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Customer Reviews (3)

Lucid and exact exposition.
Sartre's philosophy reduces to a radical dichotomy of por soi and en soi.The logic for this radical dichotomy is his ontological argument.The ontological argument is the springboard for all of Sartre's later deductions.He is quite faithful to his principle, derived from the ontological argument.In this book, the author gives an excellent and lucid exposition of Sartre's reasoning on the ontological argument and shows how his entire corpus is derived from it.He shows that Sartre's lack of an ethic is grounded in Hume's understanding of personal identity, that is found in Hume's book, A Treatise of Human Nature.If experience is as radically discontinuous as Hume states it, then we cannot generalize from experience and therefore cannot formulate ethical norms.One can see the philosophical basis for Satre's Nausea when one understands the ontological argument.In fact, it is a precursor of deconstructionist understanding of words and language.Sartre ultimately resorts to a utilitarian ethical theory which, quite frankly, cannot be reconciled with his overall work.Although I adamantly disagree with Sartre, this book operates as a perfect solution for those who have difficulty understanding him.

"If you want it, come and get it."
This is the best commentary on Sartre's book I've seen. In fact, you should probably read this book before Being and Nothingness, and then tackle that forbiddingly ponderous and dense volume afterwards. Many people start, but never finish the book, and this book may help you get "over the hump" in that sense, since it'll simplify things considerably and give you a leg up on some of the more difficult points. Anyway, since this is an excellent commentary on Sartre's book, I just wanted to add a few comments myself, especially about one particular existential idea that I find odd.

I should warn you ahead of time that this is a very dark book review, just as Being and Nothingness itself can be, that being my point of departure. But a lot of it is black humor or satire and not meant to be taken seriously.

Sartre wrote in this book that "Life is a useless passion." He and other existential philosophers have maintained that life is "absurd,"--an idea that became a major tenet of existential thought.

Well, as the memory of the 20th century fades behind us, let us consider how absurd or useless life may truly be. Although existential philosophy traces its roots back to Kierkegard in the last half of the 19th century, it was the 20th century in which existentialism really came to prominence, as philosophers attempted to create a philosophy of being to cope with the devastation of a century that saw not only the greatest scientific and medical advances, but also the greatest conflagrations of mass death and destruction in man's history--and which, ironically enough--were mostly made possible by man's own new-found technological capabilities. With these awesome new powers at his command, mankind unflichingly, even enthusiastically, embarked on a new era of unabashed and uninhibited mass death and destruction unprecedented in human history.

It was indeed a century to remember, made all the more memorable by the millions of people caught in its deadly milieu. Millions died in World War I; 20 million more died during the Spanish Flu epidemic immediately afterward, and made worse by the weakened condition of state infrastructures and medical facilities after the war.

In World War II, millions more died, including 20 million dead in Russia alone either directly from war casualties or indirectly through starvation, disease, and privation. Six million Jews, 1 million Russians--and even a quarter million Gypsies--were rounded up and systematically exterminated in the death camps ("better living through chemistry"), and tens of millions more died of starvation in India because the price of rice went through the roof.

That doesn't take into consideration the myriad smaller conflicts, genocides, pogroms, famines, and other disasters in which thousands to millions of people died. Unfortunately, there was no shortage of them to grace and adorn each ill-fated decade of the 20th century, as more and more people were caught in its inimitable and seemingly inexorable machines of death.

In addition to WWI in the teens and WWII in the 40's, respectively, there was the genocide of Armenians in the 1920's (1,000,000 people dead), the Rape of Nanking (300,000 dead), the Great Purges in Russia in the 30's (3,000,000 people executed or dead in the labor camps) the Korean War in the 50's, the famines in Biafra in the 60's and Ethiopia in the 80's, and America's geopolitical debacle, the Vietnam war of the 60's and early 70's.

And there's more fun yet to come. Let's not forget the ever-lovin' Idi Amin in Uganda during the 70's (if you can say one good thing about Amin, it's that he was content to stay within his own borders and slaughter his own, instead of starting wars with everybody else, like most dictators). Africans, knowing a good thing when they see one, followed Amin with the internal massacres and tribal conflicts in Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone, and Sudan in the 90's (to mention the most important ones), with untold millions of innocent people slaughtered, maimed, dead from disease and starvation, or displaced in refugee camps.

Lest you think I'm unjustly singling out Africa, there was the recent genocide and atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia, the recent terrorism in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, and the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians (which has been going on for about 4,000 years--give 'em time--they'll figure out that they really hate each other eventually).

Not to mention the spectre of nuclear annihilation, which somehow, humans have managed to avoid--at least for the time being. (No doubt the human race will screw that up, too). And last but not least--we now have the spectre of mass annihilation through bioweapons. (Isn't it great being part of such a technologically advanced race? We come up with such clever and fun little toys.)

Yeah, you have to hand it to the human race. We know how to make progress. We've gone from sacrificing virgins (what genius invented that idea?) to being able to kill millions of people at a time with a single nuclear blast in only about 2,000 years. When the first two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 200,000 people (including, presumably some virgins, which made it okay, I guess) vanished in less than a second. And now we have bombs that are up to 5,000 times more powerful than these.

But getting back to my main point. Given the above, describing life as "absurd" seems pretty lame, to say the least. Sartre was even awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature. When the news of the prize came out, Life magazine called him "The wall-eyed little man who figured it all out." (Maybe Sartre should have just gotten corrective lenses for his eye problem and called it a day). But really, is this the best they can do?

Don't get me wrong, I like much of what Sartre says and I might even go so far as to say he was a brilliant philosopher, but some people have been upset by what they see as Sartre's and other existential philosophers' overly "pessimistic" view of life. Given how things have generally turned out for the human race, however, especially in the 20th century, saying life is "absurd" seems itself an absurdly naive and over-optimistic understatement, and hardly anything for people to get upset about.

Given the above, I don't think it is possible to be overly pessimistic about individual human existence, and perhaps more importantly, about the prospects for human society as a whole.

There is always the possibility (it does occasionally happen) that an individual human being will become more enlightened. You can always tell when someone has become "enlightened." His friends all start avoiding him like the plague and think he's gone totally nuts. At the social level, however, this never happens--since there are no, and never have been, any truly enlightened human societies--and probably never will be.

Not to beat a dead horse or anything (another sadistic human custom, no doubt), but I'll mention one more social criticism of contemporary society that I happen to agree with. Especially in the west, adult life is mostly concerned with the accumulation of wealth and power--neither of which, as Arthur C. Clarke once wrote--should be the main concern, much less the only concern, of full-grown, mature men. It goes without saying that a society based on such consumerist ideals will never become truly advanced or enlightened. No wonder S-F writers dream of getting off the planet--they may not know where they're going in the universe either--but they sure as hell know it's a cosmic cluster-f_ck down here.

I haven't even touched on the problem of individual crime, since I've been more concerned here with the broader social and historical issues. Suffice it to say that a society in which the mass media glorifies and makes heroes of serial murderers just to sell more magazines, newspapers, and advertising can't be all bad. After all, they'll probably make more money that way, which will be good for the stock--and in this market--that's nothing to shake a stick at.

But returning to my earlier point, failing to achieve "true enlightenment" is the least of our worries, however, because if we were even close, that in itself would be quite an achievement. If human societies were just "advanced" as opposed to truly enlightened, we'd probably be 10 times better off than we are now.

Well, we're about as far away from true enlightenment as you can get. In fact, the really tragic thing is that the human societies of the 20th century brought most of the above disasters down on themselves--tragedies which a less violent and more reasonable, socially intelligent, and responsible race would have been able to avoid. Or to put it another way, in another unfortunate and bizarre twist of human psychology, despite humans being the most intelligent and "evolved" species on the planet, it would seem we are also the only social species that is less intelligent as a group than we are individually. Or, as Mark Twain once said, "A committee is the only critter with 10 bellies and no brain."

Not that I'm a total nihilist. There is always the slim hope humans will change. I truly hope the human race will come to its senses before time runs out. It seems unlikely, however. Humans are too quarrelsome, violent, warlike, greedy, selfish, intolerant, bigotted, venal, petty, vain, neurotic, irrational, illogical, ignorant, short-sighted, and just generally vicious, mean-spirited and uncivilized a species (I could go on but one has to stop somewhere), and there just aren't enough truly good humans out there to make a difference. There are a few good people out there, I admit--but let's face it--we all know that in this life "nice guys finish last." Similarly, the lessons of human history make it abundantly clear that unless good is very, very careful, evil usually wins out.

Oh well. It's sad to say, since it's my own species I'm talking about, but the earth, and probably the universe as well, will probably be better off without us.

I realize I've painted a pretty dim, dark, and ultimately depressing view (a 3D view?) of humanity and of humanity's future prospects. I hope I am wrong. Unfortunately, the history of the human race doesn't give one much cause for optimism. If we can screw it up, the human race probably will--even our own future. After all, we've screwed up 99% of our past history--and the future is just history that hasn't happened yet.

Speaking of which, I don't want to give you the impression that there's no room for optimism in my life. In fact, I'm about the most "optimistic" guy out there--I'm just optimistic that the human race will Bite the Big One some day through its own habitual and perverse self-destructiveness and figure out some creative and fun way to wipe itself off the surface of the planet in one fell swoop. Although our history may be nothing to be proud of--I have every expectation and confidence that our ending will be a truly monumental and awe-inspiring achievement. I just hope I live long enough to see it; it would be a real bummer to miss out on humanity's glorious, universal, and final holocaust of mass death and destruction. Given humanity's talent for careening from disaster to disaster throughout its history, I'm sure it will be sooner rather than later--after all why delay the fun? Just think of the 20th century as the dress rehearsal for humanity's last curtain call.

Come to think of it, why we're called "humanity" I don't really understand. We should be called "inhumanity." "Humanity" has to be the only one-word oxymoron in the English language. (For those of you who weren't paying attention in your English class, an "oxymoron" is a rhetorical figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory words are combined, as in "thunderous silence", or "mournful optimist," or "a just society," or "a kind and wise human being.")

I know some people will say it'll never happen--that the human race will become wise before it's too late and somehow turn back from the brink of disaster. Obviously these people have never stuck their noses inside a single history book for more than five minutes. But the ultimate problem, and the ultimate reality--is that we humans, both individually and as a species--would rather live down to our lowest impulses and desires rather than the reverse. After all, that takes genuine discipline and real moral fiber--which is no fun at all for a snarling, primitive, vicious ground monkey with a brain too big for his Johnson (among other things--such as the 40,000 nuclear missiles and bombs still in existence).

