choice afloat in a sea of historical forces. Whether or not he succeeds is a current question. McMahon believes that he does not. Because what he calls the "shift of emphasis" in Sartre’s thought from the individual to the social involves a growing interest in the sciences humaines, McMahon’s failure to consider Sartre’s political writings at any length is the chief disappointment of this excellent study. And then there is that stepchild of Sartriana, Existentialism is a Humanism. Following Cumming and others, McMahon chooses to ignore this essay, probably because Sartre himself has repudiated it. But if anyone is to portray Sartre "warts and all," and McMahon does not hesitate to expose the blemishes, then the reckless and inconsistent statements of this short lecture are most revealing. They indicate the freewheeling motions of a "shift" underway. Each chapter is followed by a short but helpful discussion of related themes and works. To capture the world of Jean-Paul Sartre is a most ambitious project. McMahon has met this challenge with insight and style.—T. R. F. (shrink)

It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominent European intellectual of the post-World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture (“Existentialism Is a Humanism”) was to expound his philosophy as a form of “existentialism,” a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a (...) doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity. The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes (“existence precedes essence”). Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind. This book presents a new English translation of Sartre’s 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus’s _The Stranger_, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre’s introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture. (shrink)

The article contains an exposition of the moral philosophy of J. P. Sartre as well as a trial of its evaluation. The author presents the social basis and main theses of Sartre’s.philosophical system and stresses the questions of social conditioning, real contents, and functions of the situational ethics of Sartre. According to the author, the situational ethics of Sartre, being an expression of feelings of intellectuals, middle-class, and students in the period of violent changes in our (...) civilization, simply describes a certain type of man, peculiar to these conditions and this time. Therefore, this type cannot be considered a definite universal construction of a human subject. Pessimism, characteristic for the existentialism, as an expression of.certain social and political conditions, can be easily surmounted, provided that a possibility of definite social transformations can be demonstrated. This gives evidence of a positive alternative which proposes development of social democracy, elimination of the remnants of worship of the individual, as well as a more and more full realization of social humanism, that are limiting the experiments of existentialism. Together with an increasing conviction of a possibility to surmount and to abolish the capitalistic alienation and together with the development of socialist democracy, when marxist thinking comprises more and more effectively all aspects of human fates, the social basis of existentialism and its influence are losing ground. On the other hand, whatever might be said about arbitrariness and subjectivism of many theses of existentialism, it has raised many essential questions of particular importance in our time. These are: 1) subjective aspect of human freedom in situations of a choice of an action; 2) responsibility of an individual to himself, other people, and history; 3) contradiction between general systems of valuation and norms and of a definite situation in which a choice is taken; 4) danger of a non-authentic apparent communication; 5) danger of a lost of personality in conditions of consumptionist civilisation; 6) necessity of responsibility and engagement; 7) necessity of forbearance, tolerance and respecting the subjective world of other persons; 8) existence of conflict situations. According to the author, a resolution of the above problems, which are important for a modern man, can be done only basing on marxism which should be conceived in a creative way. It is necessary, however, to reject arbitrary assumptions of the existentialist metaphysics, ethical formalism, and, above all, ahistorical conception of freedom. The opinions of Sartre that the, good a priori cannot exist, that everybody should determine his own existence, and that in each situation he should maintain his creative attitude and moral alertness, are in a certain sense and within certain limits right and productive. However, depriving people of a possibility to build any system of values and norms of a super-subjective character is a risky thing and may lead to moral relativity and nihilism. The social function of the existentialism is also a double one. On the one hand, existentialism, which demonstrates a super-historical and unchangeable character of the drama of human existence, in some way confirms and justifies the social system submitted to critic. On the other hand, as it states a moral and idealistic outsidership, bareness, and loneliness of a human individual in a modern bourgeois 1society, existentialism presents an important ethical indictment directed to the capitalistic society and indirectly shows a necessity to create such relations which would remove the tragic gap between individual and society. This is the reason of a peculiar paradox that for same people the existentialism is a point of departure from the files of the revolutionary movement, and for others a point which leads into marxism – cum duo faciunt idem, non est idem. (shrink)

_Being and Nothingness_ is without doubt one of the most significant books of the twentieth century. The central work by one of the world's most influential thinkers, it altered the course of western philosophy. Its revolutionary approach challenged all previous assumptions about the individual's relationship with the world. Known as 'the Bible of existentialism', its impact on culture and literature was immediate and was felt worldwide, from the absurd drama of Samuel Beckett to the soul-searching cries of the Beat (...) poets. _Being and Nothingness_ is one of those rare books whose influence has affected the mind-set of subsequent generations. Sixty years after its first publication, its message remains as potent as ever - challenging the reader to confront the fundamental dilemmas of human freedom, responsibility and action. (shrink)

_Critical Essays _ contains essays on literature and philosophy from a highly formative period of French philosopher and leading existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre’s life, the years between 1938 and 1946. This period is particularly interesting because it is before Sartre published the magnum opus that would solidify his name as a philosopher, _Being and Nothingness_. Instead, during this time Sartre was emerging as one of France’s most promising young novelists and playwrights—he had already published _Nausea, The (...) Age of Reason, The Flies, _and_ No Exit_. Not content, however, he was meanwhile consciously attempting to revive the form of the essay via detailed examinations of writers who were to become central to European cultural life in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Collected here are Sartre’s experiments in reimagining the idea and structure of the essay. Among the distinguished writers he analyzes are Francis Ponge, Georges Bataille, Vladimir Nabokov, Maurice Blanchot, and, of course, Albert Camus, whose novel _The Stranger _Sartre endeavours to explain in these pages. _Critical Essays _ also contains a famous attack on the Catholic novelist François Mauriac, studies of the great American literary iconoclasts Faulkner and Dos Passos, and brief but insightful essays on aspects of the philosophical writings of Husserl and Descartes. This new translation by Chris Turner reinvigorates the original skill and voice of Sartre’s work and will be essential reading for fans of Sartre and the many writers and works he explores. “For my generation he has always been one of the great intellectual heroes of the twentieth century, a man whose insight and intellectual gifts were at the service of nearly every progressive cause of our time.”—Edward Said. (shrink)

Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre counted among his friends and associates some of the most esteemed intellectuals, writers, and artists of the twentieth century. In Portraits, Sartre collected his impressions and accounts of many of his notable acquaintances, in addition to some of his most important writings on art and literature during the early 1950s. Portraits includes Sartre's preface to Nathalie Sarraute's Portrait of a Man Unknown and his homages to André Gide, Albert Camus, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. (...) The essay on Merleau-Ponty casts considerable light on the recent history of French philosophy, particularly with regard to dominant post-war political conceptions. Featured as well are lengthy studies of Sartre's close friend Paul Nizan and of the young André Gorz that are no less revealing, as well as Sartre's "Reply to Albert Camus," which sealed the ideological and personal break between the two writers on its publication in 1952. Alongside these major writings are fascinating articles on Tintoretto and a number of contemporary artists, including Giacometti and Masson. Finally, Portraits concludes with two travelogue-style accounts of Sartre's time in Italy. This new translation by Chris Turner presents these essays in their complete form as originally intended by Sartre when he first published Situations IV in France and is thus essential reading for anyone interested in the artistic and intellectual history of the time. (shrink)

(Spanish) RESUMEN: La libertad absoluta postulada por Viktor Emil Frankl y Jean-Paul Sartre, la Shoah y la creencia en un dios omnipotente, bueno y justo parecen contradecirse. La pregunta por el sentido del sufrimiento de las víctimas del Holocausto (la verdadera catástrofe, el mayor crimen contra la humanidad), simbolizado por Auschwitz, y como punto de inflexión en la historia, es terriblemente dolorosa y parece no tener una respuesta filosófica ni teológica. A mi juicio, es importantísimo distinguir entre (...) las víctimas inocentes de la Shoah que perecieron y las víctimas inocentes que sufrieron un verdadero infierno y perdieron a sus seres queridos, pero que lograron sobrevivir. Ambas son víctimas, por supuesto, pero así como encontrarle un posible sentido al sufrimiento de las víctimas masacradas y gaseadas podría suponer un insulto a su sufrimiento y agonía –en especial, al horror que sufrieron los niños–, el horrible sufrimiento de los supervivientes pudo dar, tal vez, de alguna manera, un sentido a sus vidas después de la liberación de los campos de concentración y exterminio, ya fuera como voz, como protesta o como simple supervivencia. Frankl apuesta por un sentido último (que abraza el sentido del sufrimiento de las víctimas), y Sartre, aunque parezca no apostar por sentido alguno, volcó su vida al compromiso político después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y ello parece vislumbrar una minúscula pizca de sentido después de la barbarie. La filosofía de Frankl es un sí a la vida incluso en las situaciones más extremas, un grito casi nietzscheano que exalta el valor de la vida más allá de cualquier sufrimiento. Frankl, padre de la logoterapia y superviviente del Holocausto, abre una puerta a Dios al hablar de un dios inconsciente, una dimensión suprahumana y una fe incondicional, y define la religión como espiritualidad y como la búsqueda del hombre por el sentido último. Según Frankl, la libertad no se contradice con Dios, y la religión existe no a raíz de la barbarie, sino a pesar de la barbarie. El existencialismo sartreano es una filosofía de la libertad radical y de la responsabilidad. El hombre está condenado a ser libre. El ser humano es un ser en el que la existencia precede a la esencia. Somos totalmente responsables de lo que somos. Sartre afirma que la libertad humana es incompatible con Dios. En un mundo sin Dios, la moral la construyen los hombres, con sus propias decisiones y sus acciones, y la existencia y el sufrimiento de las víctimas no tienen sentido alguno. Sartre define al hombre como libertad, responsabilidad, angustia y contingencia. Frankl define al hombre como libertad, responsabilidad, espiritualidad y búsqueda de sentido. Con esta tesis me propongo entrar en la resbaladiza dimensión del dolor, la desesperación, el sentido y sinsentido del sufrimiento de las víctimas (teniendo presente los horrores de Auschwitz, que en teología y filosofía ha simbolizado desde la liberación de los campos la muerte de Dios y la muerte de la moral). Es verdad que no solo los hombres, mujeres y niños judíos fueron víctimas de la barbarie alemana, pero, como reza el mensaje de Elie Wiesel en la exposición permanente del Block 27 del Auschwitz-Birkeanu State Museum: "Not all victims were Jewish in this place, but all Jews were victims". La Shoah no es un episodio dentro de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, sino un punto de inflexión en la historia de la humanidad, y es una catástrofe que nos concierne a todos, hombres y mujeres judíos y no judíos, religiosos e irreligiosos, creyentes e increyentes, como seres libres, responsables y morales que somos –o que deberíamos ser. Muchas de las víctimas del Holocausto, en medio de la desesperación, entraron en las cámaras de gas orando, aferrándose a la esperanza de que ese final espeluznante no era un punto final. Con esta tesis no me propongo de ninguna manera responder a la eterna pregunta de si Dios existe o no, sino que propongo interpretar ese grito hacia Dios como un desesperado anhelo de esperanza. También me propongo encontrar una coherencia en las posturas de estos dos grandes pensadores para quienes la libertad y la responsabilidad definen al hombre: Frankl (quien apuesta por una dimensión suprahumana donde existe un sentido último en el que el sufrimiento de las víctimas tiene que tener algún sentido, aunque ese sentido sea completamente incomprensible en la dimensión humana) y Sartre (el existencialista ateo por excelencia, para quien el mundo, la existencia y el sufrimiento son absolutamente contingentes). En el primer capítulo expongo la logoterapia y el existencialismo sartreano: describo las tres dimensiones del hombre y las tres búsquedas de sentido propuestas por Frankl, y expongo las cinco consecuencias de "l'existence précède l'essence", centrándome en la libertad y la responsabilidad, y hablo del suicidio. El segundo capítulo está dedicado al dios inconsciente frankleano, la dimensión suprahumana, la búsqueda por el sentido último y la fe incondicional. En el tercer capítulo ilustro la libertad sin Dios sartreana, la ontología sartreana, el ateísmo sartreano y el humanismo sartreano, y hablo sobre la responsabilidad, la mauvaise foi, la contingencia, la situation y la angustia. El cuarto capítulo es necesariamente histórico (sin dejar de ser filosófico): me pregunto por la muerte de Dios después de Auschwitz, argumento y defiendo la unicidad del Holocausto (la Shoah es un punto de inflexión en la historia de la humanidad), describo las masacres antes de los campos de exterminio (Einsatzgruppen, Ordnungspolizei y Wehrmacht), el gigantesco complejo de Auschwitz (Stammlager, Auschwitz-Birkenau y Monowitz-Buna), reflexiono sobre Dios y el mal (centrándome en los niños de Auschwitz), describo los días de Frankl en Auschwitz, hablo de Dios como esperanza, de la inmortalidad y la escatología, de la crueldad de Dios, de la relación entre el cristianismo y el antisemitismo, del islam y el antisemitismo, critico el silencio de Dios, hablo de la muerte de Dios y del juicio contra Dios. En el quinto capítulo expongo la moral frankleana (una moral que atañe al hombre y no a Dios), basándome en su