In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments SARTRE AND SEXISM by Hazel E. Barnes Insofar as is possible, I want to consider here not Sartre the man but Sartre the philosopher—or, more precisely, the philosophy of Sartre. To askwhether Sartre's long association with Simone de Beauvoir was a model of human relations at their best or an example ofbad faith on both sides is not to my present purpose. Nor are his numerous, (...) sometimes rather unsavory affairs with other women. Of course, the man and his work cannot be separated entirely. Sartre himselfadmitted that despite his wholehearted support of women's liberation, there remained in him vestiges of ingrained male chauvinism which he found difficult to eradicate.1 We should expect to find echoes of these in his writing, and we do—not in the ideas but in the imagery and rhetoric, and these not only in the fiction but in the philosophical works. The grossest example is the well-known passage in which Sartre discusses the "existential meanings" ofslime and holes.2 Slime, the great "Antivalue," is "a moist and feminine sucking" and "a sickly-sweet feminine revenge." Moreover—and this is even worse—Sartre allows his meditation on holes to lead by a process of his own associations to the idea ofa woman's sex as "a voracious mouth" evoking the male castration complex. This is not the only place where Sartre links female with notions of a treacherous receptivity. Furthermore, such passages are complemented by others where Sartre employs male sexual imagery to describe the activity of consciousness. Knowledge is portrayed as penetration and conquest. He points out, without objecting, that banal metaphors of everyday language suggest that "knowing" has overtones of carnal knowing and sexual violation: "What is seen is possessed; to see is to deflower.... The unknown object is given as immaculate, as Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 340-347 Hazel E. Barnes341 virgin, comparable to a whiteness.... Man has not yet 'snatched' its secret away from it.... Figures of speech... like that of the 'unviolated depths of nature' suggest the idea ofsexual intercourse more plainly."3 There can be no doubt that a full investigation ofthe linguistic codes in Sartre's writing would reveal him to be a man comfortably ensconced in a world of male dominance. Yet Collins and Pierce in their excellent article, "Holes and Slime: Sexism in Sartre's Psychoanalysis," even as diey deplore Sartre's sexist language and his failure to depict any fictional female characters as embodiments of existential authenticity, admit that these weaknesses are at variance with the central philosophy ofBeing and Nothingness and not derived logically from it.4 I agree, and diat is why I hold that the sexism is there but is contingent, relevant to our appraisal of die writer but not essential to ourjudgment on the philosophy and its potential value as a support to feminism. In saying this I am partially making the sort of distinction employed by Jean Grimshaw, who points out that a philosophy built on male assumptions may exclude women essentially as with Kant, inconsistendy as with Aristode, or inadvertendy as with Descartes.5 The difference with Sartre is that in spite of the occasional lapse into traditional male linguistic tropes, the work, like its author, is notjust theoretically egalitarian but concerned explicidy with forms of oppression and the problems of disfavored groups. More than that of any other male writer, Sartre's philosophy seems to me to demand feminism as one of its natural consequences. That diis has been historically true is shown, ofcourse, by the fact that Simone de Beauvoir used Sartrean existentialism as the foundation for her own original analysis of women's situation in TL· Second Sex. The irony is diat this book, which played a key role in launching the movement for women's liberation throughout the world, has been adversely criticized by later feminists precisely on the grounds of its Sartrean orientation, along with Beauvoir's emphasis on women's right to share the things men value rather than to challenge those values. Beauvoir herself later recognized that the book did not go far enough, but she never renounced what she had written there. My claim... (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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hazel E. Barnes BEAUVOIR AND SARTRE: THE FORMS OF FAREWELL There ARE MANY forms of farewell. The formal interview may be one of them, an autobiography another, the biography written by a relative or close friend of the deceased a third. In The Words Sartre bade farewell to his childhood. He thought he was saying goodbye to literature at the same time, though this adieu turned out to be (...) more in the nature of au revoir or even à bientôt. In an extended interview on the occasion of his seventieth birthday and in a three-hour documentary film, Sartre commented on the events ofhis life, his writings, his hopes and aspirations, his political judgments. Each of these was a summing up, and a selfappraisal, a final statement, too, inasmuch as Sartre's ill health and near blindness made it clear to him that he would not be writing anymore. Simone de Beauvoir obviously drew up some kind of final reckoning in the last volume of her autobiography, Tout comptefait {Account Closed). All of these are farewells of a sort, official valedictories. They have been much discussed, and I will not dwell on them here. Two other works bearing Beauvoir^ name are farewells in a different sense. They are preparations for leave-taking and records of remembrance for the bereaved. They have been combined in a volume published in late 1981, a year and a half after Sartre's death. The first of these is La Cérémonie des adieux (The Ceremony ofFarewells).? This is an account of the decade preceding Sartre's death. The title is itself a recollection of a poignant moment, as Beauvoir explains: "Then this is the ceremony of farewells!' Sartre said to me as we were leaving each other for a month at the beginning of one summer. I had a presentiment of the meaning these words would one day assume. The ceremony lasted ten years. It is these ten years that I recount in this book." The record is annalistic, the same kind of detailed year-by-year account of events