EXISTENTIALISM: A spurned Nobel Prize calls the world's attention to a lonely philosophy of despair
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Transcript of EXISTENTIALISM: A spurned Nobel Prize calls the world's attention to a lonely philosophy of despair
7/27/2019 EXISTENTIALISM: A spurned Nobel Prize calls the world's attention to a lonely philosophy of despair
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A spurned Nobel Prize calls the world's attention
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7/27/2019 EXISTENTIALISM: A spurned Nobel Prize calls the world's attention to a lonely philosophy of despair
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a lonely philosophy of despairDr. Nommn Alcork. a pacifist
,,/,)'sin'si. 5/(111<15<II," U,kr O"",do
iN floe 10 "((I11""i", lois 1'/"" far ""'{lU.
can counl on no one but himself: he is alone. abandoned on earlh
of his infinite responsibilities. without help, with no other
than the one he selS himself. " ';Ih no olher destiny than Ihe one
on this earth:' This is the philosophy of existen
set down by J e ; t n - S;mrc, a 59-year-old Frenchman who
astonished the world by turning down the Nobel I' rizc for
The picture above is an accidenwl but Slriking symbol of
The scientist on the icc noc not only looks as poig
M. Sarcre says all men arc. but just by being in
odd situation he shows that he has commiued himsclf- as Sanrc
So."lys all men are obligcd to do if thcy He to cscape a mcaningless lifc.
Existcntialism. as propoundcd by Sanre. who is introduced on thc
next pagc. is a philosophy ba>cd on despair- somber. dcmanding and
godless. O"cr the past two dcrades il has brought about radical changcs
in Weste rn thought ~ l I 1 d Westcrn socicty. Although it is sub tle and elu
sivc, its man ifestations can casil y be seen around us-as the phow-
graphs on pages 90- 93 show. It s mood is felt and expressed by>corcs
of today's Icnding writers- somc of whom arc ponrayed on p<lgcs 94-95.
And its perplcxitics again and again prompt people 10 ask: What is
im 'm ialism'! A dctailed n n ~ w c r 10 this qucstion is givcn on pages96-110.
CONTINUE D 87
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Sartre, the walleyed little man whoTo those who know Jean-Paul Sartre. hi s refusal of the Nobel Prize-with its $53,000 award - wa s nosurprise. " I don' t align myself withanybody else's descriptions of me,"
he told L IFE just before the prize."Peopic can think of me as a genius, a pornographer, a Communist.a bourgeois, however they like.Myself. I think of other things."
Sarlre, who is resigned to beingwalleyed and short, has for yearsacted on his thoughts--as befitsany existentialist - with bravado.He quit teaching philosophy to
JOin the Resistance movement inWorld War II , and was once a German captive. After the war- whenthe portrait below of him on thePont des Arts was taken- he out
spokenlychampioned Marxism butnever joined the Communist partyand was appalled by the Hungarian revolution. For hi s anticolonialist views on Algeria. his Parishome was bombed in 1961. Alwayshe kept on writing: plays. novels,stories and essays and, JUSt now,an autobiography. Th e Words,
which is selling phenomenally ev-
erywhere. (The U.S. edition is published by Geo rge Braziller,)
Sarlre' s exclusive interview withLIFE began in his apartment, onthe Left Bank in Paris. and con
tinued wi th a visit to Simone deBeauvoir. She is Sartre's lifelongcompanion (by a deliberate pactthey have nOt married) and isherselfa brilliant writer- The Sec
ond Sex, The Mandarins . Someof his other remarks to LlFI;'s Rudolph Chelminski and Jan e Howard, together with some selectionsfrom The Words. are offered here.
"Ail ihe dislinclions a wriur
r " c e i ' loy his readers Q ~ J / /0
p,e.ssU,el lhol l do nOljudge desirable.
It 's nol Ihe Jame lhing i f
I sigll ktill-Paul Sari"
or Jean-Paul Sari", "'inner
oflhe Nobt-I Prize."
