Jean-Paul Sartre

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Jean-Paul Sartre

• By Dennis Stapleton

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Sartre, the Father of Existentialism

• Existentialism-A philosophy that emphasizes the
  uniqueness and isolation of the individual
  experience in a hostile or indifferent universe,
  regards human existence as unexplainable, and
  stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for
  the consequences of one's acts.
• Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his
  work Existentialism is a Humanism (1946).
• Sartre finds the essence of human existence in
  freedom in the duty of self-determination and
  the freedom of choice and therefore spends much
  time describing the human tendency toward "bad
  faith," reflected in humanity's perverse attempts
  to deny its own responsibility and flee from the
  truth of its inescapable freedom.

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Marxism

• Besides existentialism writings, Sartre also
  wrote about Marxism.
• Marxism-the synthesis of philosophy and political
  action.
• Any political practice or theory that is based on
  an interpretation of the works of Marx and Engels
  may be termed Marxism.

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Sartres Philosophical View

• In his philosophical view atheism is taken for
  granted the "loss of God" is not mourned. Man is
  condemned to freedom, a freedom from all
  authority, which he may seek to evade, distort,
  and deny but which he will have to face if he is
  to become a moral being. The meaning of man's
  life is not established before his existence.
  Once the terrible freedom is acknowledged, man
  has to make this meaning himself, has to commit
  himself to a role in this world, has to commit
  his freedom. And this attempt to make oneself is
  futile without the "solidarity" of others.

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Biography

• Jean Paul Sartre was born in Paris on June 21,
  1905.
• He was a dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and
  critic.
• Sartre entered the École Normale Supérieure in
  1924 received first place in the agrégation of
  philosophy in 1929.
• There, he met Simone de Beauvoir, who studied at
  the Sorbonne and later went on to become a noted
  thinker, writer, and feminist. They became
  inseparable and lifelong companions.
• Sartre took a teaching job at a Lycée in Le
  Havre. There he wrote his first novel, Nausea in
  1938.
• In 1939 Sartre was drafted into the French army,
  where he served as a meteorologist. German troops
  captured him in 1940 in Padoux, and he spent nine
  months as a prisoner of war.
• While a prisoner of war, his first theater piece
  Barionà, fils du tonnerre, a drama concerning
  Christmas.
• After the war Sartre abandoned teaching,
  determined to support himself by writing. He was
  also determined that his writing and thinking
  should be engagé.
• Sartre suffered from detrimental health
  throughout the 1970s. He died of a lung ailment
  in April 15, 1980.

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Nausea

• His first novel, Nausea (1938), narrates the
  feeling of revulsion that a young man experiences
  when confronted with the contingency of existence.

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Being And Nothingness

• In Being and Nothingness (1943), he places human
  consciousness in opposition to being
  consciousness is nonmatter and thus escapes all
  determinism.

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The Roads to Freedom

• Besides the obvious impact of Nausea, Sartre's
  major contribution to literature was the The
  Roads to Freedom trilogy which charts the
  progression of how World War II affected Sartre's
  ideas. In this way, Roads to Freedom presents a
  less theoretical and more practical approach to
  existentialism.

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Simone de Beauvoir

• Jean and Beauvoir challenged the cultural and
  social assumptions and expectations of their
  upbringings.
• Beauvoir wrote about him in her autobiography,
  The Prime of Life (tr. 1962).
• She is best known for her two feminist books, The
  Second Sex and Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter.
• In 1929, Beauvoir also became the youngest person
  ever to obtain the agrégation in philosophy.
  Sartre was first that year, but she was a close
  second.
• After Sartre died, Beauvoir published his letters
  to her with edits to spare the feelings of some
  people in their circle who were still living.
  After Beauvoir's death, Sartre's adopted daughter
  and literary heir Arlette Elkaïm would not let
  many of Sartre's letters be published in unedited
  form.

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Sartres Works

• L'imagination (), 1936
• La transcendance de l'égo (The Transcendence of
  the Ego) 1937
• La nausée (Nausea), 1938
• Le mur (The Wall), 1939
• Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions (Sketch for a
  Theory of the Emotions), 1939
• L'imaginaire (The Imaginary), 1940, lit. "The
  Unconscious"
• Les mouches (The Flies), 1943 - a modern version
  of the Oresteia
• L'être et le néant (Being and Nothingness), 1943
• Réflexions sur la question juive (Anti-Semite and
  Jew literally, Reflections on the Jewish
  Question), 1943
• Huis-clos (No Exit), 1944
• Les Chemins de la liberté (The Roads to Freedom)
  trilogy, comprising
• L'âge de raison (The Age of Reason), 1945
• Le sursis (The Reprieve), 1947
• La mort dans l'Âme (Troubled Sleep, title
  formerly translated as Iron in the Soul,
  literally "Death in Spirit"), 1949
• Morts sans sépulture (Deaths without burial aka
  The Victors), 1946
• L'Existentialisme est un humanisme
  (Existentialism is a Humanism), 1946
• La putain respectueuse (The Respectful
  Prostitute) 1946
• Qu'est ce que la littérature? (What is
  literature?), 1947

• Baudelaire, 1947
• Situations, 1947 1965
• Les mains sales (Dirty Hands), 1948
• "Orphée Noir" (Black Orpheus), introduction to
  Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et
  malgache. edited by Léopold Sédar Senghor, 1948
• Le diable et le bon dieu (The Devil and the Good
  Lord), 1951
• Les jeux sont faits (The Game is Up), 1952
• Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr, 1952
• Nekrassov, 1955
• Existentialism and Human Emotions, 1957
• The Problem of Method, 1957
• Les séquestrés d'Altona (The Condemned of
  Altona), 1959
• Critique de la raison dialectique (Critique of
  Dialectical Reason), 1960
• "Preface" to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the
  Earth, 1961
• Search for a Method (English translation of
  preface to Critique, Vol. I) 1962
• Les mots (The Words), 1964 - autobiographical
• L'idiot de la famille (The Family Idiot),
  19711972 - on Gustave Flaubert

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Achievements

• Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
  in 1964, but he declined it.
• He refused the Legion of Honor awarded him by the
  government.
• Participated in the founding of the Rassemblement
  Democratique Revolutionnaire (RDR), but he later
  on became disaffected with the group and left it
  the following year.
• Served in the French army during World War II.

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The End