Jean-Paul Sartre 100 years

[Scheherazade]

It is Jean Paul Sartre's (1905 - 1980), one of the most influential authors and thinkers of the 20th century, 100th birthday today:


France is marking the centenary of Jean-Paul Sartre, the controversial modern philosopher whose popularity has been declining in recent years.

But despite a series of tributes to mark the date of his birth, many in France are questioning his legacy.

"France hated him when he was alive and shuns him in death," French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy said.

But in his heyday, his radical ideas earned him a following that has been compared to that of a pop star.

The was a time when Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) could not move without being mobbed in the street.

His existentialist ideas made him an icon for a whole generation of intellectuals.

According to the British philosopher Julian Baggini, Sartre's "point is that freedom is something we're kind of afraid of, and we always want to deny we have, so we always try and make excuses for our behaviour, and say it's not our responsibility".

"And his real point was, no, we do have to choose. And not just about what we do, but what we believe, and the values we hold."

Communist sympathies

Nothing if not controversial, Sartre supported the Soviet regime in the 1950s and later the Maoists.

He also defended the killing of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

And he declined a Nobel prize for literature, rejecting it as a bourgeois prize.

Perhaps not surprisingly, views about him in France are mixed.

But Sartre's biographer says his politics was so unforgivable to some French people, that the philosopher is now more studied in America and Britain than he is at home.

And officials at France's National Library are disappointed by the poor visitor figures for a current anniversary exhibition of his work.

But whatever people now think about his philosophy, the image endures - of the man in the black jumper, holding forth in a smoky cafe on the Left Bank with his partner, the French feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4114134.stm


Sartre's Bio (http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1964/sartre-bio.html)

[mono]

Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for forming the thread, Scher! ;)
Unfortunately, I have read little of his work, only Being and Nothingness and a few plays, but I certainly admire such a beautiful mind that shined through every word.
Happy birthday, Jean-Paul Sartre.

[Morten]

Last Tuesday, the 21st of June, was Sartre's 100th birthday. Therefore I thought perhaps others would be interested in discussing him and his works?

There's plenty to talk about; his literary career, his existentialist philosophy, his fascination with marxism, his quarrel with Camus, etc.

[lavendar1]

Sartre wrote a sort of maifesto on literature, appropriately entitled What is Literature? that seeks to answer questions like "What is Writing?", "Why Write?", and "For Whom Does One Write?" It's a tough read for a non- philospher like me, but it's worth it. What strikes me most about it is his reiteration that writers must be responsible to both themselves and to their society. An excerpt:

One does not write for slaves. The art of prose is bound up with the only regime in which prose has meaning, democracy. When one is threatened, the other is, too. And it is not enough to defend them with the pen. A day comes when the pen is forced to stop, and the writer must then take up arms. Thus, however you might have come to it, whatever the opinions you might have professed, literature throws you into battle. Writing is a certain way of wanting freedom; once you have begun, you are engaged, willy-nilly.

It's food for thought (and action), isn't it?

[Scheherazade]

I have merged these two threads since they are dedicated to the same subject.

[Jozanny]

He also defended the killing of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

I must say, I am no expert on Sartre. I know more about him through the filter of academic explanations of existentialism, through de Beauvoir's characterization of him, and through the backdoor of Foucault's answer to that philosophy, although I am no Foucaultan expert, but this comes as something of a shock.

{edit}

When I do finally read my edition of B&N, I may end up reading it more jaunticed than I wish to be.

[jgweed]

I think it is very unfortunate that he is not read much anymore; his philosophy---particularly his ethics---certainly made a profound difference (at least for some of us).
While understandable from his point of view and his participation in the French Resistance, his excursions and engagement into contemporary politics were often as silly as his view was distorted---but if he was wrong, he was wrong for what seems to me the right reasons. One must admire his insistence on the importance of individual freedom, responsibility, and authenticity.

I remember, when I read Simone's <u>Adieux:A Farewell of Sartre,</u> a mixture of sadness and admiration.

"The fear of truth is the fear of freedom."

I am happy that the anniversary of his birth was not forgotten here at Litnet.
John

[Jozanny]

I think it is very unfortunate that he is not read much anymore; his philosophy---particularly his ethics---certainly made a profound difference (at least for some of us).
While understandable from his point of view and his participation in the French Resistance, his excursions and engagement into contemporary politics were often as silly as his view was distorted---but if he was wrong, he was wrong for what seems to me the right reasons. One must admire his insistence on the importance of individual freedom, responsibility, and authenticity.

Well, now I am hesitant to post since I ran afoul of the law, but it seems intellectuals and actors always damage themselves when they go contemporary.

But I highlighted the Munich statement because I really did not know Sartre went that far.

However, philosophy is a gap in my education, sadly, and I don't really have time to fill it by laboring through Aristotle and Kant to then go through post-structuralism and its discontents.

I pick up things, and Foucault is one of the few 20th century voices who've motivated me to study him, but Sartre always seems to be in a reactionary argument against someone he names whom I don't know. Still, I was on one of my book buying sprees, and Barnes & Noble had a battered thick copy of Being & Nothingness. Seized.

Introduction riffled through. In closet with my pretty and equally untouched Derrida, Writing and Differance.

Existentialism and Deconstruction are faded white heat. Metaphysics has struggled with the same ontological issues since the first flourish of Grecian civilization, and here I am, able to say Wittgenstein was important because, and so on.