teoría del amor y en su única obra de teatro (Synchronisation in Binkerwald), y la moral sartreana (una moral que atañe a una humanidad sin Dios), recordando a Dostoyevsky, analizando la famosa cita de Garcin en Huis clos "L'enfer, c'est les Autres", criticando el marxismo de Sartre y cuestionando (con la mirada de Frankl y Sartre) el verso de Brecht "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral"; al final del capítulo incluyo una reflexión propia y las críticas frankleana y sartreana sobre la impunidad de los verdugos y colaboradores después del Holocausto (con el permiso de Dios). Después de la Conclusión, añado un Apéndice sobre las vidas de Frankl y Sartre, para poder entender mejor su obra. PALABRAS CLAVE: logoterapia, existencialismo sartreano, búsqueda de sentido, libertad, responsabilidad, moral, angustia, sufrimiento, supervivientes, víctimas, contingencia, espiritualidad, religión, Dios, esperanza, antisemitismo, culpa, Auschwitz, Holocausto, Shoah. /// (English) ABSTRACT: The absolute freedom defended by Viktor Emil Frankl and Jean-Paul Sartre, the Shoah and the belief in an omnipotent, benevolent and just God seem to contradict each other. The question of the meaning of the victims' suffering of the Holocaust (the true catastrophe, the biggest crime against humanity), simbolised by Auschwitz and as a turning point in History, is terribly painful and doesn't seem to have an answer. In my opinion, it's crucial to distinguish between the innocent victims of the Shoah who perished and the innocent victims who sufferend a real hell and lost their loved ones, but managed to survive. Both are victims, of course, but just as finding a possible meaning to the suffering of the massacred and gassed victims could result in an insult to their suffering and agony –especially to the horror that the children suffered– the gigantic suffering of the survivors could, maybe, somehow, give a meaning to their lives after the liberation of the concentration and extermination camps, either as a voice, as a protest, or as a simple survival. Frankl believes in an ultimate meaning (that embraces the meaning of the victims' suffering), and Sartre, even if it appears not to embrace any meaning, turned his life to political engagement after War World II, and that attitude seems to give a tiny glimpse of meaning after the barbarity. Frankl's philosophy says yes to life even in the most extreme situations, and it's a Nietzschean-like scream that exalts the value of life beyond any monstrous suffering. Frankl, the father of logotherapy and a Holocaust survivor, opens a door to God when he talks about an unconscious God, a supra-human dimension and an unconditional faith; he defines religion as spirituality and as man's search for ultimate meaning. According to Frankl, freedom is not contradictory with God, and religion exists not because of the barbarity but in spite of the barbarity. Sartrean existentialism is a philosophy of radical freedom and responsibility. Men are condemned to be free. We are beings where the existence precedes the essence. We are completely responsible of what we are. Sartre argues that human freedom is incompatible with God. In a godless world, morality is constructed by people, with their own choices and actions, and human existence and the suffering of the victims don't have any meaning. Sartre defines man as freedom, responsibility, Angst and contingency. Frankl defines man as freedom, responsibility, spirituality and search for meaning. With this dissertation I attempt to enter in the slippery dimension of the pain, despair, meaning and meaninglessness of the victims' suffering (having in mind the horrors of Auschwitz, that in theology and in philosophy have simbolised, since the liberation of the camps, the death of God and the death of morality). It's true that not only Jewish men, women and children were victims of the German barbarity, but, as Elie Wiesel's message from the permanent exhibition from Block 27 of the Auschwitz-Birkeanu State Museum reads: "Not all victims were Jewish in this place, but all Jews were victims". The Shoah is not an episode inside War World II, but a turning point in the history of humankind, and a catastrophe that embraces us all, Jewish and not not Jewish men and women, religious and not religious, believers and not believers, as the free, responsible and moral beings that we all are –or that we should be. A lot of the victims, in the midst of their desperation, entered into the gas chambers praying, holding to the hope that their horrifying end was not the ultimate end. With this dissertation I do not attempt to answer the eternal question of the existence of God, rather, I will try to interpret that scream to God as a longing for hope. I also intend to find a coherence between the thought of these two great thinkers for whom freedom and responsibilty define man: Frankl (who argues that there is a suprahuman dimension where an ultimate meaning exists and where the victims' suffering has to have a meaning, even if this meaning is completely incomprehensible in the human dimension) and Sartre (the atheist existentialist par excellence, for whom the world, human existence and suffering are absolutely contingent). In the first chapter I expose logotherapy and Sartrean existentialism: I describe the three dimensions of man, the three searches for meaning, the five consequences of "l'existence précède l'essence" and I speak about suicide. The second chapter delves into the unconscious God, the supra-human dimension, the ultimate meaning and the unconditional faith. In the third chapter I expose the freedom without God defended by Sartre, Sartre's ontology, Sartre's atheism, Sartre's humanism, and his ideas about responsibility, mauvaise foi, contingency, situation, and Angst. The fourth chapter is necessarily historical (while being philosophical too): I wonder about the death of God after Auschwitz, I argue and defend the uniqueness of the Holocaust (the Shoah is a turning point in the history of humankind), I describe the massacres before the extermination camps (Einsatzgruppen, Ordnungspolizei y Wehrmacht), the gigantic Auschwitz camp complex (Stammlager, Auschwitz-Birkenau y Monowitz-Buna), I reflect on God and evil (focusing on the children of Auschwitz), I describe Frankl's days in Auschwitz, I talk about God as hope, about immortality and escathology, I discuss God's cruelty, the relationship between Christianity and antisemitism and Islam and antisemitism, I question the silence of God, and I talk about the death of God and about the trial against God. In the fifth chapter I talk about the Franklean morality (a morality that concerns man and not God), on the basis of his love theory and his only work of theater (Synchronisation in Binkerwald), and the Sartrean morality (a morality that concerns a humanity without God), remembering Dostoyevsky, analysing Garcin's famous quote in Huis clos "L'enfer, c'est les Autres", crticizing Sartre's marxism and questioning (with Frankl's and Sartre's eyes) Brecht's verse "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral"; at the end of the chapter I include my own reflection (and Frankl and Sartre's critique) about the impunity of the executioners and collaborators after the Holocaust (with God's permission). After the Conclusion, I add an Appendix about the lives of Frankl and Sartre, which helps understanding better their work. KEYWORDS: logotherapy, existentialism, search for meaning, freedom, responsibility, morality, Angst, suffering, survivors, victims, contingency, spirituality, religion, God, hope, antisemitism, guilt, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Shoah. (shrink)