"I" 'as prepared al all eadyage
10 regard uochiJ/g as a prlf'sl"ood (JIrd
lileral"", as a passion.
Booh 1I'f'r" my birds {JI/d my ""SIS.
my "auSl!hold my bam IIIrd
my coulliryside and Ihe library "'OJ
Ihe WQfId Mllghl In a mirror.'!'!
"M y holies are made of emher IIl1d
cllrdboard. my parchmem-sJ,:iI/lled
/ lnh smf'lIs o fglue ami mushrooms .
1 sil ill s t o l ~ Ih,ough 1)0 pollllds
o f p a ~ r , l"artJlllfhly aleoy. I
am ",OOrll. I at last becomf' a ,,·/rolefflOlI.lhillkitlg. tolking. singing.
IhulUiering, a mon II'M osstrlJ himself
"'il" Ihe peremplory inf'rlia o f
mollf'r. Halldslake medo,,'n, ~ n _ ,spread me/lol OJIIM lable. smoolh
me ami somnimes moke me r f o k .
"111m 1101. as has bun MIid. u
pessimist: 10 m a persoll ...ha I r i ~ ,{a make peaple nlO" lucid "is-IH'iJ
Ihemse/"eJ. {/lid it i l or thil lhal
l am disliktd. 1 righlen peaple,
I would say IhOllhe majorilyofpeople
ha,'e alll'oys been afraid la think.
Slendhlll, in his lime. ""Ole
'all good reol(ming ilojfensi>'e'
Ihal iJ JliII "ery much IrUf.
"I see 110 rNISO II "'hy the family UJ
such should 1101 cOlI/inut. allholllfh
"'''el''er or 'IO{ lhe parenll are
married hOJ lillie Imporltlllce 10
£"f'1I in "'''al .. now consider
rf'lordtd parliollS o f he globe,
II"it,k Ihal illihe future falhf'rs
will nal be so lnconleslably dominalll
lwr "'(Jmfll SO /lntqlwlos Ih"y hal'"
bu". The imporlalll Ihil'8 is Ihol
Ih e relOlianshlp bt-Iween Ihe porelllS
omllhe childrell '101 sufff" . !' !
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it all out, says: (I frighten people'
T h e r f ' is 110 gO(ul fOIIl<", 11",(s tire
rill .. Do,,', 10)' Ih,' blu",,. 011 "'ell bill 011
Ihe oo",{ o[pat"mily. ~ ' h i c l , is
rolll'''. To begn cltildr.·/I. 1I1J1ltillg
bellu; 10 haw Ihl>!, H'/I<I( i l l i"IIi ly' !'i i l ll my molhe"3 qel "-"s" {O-IIwtlliI
child. Mila huh-" Ihlll l l l", ",hus,
mort' gl<lud. crispit', {IS a n'S''!1 o f
slUyilrg illlh" o\'m/ung,·r.! '
" , hun, lUll "" eIlQm",//s differellce
btl"'u tl Simo,,<' de B .ullovir' • "",lillY
gellulltiQII "'heu , ... W"'t' 5111c/"/IIS
"" d Ihe 1O-year....,lds o f IO;/oy. IV .
"'ere sOJI ollli ullomsrhms, ",,,"I<
"II{/II"Jedt/ed: roda,' 'hq 'Ir" milch
mort' or",,,,/ for lIft' I/I{III M'" ",,-rt ',
Thq ore milch mort' Op<'11 , ,"'/I/W),
know many thillgs " ' f ' did I/(J/,"
'''w,. 11m'" lost uligioll, bill w" ,,"'..
gained hll",o"ism, TI,,. it/",,{ "" W
i.< {o liberale om//o IIdp mUlllcipdll'
nllJllkiml, wilh ,II . ,eslIlI lIun "'0"
beconlt's ,mill' all "bsa/Ille for """,."
"f dmire rhe ... II fa "'e/rame 1.',·eq,IIilll!
- rhe s'"pid "iolell("e of dum("e.
