In this paper, I argue that Jean-Paul Sartre's theory of the imagination emerges out of a position on perception that is similar to modern naïve realism in that he seeks to add elements of what today is called “relationalism” to his phenomenological description of perceptual and imaginative experience. The problem is that it is not clear that relationalism can be added to the phenomenologist's intentional theory of consciousness in the way Sartre recommends. This paper takes an analytic approach to understanding (...) Sartre's theory of perception, traces his motivation in arguing that perception and imagination are sui generis mental activity and identifies the ways in which Sartre's attempt to add elements of relationalism to the Husserlian account of perception runs into trouble with hallucinatory experience. (shrink)

In this essay I shall consider the different perspectives adopted by the characters in Simone de Beauvoir's Les Mandarins on literature, its relation to politics and the role of the writer in society. Far from being outdated, the questions of whether literature should be politically committed and to what extent works of literature can be said to effect social change are still central to our attempts to navigate contemporary culture. Addressing these questions in Les Mandarins, I argue that Beauvoir's work (...) remains topical and offers important insights into the role of the writer and the place of literature in Western culture. (shrink)

This essay argues that the depiction of two female characters’ situations, friendship, and self-understandings in The Mandarins (Les mandarins, 1954) develops Beauvoir's theorization of feminine complicity in The Second Sex (Le deuxième sexe, 1949). Through its prolonged focus on the concrete situations of two female characters, the novel enables Beauvoir to explore the (hetero)sexual and metaphysical sources of feminine complicity in depth. The result is that The Mandarins illustrates why women who are, to greater or lesser degrees, complicit with the (...) structures of their own oppression can be understood neither as agents of gender-based oppression nor as passive victims of it, but only as human beings forced to invent means to survive the mutilation of their transcendence. (shrink)

This article advocates reading Les Mandarins taking into account, first of all, that it is a novel, leaving aside the familiar theories that it is a roman-à-clef, a roman-à-thèse, a biographical chronicle, or all three. It considers the novel's setting, point of view, plot and character in relation to political activism, love relationships, the literary vocation, as well as its metaphysical framework. I argue that this approach leads to a more complete understanding of the novel's multi-layered world, avoiding the distracting (...) and misleading nature of those theories. I conclude by stating that Beauvoir's own defence of her work confirms such a reading. (shrink)

This paper gives an account of Gilles Deleuze's and Jean-Paul Sartre's respective conceptions of “the Other” as this concept evolves in relation to Sartre's earliest insights into self/Other dynamics in his 1937 essay, The Transcendence of the Ego. By reading Deleuze through his early interlocutor—the philosopher and author Michel Tournier—I argue that the account of Otherness presented in Deleuze's early (and later disavowed) “Sartrean” works represents a critique of Sartre's own revisions to the concept of Otherness in his 1943 magnum (...) opus, Being and Nothingness. Thus, we can read Sartre and Deleuze as offering competing views of how (and indeed if it is possible) to inherit Sartre's own early insights into the value of existential phenomenology for a “positive” account of interpersonal relationships. (shrink)

The question of precisely what Simone de Beauvoir means when she asserts in The Second Sex that “[o]ne is not born, but rather becomes, woman” continues to be the subject of scholarly debate (TSS, 283). The more traditional view sees Beauvoir referring to a process whereby female human beings are socialized according to, and subsequently internalize and constitute themselves in terms of, prevailing norms of femininity. An alternative perspective asserts that the act of engaging in heterosexual intercourse marks the point (...) at which human females “become” Woman. I see The Second Sex presenting a hybrid of these two theories. On my reading, the initial experience of heterosexual intercourse crystallizes the relation of self-to-self Beauvoir refers to as se faire objet—making oneself into an object generally and into a sexual object for men more specifically. Subsequent experiences of heterosex entrench this distinctively feminine mode of self-relation. I support my reading through analyzing the situations of Paula Mareuil and Anne Dubreuilh, two of the main characters in Beauvoir's novel les Mandarines. (shrink)

This article addresses the ‘Indirection Problem’ in Sartrean ethics of authenticity and compares it to the problem of the same name in virtue ethics. Both ethical frameworks encounter a disharmony between core concepts and proper motivation. The article reviews the indirection problem in virtue ethics, highlighting Swanton's solution of defining virtues as promoting specific values. It then explores how Sartrean ethics faces a more profound indirection problem due to the elusive nature of its core concept—authenticity. The motivation for authenticity cannot (...) be its rationale (salvation). Freedom seems to be a more direct value, but the desire for freedom itself risks falling into being yet another pursuit of being. The article advocates a radically negative motivation for authenticity—a resignation from futile, inauthentic projects. (shrink)

Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre's biographer and author, was one of the keynote speakers at last year's UK Sartre Society Conference at La Maison française in Oxford. The title of her talk echoed that of a key article she published in Le Monde on 12/13 March 2023, ‘Qui a encore peur de Sartre?’, which brilliantly characterises Sartre's position in France and in the world. The article is translated in full below.