[blazeofglory]

Sartre is unbeatable in that he came up with masses of literature, and all to revolutionize the very convention of it, and he devoted his life to it or else such beautiful pieces of literature could not be imagined or crafted.

[~Sado]

Schopenhauer makes a funny remark somewhere in his introduction to his 'The World as Will and Representation' that, should the book be too intimidating, one can always put it up on one's shelf to impress a lady friend.

I'm sure Schopenhauer understood symbolic exchange when Marx was still playing with lego.

[Jozanny]

Schopenhauer makes a funny remark somewhere in his introduction to his 'The World as Will and Representation' that, should the book be too intimidating, one can always put it up on one's shelf to impress a lady friend.

I'm sure Schopenhauer understood symbolic exchange when Marx was still playing with lego.

I'm not intimidated so much as wondering if it is worth the effort to resurrect the dead. Derrida has been dismantled, and/or discredited, by present day scholars, and probably with some justification. To the *popular mind* (regular every day readers) he is dismissed as the man of word games.

I am in the middle somewhere, and do not feel that Deconstruction and Existentialism are total chicanery, but have been superceded by biological proof that life is a really advanced software program of some kind. Organisms are machines, more advanced than what we have in computers as a kind of reflective imitation, but there is no other analogy that works.

DNA/RNA is the primary coding, genes do the regulating, and cells modify to do certain functions.

Still creates all kind of philosophical problems. Epistemological, deterministic, and what is choice then if we are programmed? But the great existential outcry of irrational existence seems, in some ways, a sort of last gasp of romantic feeling.

And language then assumes much less importance. It is a tool, a funky tool, a limited tool, occasionally a good tool, I should add, even a fantastic tool, since I am a writer, and in religious or political hands a triumphalist tool, but also sometimes a useless tool; one in which Derrida placed too much of an investment towards anxiety of authority over uncertainty. I suppose it takes nerve to say that as I've read so much about him and so little of what he wrote, but that seems to be the gist of what he was after.

We will never really get to a sound definition of why we be, but we all know we be. Language loses its dialectic crux at a certain point, which is why metaphysics as a branch has been a failure since we created it.

So I'm 46, or nearly so, and do I want to labor over dead Frenchmen who substituted isms and methodology for sexual vitality? I have to be in a good place to start.:yawnb:

I have read your intro, btw. Welcome aboard. This can be a fun place, even a good community to learn.

[jgweed]

Sartre seems to have been a rather busy guy:

"So after Beauvoir slept with her 17-year-old student, Olga Kosakiewicz, Sartre tried to seduce Olga, too. When Olga rejected him, he seduced Olga's sister, Wanda. When Beauvoir slept with another student, Bianca Bienenfeld, Sartre did. He also seduced Beauvoir's former student, Nathalie Sorokine, with whom Beauvoir was sleeping. When Beauvoir had an affair with Claude Lanzmann, Sartre started one with Lanzmann's sister, Evelyne."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/books/29beau.html

Simone and John-Paul seem, in addition to an intense intellectual relationship, also to have something of an Merteuil-Valmont side as well. One often sees a picture of wall-eyed Sartre sitting in a cafe before a table cluttered with papers; perhaps awaiting Simone to discuss the latest events in their affairs.

It might be profitable to some struggling graduate student to write a dissertation on the sexual lives (beginning with Sokrates) of the great philosophers, who were, apparently, all-too-human.
Cheers,
John

[Jozanny]

Sartre seems to have been a rather busy guy:

"So after Beauvoir slept with her 17-year-old student, Olga Kosakiewicz, Sartre tried to seduce Olga, too. When Olga rejected him, he seduced Olga's sister, Wanda. When Beauvoir slept with another student, Bianca Bienenfeld, Sartre did. He also seduced Beauvoir's former student, Nathalie Sorokine, with whom Beauvoir was sleeping. When Beauvoir had an affair with Claude Lanzmann, Sartre started one with Lanzmann's sister, Evelyne."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/books/29beau.html

Simone and John-Paul seem, in addition to an intense intellectual relationship, also to have something of an Merteuil-Valmont side as well. One often sees a picture of wall-eyed Sartre sitting in a cafe before a table cluttered with papers; perhaps awaiting Simone to discuss the latest events in their affairs.

It might be profitable to some struggling graduate student to write a dissertation on the sexual lives (beginning with Sokrates) of the great philosophers, who were, apparently, all-too-human.
Cheers,
John

Good idea. Perhaps existentialism wasn't a substitute then! Existential angst may have more credence yet than deconstruction does, but it too seems to be fading as an intellectual-revolt du jour. I do not have any real evidence to point to for this, honestly, but Brian Greene and co seem to have replaced late 20th century post-structural decoding convulsions, and Greene I am going to read, with enthusiasm, but thank to this discussion, I am going to take Being & Nothingness down.

Not to start, since I have 4 books going and am debating either restarting Discipline & Punish or opening my Foucault Reader first and take notes. I must be in some kind of hurry:lol:

[jgweed]

Philosophy, like much of life, is not immune to fads, even within the groves of philosophy departments around the world. At one time, the liguistic analysts under the influence of Wittgenstein held sway, now it the deconstructionists and POST-deconstructionists--- and in secluded rooms in the campus philosophy buildings the lebenswelters sit, Sein und Seit in hand, plotting the overflow of the Department.