Ille mello("illg orde, o feu"St's SIIdd"lIly
tII,masked. If 0111.' like • slIrprises.
OIW milS' 1." '1.'11 like ,I", m,e 1/(lshes
"'hieh ,e"eol,o ,lie d""ol<'es II""
Ihr furlll is "0 ' mmle for I I 1 e " , . ~
h Ne.w ill my lif<' 110 ... / girell Oil
on"' , Mil/WIII ""'g/,illg .... lltoll/
",,,killg olilers 1''''KIt. /1 is bu,,,,.,,/ om 110' ("oll."",ed Mi,II r/,,, ("0"1",,ofpower: I .. "s ""'/lIIICh, ob<'diellt"<'."
. 'Oe GOllile is ra y "'If: / "m"ery sho" . Nei,h", il l h<'ig'" II", ill UIlY
o,her respt"C1 "" "'e sho,e""yrllillg wllmerer ill romlllOlI."
,., do,,', mimi If my felf"'" me"
forgel o/Jour me ,II . day "fler I (1m
hllri"d. As 10llg as rhey', . olire 1"11
1,,""11 Ihem. 1I111"IIII .d. impt"rap'ibie.
preselll ill erer), one o f IIIemjllsl
"s ,h . hilliolls of'/<'(u/ wllo /ire W, k IlO"'1I
10 me IIl1d "'I",m I p,es"rI'" from
mmiili/mi"" <If<' presem ill me."
CONTINUED 89
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It finds an eternal absurdity
I
mes Square, NO"cmMr 22, 1963 A lx,,'(>, Q boy ill a Pimburgh Slrl'r/ Bela",. ",,, , iSIS"'''Ol}: some m",,,,,,il'$
•
In deathTo SaTire, death is an overpower
ing absurdity. The bitter contm·
diction is that while man has a
duty to shape hi s own life and the
world around him. he is constant
ly threatened by death. which SarIre calls a "cancellation always
possible of what I can be."
The tragic cancellation. on Nov.
22. 1963, of what one man could
have been was a drdmalic illus
tration of Sartre's thesis. The pho
tognlpher (opfmsi lf' {!liKe) empha
sized the existentialist overtones of
absurdity by picturing the out-
rageous news against the stricken
billboard face of a model whose
anguish stemmed not from ever-
present death but the ever-present
threat of the common cold. Many
people, Sartre says. unaware of
the omnipresence of death, main
tain an inauthentic aUi ludc 10-
ward it like the little boy with the
cap piSIOI, to whom it is somc sort
of joke. Or like the young couple
in the Mexican catacombs. who
pup.;ue their preoccupations obliv
ious of death all around them.
They see nothing untimely in it.
But Sarlre says that death, except
in the case of suicides and mad
men. is always untimely and there
fore existentially absurd. It does
not give a life its meaning- it de
prives it of any meaning whatever.
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It sees a lonely world of the alienated;\ long ... ith Ihc conceptSof the ab-
surdity in life and death. the C\j , ·
lentiaiisl concept ",hich has had
the most po"crful influence on
post·war r l i ~ l s and wnlers Ihal
of "a lienation:' This mean
s mon:lhan si mple CSIr'..lngcmcn l from
others. The alienated person c\ -
periences himself as an ou tsider.
r . thcr tllan as the center of his
0"" u n i ~ e r s c and the originator
of his 0"" actions. In II sense
he is eSlmngcd from himself. and
he is ccrwinly cSlrllngcd from any
God.
Th is estrangement is c x p r c ~ s c din contemporary art and li lcrmurc
as an o,·crwhclming loneliness. II
may be the loneliness of the in-
dividual " 'ho. consciously or un·
consciously. made an c\;Slcntial·
iSI gesture in Ie(wing Ihal might y.
imllld ible shout on Ihe plain (righll
"ith no object for his alTection
but the sky.