The three articles and commentary that follow began as talks for a book symposium dedicated to Jon Webber's monograph Rethinking Existentialism. The talks were given for a plenary session at the United Kingdom Sartre Society meeting, held at the Maison Française d'Oxford on 3 July 2023. Organised to honour the excellence of Webber's work on Sartre, the Symposium aimed to call attention to the importance of his monograph. Since Rethinking Existentialism centrally addresses Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon, (...) the division of labour was straightforward. Matt Eshleman addresses Webber's treatment of Sartre, Kate Kirkpatrick his treatment of Beauvoir and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc his treatment of Fanon. For those who have not read Rethinking Existentialism a brief synopsis follows. (shrink)

Motivated by Jonathan Webber's recent work, this article addresses what I call ‘the normative bridge problem’ in the early work of Jean-Paul Sartre: What justifies the move from an agent explicitly recognising and affirming her freedom to an obligation to respect the freedom of others? Many sympathetic Sartre commentators have argued that Sartre lacks resources to justify this obligation (Anderson, Heter, Webber) and, hence, that Sartre fails to traverse the normative bridge. This article hypothesizes that Sartre does not need to (...) explicitly justify the bridge obligation. In correctly grasping one's metaphysical nature, a Sartrean agent cannot fail to realise that the affirmation of the freedom of others cannot but follow from the affirmation of one's own freedom. I test the hypothesis by sketching two competing interpretations of authenticity and try to show that only under one interpretation can one see why the normative bridge amounts to a theoretical illusion. (shrink)

I have been invited to respond to Rethinking Existentialism's engagement with the work of Simone de Beauvoir, and I do so in three parts. First, I introduce Webber's Beauvoir, moral theorist, and raise some textual and conceptual objections to his argument for a ‘categorical imperative for authenticity’ in Chapter 10. Second, I turn to historical and conceptual challenges to Webber's definition of existentialism, including meta-philosophical questions about his use of literature in general and Beauvoir's novel She Came to Stay in (...) particular. Finally, I conclude with a trio of broad questions relating to what I will call the ‘missing materiality’ in Webber's Beauvoir: Where's the ambiguity? Where's the tragedy? Where's the tension? (shrink)

In Rethinking Existentialism, Jonathan Webber examines Fanon's engagement with the Negritude movement, focusing on his discussion in Black Skin, White Masks. A portion of Fanon's text discusses an interpretation of the movement advanced by Sartre in his essay ‘Black Orpheus’. Here, I raise some difficulties for what I will call Webber's ‘black agency’ reading of Fanon, before presenting an alternative. I argue that Fanon accepted certain important Negritude ideas, particularly Césaire's conception of a therapeutic method called the nekyia, and that (...) this is crucial to understanding Fanon's response to Sartre. (shrink)

This essay analyses Sartre's Nausea as a site of posthumanist revolt against the more humanistic sentiments of Being and Nothingness. Placing it alongside Derrida's exploration of animality and the human in The Animal That Therefore I Am, it examines the profusion of ‘bestial references’ in Sartre's text, and how the text promotes a postmodern openness to the multiplicity of existence by viewing the alterity of animals in a positive light.

This article is a response to critiques of my book Rethinking Existentialism in this symposium. It begins with a reflection on the nature of this discussion. Then it reformulates Eshleman's ‘bridge problem’ to defend my view that eudaimonist arguments cannot establish that we ought to respect freedom. Next, it shows how my interpretation of Beauvoir's argument for authenticity can incorporate Kirkpatrick's reading of Beauvoir's ethics. Then it uses Romdenh-Romluc's description of Fanon's therapeutic methodology to present a comparative reading of Fanon (...) and Sartre, followed by an argument that Romdenh-Romluc's reading of Fanon can be incorporated into my interpretation to the benefit of both. The penultimate section incorporates Beauvoir's theory of femininity into my account of her theory of gender sedimentation. The final section considers how Eshleman's emphasis on social interdependence might enrich Sartre's picture of authenticity. The article closes with brief comments on the value of reading these texts together. (shrink)