This article examines Sartre’s works in which his attempt to find an existentialist ethics is evident. Most of the clues to this project are to be found in texts published posthumously since during his lifetime he never managed to fulfil the promise he made at the end of Being and Nothingness. It will be argued that this existentialist ethics owes a strong debt to Kantian philosophy, even if it confronts more directly the historical dynamics of violence and oppression. Despite (...) the fact that this project is unfinished and only sketched out, it is possible to ask what Sartre’s direction of development would have been, pointing to the outline of a normative theory, Critical Existentialism, that could have its place in contemporary ethical debate. (shrink)

_Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism_ is a classic critique of France's policies in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s and inspired much subsequent writing on colonialism, post-colonialism, politics, and literature. It includes Sartre's celebrated preface to Fanon's classic _Wretched_ _of the Earth. Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism _ had a profound impact on French intellectual life, inspiring many other influential French thinkers and critics of colonialism such as Jean-Francois Lyotard, Frantz Fanon, Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida.

While the postmodern critique of universals provides important insights, it also leaves us in an unacceptable position---lacking solid justification for moral judgments and political action, and unable to generalize about human experience. I argue that the best response to relativism lies in a new humanism. Any new humanism must be "post-humanist"---taking into account valid critiques of past humanisms, incorporating multicultural voices, and building upon an understanding of the common human condition that does not erase or ignore difference. My (...) project is to present a re-conceptualized notion of the "human condition" that meets these conditions, to serve as a basis for a new humanism. ;As a starting point, I take up the framework found in Jean-Paul Sartre's later Marxist-Existentialist works. These are helpful in two respects. First, as he attempts to reconcile Marxism and Existentialism, Sartre re-examines central categories of human experience and ultimately arrives at an understanding of the human that transcends both essentialism and anti-essentialism. Second, I argue that the methods Sartre develops anticipate crucial postmodern insights without losing moral and political ground, and that a reworking of these methods enables us to theorize beyond postmodernism today. My project also draws upon Feminism, Critical Race Theory, Postcolonialism, African Philosophy, and the Frankfurt School. ;The central elements of my articulation of the human condition include: a rethinking of the relationship of the individual and the social; an account of the social constitution of the individual; a new approach to understanding freedom and necessity in human experience; and a reconsideration of social identities such as race, class, and gender. I ask, given this understanding of the human condition, what problems remain inherent to human relationships, and what are the possibilities? Are we doomed to alienating and objectifying interactions with others, or are authentic love and cooperation also possible? Finally, I explore the ways in which we might achieve equality and reciprocity in a democracy necessarily built upon differences in identity and social power. (shrink)

In 1966 Michel Foucault pointed out that the generation of thinkers who had taken as their model Sartre or Merleau-Ponty had suddenly become part of the intellectual museum. A new generation of thinkers had appeared whose passion was not for “meaning”, “man” and “commitment”, but for the “concept and the system”.One could say that the break with the past generation began the day that Levi-Strauss with regard to societies and Lacan with regard to the unconscious showed (...) us that “meaning” was probably nothing but a sort of surface effect, a scum, and that that which affected us most profoundly, that which preceded us, that which maintains us.in space and time was the system.“Our task, Foucault went on, is to free ourselves from humanism and in that sense our work is political.” For some time Foucault and those who thought like him were classed as ‘academics”, that is as people whose thinking had little or no implications for the ongoing state of the society. Then came the May movement of 1968 and in February of 1969 a major gathering was held and the main speakers were Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault. (shrink)