But there is always hope, and the future is as good place for our hopes to reside as any--because if there's going to be any hope for the human race, it will have to be there--since there obviously isn't any hope for humanity based on our past.

And maybe what I've said here is what Sartre and the other existentialists really meant to say? Perhaps being civilized philosophers and academic-types, they were just trying to be polite and soft-pedal it a bit.

Well, I'm not a philosopher, I'm not an academic (not anymore, anyway)--and maybe I'm not even civilized! So does that mean I'm telling it like it is?

We'll see. In the meantime, I'm sure the geopolitical gladiatorial games that is human civilization will continue to provide all the sadistic and voyeuristic "bread and circuses" action (coming to you live on the 6 o'clock news!) you could want.

Joseph Catalano's A COMMENTARY OF "BEING and NOTHINGNESS"
If you find yourself extremely frustrated in your attempt to plow through Sartre's massive BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, there is simply no better guide than Catalano's commentary. No first time reader of Sartre's book should be without this guide. Catalano does not shy away from the difficult and abstruse points of BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, but helps the reader understand Sartre's rather peculiar style of phenomenology. If one wants to understand one of the landmark works of 20th century Continental philosphy, one needs to read the original text. However, most nonacademic readers, and even most professional American philosophers, lack the crucial background to truly grasp what Sartre is attemtping to accomplish. Before reading BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, I recomend reading several of Sartre's literary works, and two shorter philosophical texts, THE TRANSCENDENCE OF THE EGO and THEORY OF THE EMOTIONS. Then expect to spend several months (at least if you have to work for a living) with Sartre's treatise. Be sure to have Catalano's book by your side. It will give you both the necessary background for understanding the text, as well as lucid commentary on some very difficult passages of Sartre's work. In the end, do not shy away from the original text. Even if you find yourself unsympathetic to Sartre's ideas and style of philosophy, I believe you will find that Sartre has some rather vivid insights about human existence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

Existentialism and Human Emotions Reviewed.
This book, I highly recommend to any aspiring student of Existentialism.Sartre takes the time to juxtapose Freudian psychoanalysis with his version of Existential psychoanalysis, which affords the reader an opportunity to feel the impact of Adler on Sartre. Sartre touches all the essential elements of Existentialism, Decisions, time and Existentialism as humanism.This is much better starting point for those interested in Sartre than Being and Nothingness

Existentialism
Yes, I was in fact groping in the darkness about the essence of the philosophy of 'existentialism'so long. I shuffled thru the pages of Satre's magnum opus - Being and nothingness ( I don't know whether I have quoted it correctly)! But yr reference to this edition of Satre's essential philosophy of existentialism has opened the door of my understanding. In fact yr quick despatch of the book has helped me a lot of quintessence of the philosophy. Whether I agree or don't agree with his viewpoint is a different issue. But I thank AmazonBooh Agency, for the prompt arrival of the edition. In fact I badly need a book like this.

Kalyan Kumar Guha

Good
Great translation of a popular writing. By far the most comprehensible of the translations I've found.

Existentialism Made Easy
If Sartre wanted to endear himself to the masses, he did himself no favors with the cover to Existentialism and Human Emotions, with his pipe-puffing professoriality conveying enough know-it-allness to give most anyone not assigned to read it a hearty guffaw. Which is a shame really, as this 96-page essay serves as an excellent primer for anyone who thinks of existentialism as a ponderous, do-nothing philosophy (If all I am to do is exist, why do anything else?), defining the terms, fielding common accusations from other religious and philosophical camps, and connecting existential philosophy to other critical traditions.

That said, the title is a bit misleading, or incomplete at least - it really just introduces and retorts the accusations Sartre wrote the essay in reaction to. It does this brilliantly though, especially on pp18-33 where he fairly systematically explains the philosophical reasoning behind the 3 quintessentially existential emotions of anguish, forlornness, and despair. Outside of this and a section from page 41-51 where he addresses 3 major emotional objections to existential philosophy, he is speaking on a more general plane - I almost think that it would be published today under the title Existentialism for Dummies.

What I found most engaging in the text (mostly the section simply entitled "Existentialism" that takes up the first 51 pages) was his connection of the notion of subjectivity in religious, philosophical, and practical discourse, summed up in this passage from pp22-23: "If existence really does precedes essence, there is no explaining things away by reference to a fixed and given human nature. In other words, there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom. On the other hand, if God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So, in the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us. We are alone, with no excuses."

In context of a modern world of jihad, know-nothing consumerism, religious fundamentalism, and a creeping sense of dislocation in both the family and the workplace, Sartre's words are scathingly prophetic, as each of these elements of the modern world has one thing in common: each subjective way of looking at the world is equally right - or equally wrong - and we are without recourse when things don't go as we hoped ("To be sure, this may seem a harsh thought to someone whose life hasn't been a success").

But the wondrous thing about the text is that, despite the focus on words like anguish and despair, Sartre ends up coming off as fairly optimistic. This achieved at least partially by his following the notion of subjectivity with the notion of intersubjectivity - "this is the world in which man decides what he is and what others are." I would describe this as almost a fusion of the classically opposite Civil Society and State of Nature - every person is dependent on other people insomuch as those people influence our own "projects," as Sartre calls them; in other words, when they impose their wills enough that their world, their projects become part of ours.

He follows this up in the short section entitled "The Hole," stating, "A good part of our life [and it may simply be the translator's choice, but I found it encouraging that he said "life," not "lives"] is passed in plugging up holes, in filling empty spaces, in realizing and symbolically establishing a plenitude." He actually hilariously (though not intentionally so) applies this to sexual intercourse and eating in two of the more entertaining passages, with the mouth and the you-know-what being the holes literally and symbolically filled.

Brilliant
Sartre takes atheism to its logical conclusions.He starts with the assumption that there is no God and deduces a proper philosophy based on that one starting assumption.From that point of view, this book is a wonderful argument for theism via reductio ad absurdum.Sartre argue that existence precedes essence, and hence man is totally in charge of his own destiny.There is no human nature, there is no pre-set things that we must conform to, we decide our own fate.There is also no objective moral values.Sartre laments the fact that some say there is no God but still hold to objective moral values and don't act any differently or believe any differently about other things.This book is very, very easy to read and can certainly be read in only one sitting.This is the kind of philosophy that theists need to read and internalize to show atheists the logical conclusions of their atheism.There is no better proof for theism than this book. ... Read more

Product Description
A classic work by the founding father of existentialism, describing his philosophy and its relationship to Marxism.

This book presents a full decade of Sartre’s work, from the publication of the Critique of Dialectical Reason in 1960, the basic philosophical turning-point in his postwar development, to the inception of his major study on Flaubert, the first volumes of which appeared in 1971. The essays and interviews collected here form a vivid panorama of the range and unity of Sartre’s interests, since his deliberate attempt to wed his original existentialism to a rethought Marxism.

A long and brilliant autobiographical interview, given to New Left Review in 1969, constitutes the best single overview of Sartre’s whole intellectual evolution. Three analytic texts on the US war in Vietnam, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the lessons of the May Revolt in France, define his political positions as a revolutionary socialist. Questions of philosophy and aesthetics are explored in essays on Kierkegaard, Mallarme and Tintoretto. Another section of the collection explores Sartre’s critical attitude to orthodox psychoanalysis as a therapy, and is accompanied by rejoinders from colleagues on his journal Les Temps Modernes. The volume concludes with a prolonged reflection on the nature and role of intellectuals and writers in advanced capitalism, and their relationship to the struggles of the exploited and oppressed classes. Between Existentialism and Marxism is an impressive demonstration of the breadth and vitality of Sartre’s thought, and its capacity to respond to political and cultural changes in the contemporary world.

Customer Reviews (1)

The best of Jean Paul Sartre's Mind
Always lucid, profound and ever irreverent, this is a delicious collections of reprints and interviews on the "whys" and "why nots" of Sartre's century of intellectual and political ideas. Here is a once in a life time "head session" that covers the waterfront - from Existentialism to Marxism, from Genet and Tintoretto to Flaubert, from politics to the Arts, to Sartre's attitude towards his own writings, and on to Freud and back -- giving those who do not yet know him well an unobstructed window into some of his most valuable intellectual insights. And for those who do know him well, this book becomes a summary of many of Sartre's core ideas and further confirmation of why he will remain one of the towering intellects of our times.

In this short collection, Jean Paul Sartre covers so much intellectual ground with so much ease and clarity, and with so much intellectual depth and facility that it literally takes the breath away. As a result, these pages must be read slowly and savored, for there are only a handful of intellectuals in history who can match Sartre's rich and deep insights, or who can shock our minds into complete attention for such a long span of time: For our troubled times, his prodigious intellect, his wit, his literary skills, his clarity and his iconoclastic irreverence, are an iron tonic that is as much an existential and literary, as a political, necessity.

Most refreshingly here is the fact that Sartre and the first interviewer, Madam Madeleine Chapsal, engage in a compellingly "scrappy" intellectual repartee designed to draw Sartre into revealing the "motive forces" behind his intellectual insights. Madeleine Chapsal's "in your face" discussion of why some of Sartre's most fundamental views have changed over time makes for interesting repartee. Un-awed by Sartre, and like a hunter who has cornered her prey, Madam Chapsal is relentless in pushing Sartre over the horizon pass "the expected and ordinary" to"the-meat-and bones" of his ideas, all done in a freewheeling, almost didactic dialogue between intellectual equals. Intellectual repartee does not get much better than this.

We discover here that there are two formative experiences that drive most European intellectuals: First and foremost, is the trauma of two world wars fought back-to-back on European soil -- the greater being WW-II where Hitler embarrassed and humiliated Europe, and most especially the "uber-proud" French: Hitler's occupation was an abyss from which it seems the French have yet to completely recover, and from which they had nowhere to hide between their choice of the "false experience" of imagined French heroism, and the brutal reality of Nazi power. It is no longer a secret that much too often, this choice was resolved in the cruelest of ways: to die, be imprisoned and tortured, or become a ignominious traitor to France.