It may be thc solitudc. the more
terrifying because it is in the midst
of multitude. of the \loman (QI"
pt)sill' pagl') caught by Ihe pho
togl1lphcr clutching a doll a chi ld
had givcn he r to hold. Shc stands
tllere liS II symbol of peoplc so es
tr.mged from life tll:u they can
hold only an imi tation of it.
Or il may be the aloneness of
the m:m below. sep.lrntcd. wi ll fully
and witll absurd elabor'J lcllcSS. notmerely from hi s fc llow man bUI
from a fellow man not evcn there.
- .
•
WordJ ill salld ,m Colorado drlul
·WI1ITE ·
-
•
/ ( J ~ , . W ilmilrglOll, H.C. wtlJhroom RighI, OIl Q SlrUI (II Nl ' ... ) 'ork CII)
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It shapes
the mood
0/ a whole
generation
a/writersSince the war. Western literature
has had a pronoun ced existential·
ist strain. although few writers c.x-
plic itly identify themselves as Sar-
Ireans. or c\"cn existentialists. In
Europe. authors lik e Ducrrenmatl
(The Visit) and Nathalie Sarrautc
(The Golden Fruils) grapple with
absurdity and the anguish of mor
tal man isolated from his fellows
and himself. Samuel Beckett iso
lates his characters by cocooning
them in jugs and ashcans. or. as
he does wilh Bert Lahr in Wait-
ing for GOdOf (righl). olTering an
absurd temptation: a carrot. lon
csco changes his characters into
animals in Rllinoreros. Genet
scrdmbles the identities of his by
means of masks and grotesque
costumes.
John Updike said that no lan
guage is so unexistcntial as Eng-
1"sll. Yet Updike. whom Sartre
greatly admires. lias increasingly
dealt with alienated heroes. as inRabbil. Rutl . Other American
write rs attack the hypocrisies of
Western morality. Heller'sdubious
hero of CUid. 12. Yossarian. hope
lessly sane in an insane world.
makes a monstrous war look like
an old Marx Brothers film. Oon-
leavy's Gitlger Mati pushes his
pregnant wife dowlI the stairs and
makes this savagery seem hilari·
..
JOHN UPD I KE
J.D. SA Ll t"GER
TE Nt"ESSEE WILLI AMS
ous. Southern. who says he " digs
Sartre the most: ' un masks sc -x ual
mores in Candy by wi ldly embrac
ing and violating them. deadpan.
In The Naked Lutlch. William
Burroughs inverts values to deride
our ideas of criminality. John Os
borne. in Look Bark in Anger.
lambaste s the bourgeoisie; so
does Mailer in The Deer Park. The
nonheroes of Bellow in I Irr:Qg
and Malamud in The AssiJ(alll
are classic misfits. In Salinger's
novels it is youth that is alienated;in Baldwin·s. his entire raox . Albee
derides U.S. values by usi ng an
emasculated. adopted son to sym
bolize them in The American
Dream. Tennessee Williams made
"of Blanche Ou Bois in A Slreel-
car Nalllf'li Desire an alienated
heroine who turned to prostitution
bc<:ause she couldn't relate 10 any
one bUI a stranger. Gelber in his
novel On Ice created an apothegm
that might ha ve come from Sartre
himself: " It 'sa random universe."
t"ORMAN MAILER JA MES IIALDWtN
JOSEPH HELLER SAUL IIELLOII
EDWA RD ALIIEE ANI) HtS 'A MEIIIC" N D REA M'
BER NARO MAL"MUD
J" C K GELBE R
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J. P. DO:-':lEAVY
IlI: RT LA II R IN IIECK l,"T"S 'WAITING FO R GO DOT'
I.UCt.'IIC IO .. t:SCO
\I ILUA \1 IIURROUCItS
TF.RRY SOlJTltF.R'"
JOUN OSBORNE
JEAN GENET
NATllALIF. SARRAUTt:
CONTINU( D 9S
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Its shy champion flees fame. : i a n ~ tried to a'old the pn:ss
after he r e ~ l e d 1M Nobtl Pria:.
oot a sharp-eyed pholOllmpher found
him and he flashed an i m p i ~ h ITin.
