By what incredible foresight did the most significant intellectual quarrel of the twentieth century anticipate the major issue of the twenty-first? When Camus and Sartre parted ways in 1952, the main question dividing them was political violence—specifically, that of communism. And as they continued to jibe at each other during the next decade, especially during the war in Algeria, one of the major issues between them became terrorism. The 1957 and 1964 Nobel Laureates were divided sharply over which violence most (...) urgently demanded to be addressed and attacked—the humiliations and oppressions, often masked, that Sartre described as systematically built into daily life under capitalism and colonialism, or the brutal and abstract calculus of murder seen by Camus as built into some of the movements that claimed to liberate people from capitalist and colonial oppression.The Sartre-Camus conflict remains, fifty years later, philosophically unresolved. And I would argue—against today's conventional wisdom so persistently asserted by Tony Judt—it is also historically unresolved, despite today. (shrink)

Until now it has been impossible to read the full story of the relationship between Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Their dramatic rupture at the height of the Cold War, like that conflict itself, demanded those caught in its wake to take sides rather than to appreciate its tragic complexity. Now, using newly available sources, Ronald Aronson offers the first book-length account of the twentieth century's most famous friendship and its end. Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre first met in 1943, (...) during the German occupation of France. The two became fast friends. Intellectual as well as political allies, they grew famous overnight after Paris was liberated. As playwrights, novelists, philosophers, journalists, and editors, the two seemed to be everywhere and in command of every medium in post-war France. East-West tensions would put a strain on their friendship, however, as they evolved in opposing directions and began to disagree over philosophy, the responsibilities of intellectuals, and what sorts of political changes were necessary or possible. As Camus, then Sartre adopted the mantle of public spokesperson for his side, a historic showdown seemed inevitable. Sartre embraced violence as a path to change and Camus sharply opposed it, leading to a bitter and very public falling out in 1952. They never spoke again, although they continued to disagree, in code, until Camus's death in 1960. In a remarkably nuanced and balanced account, Aronson chronicles this riveting story while demonstrating how Camus and Sartre developed first in connection with and then against each other, each keeping the other in his sights long after their break. Combining biography and intellectual history, philosophical and political passion, Camus and Sartre will fascinate anyone interested in these great writers or the world-historical issues that tore them apart. (shrink)

In October and November, 1948, an exchange on democracy between Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus appeared in Jean Daniel's monthly Caliban. At first glance these articles confirm the prevailing sense that the 1952 split was inevitable. But reading the break back into the relationship presents it with a kind of necessity, corresponding to the law of "analysis after the event" described by Doris Lessing. Inasmuch as it resulted in a break, we are tempted to focus from the start on "the (...) laws of dissolution" of the relationship. As in a marriage that ends in divorce, afterwards we fixate on the logic of the breakup, as if the two were bound to fall out and that is all that matters. But the Sartre/Camus story was in reality too open-ended and complex for such a onesided reading of the story. The events of the year before these articles give us a very different sense of the relationship. (shrink)

While Sartre scholars cannot fairly be described as being opposed to science, they have, for the most part, stayed aloof. The field of psychology, of course, has been an exception. Sartre himself felt compelled to present his own existential psychoanalysis by marking the parallels and differences between his position and traditional approaches, particularly the Freudian. The same is true with respect to his concept of bad faith and of emotional behavior. Scholars have followed his lead with richly productive results. But (...) we may note that the debate has centered on psychic and therapeutic issues, aspects of what Sartre called le vécu or lived experience, rather than on the findings of cognitive science or neuroscience. Although all existentialists and phenomenologists accept as a central tenet the fact that consciousness is embodied, there has been virtually no concern with the biological substratum. But the study of consciousness cannot be restricted within its own narrow confines—unlike, say, Greek grammar, which can be learned without reference to the rules of Arabic. At some point, there must be established an organic foundation for the behavior of the conscious organism. (shrink)

Jean Pierre Boulé's Sartre, Self Formation and Masculinities argues that we cannot adequately understand Sartre without taking account of the unique ways in which he negotiated the gender mandates of patriarchy. Taking Boulé's cue, I call on Lacan, Cixous and Beauvoir to interrogate Sartre's relationship to women, to his body and to writing. I argue for Boulé's approach but against several of his conclusions. Further, I credit Boulé with providing ammunition for challenging Lacan's universal account of the mirror stage, and (...) for pushing me to read Beauvoir's "Must we Burn Sade?" as a critique of Sartre's betrayal of the erotic's ethical demands. (shrink)