Webber argues for a new interpretation of Sartrean existentialism. On this reading, Sartre is arguing that each person’s character consists in the projects they choose to pursue and that we are all already aware of this but prefer not to face it. Careful consideration of his existentialist writings shows this to be the unifying theme of his theories of consciousness, freedom, the self, bad faith, personal relationships, existential psychoanalysis, and the possibility of authenticity. Developing this account affords many (...) insights into various aspects of his philosophy, not least concerning the origins, structure, and effects of bad faith and the resulting ethic of authenticity. This discussion makes clear the contributions that Sartre’s work can make to current debates over the objectivity of ethics and the psychology of agency, character, and selfhood. Written in an accessible style and illustrated with reference to Sartre’s fiction, this book should appeal to general readers and students as well as to specialists. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre is an undisputed giant of twentieth-century philosophy. His intellectual writings popularizing existentialism combined with his creative and artistic flair have made him a legend of French thought. His tumultuous personal life - so inextricably bound up with his philosophical thinking - is a fascinating tale of love and lust, drug abuse, high profile fallings-out and political and cultural rebellion. This substantial and meticulously researched biography is accessible, fast-paced, often amusing and at times (...) deeply moving. Existentialism and Excess covers all the main events of Sartre's remarkable seventy-five-year life from his early years as a precocious brat devouring his grandfather's library, through his time as a brilliant student in Paris, his wilderness years as a provincial teacher-writer experimenting with mescaline, his World War II adventures as a POW and member of the resistance, his post-war politicization, his immense amphetamine fueled feats of writing productivity, his harem of women, his many travels and his final decline into blindness and old age. Along the way there are countless intriguing anecdotes, some amusing, some tragic, some controversial: his loathing of crustaceans and his belief that he was being pursued by a giant lobster, his escape from a POW camp, the bombing of his apartment, his influence on the May 1968 uprising and his many love affairs. Cox deftly moves from these episodes to discussing his intellectual development, his famous feuds with Aron, Camus, and Merleau-Ponty, his encounters with other giant figures of his day: Roosevelt, Hemingway, Heidegger, John Huston, Mao, Castro, Che Guevara, Khrushchev and Tito, and, above all, his long, complex and creative relationship with Simone de Beauvoir. Existentialism and Excess also gives serious consideration to Sartre's ideas and many philosophical works, novels, stories, plays and biographies, revealing their intimate connection with his personal life. Cox has written an entertaining, thought-provoking and compulsive book, much like the man himself. (shrink)

Named one of the Ten Best Books of 2016 by the New York Times, a spirited account of a major intellectual movement of the twentieth century and the revolutionary thinkers who came to shape it, by the best-selling author of How to Live Sarah Bakewell. Paris, 1933: three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow (...) philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called Phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!" It was this simple phrase that would ignite a movement, inspiring Sartre to integrate Phenomenology into his own French, humanistic sensibility, thereby creating an entirely new philosophical approach inspired by themes of radical freedom, authentic being, and political activism. This movement would sweep through the jazz clubs and cafés of the Left Bank before making its way across the world as Existentialism. Featuring not only philosophers, but also playwrights, anthropologists, convicts, and revolutionaries, At the Existentialist Café follows the existentialists' story, from the first rebellious spark through the Second World War, to its role in postwar liberation movements such as anti-colonialism, feminism, and gay rights. Interweaving biography and philosophy, it is the epic account of passionate encounters--fights, love affairs, mentorships, rebellions, and long partnerships--and a vital investigation into what the existentialists have to offer us today, at a moment when we are once again confronting the major questions of freedom, global responsibility, and human authenticity in a fractious and technology-driven world. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre is often seen as the quintessential public intellectual, but this was not always the case. Until the mid-1940s he was not so well-known, even in France. Then suddenly, in a very short period of time, Sartre became an intellectual celebrity. How can we explain this remarkable transformation? The Existentialist Moment retraces Sartre s career and provides a compelling new explanation of his meteoric rise to fame. Baert takes the reader back to (...) the confusing and traumatic period of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath and shows how the unique political and intellectual landscape in France at this time helped to propel Sartre and existentialist philosophy to the fore. The book also explores why, from the early 1960s onwards, in France and elsewhere, the interest in Sartre and existentialism eventually waned. The Existentialist Moment ends with a bold new theory for the study of intellectuals and a provocative challenge to the widespread belief that the public intellectual is a species now on the brink of extinction. (shrink)