and her reactions to them 21 22Philosophy and Literature mat Beauvoir employed in the first three volumes of her autobiography. But there her stated intention was to keep herselfas the center offocus and to speak of Sartre only insofar as his existence was intertwined with her own. In the preface to The Ceremony of Farewells she states that she has recorded these ten years as she had lived them, but that the book is devoted wholly to Sartre. Ifshe has spoken also ofherself, it is because "the witness is a part of what he witnesses." The book is dedicated "To those who loved Sartre, love him, will love him." Indeed, it has been written for them by one who is of them. The second work is Entretiens avecJean-Paul Sartre, a collection of interviews she herself conducted with Sartre in the summer of 1974. These have been subjected to superficial editing but by no means reworked into literature. Beauvoir wanted to give to readers the opportunity "to follow the meanders of his thought and to hear his living voice." Here she uses the method adopted in the fourth volume ofher autobiography, where she grouped her reminiscences by topics. Sartre responds at length to her questions on a vast variety ofsubjects, ranging from food likes and dislikes to his changing concepts of freedom, from sexual preferences to politics; there are comments on schoolboy fights with Merleau-Ponty, and later arguments with Camus, thoughts on literature, on death, on God. A reviewer has remarked that these interviews represent "a worthwhile approximation to the autobiography [Sartre] never wrote."2 Thus we have a work that falls in between biography and autobiography, because of the author's close involvement with her subject, and we have a set of autobiographical interviews. In both Beauvoir is recorder and commentator, Sartre central subject and actor. The two may serve for mutual corroboration and correction. Together diey express Beauvoir^ and Sartre's farewell to each other and his farewell to life. I will begin with the Interviews and focus my discussion on a few selected items which seem to me especially... (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)

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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hazel E. Barnes FLAUBERT AND SARTRE ON MADNESS IN KING LEAR T'oward the end of the second volume of The Family Idiot (L'Idiot de la famille), in a section called "Exercises and Reading," Sartre discusses Flaubert's reading of Shakespeare.1 In the context Sartre describes how Flaubert spent his time during one of the rare periods when he was not even attempting to write anything; more than two years elapsed (...) between the completion of the first Sentimental Education in January 1845 and die beginning of his collaboration widi Maxime Du Camp on La Bretagne. Along with doing desultory background reading for "an oriental tale," and analyzing the plays ofVoltaire, Flaubert claimed to be studying the Greek and Roman authors and a selected few of the later "great immortals." Sartre shows that Flaubert's way of reading them was entirely different from the critical analysis which he directed on the work of his contemporaries. Essentially it was a series of"rereadings," and its purpose was not to gain knowledge or even a fuller understanding of the text. In a letter to Mlle de Chantepie, Flaubert counsels her to take one of the great writers and "study him in depth," reading from beginning to end and then starting over again: "But do not read, as children read, to amuse yourself, nor as the ambitious read, to instruct yourself. No, read so as to live. Create in your soul an intellectual atmosphere which will be compounded from the emanation of all the great minds."2 How can Flaubert both counsel his correspondent to study in depdi and not to seek instruction? The kind ofstudy he has in mind, Sartre claims, is comparable to the way in which an amateur pianist might "study" Chopin, where die aim is not to understand analytically but to perfect a particular interpretation and to evoke a certain aesdietic reaction. Flaubert resists instruction because new knowledge risks forcing change. What he wants is 211 2 1 2 Philosophy and Literature to rediscover the same eternal truths and emotions.3 It is also to find inspiration for his own dreams, an oneiric reading. In this connection Sartre makes two important points. First, in striving to cultivate for the soul "an intellectual atmosphere... compounded from the emanation of all the great minds," the artist is adding so many strings to his lyre — the laugh of Rabelais, the cosmic passions of Shakespeare, the skepticism of Montaigne. This is whyJules at the end of die first Sentimental Education plans to study die great writers, beginning with Homer — not to learn dieir technique but to enlarge the artist's sensibility. Sartre's second point is made apropos of Flaubert's rereading of Shakespeare. Flaubert fluctuates between two responses. Sometimes he is depressed at the thought of his own lack of genius in comparison with Shakespeare. "That good man will drive me mad.... All odiers seem to me children beside him."* At odier times he experiences what Sartre calls a "glorifying identification." It is as though in imagination he becomes Shakespeare. In part this is because, as he writes in this same letter, we artists "breathe in our existence by means of die sentence." Sartre notes that for Flaubert the existence in question is a literary reality, not that of die everyday world; we may breathe it in either dirough writing or through reading. At this particular moment in his life, Sartre argues, Flaubert's program of study was in bad faith. He allowed die imaginary identification to suffice. Sartre goes so far as to say, "He reads in order not to write; in diis masturbatory substitute for the act, he makes himself an aumor all at once, under anodier name, in order not to work at becoming the writer of genius he wants to be." This comment makes sense if we recall Flaubert's situation in 1845-47. After the nervous crisis at Pont-L'Evêque he knew that either he would be a writer or he would remain a feeble invalid, an object of pity, the "family idiot." "There he is, dien, paralyzed by two opposing forces: hope and die fear of being disappointed " (p. 2021). No wonder he... (shrink)