There are positive and negative lessons from Sartre: - Taking up some of his ideas one may arrive at a better model of consciousness in the analytic philosophy of mind; representing some of his ideas within the language and the models of a functionalist theory of mind makes them more accessible and inte¬grates them into the wider picture. - Sartre, as any philosopher, errs at some points, I believe; but these errors may be instruc¬tive, especially in as much as they (...) mirror some errors in some current theories of consciousness. This paper, therefore, is not a piece of Sartre scholarship, but an attempt of a “friendly take¬over” of some ideas I ascribe to Sartre into current models in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

As debate continues1 we hope to shed some light on the development of Sartre's thought by returning to his philosophical beginnings, to his phenomenology, confident that it is here, in its origins, that we will find what has always been the very center of his thought.

In this article, I will investigate Sartre's claims regarding need as an element of the human condition, and I will compare them to the analysis of need found in the works of Marx and of Herbert Marcuse. These comparisons will raise important questions, such as: given the cultural diversity of experiences of need, is Sartre justified in speaking of needs common to all humans? Are these human needs to be considered permanent fixtures, or do they change historically? And, how might (...) this affect their status as fundamental and truly human? Finally, is it even possible for us to recognize our real human needs, and to distinguish them from artificially created and alienated false "needs," while we exist in what Sartre identifies as the current state of subhumanity? (shrink)

As a psychologist working with individuals, couples, and groups over the past 25 years, I have become convinced that group therapy holds effective possibilities for treatment that neither individual nor couples therapy can match. In theorizing about why group work holds such potency for changing lives, I have come to place it in a Sartrean context. I believe that group therapy offers a greater possibility for revolutionary praxis than individual or couples therapy. In saying this, I am not talking about (...) political or social revolution, but rather the possibility for radical change in a person's orientation toward the world, which groups tend to provoke and reinforce in a way that is more difficult in other forms of therapy. Sartre's concept of groups in his later philosophy, especially in Search for a Method and the Critique of Dialectical Reason, can help us to understand better this transformative power of groups. Such power is not always positive, of course, as Sartre himself recognizes—and as social and political history so amply demonstrates. But the nature of therapy groups is such that they at least have the potential for positive results. (shrink)

: A highly detailed application of Dewey's "dramatic rehearsal" to a particular ethical dilemma situation is developed here. This illustrates the role of moral imagination and creativity, and of self-discovery and self-transformation, within dramatic rehearsal. A primary concern is to show how decisions emerge through unification; what sorts of decisions emerge; how they can be evaluated; and whether the choices and evaluations accord with what is generally taken to be ethical/moral. Sartre's dilemma of a French student during World War II—who (...) is torn between staying with his mother who needed him and making his way to England to join the Free French Forces—provides the illustrative case. Using this case leads to a comparison of Dewey's and Sartre's approaches, and to a Deweyan reinterpretation and reconstruction of the process of decision in Sartre's early ethical theory. Criteria that Sartre, rightly, rejects as determinants of decision are shown to function in dramatic rehearsal as instruments for exploring the meanings of the dilemma. Sartre's analogy between making an ethical decision and creating a painting is explored in terms of Dewey's esthetic theory. This illuminates how dramatic rehearsal develops, and how it culminates in ethical decision. The idea that one makes oneself as one makes one's decision is shown to flow from the painting analogy, in both Sartre and Dewey. How this Deweyan account relates to Sartre's theory of radical choice is considered. Openings for the Deweyan perspective are sought in a brief exploration of Sartre's later ethical theories. (shrink)

My goal in writing this article is to give a brief overview of the two volumes of Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason. After a brief introduction, I proceed in three stages that move from the abstract to the concrete. I thus trace the development of such notions as comprehension into the dialectic, praxis into singularity and incarnation, the practico-inert into the totalization-of-envelopment, and the enhancement of the notion of scarcity as a general historical condition into a collective free choice. I (...) also suggest new divisions for Critique II. (shrink)