Arguing that Sartre's social philosophy is both heuristic and normative, Greene's book represents a major contribution to the study of Sartre. He desires to eschew any evaluative judgments on Sartre's work and to concentrate on how to unravel the social philosophy of Sartre. But herein lies the major shortcoming: although warning the reader to be wary when interpreting Sartre's fiction and insisting that the major source of Sartre's doctrine is to be found in Being (...) and Nothingness, Greene neither indicates how to interpret Sartre's fiction, nor satisfactorily explicates Sartre's major work. The basic themes of Greene's exposition are that: Sartre is only concerned with the intellectual environment of the twentieth century; Sartre criticizes liberalism, Marxism and Catholicism in order to describe social reality and to define the proper relationship between the individual and society; Sartre has an ethics.—C. E. B. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for AquinasR. E. HouserI expect to die in my bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. Then his successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.—Francis Cardinal George (2010)Here I propose (...) to present a feature of the ethics of Thomas Aquinas, his ethical doctrine of virtue, concentrating on the four cardinal virtues—justice, prudence or good practical judgment, courage, and temperance. Plato first selected them as the four premier virtues, but they go back at least to Homer, for whom wily Odysseus exemplified prudence, warlike Achilles courage, old Nestor justice, Penelope and Telemachus, Odysseus' wife and son, temperance. And I offer them as central to living the morally good life required to "rebuild civilization" in an America that so fair and judicious a man as Cardinal George could call a "ruined society." To see the need for Thomas's solution, we must begin with the problem. Now, all societies depend upon the deep and fundamental ideas of the most important thinkers, prophets and sages, saints, and yes, even philosophers. Their ideas "trickle down" to influence regular folk, like you and me, those who whose hard work actually makes a society thrive, or die. And when those fundamental ideas change, the moral principles of those who embrace those ideas change, and consequently their actions change, and as a result the wider society in which they live changes, for better or worse. Such effects can now be felt across America [End Page 135] by all; but most of us are unaware of the primary intellectual agents of these changes, since they operate at the level of fundamental ideas, not politics or business or day-to-day life. And often their originators have died before the ideas reach full cultural force. So, ignorance of history makes it difficult to deal with present problems caused by those ideas.My first conclusion will be that a major cause of the current coarsening of our culture is the group of ideas of the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, even though most Americans have never heard of him, and most of those who recognize his name have not read his works carefully enough to see the connection. Why Sartre? In the honors program at my university, I had a bright young lady of Muslim heritage who had gone to a lycée, one of France's elite classical secondary schools. "Did you read the classics?" "Yes." Expecting Montaigne or Pascal, I asked, "Who?" Her answer: "Sartre." So let us begin with the theory and practice of Sartre and his long-time lover Simone Beauvoir, whose book The Second Sex was an intellectual spark for the women's liberation movement. Then we turn to some real-life examples of Sartrean influence on ourselves and American culture. Finally, for the best remedy for non-Christian and Christian alike, I recommend Aquinas's doctrine of virtue, when taken in its full scope.Sartre's Ethics of Absolute FreedomIn 1946, the year I was born, Sartre gave a lecture to a meeting of French librarians, which became his most popular book, Existentialism is a Humanism. There he laid out the core of his thought about God, humans, and their ethical behavior. Here I arrange his main ideas in an order that facilitates comparison with Aquinas, beginning with his view of human ontology and proceeding to its impact on the four cardinal virtues.Human OntologySartre turned his back on the traditional metaphysical view that every creature is an individual substance defined by a nature or essence it has in common with all other things of that type. In his "first principle of existentialism," Sartre skips over other animate things, plants and animals, and compares humans to inanimate objects:Let us consider... a book or a paper-cutter: here is an object made by an artisan whose inspiration came from a concept.... One cannot postulate a man who makes a paper-cutter but does not know what it is... (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre e Michel Foucault travaram acirrado debate em torno de suas concepções acerca do que é a História. No presente artigo examinaremos o debate entre esses dois autores privilegiando as contribuições que fizeram a partir de suas obras principais nos anos 60. Na Crítica da Razão Dialética Sartre explicita uma noção de História que tem como perspectiva geral a superação e a transformação de estruturas pela práxis humana, determinando assim um lugar fundamental para (...) a atividade do sujeito e de sua consciência na história entendida como processo de totalização dialética. Por outro lado, em As Palavras e as Coisas e em A Arqueologia do Saber, Foucault inscreve sua arqueologia no contexto mais geral de uma mutação epistemológica da história. Seu objetivo é defender uma prática metodológica nova, desfazendo as sujeições antropológicas que, nas suas palavras, permeiam uma concepção obsoleta de história. A partir daí compreende-se sua preocupação em desconstruir uma determinada relação entre dialética-humanismo-história como forjadora de uma “grande evolução contínua e homogênea” para onde tudo converge. Investigando em que medida esta arqueologia esteve voltada para uma contraposição com a noção de história que tem o homem como garantia, isto é, um sujeito que faz a história e garante sua continuidade, veremos que o projeto sartreano de desalienação do homem encontra seu limite, em Foucault, na forma de um projeto de historicização que visa reduzir o lugar desse sujeito transcendental. Finalmente, esses deslocamentos tornam patentes novas possibilidades para se pensar a relação entre história e filosofia. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Antihumanism of the Young Deleuze:Sartre, Catholicism, and the Perspective of the Inhuman, 1945–48Giuseppe BiancoGilles Deleuze, along with Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and to a lesser extent Jean-François Lyotard, is considered an avatar of post-structuralism, and often associated with the critique of the concepts of identity and subjectivity. In this essay, I seek to identify the early sources of Deleuze's rejection of the notions of (...) ego and person. In the decade following 1944, one buzzword linked these two notions: humanism. Inspired by the evidential paradigm,1 and by using archival documents and little-known writings, I suggest why Deleuze's position, and the context in which it developed, can illuminate his mature work, especially his use of the concepts of immanence and univocity.Deleuze's engagement with anti-humanism—or, to be precise, with "inhumanism" and "impersonalism," the expressions Deleuze and his friends [End Page 795] used during the 1940s—is rooted in his radicalization of Jean-Paul Sartre's atheistic philosophy, which he read and discussed between 1943 and 1948. During this period, Deleuze was involved in gatherings organized by Catholic historians of medieval philosophy, including his mentor Maurice de Gandillac and Marie-Madeleine Davy. Gandillac, Davy, and their circles were interested in the existentialist and phenomenological movements, which they occasionally read within a theological framework. By radicalizing the positions detailed in works such as Being and Nothingness (1943) and "Transcendence of the Ego" (1936), Deleuze and his friend Michel Tournier confronted the mutation of Sartre's philosophy that began with his lecture "Existentialism Is a Humanism" (given in 1945 and published as a book the following year). They considered this turn to be incoherent with the core of his philosophy and to have conservative political consequences. This radical stance distinguished them from an older generation of scholars.Stefanos Geroulanos has shown that opposition to humanism, broadly conceived, emerged in French thought during the 1930s.2 To him, the idea that humanism had to be rejected and especially that anthropological questions had to be overcome began in the middle of that decade and reemerged in the later 1940s, with atheist and secular rejections of liberal humanism shadowing Catholic and, to a lesser degree, communist ones. However, I would argue that this ideological transformation in fact slowed somewhat in the decade following 1944. During this period, as Edward Baring has also claimed, most French intellectuals utilized "humanism" to oppose totalitarian and "anti-human" ideologies and to promote doctrines underlining the uniqueness of man as compared to other beings, the centrality of freedom, and the importance of defending human rights.3 Critiques of humanism took a final turn during the 1950s, after the publication of Martin Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" (1947).4 From the late 1950s, and even [End Page 796] more so during the 1960s, the question of Being and the analysis of unconscious structures became common among scholars born during the interwar years as ways to overcome humanism and its limitations. During the 1960s, far more than during the 1930s, opposition to humanism and to the centrality of the notion of human subjectivity became radical and explicit; in this period, the term "anti-humanism" took hold, whereas, prior to the 1960s, it was rare and used as a pejorative. Deleuze used "inhumanism" far earlier than other authors of his cohort, already in 1945–48: by comparison, in the early 1950s, both Foucault and Derrida were still relying on different forms of humanism—in the case of the former, Marxist/existentialist; in the case of the latter, existential/spiritualist.5 Their turn toward anti-humanism during the mid-1950s was the result of the influence of Heidegger, Jean Hyppolite, Jules Vuillemin, and linguistic structuralism, through Lévi-Strauss.6 Not only did Deleuze reach antihumanist positions earlier, before even some of his professors, but he got there along a different way. Sartre's works were a defining theoretical influence at the beginning of Deleuze's intellectual trajectory, and they gave it a peculiar theoretical direction. During the 1940s, authors such as Bergson, Spinoza, and Nietzsche were not yet dear to Deleuze, and they did not occupy the important role that they... (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre: Mind and Body, Word and Deed celebrates Sartre's polyvalence with an examination of Sartrean philosophy, literature, and politics. In four distinct yet related sections, twelve scholars from three continents examine Sartre's thought, writing and action over his long career. "Sartre and the Body" reappraises Sartre's work in dialogue with other philosophers past and present, including Maine de Biran, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Didier Anzieu. "Sartre and Time" offers a first-hand account (...) by Michel Contat of Sartre and Beauvoir working together, and a "philosophy in practice" analysis by François Noudelmann. "Ideology and Politics" uses Sartrean notions of commitment and engagement to address modern and contemporary politics, including insights into Castro, De Gaulle, Sarkozy and Obama. Finally, an important but neglected episode of Sartre's life the visit that he and Beauvoir made to Japan in 1966 is narrated with verve and humour by Professor Suzuki Michihiko, who first met Sartre during that visit and remained in touch subsequently. Taken together, these twelve chapters make a strong case for the continued relevance of Sartre today. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Regarded as the father of existentialist philosophy, he was also a political critic, moralist, playwright, novelist, and author of biographies and short stories. Thomas R. Flynn provides the first book-length account of Sartre as a philosopher of the imaginary, mapping the intellectual development of his ideas throughout his life, and building a narrative that is not only philosophical but also attentive to (...) the political and literary dimensions of his work. Exploring Sartre's existentialism, politics, ethics, and ontology, this book illuminates the defining ideas of Sartre's oeuvre: the literary and the philosophical, the imaginary and the conceptual, his descriptive phenomenology and his phenomenological concept of intentionality, and his conjunction of ethics and politics with an 'egoless' consciousness. It will appeal to all who are interested in Sartre's philosophy and its relation to his life. (shrink)