For Sartre -- captured, imprisoned and tortured by the Nazis, Hitler's occupation ceased to be a theoretical abstraction, but became the "lived archetype" of absolute power corrupted absolutely. Nazi reality was a powerful existential crucible into which the French were quickly sucked into and crushed. It became the defining "lived experience" for European philosophy: Perhaps for the first time, the German occupation was where the typical European was trapped by "lived circumstances" beyond his control and against his will. Hitler's occupation thus became the archetype of lost control dictated completely by circumstances and conditioning. And yet, it is here, from the very bottom of the abyss that, Sartre, and the French, were forced to "stay in the game" and be totally responsible "for what society had made of them." From there, they had to refashion themselves into a quiet, solitary, self-respecting, and self-defined, hero.

The existentialist problem for "European Man" was also true for man more generally: to be able to "take responsibility for making something out of what society has already fashioned us to be." The highest level of existential honor is to be found in how we "act" as we reject the conditioning that has been imposed on our freedoms from above, and in how we "go about" refashioning what society has tried to make of us. Existential heroism thus by definition is to "continue along the road to freedom" while fashioning a new self from the very ashes of slavery - whether self-imposed or otherwise. The ultimate nobility of "existential man" is to be found in this solitary project, within whose goal, lay the very definition of freedom.

In addition to two world wars, what was also formative for the European intellectual experience was the tense and troubled relationship between the individual's private struggles for independence from the worldview of his bourgeois (and usually) Catholic parents: a worldview that Sartre claims was inherited through social osmosis, but then, was just as quickly and resoundingly rejected and abandoned. In Sartre's case, Christianity was not a total lost. For he successfully "transposed [it] into literary terms" and it became the unconscious driving force of his writings.

On Marx and Freud

One of the things that comes through more clearly here than elsewhere among Sartre's many writings, takes place as Sartre attempts to answer the question posed to him by Madeleine Chapsal as to: Why he became such a late, if not an entirely reluctant, convert to Freud? His answer was surprisingly terse but killed two birds with one stone: "The thought of both Marx and Freud is a theory of conditioning in exteriority. When Marx says `It matters little what the bourgeoisie thinks it does, the important thing is what it [actually] does,' one could replace bourgeoisie by `a hysteric,' and the formula would be Freud."

Thus Marxism for him was always a two-pronged tool: First it was a whetstone for honing ones ability to reason about the meaning of the social forces that have shaped history, and then only secondarily it was a tool of methodology, of praxis: for engaging in the necessary committed social and political actions "called up" by the times. Freud's preoccupation, on the other hand, was somewhat less noble: He was preoccupied with the machinations of the unconscious, the mechanics of which turned out to be a mere artifact of his own theoretical imaginings; imaginings that proved to be true and powerful only when they were correct: But, according to Sartre, they were correct only at the intersection, or confluent, of their many intuited forces. Yet, these "intuited mechanisms," appearing at the intersection, were at no point "primary" or even necessarily centered in "lived experience" as Freud's theories erroneously assumed and claimed. Freud's mechanisms were in fact not the "real" independent variables" that he thought them to be. It is Sartre's belief that Freud himself failed to recognize the fact that it was the "confluence itself," rather than the "intuited mechanisms" that was the irreducible unit of consciousness, and of psychoanalysis. Thus, through an obsession to make psychoanalysis into a reductive science, Freud may have missed his own deepest insight: that only the confluence of his mechanisms were real. This single oversight ensured that Freudian psychoanalysis would forever remain suspended in what Sartre describes as a "mechanistic cramp," and indeed in the backwaters of intellectual solipsism, devoid of its most important irreducible content: independently "lived experience."

On Vietnam

In this essay, entitled Imperialism and Genocide, Sartre explains the imperatives of Colonialism about as well as they can be explained, and then demonstrates that in general it is a form of slow-motion, cautionary, conditional, cultural genocide: implemented by blackmailing, terrorizing and intimidating colonial subjects into giving up their aspirations for freedom and independence. The U.S. version, occurring in Vietnam, broke the old post-war mold in that it was no longer driven by economic imperatives (i.e. by greed) but by racism and a pure pursuit of cultural hegemony.

On Czechoslovakia

He summaries the experience of the thirteen Czech interviewees living under Soviet style socialism as "that long night of the [modern] Middle Ages."

100 Stars
... Read more

Product Description
Jean-Paul Sartre:Basic Writings is the first collection of Sartre's key philosophical writings and provides an indispensable resource for readers of his work.Stephen Priest's clear and helpful introductions make the volume an ideal companion to those coming to Sartre's writing for the first time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Poor TOC
Yes, of course the content is good. And the basic formatting is fine. But the TOC has no Chapter names, which make navigating this collection of writings very difficult. There is no way to know what the content of a chapter is other then opening the chapter to see what it contains. Its a very simple edit for the publisher of this eBook that would make a big difference and help to justify the steep price. (For those without an eidetic memory the workaround is to create a note and manually add the chapter content reference ~ 45min)

Brilliant editing; but with some practical flaws
The works selected are an excellent representation of Sartre's oeuvre, and the real strength of this book is Professor Priest's brilliant and very readable introductions to each chapter.
The drawbacks are the following:
1.) Although the chapter introductions are exceedingly helpful, it would also have been a plus to include footnoting within Sartre's texts (there is such widespread use of philosophical jargon which the layman is not familiar with.)
2.) There is a rather large incidence of typographical errors (or possibly errors in translation) - enough to be noticeable.
3.) At least some examples of Sartre's fiction ought to have been included, since they are so much more accessible than his strictly philosophical tracts.

The Anti-Semite
This review is of a single essay by Sartre, "The Anti-Semite".He uses his notion of people's needing to turn away from their own natures and not look too closely at themselves, as causal to anti-semitism.He is probably correct that mankind in general wishes to concentrate the mind upon some external idea.Religion does this, of course, giving people a beautiful or demanding abstraction to focus upon at the expense of one's own nature.This is no brilliant insight.It is an idea as old as Genesis.Sartre's creation of a relationship between this
aspect of man's existence and anti-semitism is that the anti-semite concentrates feeling, thought and force of will upon the Jew individually or collectively in order to keep his own mind from
concentrating on his true nature.

As an explanation of anti-semitism Sartre is spouting pure nonsense.He says, for instance, that one cannot understand
anti-semitism unless one knows that Jews are totally blameness.

Sartre's general philosophy is of interest to many people, but is of no particular importance to me.However, his theory of the cause of anti-semitism is of importance when people accept what he is saying.His stated view is much akin to notions that anti-semitism is some sort of "virus" that infects the sufferer or that anti-semitism is "the most virulent form of raceism" or similar notions which have Jews in the position of young children being attacked, perhaps killed, by a child molester turned child killer.This view, widely promoted, is an attempt to force the public's minds to ignore cause-and-effect.Sartre's argument is infantile; it has no more connection to real causes of anti-semitism than a comic book or a video game has to real life.

Liberty, equality, fraternity
In the introduction of the book Sartre's philosophical writings are spoken of as connected with the three fundamental values given in the slogan of the French Revolution, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. The first Existensial writings are devoted to individual development expression and freedom. The second period in Sartre's philosophical life, the Marxist period is said to be devoted to the value of'Equality'. And the third less extensive period to the value of ' Fraternity' In this period Sartre calls for the disappearance of the State, and places the focus on bonds of friendship, Fraternity. This rough classification is of course ' rough' and as Steven Priest makes clear Sartre is an Existensialist throughout concerned with the fundamental themes of human life, liberty, justice, life, death, anxiety, being, nothingness, truth and authentic existence.
The work is divided into eighteen chapters each of which deals with a major theme of this kind.
In it the reader can have a good feeling of the overall development of Sartre's philosophy, and can judge what they regard to be of value in it.
My own sense is that the truly important Sartre is the Sartre of the first period, of the existence precedes essence, of the making of meaning in our own life through our action, period.
But the philosophy of this first period too would seem to me to fall short of answering true human needs, and providing hope of ultimate meaning.For that one has to go to a kind of religious existensialism which of course Sartre would have nothing to do with.

an excellent selection
As far as collections of Sartre's philosophical works go, this one is the best I've come across.The book is broken down into sections such as "Existentialism", "The Other", "Nothingness", "Politics", and so on.16 chapters in all, each offering key excerpts from Sartre's entire corpus, especially focused on a specific philosophical matter.The editor, Stephen Priest, does a good job of introducing each chapter and his contributions offer excellent insight both to those who haven't gotten too far into Sartrean philosophy as well as those of us who occasionally need a refresher course.This book reminds me of why I first got interested in reading Sartre.It brings out the exciting spirit of Existentialist philosophy by focusing on the most poignant passages of Sartre's works.I do feel the book to be a bit pricey for a paperback, but all in all it is a rather aesthetically pleasing book.The binding and layout are high quality, as is usual for Routledge texts.Also, this book offers the complete "Existentialism and Humanism" lecture, including transcript of a question and answer forum which you will not find in most editions.Priest also does a decent job of providing biographical information in the chapter "Sartre in-the-world." ... Read more

Product Description
Being and Nothingness may well be thought of as Sartre's greatest work; it has also come to be regarded as a text-book of existentialism itself, and this is for many reasons a proper way to read it. These pages set out with relative perspicuity almost all of the salient ideas of existentialism; and, in addition, the method according to which the book is composed is itself highly characteristic of existentialist philosophers.
From the Introduction by Mary WarnockAmazon.com Review
Jean-Paul Sartre, the seminal smarty-pants of mid-century thinking, launched the existentialist fleet with the publication of Being and Nothingness in 1943. Though the book is thick, dense, and unfriendly to careless readers, it is indispensable to those interested in the philosophy of consciousness and free will. Some of his arguments are fallacious, others are unclear, but for the most part Sartre's thoughts penetrate deeply into fundamental philosophical territory. Basing his conception of self-consciousness loosely on Heidegger's "being," Sartre proceeds to sharply delineate between conscious actions ("for themselves") and unconscious ("in themselves"). It is a conscious choice, he claims, to live one's life "authentically" and in a unified fashion, or not--this is the fundamental freedom of our lives.

Drawing on history and his own rich imagination for examples, Sartre offers compelling supplements to his more formal arguments. The waiter who detaches himself from his job-role sticks in the reader's memory with greater tenacity than the lengthy discussion of inauthentic life and serves to bring the full force of the argument to life. Even if you're not an angst-addicted poet from North Beach, Being and Nothingness offers you a deep conversation with a brilliant mind--unfortunately, a rare find these days. --Rob Lightner ... Read more

Customer Reviews (61)

Bible of existentialism?
If you want to learn about existentialism, you might want to bypass this book. Existentialism is not hard to understand, though Sartre goes out of his artsy-fartsy way to make it all but incomprehensible.