CON TI NUED
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I na 1946 portrait Sartre is seenwith the two dominant women in his
life, Simone de Beauvoir( I ~ J i ) and his mother, now 82.
SARTRE TRAVELS A TORTUOUS ROAD TOWARD HIS NEW MORALITY
Today he works surrounded by books
in an apartment in Montparnassc.with Mme. Sartre down the block andMme. de Beauvoir no t far away.
Dealing with Earthly Hellsby FRA NK KAPPLER
A ll men liveenvclopcd in whalelines." wrote Herman Melville."A ll are born with halters round
their but it is only whencaught in the swift. sudden turn of
death . thai mortals realize the si-
lent. subt le. ever-present perils of
life...."We have lost lauch so much
that occasionally we cannot helpfeeling a sort of disgust with 'reallife.' " observed Fyodor Dostoevsky, "and that is why we areso angry when people remind us of it: '
Hamlet had a dilTerent problem: " To be or not to be." he
asked. " Tha t is the question." Andfor Lord Greystoke. Edgar RiceBurroughs' jungle hero. the complexities of human relationships
were summed up in a single, perplexing concept: "You Jane, meTarzan. "
Whatever else the above quota-
tions may have in common, theunifying thread that cau<;cs themto be anthologized here is existentialism. Advertently or otherwise.all arc manifestations of existential thought. Exi stentiali sm hasbeen around for a long time. andmany people have been waitingfor it to make up its mind about
what it really is. or just hoping it
would go away. The possibilitythat it will do either is remOte-
especially now that its most vocal
contemporary apostle. Jean-Paul
"
Sartre, has published the lirst volume of his long-awaited autobiography and created a literary furorby spurning the Nobel Prize forLiterature.
It was Sartre, with his novels
and especiall y his plays. helpedby the novels of his then-closefriend Albert Camus. who afterWorld War I[ channeled what had
been primari ly a preoccupationof phi losophers into what is today the mainstream of artistic creation. Sartre took the turgid soulsearching of the modern Germanphilosophers and gave it a Frenchlucidity: Camus took from theCzech novelist Franz Kafka andthe Russian Dostoevsky their alienated heroes. helpless in an absurd world. and etched them with aGallic economy of line. These werethe two who first caught the at
tention of the avant-garde. BUI
hard on the heels of the avantgarde always come the popularizers. and now. like it or not. we
arc aU consumers of e ~ i s t e n t i a l -ism. buying it in aU kinds of packages- novels with faceless characters. plays without exits. nouveUe vague films, whose commonperceptible message we alreadyknow: human existence is absurd.h has been written about endlessly. but the philosophers' verbiageis written in code. and so a consumers' guide is not amiss.
Much of the popular confusionabout the nature of existentialism
stems from its wide variety. Sar-
trc's is the check-rated brand. butit is only one of many_ Even exis
tentialists differ about what it
means to be an existentia list. buton one thing they aTe genera lly in
agreement : they hate to define it.
It is a rare book on existentialismthat does not sta rt out by teUingthe reader that. if he e x p ~ t s adefinition, he's got another think
coming. An excellent new guide to
existential thought. TIll' Worlds ofExis/f'ntialism by Professor Mau
rice Friedman of Sarah LawrenceCoUege. wastes no time settingthe reader straight on this point.It s opening words arc: .. 'Give me
a one-sentence definition of existentialism: This statement is of
ten more a ritual defense againstthe insecurity aroused by not be-
ing au courant than a genuine desire ror knowledge."
W th somewhat less asperity.Dr. Friedman goes on 10 explainthat existentialism is not a singlemovement within philosophy buta Stream welling up from underground sources and convergingand diverging: not a philosophy
but a mood. embracing a numberof dispar3te philosophies whose
differences are more basic than thegenera l feeling which unites them.