In three interviews, the Marxist historian and scholar Perry Anderson takes Sartre on a wide-ranging tour of his philosophy and politics.

Most readers of Sartre focus only on the works written at the peak of his influence as a public intellectual in the 1940s, notably "Being and Nothingness". "Jean-Paul Sartre: Key Concepts" aims to reassess Sartre and to introduce readers to the full breadth of his philosophy. Bringing together leading international scholars, the book examines concepts from across Sartre's career, from his initial views on the "inner life" of conscious experience, to his later conceptions (...) of hope as the binding agent for a common humanity. The book will be invaluable to readers looking for a comprehensive assessment of Sartre's thinking - from his early influences to the development of his key concepts, to his legacy. (shrink)

The Transcendence of the Ego may be regarded as a turning-point in the philosophical development of Jean-Paul Sartre. Prior to the writing of this essay, published in France in 1937, Sartre had been intimately acquainted with the phenomenological movement which originated in Germany with Edmund Husserl. It is a fundamental tenet of Husserl, the notion of a transcendent ego, which is here attacked by Sartre. This disagreement with Husserl has great importance for Sartre and (...) facilitated the transition from phenomenology to the doctrine of Being and Nothingness. (shrink)

A major event in the history of twentieth-century thought, Notebooks for a Ethics is Jean-Paul Sartre's attempt to develop an ethics consistent with the profound individualism of his existential philosophy. In the famous conclusion to Being and Nothingness , Sartre announced that he would devote his next philosophical work to moral problems. Although he worked on this project in the late 1940s, Sartre never completed it to his satisfaction, and it remained unpublished until after his (...) death in 1980. Presented here for the first time in English, the Notebooks reveal Sartre at his most productive, crafting a masterpiece of philosophical reflection that can easily stand alongside his other great works. Sartre grapples anew here with such central issues as "authenticity" and the relation of alienation and freedom to moral values. Exploring fundamental modes of relating to the Other--among them violence, entreaty, demand, appeal, refusal, and revolt--he articulates the necessary transition from individualism to historical consciousness. This work thus forms an important bridge between the early existentialist Sartre and the later Marxist social thinker of the Critique of Dialectical Reason . The Notebooks themselves are complemented here by two additional essays, one on "the good and subjectivity," the other on the oppression of blacks in the United States. With publication of David Pellauer's lucid translation, English-speaking readers will be able to appreciate this important contribution to moral philosophy and the history of ethics. Jean-Paul Sartre (1906-1980) was offered, but declined, the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. His many works of fiction, drama, and philosophy include the monumental study of Flaubert, The Family Idiot , and The Freud Scenario , both published in translation by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: “The Look”.