I expected better of Sartre, since his plays and fiction are so well done and make for enjoyable reading. And who knows: in the original French, his ideas may have come across much more readily. But in English translation, "Being and Nothingness" is all but unreadable. It is clearly aimed at specialists, snooty philosopher majors who don't mind reading 800 pages of torturous nonsense. My question: of what use is philosophy if those of us in the real world can't comprehend it? One could be forgiven than philosophers are more interested in intellectual snobbery than they are in actually saying anything of consequence. Perhaps that's why Nietzsche is so widely read. He at least knows how to make a point.

It's said that Sartre "moved on" from the views he expresses in his masterpiece, which makes one wonder why we should be bothered to read it.

Makes for a nice doorstop, though, I must say.

Amazing Insight
Sartre's treatise on Existentialist thought is a revealing, startling, and bold pronouncement of the power of humankind.Many folks pan this type of philosophy as outdated, but I think in contemporary times Sartre's message is particularly salient. I am not sure I have ever encountered a text that possessed so much power that I felt overwhelmed and indebted to its gravity. This is definitely something that takes a few reads, maybe some explanation by a thoughtful philosophy professor (which I was lucky enough to have) and much contemplative, individual rumination on its meaning. But in the end, I might go so far as to say it will change your life.

The Hobo Philosopher
I have been reading one version or another of this book, off and on, for the last 40 years - mostly off. I finished it once but, of course, one reading is hardly enough for this type book. It is very difficult reading. I keep a philosophy dictionary beside me whenever I pick this book up. Whenever I start reading I am torn between the notion that Mr. Sartre is a philosophical genius or the man is putting me on.

I always recommend this book to friends and associates who brag on their knowledge of philosophy and philosophers. I ask them to get back with me after they have read the book and let me know what they have learned. It's my personal joke on my intellectual friends. I know of no one who has ever finished the book. Nor do I know anyone who could explain what the book has to say.

This book is for those versed in philosophy. You must have an understanding of philosophical terms and certainly beyond a freshman level. If you haven't studied philosophy in college or are not truly interested in the academics of philosophy and well versed in terminology, you will go nowhere with this book.

I haven't read the other reviews on this page but I would guess that there are no detailed analyzes of this book with criticisms of Mr. Sartre ideas and philosophybecause I doubt that there are any reviewers who have the background or capacity to truly understand what this man is saying. I think most people would be better off buying a book that explained this book - like Being and Nothingness for dummies or some such thing. But I haven't given up yet. I will find out what this man is trying to say ... one day ... if I live long enough.

Books written by Richard Noble - The Hobo Philosopher:
"Hobo-ing America: A Workingman's Tour of the U.S.A.."
"A Summer with Charlie" Salisbury Beach, Lawrence YMCA
"A Little Something: Poetry and Prose
"Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother" Novel - Lawrence, Ma.
"The Eastpointer" Selections from award winning column.
"Noble Notes on Famous Folks" Humor - satire - facts.

So So Version
Being and Nothingness is the best known and most comprehensive exposition of Sartre's philosophical system.The following comments pertain to the Washington Square unabridged version of the text.

One of Sartre's objectives in Being and Nothingness is to develop an understanding of knowledge that avoids what he sees as the two extremes of idealism and realism (Cartesian dualism).Very much in the existential/phenomenological tradition of early twentieth century continental philosophy, the starting point for Sartre's system is the public shared world rather than the private world of thought.From this perspective he puts forth a tripartite ontology, consisting of `being-in-itself', `being- for-itself' and `being-for- others'.While Sartre's discussion of being-in-itself and being-for-itself are laborious and not particularly original (heavily indebted to Heidegger), he is most interesting in his phenomenological discussion of what it is like to be a in a shared world with others. At its best, Being and Nothingness provides an interesting and eclectic mix of philosophy and psychology which challenges the reader to recall and interact with an array of thinkers and ideas.

While not without some strength the book is a difficult read on several front, first,the subject matter is dense (the nature of being), and, second, Sartre's awkward and pretentious prose cloud examination of this already challengingsubject.Indeed, the combination of poor style and sheer length (800 pages) causes many readers to skim the text or put it away entirely.Potential readers should be forewarned, this is rambling and repetitive text which reads very much like an early manuscript. While Sartre has his followers, to many commentators he is seen more as a political activist and public personality than a serious thinker, often being criticized for misunderstanding and misrepresenting the works of others.

While the Washington Square version is relatively inexpensive, the font is small and the quality of the print is lacking in sharpness - this could be a specific problem with my copy, but, I think that it is likely a wider print issue. Overall, while Sartre's popularity has been eclipsed by other existential thinkers of the period, Being and Nothingness continues to have some historic significance, and, as a result, may be worth a look by students of twentieth century continental philosophy.I would not normally recommend a commentary in place of an original text, however, if ever there was a case to do so, this would be it - Joseph Catalano's commentary is good in this regard, he does a commendable job of summarizing and representing Sartre's ideas.

Sartre's angst to write the epitome of existentialism (living life outside of it!)
This book is for the most part tedious and often it will get on your nerves, but nonetheless your effort will be rewarded with some valuable knowledge. Sartre intentionally writes in an academic, obscure, constipated way that makes you wonder whether it is due to your limited mental capacity that you do not understand what he is saying, or that he takes so much pride in his superior self that he does not want to be understood by the many. The trick when you read Sartre is to recognize in his writing those parts that correlate with the experience of your own everyday life. Doing so, you will be able to find some practically useful wisdom in Sartre's thinking. After all, every philosophy of life should fundamentally relate with our everyday existence, otherwise it is not philosophy but some sterile theory destined to fall in limbo. ... Read more

Product Description
4 plays about an existential portrayal of Hell, the reworking of the Electra-Orestes story, the conflict of a young intellectual torn between theory and conflict and an arresting attack on American racism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (52)

Philosphy and Theatre: Two Masterpieces and Two Lesser Titles
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) is extremely difficult to approach, for his reputation rests heavily upon the work BEING AND NOTHINGNESS: AN ESSAY ON PHENOMENOLOGICAL ONTOLOGY--an extremely complex work that many regard as the single greatest work of 20th Century philosophy and which is largely beyond the grasp of everyone but the most gifted philosophers themselves. Fortunately for the rest of us, Sartre translated his vision of the world into more accessible forms.Although his novel NAUSEA is widely known, he is more likely to be known for his plays--and for one in particular, the celebrated NO EXIT.This collection includes that play (in French titled HUIS CLOS), THE FLIES (LES MOUCHES), DIRTY HANDS (LES MAINS SALES) and THE RESPECTFUL PROSTITUTE (LA PUTAIN RESPECTUEUSE.)Each of these plays in some way revolve around ideas of self-determination, freedom of choice, and responsibility to one's self, addressing issues that are at the heart of French existentialism.

Unlike many European dramatists of his era, Sartre was not an absurdist author per se, and while his plays sometimes make use of an unexpected premise, they are generally naturalistic in tone.NO EXIT, first played in 1944, is easily the most famous: a man and two women, none of them of any great moral or intellectual worth, are led into a small room.It gradually transpires that they are dead--and that they are completely incompatible.This is hell: humans determined to impose their wills and ideas and visions upon unwilling others, working without ceasing to undercut each other in a vain effort to gain individual advantage.Written in a single act and requiring about ninety minutes to perform, it is easily one of the most intense plays ever seen on stage, a combination of intellectual and emotional ferocity beyond easy description.It is truly one of the great masterpieces of western drama.

The other titles are less well known to English-speaking audiences.Of them THE FLIES is the most widely performed.Pre-dating NO EXIT by a year, it is a full-length drama based on the ancient Greek ORESTIA, in which Orestes returns to his home--but unlike the original he has no intention of avenging his father's murder until he realizes that he can freely elect to do so as long as he freely embraces the consequences of his actions.As in most of Sartre's works, much of the play revolves around the necessity of the individual to define himself for himself, and often in rejection of the manipulative status quo, and the play possesses tremendous theatrical sweep.The characters are elegantly and powerfully redrawn from the Greek revenge tragedy, and the overall play itself has the power of its ritualistic orgins.

DIRTY HANDS debuted in 1948 and proved extremely controversial, albeit for reasons that Sartre himself may not have foreseen.In general terms, it is the story of a World War II communist party worker who, on party orders, commits murder and who is afterward shocked to find how utterly meaningless his act has been--ideas and issues that are very typical of Sartre's work.But the play's story pitted one faction of the communist party against another, questioned how effectively any person could define themselves within a political system, and in doing so thoroughly outraged half the nation.Almost three decades had to pass before it was once more performed in France.This said, it is easily the most problematic of the four plays; it seems unduly long, unduly dry, a bit awkward in construction, and very obvious in its statements.

Like NO EXIT, THE 1946 THE RESPECTFUL PROSTITUTE is a one act, and although it does not rise to same artistic level as NO EXIT or THE FLIES it has unique sting nonetheless.The play, somewhat surprisingly, is set in a small town in the deep south of the United States, where a newly arrived prostitute finds herself caught up a drunken murder that gives rise to a double killing calculated to cover up the first crime.Again, issues of self-determination arise, but on this occasion with an unexpected twist: the central character, the prostitute, is a woman of no particular intelligence.She is just smart enough to know that she has been duped and manipulated, but not smart enough to sort out the implications and ramifications of her situation as it unfolds.The play has an undeniable power, but Sartre is writing outside his direct knowledge here, and although technically accurate, his portrait of southern racism does not ring entirely true.

Whenever I review plays I like to note that plays are not really written to be read.They are intended to be seen and heard on the stage, and many readers find it difficult to envision how a particular script will play out before an audience.The fact that each of these four plays has considerable philosophical depth may add to the difficulties involved.NO EXIT is a masterpiece, no doubt about it, and I think most people will find it highly readable--and I think most people will find THE FLIES not far behind.THE RESPECTFUL PROSTITUTE is flawed, and it may leave some readers wondering at the point, but it is short and worth the effort.DIRTY HANDS is probably best left to those who are more interested in Sartre's overall work than those who just want to read a good play.Recommended overall, and given five stars on the basis of NO EXIT and THE FLIES, with RESPECTFUL PROSTITUTE rated at four stars and DIRTY HANDS at three.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

To see ourselves as others see us
Sartre's play, "No Exit," has a well-known premise--Garcin, Inez, and Estelle are an eternal triangle, captive in a small drawing room of hell, an endless merry-go-round of mutual torture for their sins. Another premise can be read, the major premise, actually--there is hope even in hell (contrary to Dante's epigram and Sartre's minor premise). And if there is hope in hell, there is even more hope for those who have not yet arrived.