On the back cover of the original French edition of Sartre's Le scénario Freud (The Freud Scenario), the promotional blurb poses the question: "Est-ce ici Sartre qui analyse Freud ou Freud qui analyse Sartre?" (Is Sartre analyzing Freud here, or is Freud analyzing Sartre?). We do not, for obvious reasons, have anything of Freud's on Sartre, but we do have quite a lot of Sartre on Freud, and great quantities of Sartre on Sartre. It has sometimes seemed to me that (...) reading through everything that Sartre wrote—not just the autobiographical material but everything, including the carnets and the cahiers and the letters—might be a bit like having him in analysis. The speed and apparent openness with which he produced his texts, page after page in that quick yet legible script that French writers seem to turn out so effortlessly, mimic some of the conditions of free association, and an analytically sensitive eye, like the analyst's ear in therapeutic sessions, could no doubt piece together a plausible account of the Sartrean unconscious. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre''s position on religion has traditionally been reduced to variations of his well-known atheism. This is a result of collapsing the distinction between religion and theism, as both critics and supporters of Sartre have commonly done. Consequently, attention to Sartre''s persistent and pervasive concern with religious ideas, symbols, and experiences has been neglected. While the religious implications of Sartre''s thought have mostly been considered in relation to Christian theology, other newer areas of religious studies suggest additional avenues for considering (...) Sartre. Sartre''s possible connections to four such areas are discussed: 1) Eastern religions; 2) Jewish studies; 3) feminist theology, and 4) the psychoanalysis of religion. (shrink)

This article stresses the importance of one of Sartre's often overlooked novels, The Age of Reason (1945), and the possibility that it should be considered an early attempt by Sartre to answer the questions he raises at the very end of Being and Nothingness (1943). Considered as a preliminary response to Being and Nothingness , this novel provides an opportunity to explore how ethics might be lived, and draws a clear distinction between a theoretical understanding of being-for-itself and living authentically. (...) As such, it is argued that Sartre's fictional writings, especially The Age of Reason , must be taken seriously in Sartre scholarship. (shrink)

The dead will remain with us, Sartre remarks at the end of Les Mots, for as long as humanity roams the earth. The dead are never quite dead; they survive in what Sartre, in L'Etre et le néant, calls 'la vie morte' (dead life). In Huis clos, Sartre envisages an afterlife in which, although they can no longer act, the dead continue to agonize over the meaning of their lives and their now irrevocable actions. Sartre's script of Les Jeux sont (...) faits, filmed by Jean Delannoy and shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1947, goes a step further. It depicts two dead people given the chance to return to earth in the pursuit of love and, at the same time, the opportunity to rectify their earlier mistakes, to change the meaning of their lives by intervening more effectively in their worlds. Despite its supernatural story line, the stakes of Les Jeux sont faits are recognizably Sartrean. The film serves as an opportunity to probe the themes of freedom, responsibility, choice, the role of the individual agent in history, the self's opacity to itself, the conflict endemic in the human condition and the ways in which external circumstances make a mockery of our endeavours. It asks the question, if we were given a second chance, could we revisit the scenes of our failures and transform them into successes? Could we learn from our mistakes and lucidly remodel the world in the form of our desires? Or are we condemned only to fail again, to make the same mistakes twice over? (shrink)

For the one hundredth anniversary of Sartre's birth it is fitting to consider some of the ways in which his thought remains relevant to our present concerns and to those of the foreseeable future. In this age of terrorism, most people would perhaps think first of Sartre's writings on political violence. Analytical philosophers, on the other hand, might be more inclined to cite Sartre's early works on such "hot" topics as the emotions and the imagination, not to mention consciousness more (...) generally. And historians of philosophy, mindful of the cyclical nature of philosophical fashions and enthusiasms, might well point to a developing resurgence of interest in phenomenology, and to Sartre's distinctive contributions to that philosophical movement. Indeed, given the astonishing range of Sartre's writings, on everything from art to biography to history to psychology to literary criticism, it is impossible in one short essay to identify every contribution of enduring (or perhaps even permanent) value. Accordingly, I will focus here on just two topics: freedom and education. (shrink)

Andrew Dobson charts Sartre's transformation from novelist and apolitical philosopher of existentialism, before the Second World War, to a committed defender of Marxism and Marxist method after it. Examining Sartre's post-war work in detail, he shows how the biographies of Baudelaire, Genet and Flaubert, often considered tangential to his main oeuvres, are in fact central to this defence of Marxism, and should therefore be read as acts of political commitment. Andrew Dobson's study is new in its use of posthumous sources, (...) including one of the first extended commentaries in English of Volume II of the Critique of dialectical reason, and in its insistence on reading Sartre's philosophical development as primarily politically motivated. It provides a clear reading of some of Sartre's less familiar works, situating them in an overarching social and political project. (shrink)