When it comes to the areas on
whiCh most existentialists agree.Webster'S New Co llegiate D ic tionary. at least. is unequivocal. [t de
fines existentialism as " I . Phi/o.<_
An introspective humanism or
theory of man which expresses theindividuars intense awareness of
his contingency Ithat is. existingas an individual human bei ng. de-
pendent on others for existence,
menaced by death and dependenton oneself for shaping the courseand qua lity of one's life] and free
dom: a theory which states ttlat
the existence of the individual precedes his essence. Specif.: a . phi/a-
sophiral exislentia/ism, a theorywhiCh stresses the ind ividuars re-
sponsi bility for making hi mselfwhat he is. b, Chris/Ian f'xis/en-
liaiism. a theory which Slresses thesubjective aspects of the humanperson considered as a creature ofGod . . . . "
T his is a good sta rt ing point. It
isn't complete, but many omittedelements are things over which ex
istentialists disagree. Before dissecti ng existentialism. a few definitions of the key words in theexistenti aI lexicon arc in order. Thedistinction between eXiSleilCe and
essence is not merely a semanticinnova tion of existentialists: it haslong been part of the language of
philosophy. Existence. which is nOt
the passive continuance in being
of common s ~ h , imp lies something active, an emergence frompassiveness. (" Don't just he there---do something! Ex/sI!")
Essence is the name fo r the common nature of all members of one
species. T raditionally it has been
assumed that Ihis na ture is ready-
CONTINUED
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The price of awareness
is often despair
EINUED
and unalterable . By contraStus forms of existentialism
e that man exists only insofarshapes his own existence andconfers an essence upon it
ow n conscious choice-theHamlet wrestled with
oqucmly. From this idea fol Sartre's famous formula,
not all existentialists accept :recedes essence:'
of SaTIre's philosophysummarized (oversimpli lied,
as follows: Man comes
a totally opaque, undifferenti·meaningless universe, By theorhis mysterious conscious
wh ich Sartre calls neanl, manof the universe a habitable
d. Whatever meaning and val-has comes from his
choice. These choicesone man to another.
in his own world, or,also says, each creates
situation. Frequently thischoice is buried in a
of consciousness. Butone must be
of oneself as an ',\"'is, a true exis/enlial subject,
r alone the responsifor his own situation.
s dreadful f ~ d o m to choose
the e:>;istential subject.the man who is clearly con·
s of the necessity he is underworld will suf
sense of absurdity and oftenr. What values is he to
Systems of philosophy. remorality
e:>;cuses for evadliberty, or du ty, to deter
oneself. They canto the ultimate
maul'aise Joi (bad fai th). Onelives in maumiseJoi leads an
existence, and theresn't anything worse than that.
is possible to emerge, Sartre
state ofengagement,
a resolutefree choice to a positive part
man affairs. This leads to an
of the freedom of othth is commitment in turn
shape for one's owncommon. inte
end, SaTIre has sot made up his mind. Whcn
roached the idea of salvationngagemf'nI in 1946 in L"Exis*
es t un humanismI',
many saw it as an optimistic twistin Sartre's pessimistic philosophy,and the humanists, who place theirfaith in man and not in God,
started to welcome him aboard.
But Same waved them off. He insisted God was dead, but he reo
fused to substitute man for Him.He refused 10 go beyond what hehad said earlier, that "man is the
being who aspires to be God." It
is only in this latter sense that hewould accept the humanist label.
In the sense that existentialismis not a system but a mood of phi·losophy, a reaction against the
Ex istentialism's most eloquentnovelist, Albert Camus, won Nobel Prize in 1 9 ~ 7 , died inanautomobile accident three years later.
static and the abstract in of
the dynamic and the concrete, ithas been on the scene e ~ e r s i n ~ eHeraclitus (500 B.C.) took issuewith Parmenides' assertion that
only The Unchanging One is real.and insisted that al1 was flux . Hecited the bow and the lyre as e:l:am-pies of the harmony of opposites .