The key to this interpretation is Joseph Garcin. He stands apart from Inez and Estelle who are both complicit in murder/suicide. Garcin is no murderer but a self-accused coward, a deserter in time of war. Cruelty to his wife is the ostensible reason for his damnation, but Garcin is troubled by that not at all, "I have no regrets." He is extremely troubled by his reputation as coward, among his living colleagues, among his present, eternal companions.

Garcin is obsessive in his need for vindication. He is totally a "being-for-others," to use Sartre's own terminology from "Being and Nothingness." He defines himself exclusively as he is seen by others. He is Kafka's Joseph K. ("The Trial") in the next phase of existence. Garcin would do better to emulate either of Joseph Heller's characters, Yossarian or Orr ("Catch 22"), or to take the meaning of Hillel's, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?"

Estelle in life would talk to others while watching herself in the mirror, "seeing myself as the others saw me," in an echo of wee Rabbie Burns. To escape his hell Garcin must see himself _not_ as others see him. There are no mirrors in the drawing room to distract him. This may be an inkling of a way out, encouragement from the landlords. For Garcin's prospects "no exit" may be too pessimistic, the original "huis clos" possibly more apt.

Bad Faith is destined to shadow man's existence (whether in Heaven or Hell)
Sartre explores and "projects" some of his deepest existential themes (freedom, consciousness, and acting in bad faith) through this short play, written immediately after his magnum opus "Being and Nothingness." The plot centers around three people (Garcin, Inez and Estelle) all condemned to serve out their sentences in hell together. Mostly due to their own self-hatred and embarrassment for having ended up in hell in the first place, they predictably all hate each other, but nevertheless proceed trying to convince each other (and themselves) that they are worthy individuals, unjustly condemned to their stations in Sartre's metaphorical hell.

In Sartre's view, apparently this tableau of struggling with "bad faith" in hell is just a mirror image of what goes on outside it; as in both cases humans are continually acting towards one another in mutual "bad faith." Almost as a psychological imperative, they are always busy "fronting each other off;" pretending not to know that they are as much moral criminals and criminals of conscience as they are "real criminals:" all of whom got exactly what they deserved. But as the plot unfolds, we discover that they all also are indeed "real criminals," justly sentenced.

Despite this, in each case they shrink not only from the reality of their crimes and from the reasons why they ended up in hell, but more importantly, they also shrink from the primary responsibility of their own freedom, and from who they are and to their humanity. As a result, the reader gets to see that these criminals are not condemned to hell just for their moral crimes, but also for crimes of conscience: their cowardice and "bad faith" as human beings. In this, they see their cowardice through the eyes of their cellmates, their eternal torturers.

The tension of the play is created by and is centered on the interplay of the dialogues between different dyadic pairings of the couples. In each, they all struggle in their own idiosyncratic way to some how convince themselves and their respective partners (using the partner as mirrors), that they are better than the reality they each "fail to own up to." In short, they are all trying to "end run" their own "bad faith" creating a "false reality" by using their cellmates as a positively distorted reflection of themselves. In this very act, they lose the right to construct an authentic reality and an authentic self.

The question the play begs: is how, writ large, do human beings deal with the "bad faith" of their own existence, and its corresponding failure to create a reality where the authentic self can thrive. That is how can they still come out on the other side of their conscience with their humanity and self-image authentically intact, as mature, responsible and heroic human beings?

Sartre, with his own experience as a captured prisoner of war in France during WW-II intruding into the play as an important backdrop in the subtext (While under Nazi torture, Sartre admitted to seriously considering betraying France), assures us that there is no clear answer to this question, and thus no safe exit out of his metaphorical jail into a pristine and heroic world where the problem of "bad faith" is either an easy decision, or does not exist at all. The challenges presented by "bad faith" it seems are in our hands, completely independent of the domain of our humanity: Wherever he goes, "Bad faith" is destined to shadow man's existence.

Three stars

Jean-Paul Sartre "No Exit & 3 other plays"
No Exit and Three Other Plays
An enjoyable & easy way to get into Sartre's Existentialism. "No Exit":3 people locked in a hotel room forever;Hell as other people:the last lines indicate how we can survive. "The Flies": The Electra story reformed; one can revolt against Fate and choose ones Destiny. "Dirty Hands":a free-thinker tries to find his own answer to the conflicts and pressures of others who have him caught up in their own political/moral/ethical prejudices;what price to stand alone? "The Respectful Prostitute": Power, racism and manipulation in 1950's Deep South USA;a naive/courageous prostitue escapes problems in New York to find herself at the centre of local racial bigotry and state encouraged murder;her decision could save or destroy all of those involved.

good enough condition
the book is in decent condition it does look very worn on the cover but the text is very clean ... Read more

Product Description
Powerfully depicts the fall of France in 1940, and the anguished response of the French people to the German occupation.Translated from the French by Gerard Hopkins. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

One of the last great fictional statements of man in search of meaning...
The capstone to Sartre's monumental *Roads to Freedom* trilogy, *Troubled Sleep* is in itself a magnificent novel and a fitting conclusion to a series that forever remains unfinished, as Sartre had planned but never completed at least one additional volume. Here several storylines--and lives--developed in the first two books are resolved, the direction of others suggested, and the rest left provocatively open to the reader's imagination.

I've read all three novels in succession over the last couple of weeks and found each one as riveting as the other. In *Troubled Sleep,* the French have already lost the war without much of a fight and now must come to grips with their defeat. Do they collaborate, rebel, retreat further from active engagement with the politics of the world? Do they rationalize their cowardice or is it perfectly rational to acknowledge the apparent superiority of the victorious Nazis?

It's Sartre's genius as a novelist to bring these weighty philosophical questions to life in a breathtaking narrative peopled with passionate, complex, fully-realized characters. Before the pallid postmodern ennui of our own age fully set in, Sartre harkens us back to a time when ideas and principles mattered, when evil hadn't been rationalized out of existence and ambiguity dissolved truth into another species of lie, when one's philosophy could literally be a matter of life or death. Those times are gone, probably gone for good, but *Troubled Sleep* gives us an intoxicating taste of what it was like to really care about the Big Questions, even to acknowledge that there *are* Big Questions to answer.

All that aside *Troubled Sleep* is an exciting, engaging page-turner of men at war with each other--and with themselves. Along with *The Age of Reason* and *The Reprieve,* this novel completes one of the richest, most rewarding, and satisfying reading experiences I've had in recent memory.

a not so memorable conclusion to a great trilogy
this is the 3rd in the trilogy, the "roads to freedom". although not necessary, it is recommended that you read them in order. the main characters you meet in this book were first introduced in the "age of reason" novel.

this tells the story of the overrunning of france by the germans in 1940. the first part of the book looks at the last of the soldiers who face the oncoming germans and face imminent death. the second part looks at the soldiers taken prisoner and their reaction to the war and what the future now holds.

unlike the two earlier novels, this book leaves a lot of open ends. some like the death of mathieu can easily be assumed, while the fate of others is left unresolved.

the interesting part of this book like the previous ones is its perspective of france and its people. although the feelings run the gamut of emotion, they are driven by those who feel betrayed by their leaders, their younger generation, and their laziness. in part 2, we begin to see the drift of the socialist sartre from the communism of russia to pure socialism. this is the most interesting part of the book.

of the three books, this was my least favorite, but i enjoyed them all and highly recommend them. they are very insightful especially about the french, but also about ourselves.

Different view
This is the first Sartre book that I have ever read. I liked it enough to read more from this author. There were 2 (maybe more) other sub plots going on that just left you hanging, I thought.I have not read much literature that dealt with WW II that wasn't directlyrelated to the Holocaust(sp?) or from an American perspective.That made, for me, all the difference in the world.

troubled sleep may not be the problem
THis is the first novel length fiction I've read of Sartre.Not his best form I think. Perhaps too many blank, beguiling pages to fill with unrelenting existentialism incarnate in meandering vignettes of characters that one can neither really place nor pity.A pity.Such a stunning writer in a shorter format ("The Wall" and other short stories).One grows a bit weary of self-castigating anti heros (the common man hero I gather one is supposed to infer) but a bone to lick for all one's trouble would be nice.Alas, one is not ever offerred a bone, which is not really the problem.One is never offerred a bone and therefore expects one.What one does procure, in turn, is a handful of mordant, self pitying and pitiable characters indignant that their forces were overcome with such swift Teutonic efficiency.Above and outside of this, however, Sartre has his own efficiency for writing dialogue, the sum of which, becomes many times more than the mere words which comprise it.Suffice it to say, if one is interested in Sartre's philosophy, this book, in parts, is not a bad sugarpill.

A basic fiction/philosophy book
Well, since I'm the one person who read it, I suppose I'm talkin to meself, but I thought that this is one of the greatest books I've ever read.The main purpose of this book is to examine the minds of people withno short, medium, or long term plans (disposessed french soldiers) whenfacing confrontation with an alternate culture in which everything fallsunder a master plan (the Nazi invaders.)Lots of good commentary betweenthe lines on topics such as human nature, art, sociology, and moderateinternational politics of the '40s.A very humbling book, if you're anegotist; a very profound book if you're a fatalist.I've passed it alongto a few potheads, and they seem to think it's a very good book too. ... Read more

Product Description
"Sartre is a true post-colonial pioneer. His ethical and political struggle against all forms of oppression and exploitation speak to the problems of our own times with a rare courage and cogency."
Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature Harvard University
Nearly forty years after its first publication in French, this collection of Sartre's writings on colonialism remains a supremely powerful, and relevant, polemical work. Over a series of thirteen essays Sartre brings the full force of his remarkable intellect relentlessly to bear on his own country's conduct in Algeria, and by extension, the West's conduct in the Third World in general. The tussle is not equal, and the western imperialists emerge at the end, bloody, bruised and thoroughly chastened. Most startling of all is Sartre's advocacy of violence as a legitimate response to repression, motivated by his belief that freedom was the central characteristic of being human. Whether one agrees with his every conclusion or not, Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism shows a philosopher passionately engaged in using philosophy as a force for change in the world. An important influence on postcolonial thought ever since, this book takes on added resonance in the light of the West's most recent bout of interference in the non-Western world. ... Read more

Product Description
Jean-Paul Sartre's famous autobiography of his first ten years has been widely compared to Rousseau's Confessions. Written when he was fifty-nine years old, The Words is a masterpiece of self-analysis. Sartre the philosopher, novelist and playwright brings to his own childhood the same rigor of honesty and insight he applied so brilliantly to other authors. Born into a gentle, book-loving family and raised by a widowed mother and doting grandparents, he had a childhood which might be described as one long love affair with the printed word. Ultimately, this book explores and evaluates the whole use of books and language in human experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

The Examined Life
Nearing age 60 and one of the most widely recognized writers and intellectuals of the 20th century, Jean-Paul Sartre decided in the early 1960's to sort out his early influences in the memoir THE WORDS.For anyone familiar only with the adult, his work and philosophy, this should be something of a surprise.Someone once told him that he seemed to be a person who never had parents.They might have well have said that he seemed like a person who was never a child.But he was, and a not unhappy one at that.