‘A whole man, made of all men, worth all of them, and any one of them worth him.’ This was how Jean-Paul Sartre characterized himself at the end of his autobiographical study, Words. And Bernard-Henri Lévy shows how Sartre cannot be understood without taking into account his relations with the intellectual forebears and contemporaries, the lovers and friends, with whom he conducted a lifelong debate. His thinking was essentially a tumultuous dialogue with his whole age (...) and himself. He learned from Gide the art of freedom, and how to experiment with inherited fictional forms. He was a fellow-traveller of communism, and yet his relations with the Party were deeply ambiguous. He was fascinated by Freud but trenchantly critical of psychoanalysis. Beneath Sartre’s complex and ever-mutating political commitments, Lévy detects a polarity between anarchic individualism on the one hand, and a longing for absolute community that brought him close to totalitarianism on the other. Lévy depicts Sartre as a man who could succumb to the twentieth century’s catastrophic attraction to violence and the false messianism of its total political solutions, while also being one of the fiercest critics of its illusions and shortcomings. (shrink)

This article presents Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of the tension between existence and politics and the role of political commitment in existentialist philosophy. Based on Sartre’s concept of engagement, the article analyzes the transition from the personal to the political perceived as a movement from personal moral consciousness to the awareness of the importance of the individual as a social actor and citizen in society. Sartre’s concept of political engagement can be characterized as (...) critical intellectual commitment and “Socratic Citizenship.” Accordingly, this article is also an acknowledgment of the two important philosophers of ecoethica, Tomonbu Imamichi and Peter Kemp, both committed public intellectuals who said that the role of the philosopher is to contribute to the public affair of cosmopolitan society. Thus, the article presents the political engagement in four major parts: (1) From the existential to political engagement, (2) Political commitment as a struggle for human freedom, (3) The Socratic Citizenship, and (4). Conditions of authentic political action. Political engagement represents an effort to realize the respect owed to each individual as a universal singular, as well as that owed to freedom and democracy in the Kingdom of Ends. (shrink)

The result was the Critique of Dialectical Reason, an intellectual masterpiece of the twentieth century, now republished in two volumes with major original ...

A cornerstone of Sartre’s philosophy, _The Imaginary_ was first published in 1940. Sartre had become acquainted with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl in Berlin and was fascinated by his idea of the 'intentionality of consciousness' as a key to the puzzle of existence. Against this background, _The Imaginary_ crystallized Sartre's worldview and artistic vision. The book is an extended examination of the concepts of nothingness and freedom, both of which are derived from the ability of consciousness to (...) imagine objects both as they are and as they are not – ideas that would drive Sartre's existentialism and entire theory of human freedom. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre, novelist, playwright, biographer, was undoubtedly one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. Above all, however, he was an embodiment of the engagé intellectual, active in a variety of political causes, as well as an individual who attempted to live his life in accordance with the philosophy he professed. These interviews take Sartre on a wide-ranging tour of his philosophy and politics. Here we have Simone de Beauvoir challenging Sartre on (...) his own attitude towards machismo and feminism; and Sartre responding thoughtfully to questions which range from Freud, Marx, and the drama of Bertolt Brecht to the Cultural Revolution, Stalinism, the May 'Events' and of course, the US war on Vietnam. Their breadth remains a testimony to one man's attempt to make philosophical sense of the tumultuous world around him. (shrink)

Previously published essays on Sartre by various authors, and texts of conversations between Sartre and the compiler.

First published in France in 1936 as a journal article, The Transcendence of the Ego was one of Jean-Paul Sartre's earliest philosophical publications. When it appeared, Sartre was still largely unknown, working as a school teacher in provincial France and struggling to find a publisher for his most famous fictional work, Nausea . The Transcendence of the Ego is the outcome of Sartre's intense engagement with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. Here, (...) as in many subsequent writings, Sartre embraces Husserl's vision of phenomenology as the proper method for philosophy. But he argues that Husserl's conception of the self as an inner entity, 'behind' conscious experience is mistaken and phenomenologically unfounded. The Transcendence of the Ego offers a brilliant diagnosis of where Husserl went wrong, and a radical alternative account of the self as a product of consciousness, situated in the world. This essay introduces many of the themes central to Sartre's major work, Being and Nothingness : the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, anguish. It demonstrates their presence and importance in Sartre's thinking from the very outset of his career. This fresh translation makes this classic work available again to students of Sartre, phenomenology, existentialism, and twentieth century philosophy. It includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context. (shrink)

'Search for a Method' is a separate and introductory essay published together with 'Critique of Dialectical Reason'.

English summary: The relationship between Jean-Paul Sartre and the left in France and Europe has always been a tense one. This work examines the integration of the figure of Trotsky and his ideas into the broad range of Sartre's discourse and traces its importance for the development of an independent intellectual course with respect to philosophy and politics. German description: Die Beziehung zwischen Jean-Paul Sartre und der Linken in Frankreich und Europa gestaltete (...) sich stets spannungsreich. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird die Integration der Figur und der Ideen Trotzkis in die diskursive Klaviatur Sartres in Augenschein genommen und deren Bedeutung fur die Entwicklung eines unabhangigen intellektuellen Kurses in philosophischer wie politischer Hinsicht nachgezeichnet. (shrink)

An exposition in five parts of the character of existentialist philosophy, including an analysis of the theories of Jean-Paul Sartre. Author Gabriel Marcel, a famous French dramatist, philosopher, and author of Le Dard, was a leading exponent of Christian existentialism.

First published in France in 1936 as a journal article, The Transcendence of the Egowas one of Jean-Paul Sartre's earliest philosophical publications. When it appeared, Sartre was still largely unknown, working as a school teacher in provincial France and struggling to find a publisher for his most famous fictional work, Nausea. The Transcendence of the Egois the outcome of Sartre's intense engagement with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. Here, as in many (...) subsequent writings, Sartre embraces Husserl's vision of phenomenology as the proper method for philosophy. But he argues that Husserl's conception of the self as an inner entity, 'behind' conscious experience is mistaken and phenomenologically unfounded. The Transcendence of the Egooffers a brilliant diagnosis of where Husserl went wrong, and a radical alternative account of the self as a product of consciousness, situated in the world. This essay introduces many of the themes central to Sartre's major work, Being and Nothingness: the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, anguish. It demonstrates their presence and importance in Sartre's thinking from the very outset of his career. This fresh translation makes this classic work available again to students of Sartre, phenomenology, existentialism, and twentieth century philosophy. It includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context.t of consciousness, situated in the world. This essay introduces many of the themes central to Sartre's major work, Being and Nothingness: the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, anguish. It demonstrates their presence and importance in Sartre's thinking from the very outset of his career. This fresh translation makes this classic work available again to students of Sartre, phenomenology, existentialism, and twentieth century philosophy. It includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context. (shrink)