Scholars have found intimationsof existentialist thought in the OldTestament Psalms, and one contemporary critic argues that whenJesus said, "Ye are the salt of theearth: but if the salt have lost hissavor, wherewith shall it be
salted?"' he was really expressingthe existential theme of {'ngage-
menl, or authentic inauthenticexistence. this kind of lat i-
tude, existentialism can be provento had more fathers than theatom bomb.
lust when did modern e:l:isten
tialism itself emerge from the ne-ant? The re arc any number of
places to sta rt, beginning with theLuther-dn gnostic Jacob Boehme(1575 - 1624), the first Europeanphilosopher to worry much about
existence as an abyss of nothing-
CONTINUED
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He is equipped
to trigger revolutionSA RT RECONTINUED
ness. Traces of his thinkin g ca n be
found among taler philosophersfrom Niet:uche to Paul Till ich. The
French genius Rene Descartes( 1596--1650), as every college f eshman kn ows, is the author of thefamous " 1 think. therefore 1am: '
and the true fathe r of mod ern phi·
losophy. As such . he may also bethe father of existen t ia lism. If so.he is the sort of fat ller againstwllom offspri ng rebe l, for eversi nce. one of tile favor ite pastimesof e ~ i s t e tllinkers like Dostoc:vs ki and Camus has been torewrite Descartes' theories according 10 their own lights.
But Descartes is a true forefa
ther of Sartre if only for tile factthat he was a pllilosopher willi alilerary styk. In a field where language is characterized more byprofundity tha n clarity. where sentence·long German nouns stretchto the hor izon ""ith scarcely an ac·live ve rb in sight. the essays of thebrill iant Frenchman stand o ut li kebeacons in their lucidity.
Another Frenchman. Bla ise Pasca l (1623- 62 ). also pre-echoes Sartre with his reflections on the misery and grandeur of man. borna terrified "thinking Te(:d ," and
tOTn bet""een the contradictions of
existence that the moderns catc
gorize as the absurd it y of life. Butthe o rt hodox, textbook precursorof mode rn existentialism was theDan ish theologian Soren Kicrk egaard ( 1813- 55 ). a lonely. hun chbacked writer who denounced theesta bli shed church and rejectedmuch of the then-popular doctrines of German idea lism- io
which thought an d ideas. rather
tha n things perceived through these nses. were held to constitute reality. He built a philosophy basedin part on the idea of permane ntcleavage between faith and reason . This was an existentialismwhich st ill had room for a God
whom Sart re la ter expelled. butwhich sta rted t he great pendulumswi ng toward the modem concepts
of the absurd.Ki<:rkeg1lard spent h is life think
ing existent ially and converting remarkably few to his ideas. Butwhen it oomcs to the absurdity of
existence. wa r is a great oonvincer;and it was at the end of WorldWar J that two German philosophers, Karl Jaspers and MartinHei deggcr. took up Kierkcgaard 'sideas. ela bo rated and systemat izedthem. By th e 1930s. Kierk egaard 's
thinkin g mad e new impact on
French intellectuals who. like Sartre. we re nauseated by the sta ticpre· Munich hypocrisy of the European middle class. Afler Wo rld
War II . with the human condi tionmore precarious than ever, wi th
humanity facing the mushroo mshaped ultimate absurdi ty, existen tialism and our ti me ca me to
gether in Jean-Pau l S ~ H l r e .
T o understand Jean- Paul Su·tre," nove list-crit ic Iris Murdoc hhas said . "i s to understa nd so me·thi ng impor tunt abou t the presenttimc. As philosopher. as polit icianand as novelist Same is profoundly and self-consciously contemporary; he has the style of the age:'
A s a philosopher Sartre has been
obsessed with probing the natureof being and reality. and wrestl ingwith the mys te ries of perception( Is the color f see when we say"red" the same color you see?).