When Sartre's French naval officer father died very young, his mother, Anne Marie Schweitzer (cousin of Albert), took her baby home to her parents.In her parents' home, Anne Marie functioned more like Sartre's sister or playmate.Her father, Charles, was a stern academician who loved the child.For the first ten years of his life, Sartre did not know other children; the trio of adults was his world.The book, an extended essay really, is divided into two sections, "Reading" and "Writing." He taught himself to read early and at a young age began writing what he enjoyed reading: adventure books.Charles tried to turn off the adventure spigot and turn the child to writing about serious literature, which did not go over well.For the most part, Sartre portrays the life of a precocious boy who, by age 10, was beginning to get a sense of the tension between the past, present and future and the question of existence.Sartre concludes the book as his young self enters preadolescence, with a foot out in the world, in the society of other boys at school.

The voice of this book is surprisingly spritely, honest, 20th century modern and European.It comes out of a time when autobiography and memoir could be exercises in authentic learning, not mere navel-gazing.

'I had no rights because I was overwhelmed by love'
Everyone's life is unique - the result of events, circumstances and particular sequences of incidents. George Sand in her novella 'The Devil's Pool' says `..... everyone has a story (and everyone would be able to rouse interest in the novel of their own life, if they had really understood it.....)' But perhaps, sometimes, a person's story is largely irrelevant to most of their potential readers simply because the events of their life are too extraordinary. Sartre's events are not all that extraordinary and yet they are sufficiently distinct to separate him from many people (his father died when he was very young and he was brought up largely by his maternal grandfather and mother - coupled with this Sartre was not a robust person and seems to have been extravagantly protected and praised, apparently with the intention of getting the best out of him). That upbringing did achieve significant outcomes, and yet still I wonder about this autobiographical account. Can it be meaningful to most readers - and especially those readers whose own extraordinary 'events' may have headed them off in another direction?

This book is not a labour to read. It has many unusual and fascinating stories and accounts. It does have some extraordinary people (not just Sartre himself). You can make what you want of the psychological insights.

other recommendations:

'The Confessions' - Rousseau
'Memoirs of a Revolutionist' - Kroptkin
'Memoirs' - Berlioz
'I Felt the Eagles Heart' - Macnab

Self-Creation
It is very understandable that Sartre's "The Words" is often compared to Rousseau's "Confessions". Both autobiographies seem to be brutally honest, striving to take away any romantic notions of the writers. Sartre's work however, focuses on the first ten years of his life. Sartre offers an extremely thorough psychoanalytical view of himself as a child and doesn't hesitate to apply Freud's notions of the Superego and the Oedipus complex onto himself. Sartre concludes that, lacking a father, he doesn't have a Superego or Oedipus complex, and this has made him into an extraordinary child who is able to actively create the image of himself and his identity, by using spoken, and later also written, words.
My impression of Sartre as a child is that of a clever, manipulative actor. As someone who was always trying to please the adults, and be admired by them, Sartre as a child came across to me as an annoying and spoiled kid, created by his circumstances and reading, but also a self-creating identity that writes. An example of this characterization in writing is a sentence in which Sartre proves how his virtuosity and views of equality are merely an act, befitting his view of human life as a ceremony: "I treat inferiors as equals: this is a pious lie which I tell them in order to make them happy and by which it is right and proper that they be taken in, up to a certain point" (p.33).
Like the case with Rousseau however, I did appreciate the author's honesty, but I also wonder whether this self-portrait in writing is another manipulative trick in order to create an image through words. After all, Sartre has left me with the impression of an incredibly intelligent child that knows how the world around him can be influenced and manipulated, but I can hardly imagine anyone thinking at this level at such a young age, and wonder if this autobiography is an attempt of the adult Sartre to re-create his identity through his childhood, literature and psychoanalysis. What I did love about this work is how Sartre explains his childhood and the world surrounding him through words and language, the books that he read as a child and the influence they had on his ideas. By doing this, Sartre emphasizes the idea that identities are indeed the products of an active creative process of using language and writing. Ultimately, this book explores and evaluates the whole use of books and language in human experience.

Wonderful account for any lover of words
This is Jean-Paul Sartre's brief autobiography about the impact the printed word had on his life. The book is divided into two sections, the first is titled "Reading," and the second "Writing," and I think that's an excellent summary of his life. Sartre recounts his early childhood, being born into a family without a father, and ultimately living a secluded a childhood submerged in his grandfather's library. Sartre then discusses life at the Ecole Superior, when he began to develop as a writer of prodigious genius. Sartre doesn't discuss his work particularly; this text is not a critical examination of his literary and philosophical work. Rather, it is a deeply introspective reflection and inquiry into the powerful and lasting effects words can have in life. I recommend it to all fans of reading.

Words about words
Sartre's world and life are dense with words. His books are dense with words. He is the kind of writer who seems to crowd the page with more and more words, so many words that words sometimes lose their meaning. But not all the time, and not in all of Sartre's work. True there is the famous metaphysical 'Being and Nothingness' with abstract words which mean mostly non- verifiable and non- understandable obfuscations. But there are also the words of ' Nausea' which do touch upon a certain experience, and Sartre's unique defnition of it. So too in this autobiography the words seem to have a meaning at times, a meaning defining a life which is a consciousness, a consciousness reflecting in words upon words. Sartre does have experiences, and a world in which he comes from and a way of seeing, and not seeing things all his own, but most of all he has words and more words. An intellectual and one enamored of his own abstractions he can make words appealing, and he can lose themselves to them so that he is blind to reality as he was in his failure to condemn Stalinism. But he also, and this autobiography shows this was tremendously precocious and a real worker one who produced hundreds and thousands of words about many different subjects including himself.
This work is like all Sartre's words wordy , but it has also at times a perceptiveness, an insightfulness an intelligence which makes it for a time anyway, a worthwhile read.
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Customer Reviews (1)

Marxist dogma
Jean-Paul Sartre was a French author and philosopher who lived from 1905 to 1980. He was an Existentialist and believed that people projected themselves into existence by making a choice or taking a side. This ability makes people free but also causes people anguish because they must make a choice or take a side. He turned down a Nobel Prize for literature in 1964 because he perceived an anti-communist bias in the awards. That same year he declared himself to be a Marxist, though he criticized Communist suppression of individual freedom.

His work Sartre on Cuba was published in 1961 by Ballantine Books. He wrote the book shortly after Fidel Castro's Communist Party forcefully took control of the island in 1959. He had gone there and observed first hand the changes that were taking place. He had also been there before, ten years earlier, and had toured the island. In fact, he gives a detailed account of the stages of sugar production under the old government. He offers many assertions concerning the history of the island, but there are no references to outside sources of the information.

The purpose of the book seems to be a defense of communism as well as Fidel Castro's actions. The author is biased in that he shares Castro's political views. He is openly one-sided and makes no attempt at objectivity. He dismisses those who disagree and glosses over Castro's brutality against many Cubans and his disregard for property rights. His basic argument is that Cuba has been abused by "imperial" powers and that Castro is heroically establishing a just society in Cuba.

Sartre's style makes it difficult to follow his arguments. The book is a cynical tirade, mostly against the United States, but Sartre does not bother to help the reader understand his statements. For example, on page 1 he tells of meeting "Yankees" with chilled faces and wonders, "What's crushing them? Their millions or their feelings?" His heavy use of sarcasm also makes the text hard to follow. On page 9 he says that the mostly English-speaking patrons in restaurants dined with candles and, "that's the nth degree of luxury for a free citizen of the United States." Thus, there is no attempt at engaging his opposition in meaningful debate, only condescension and mockery.

Sartre is successful in stimulating interest in Cuban history and the revolution. However, someone seeking an accurate account and interpretation of these events is driven to other sources for information because of the complete lack of scholarship in Sartre's work.
A humorous example of Sartre's bias in his interpretation of events is on page 9 where he asserts that Castro's government "advised against" pleasure trips abroad. The heavy-handed treatment of those Cubans who did not support communism is common knowledge. He did more than advise against Cubans leaving the country. Whatever sincere motives Castro had to better the lives of miserable peasants, one cannot deny his authoritarian leadership style, intolerance of dissent, and suppression of individual freedom.

Sartre seems quite resentful of the United States. On page 11 he refers to the true sense of America's "ineffectual Statue of Liberty" being that "North Americans were lighting up the New World by selling it, quite expensively, its own electricity." However, he never even tries to explain how an American company can spend its own money building electrical facilities in Cuba, but that electricity "belongs" to the Cubans. One is left with the impression that Sartre believes that Americans have a moral obligation not only to not profit from Cuban trade but also to just give their money to Cubans. His approach to Cuban self-responsibility is patronizing and is perhaps racist. How else can one explain his not holding them accountable for their own choices? On page 13 he says that, "The Cubans imitated the Yankees without having their means... (they) accepted dying a little...in order to appear in public behind the wheel of a Chrysler." Are they children? Do they need the understanding and protection of Sartre, their enlightened white father?
On page 12 he laments that Cuba is only a pawn on a chessboard to an American electric company. What should it be? American neighborhoods are also pawns to an electric company. The implication seems to be that there is some intentional abuse of Cuba by immoral capitalists. Perhaps he forgot that it was the capitalists who invented the means to harness electricity and to use it for the betterment of human life. Of course it was for profit. Yet he offers no alternative motivation. He seems to see everything through the lens of his utopian Marxist dogma: rich people bad, poor people good.

