Abstract

Jean-Paul Sartre was arguably the best known philosopher of the twentieth century. But renown is not synonymous with admiration. One of the reasons why Sartre was disliked by many was his seemingly boundless tolerance for and even encouragement of violence or, as he would put it, “counterviolence.” As with any caricature, this image bears a hint of truth. Were the figure less important or the topic less current, one might leave it at that. But given the inescapable presence of terrorist violence in our midst, it is imperative that we discover the truth of Sartre’s assessment of this phenomenon because he gave it more thought than most philosophers in the last century. In other words, we need a study like Santoni’s, and to begin with my conclusion, it is unlikely that another such thorough exposition and balanced assessment of this subject in Sartre’s work will appear.