Like many committed ideologues, Sartre was a conspiracy theorist. Apparently speaking of the United States and other "imperialist" nations on page 23 he says, "Men in frock coats and the military in uniform met around maps and divided the world with strokes of the pencil." That may be a good enough statement to impress an American college hippie in the 1960s but there is truly no substance to his claims. It could be true, but again, he offers no evidence. On page 24 he speaks of Theodore Roosevelt's belief in investing surplus American capital "in other American countries and particularly Cuba" as if it were a diabolical scheme. He makes the case that the eventual results were not favorable to the Cuban people but fails to show that it was all part of an American plan to subjugate Cuba. It seems that he muddies the water in order to make it appear deeper than it is. The United States offered Cuba low tariffs and top dollar for its sugar. According to Sartre, this was practically an invasion and violation of Cuban sovereignty by the "Puritans" (apparently a jab at American religiosity and hypocrisy).

Sartre was a voice for the Left in the 1960s. In an attempt to seize the moral high ground, his allies in the United States were screaming, "Give peace a chance!" The Left's hypocrisy, however, is shown on page 15. Sartre says of revolutionizing a society that, "the remedy is extreme; it is often necessary to impose it by violence. The extermination of the adversary and of several allies is not inevitable, but it is prudent to prepare for such an event." In other words, individuals will accept Sartre's political views or be slaughtered. This demonstrates that the true motivation of the main instigators of the "peace movement" during the Vietnam War was simply to break the American peoples' will to fight, and thus removing communism's most powerful enemy. They were not principled pacifists. They embraced the incredibly bloody revolutions in Russia and China and of course, as does Sartre, "Che" Guevara. Guevara was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. Sartre devotes an entire chapter to romanticizing Guevara starting on page 98.

In trying to explain American behavior toward Cuba, on page 34 Sartre asserts that, "The U.S.A. feared competition." For this reason, he says, they would not allow Cuba to industrialize. One wonders how Sartre would explain American investment in European industry through the Marshall Plan after World War II. There has been no greater source of competition for the United States than European nations. Was an island of peasants the best market for American industrial products as Sartre implies? If so, why did the United States encourage industry and even foot the bill for it in Japan after World War II?

In the same chapter, Sartre repeatedly holds the United States responsible for the actions of Cuban cattlemen, planters, and politicians who apparently were the ones who were truly committed to the status quo and preventing other industries from competing with them for labor. Thus, they were able to keep wages low and their profits high. Americans have spent more than 200 years battling similar problems in their own country with ongoing success. Apparently Sartre resents the Cubans being forced to take responsibility for their own freedom. Sadly, they have settled for "freedom" only from outside tyrants. One can hope that soon, when Castro is gone, Cuba will be allowed to blossom under a system based on democracy and rational self interest. Communism has been tried and found wanting.

Sartre's book Sartre on Cuba seeks to defend communism and Castro. In this it fails. His approach is unreasonable and condescending, resentful and cynical. His basic argument is that Cuba has been abused by "imperial" powers and that Castro is heroically establishing a just society in Cuba, but he does not support this argument with adequate evidence. Its only strength is in its ability to provoke interest in the reader to study Cuban history more deeply. It would be very interesting to read what comments Sartre would make on history and politics if he were alive now, forty-eight years into Castro's "liberation" of Cuba.
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Product Description

They are one of the world's legendary couples. We can't think of one without thinking of the other. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre -- those passionate, freethinking existentialist philosopher-writers -- had a committed but notoriously open union that generated no end of controversy. With Tete-a-Tete, distinguished biographer Hazel Rowley offers the first dual portrait of these two colossal figures and their intense, often embattled relationship. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Rowley portrays them up close, in their most intimate moments.

Customer Reviews (14)

Tete a Tete is the love story of philosophers Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir
The father of modern existentialism along with his sometime friend Albert Camus was Jean Paul Satre (1905-85). Hazel Rowley has done herself proud in delineating the love affair between Sartre and the equally brilliant feminist author Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986).
Anyone interested in the finer points of Satrian existentialistic thought will not find it in the steamy pages of Rowley's tome. Her book focuses on the personal lives of Satre and Beauvoir. It is a fascinating tale of the French beauty (de Beauvoir) and the beast (Sartre). Sartre and Beauvoir led complex love lives; never lived together and Beauvoir never had a child. She was the daughter of George de Beauvoir one time lawyer and amateur actor and Francois Brasseur a native of Verdun. Beauvoir and Satre were both brilliant students who studied at the Sorbonne winning prizes for their academic achievements. The two never married and usually spent nights apart. They did travel widely in Europe, America and the Far East.
Sartre loved women. Many ladies were sexually attracted to Sartre who was wall-eyed, short and ugly.Sartre was a little man whose face was covered with blackheadsable to talk non-stop about his ideas. Sartre and Beauvoir both taught for many years. Sartre served in the French military and was captured by the Nazis having to serve as a POW for several months. Both authors lived in occupied Paris and worked with the underground. Neither was Jewish. Following World War II Sartre was a fellow traveler and enamored of Communism. He and Beauvoir traveled to Russia and Cuba. They were among the leading Western intellectuals who were snookered by communistic propoganda. Sartre refused to accept the Nobel Prize. Sartre edited a magazine with the assistance of Beuvoir. He and she enjoyed a tight knit familial life including several of their lovers. Jealousy and sexual betrayal were rife in this menage of many!
His works include several plays including "No Exit" and long philosophical explanations of existentialism such as "Being and Nothingness". Beauvoir is most famous for "The Second Sex" a classic of feministic literature and such novels as "The Mandarins" and "She Came to Stay." Both authors were famous especially so among young intellectual. They were atheists and rebels against bourgeoisie society.
The authors sometimes shared lovers. Beauvoir had affairs with American novelist Nelson Algren and French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann best known for his film "Shoah" a nine hour examination of the holocaust as told by those who had lived through the hellish experience.Sartre was sexually insatiable with a very active libido.Sartre continued to have many mistresses until his death. He needed to be nourished and loved by female admirers. Beavoir had both male and female lovers, He and Beauvoir werekind people with brilliant minds. The two lovers and longtime friends are buried next to each other at the Cimeterie du Montparnasse in the Paris neighborhood of their apartments and coffee shops they loved to frequent.
Rowley has done an excellent job of researching the lives of this famous and influentual couple in the worlds of literature and modern philosophy. The book is well illustrated with photos and contains an excellent bibliography.

Rich Productive Lives, or Serial Middle age Sexual Debauchery?
It is a given that Mme Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre lived full rich productive lives according to their own existential philosophy and according to their own (to use their words) "temporary moral codes." Thus, this book begs an interesting question: Why waste 400 pages recounting and putting all of the emphasis on the voyeuristic details of their six-decades of sexual encounters? After about four chapters of middle (and old) age sexual debauchery, treachery, double (and triple)-crosses -- all interspersed between a lot of hiking, driving, suicides and all night drinking and "hanging out" in sleazy Left Bank hotels and bars, I think we finally get the picture of the letters. This existentialist "cult of personality," with de Beauvoir and Sartre at the epicenter of a group of young (mostly) virgins and "hangers-ons," was a fad that "came-and-went" and then, began to outlive its aura and its time.

At the end of the book I was still patiently waiting to finally get squarely into the "heavy stuff:" their existentialist philosophy, the couple's political activities, their attitudes towards the U.S.; their lectures and speeches, their books and plays, etc. I only realized as an afterthought and at the bitter end of the book that the numerous tidbits, which had been unceremoniously skimmed over and interspersed between the lines (and literally indeed between the sheets), as asides, en passant comments, or revelations from pillow talk, was all there was! It took a rereading of the entire book to isolate, collate and finally organize the nuggets of worthwhile substance for myself so as to be able to retain a fuller more balanced picture of this iconic couple's contributions to the world.

How could the author in good conscience hide in between irrelevant sexual trysts the fact that Sartre began and wrote most of his magnum opus "Being and Nothingness" while in a German concentration camp, after receiving a copy of Heidegger's "Being in Time" from a German officer (no less)! How much more important (than hearing about his serial sexual seductions of virgins) it would have been to know Sartre's exact state of mind during those trying days as he was grappling and struggling with this foremost intellectual beast?

The text begged (literally screamed) for more details about his long running dispute and feud with Camus and Arthur Koestler on the issue of Communism. In fact, I found it the height of tawdriness that many of the references to the couple's association with other famous political and literary figures such as the Koestlers, Albert Camus, Raymond Aron, Andre Malreaux, Merleau-Ponty, and Pablo Picasso, seemed to also have been "mined" as much for their salacious and prurient, as for their intellectual, content. It seemed that only Richard Wright and his wife escaped the gossipy muck.

Although the historical milestones, of both of these philosophical giants and trailblazers were artfully used to frame the chapters, these letters required being placed in context, otherwise they are allowed to overshadow and clobber everything else. Unfortunately, it seems that everything important about this couple has here been compressed into the spicy aspects of their sex lives. And while I cannot say that it did not interest me at all that Mme Beauvoir was dismissed from her teaching job because of her Lesbian activities, I was infinitely more interested in the fact that in her magnum opus, the "Second Sex" she explains that: the world is a masculine world nourished by myths forged by men. And that in all cultures, (even those said to be matriarchal) man is regarded as the subject, and woman as "the Other." Otherness, according to Mme Beauvoir, apparently is a fundamental category of human thought. No group can set itself up as the "One," without also setting up another as the "Other." How much more important it would have been to focus on Beauvoir's most profound thesis that: We think through a man's ideal, through his myths and hero system; that women's lack of freedom can either be inflicted, in which case it constitutes oppression; or it can be chosen, in which case it represents a moral failure. And that: no matter how it occurs, sexual discrimination, like racial discrimination is an absolute evil.

Beyond her Lesbianism, and above her sexual trysts, de Beauvoir in her letters, seems to have broken the code of American culture for, even though it was like pulling teeth, from the eighth chapter on, we learn (reading between the lines of her sexual conquests) that we organize our lives through "men directed values" and "men directed morals." Breaking away from this deeply embedded and built in framework requires not just determination, but also a great deal of moral courage. American society is not unique in that it makes it easy to forego one's liberty and become a thing (in a man's world) (or in the case of Blacks, in a white dominated world).

Since there are advantages to be gained by playing up to men (or to whites and their racist values), living through them, being supported by them, etc. As a result, many women (or Blacks in the case of racism) chose to take this easier route. On this easier route, one avoids the strain involved in undertaking an authentic existence. The central problem of the sexes (or the races) is that man's (or white's) advantages lie in the fact that their vocation as men (or as a white tribe) in no way runs counter to their destiny as human beings. Their respective social and spiritual successes in both cases endow them with a virile prestige and power. The male and the white tribe thus, are not divided in the pursuit of their self-esteem. Whereas it is required of women and blacks that in order to realize their human worth they must make inhumane sacrifices against their own natures. They must give up their subjectivity and become objects. In the case of women, they must become the prey to the stronger forces of a male dominated society. For blacks, they must bow to a bankrupt set of racist values and customs. Which is to say, in either case, they must renounce their claims to their own dignity and sovereignty as free human beings and subjects.

There are other bright spots in the book too.

For instance in chapter seven, in one of his first post war public lectures Sartre summarizes the meaning of Existentialism as being neither a pessimistic nor a negative philosophy, but one whose basic doctrine is that since God is dead, there is only liberty and contingency: man must thus make himself. There is no such thing as a priori human nature or essence; existence precedes essence. Each individual has to assume his freedom and create his own life. And in the classic Ayn Rand sense, with sufficient willpower, we can transcend all emotions, discomforts, and obstacles; and then we can choose, and without excuses, take full responsibility for ourselves. Sartre's existentialist philosophy could not be more aptly summarized than in his proclamation that it is frightening to be free. We hold our destinies in our own hands. It is up to us to determine the substance of our lives, including the way we choose to love. We are not born cowardly or lazy (or even debauched); we choose to be these things. Man is responsible for what he is condemned to be: free. Existentialism is not about possibilities or intentions for the future, or about mere words, but about concrete projects, about deeds in the present. No one is a genius unless it is expressed in his works. In fact, anything less is considered "bad faith:" a failure to achieve the authentic self. Bad faith is a failure of one to face up to, and properly orientate oneself towards, and then act to promote, his own freedom.

And finally, on his views on America, we discover that when Sartre visited the U.S. for the first time in 1945, he was astonished at the level of discrimination against blacks. "In this land of freedom and equality there live thirteen million untouchables," he wrote. "They wait on your table, they polish your shoes, they operate the elevator, they carry your suitcases into your compartment, but they have nothing to do with you, nor you with them.In 1946 after returning to France, he wrote a novel called "The Respectful Prostitute," inspired by the famous Scottsboro, Alabama case, in which nine black youths were falsely accused of raping two white prostitutes. As a result of the book he was accused of being anti-American, to which he replied: "I don't even know what the words mean. The writer's duty is to denounce injustice everywhere, and all the more so when he loves the country, which lets this injustice happen."

In conclusion, one can argue that all the pieces are here, the letters attest to this fact. But it takes a heroic effort on the part of the reader to reassemble them into a coherent and respectful whole. This is what I expected the author to do. How much better it would have been, had the author foregone so much of the nihilistic debauchery, and just focused on the world class contributions of this, one of history's most important couples as reflected in the letters? It would have made it so much easier for the reader. Four stars.

A love storie
between two of the most famouse philosopher of our time; Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. A must read! Roda Lerpold

Simone and Sartre
All I can say about this book is that is was so hard to put it down ! It made you feel as if you were European sitting alongside Sartre and "The Beaver" sharing your most secret thoughts and being open minded sitting in your favorite cafe in Paris! You really do open your mind after reading this book ................it is something everyone should read. I will say that you must be a little open minded to even begin reading this because of some of the content but it lets you in on their most personal lives.

A Book that Eventually Had to be Written
I'm surprised that it took so long, almost 20 years since the subjects' passing, for someone to assemble the record of their relationship.Perhaps it's been assumed that those who care about Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir know the story, as I thought I did.There is a tendency to keep relationships off limits, but this relationship is central to understanding the body of work of these two intellectuals.I found this book particularly relevant to understanding Simone de Beauvoir.

Rowley summarizes what is known of the various triangles, rectangles and complex situations resulting from Jean Paul Sartre's incredible need to be loved and surrounded by women... a passion he pays for both literally and figuratively.Sartre seems to see women as "prey" and to keep them he makes them in some way dependent on him (i.e. he takes their freedom away). This is the epitome of Beauvoir's thesis in The Second Sex. Beauvoir also has an active romantic life, but hers seems, more often than not, to be a reaction to Sartre's.While this content could easily be exploited, the writer avoids prurient language and the eroticism is only implied.

This book provokes old and new questions about their relationship and their views.Could the two have been so productive had they never met?How could Sartre condone/promote what was going on in Russia, particularly after visiting and experiencing his own and Zonina's lack of freedom? How could Beauvoir condone/promote Sartre when his liaisons were so sexist in nature?Did Beauvoir, despite the rhetoric, want Sartre exclusively?Did her vicarious romantic life stem from her unmet need for his secure and singular love?
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Product Description

Passionate, freethinking existentialist philosopher-writers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre are one of the world's legendary couples. Their committed but notoriously open union generated no end of controversy in their day. Biographer Hazel Rowley offers the first dual portrait of these two colossal figures and their intense, often embattled relationship. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Rowley portrays Sartre and Beauvoir up close.

Customer Reviews (3)

There has got to be better
I bought this book as some follow up reading on these two amazing existentialists I had just recently learned about in class. The material is amazing these were two fantastic characters but the author failed to present it in the style it deserved. It is akwardly written with brief sentences and focuses on dumb details instead of all the juicy stuff that Sartes and Beauvoir were famous for. I mean, she even tones down the sex but thats what these two were all about. Disappointing read, only got through half of it before simply lost interest. Hopefully there is a better book written on them out there. The store that sent it sent it quickly though which was nice.

compelling.....addicting.... scandalous
I loved the story line and the philosophical questions confronted in this work that certainly changed my view on traditional relationships and the significance of marriage.

Vivid and engaging portrait of a relationship -- but philosophically unenlightening
This well-researched and detailed portrait of a remarkable and unique relationship between two remarkable and unique people is never less than engaging.It is well worth reading for anyone who has even a passing interest in the intellectual climate in France just preceding, during and after WWII, a period that produced an amazing list of artists and philosophers: Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir, Lanzmann (all of whom figure in this narrative), the nouvelle vague in cinema, and many more.For that matter, it is well worth reading for anyone who is interested in life, and the details of these lives are intrinsically fascinating (which is not always to say admirable).Rowley had an almost unprecedented access to historical materials, and to many of the people involved, and put together a sensitive and coherent picture of Sartre and Beauvoir from roughly the time they met to their deaths.That she is able to paint such an intimate and compassionate portrait that does not shy away from depicting faults and inconsistencies in their lives and thought is a testament to Rowley's skills as a writer and as a historian.

The major weakness of the book is that her talent with philosophy is not equally on display here.In the course of telling her story, Rowley mentions the philosophical works of Sartre and Beauvoir, but says very little to illuminate the connection between their thinking and their lives.Even where she does discuss such connections, the links are fairly superficial.(Or, the connections are of the sort that can be made at the level of pop psychology between an artist and his or her work.)Existentialism comes across in her book in its fairly popular form: that there is no essence of human being and that we define ourselves through our actions.The connection between Sartre's existentialism and phenomenology gets summarized in the claim that Sartre learned from phenomenology that philosophy could be about everyday life.What she doesn't note is that beyond the fact Sartre learned from phenomenology to focus on everyday life, he also engaged in a systematic effort to redescribe life -- to show that our ordinary ways of conceiving everyday life are deeply flawed.Beauvoir's own significant and original philosophical work (apart from "The Second Sex") is hardly discussed -- her "Ethics of Ambiguity," for example, is never even mentioned.What she doesn't note is that Beauvoir had developed a powerful typology of ways in which one might respond to and realize freedom in one's life, in her "Ethics of Ambiguity" -- and it would be interesting to consider where she must have fit on that continuum.Perhaps most egregiously, she fails to emphasize that for both Sartre and Beauvoir, existentialist freedom is not primarily about the rejection of traditional bonds but about the recognition of the ways in which we bind ourselves to others through our projects and commitments -- so that "authenticity" is not just about being oneself but about the discovery that one cannot avoid belonging to others and to deny one's commitments to others is bad faith.If Sartre painted this inevitibility as a kind of hell in "No Exit," Beauvoir especially in the "Ethics of Ambiguity" depicts an acceptance of the ambiguous commitments that emerge from our being with others as the only genuine freedom and the only possible salvation.(In spite of her desire to depict Beauvoir as independent of Sartre, and her emphasis of Sartre's unwavering respect for her as a thinker, Rowley doesn't really give a sense of the independence of Beauvoir as a thinker -- and what comes across for the most part here is the popular but I think misleading picture of Sartre as the philosopher and Beauvoir as the memoirist who occasionally also applied philosophy to subjects like women and aging.)On this reading, then Sartre and Beauvoir come across primarily as writers whose ideas and commitments evolved over time to become more political, who rejected standard morality including and especially the moral prescriptions that reinforce the family, and who shared a unique form of relationship (that involved fidelity to each other in the sense that they would always tell each other the truth, even where they were willing to lie to others with whom they had secondary relationships).One might have wished for a more detailed account of their thinking if only because such an account would help to pose the question how their life must have been conceived by themselves, in accordance with their own thinking.Otherwise, and in spite of the book's other merits as a piece of history and biography that can complement a study of their work (or of the period), the book ends up reading like a soap opera for intellectuals.While I think this point deserves emphasis I don't want to overemphasize this.One of the merits of Rowley's book is that she takes as her model of biography the autobiographical works of Beauvoir -- and to that extent she does employ a similar approach to reflection on their lives that Beauvoir employs in her published works.I just would have liked to see a bit more reflection in the book about the relation between their lives and their more focused philosophical reflections.First and foremost, Sartre and Beavoir are engaged thinkers and a biography that rarely engages with their deepest thinking except at the superficial level of brief summary, seems to me to be lacking. Having said that, I should reiterate that apart from such misgivings I found the book to be very well written and thoroughly enjoyable and could hardly put it down. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Be ready
It's short but requires you really be thinking existentially when reading it or shortly after. The story itself is good and very unusual. I'm not a fan of plays but it was written very well given the content. I loved all the characters and how it played out. If you're interested in a good, deep play- this is it! You're in hell with these people- that in itself is a doorway to so many interesting questions and the answers aren't always what you expect. ... Read more

Product Description
La clarificacion de las relaciones entre el marxismo y el existencialismo es uno de los problemas basicos de esta obra. La tarea de Sartre ha consistido en escribir un libro de Sociologia en el que estudia el grupo social dialectica y existencialmente. ... Read more