Fell' pw ple who are nO I journeyman philosophers and lor masochists can get through his 194)eE/f'(' f"1 If" Niom ( /king Qnd
Nolhing"f"ss), beside whose ont olog ical semantics the chestnutabout angels dancing on the headof 3 pin seems like a simp le, sensible question . ASa political theori sthe has been naive and inconsisten t.On the one hand his need for f"1!'
gagl'lUtl!l had led him to espouse
Co mmunist causes. On the otherhand his di staste for what M issMurdochca lls thc Marxists' " theologica l vie w of the Di alectic, " andhis fierce intellectua l independencehave made him pu ll back.
It is as a writer that a ll his selves~ i l o s o h e r . political being and
p o l e m i c i s ~ m toge th er : awriter. moreover, equipped to tr igger revolutio n. For unlike h isteachers. he possesses a scintillaling litera ry style and a sense of hu mor. Unlike Kierkegaa rd , he hasalways had a sympathetic audience: of all pe ople. the French arethe mOS t disposed to read any.
thing, if it is brill ia ntly expressed.And Hnally. in Sartre thTe(: greatmodem streams of th ought Howedtogether: Marxism, existentialismand phenomenol ogy- a distinct lyZOth Cent ury and highly technicalmovement "'hieh allempl5 to ap-
prchend I he Irue essences of things.Saved by hi s Gallic skepticismfrom "buying" the whole of any
of them. he di stilled from each avita l ingredient: from the Marxians the pa ssion for (ICl io n, fromKie rkcg.1ard the image of an guished man isolated in a mean·
ingless world. fro m the pheno m-
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'"
-
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ONESD " ,R Y"'' 'RM
An anti-hero learns
there is no past
SARTRECONTJNUEO
enologists the compulsion to define
"human reality" and consciousness. The distillate he flavored with
two SanTian ingredients, sardonichumor and a proround sympathy
for the anguished. ridiculous in·dividual man.
Not all of Sartre's writing is
equally incisive. H is plays have
communicated better than his nov
els his idea of man's frcedom -
and necessity-to decide what he
wants to do and to do it, what
ever the consequences, as in usM u c h e . ~ ( The Flies) which he basedon the Orestes legend. In Huis Clos
(No Exit) he probes the baffling
relationship of self to 01hers: threecharactersconfi ned to Hell grad ual
Iy learn that what is infernal is simply other people- and ultimately
oneself. In La Mains Sules (Dirt)'
Hands. produced in the United
States in 1948 as Red GIMes) he
dealt with the self-defeating short
sightedness of the Communists'
belief that ends juslify means.
As novelist he is didactic. using his novels as platforms for his
mctaphysics. and his usually lucid
style glows fitfully from the depths
of the gray, gluey mass that Sartre
loves to describe as the very imagcof the unawakened, uncommitted
human consciousness.In his first novel (1938), La Nau·
set: (Nau;'eu). which was translated
into English as The Diury of An-
lOine Roquenlin, Sartre sloshes
Ihrough t his same ul igi nousground
in the person of Antoine Roquentin , a Iypical Sartrian hero, fasci- .
nating but totally untouching. In
the course of the book, Roquentin, a writer, is ove rcome as he
r e a l i ~ c s thaI things, objects. events
which he has always before been
able to classify and categorize no
longer make any sense to him. The
things that surround him are sim·ply there, grotesque, huge, stub
born- and meaningless. In a pic
lure gallery he studies the facesof the bourgeoisie. These peopleclearly don't think their existence
unjuslified; surrounded by their
sta tus symbols, they appear to be
convinced they are necessary to the
universe and have a right to beal ive. Things get worse. Roq uentin
feels totally alienated from the
most familiar surroundings. Hestares at a seat in a st reetcar. . . I
murmur: ' Irs a sea t : as a so rt of
exorcism. But the word remains
on my lips; it refuses to go and rest
upon the thing. . . . Things are
livered from their names . . .
seems crazy to cal! them seats or s
anything whatever about them,
Roquent;n realizes that he h
~ I w a y s befo re thought of th ings
terms of classes and kinds ; n
what he sees in front of him i
particular. exi sting, disconnec
thing. That's not all. He d iscov
there no such things as indents or ad ve ntures. An inciden
a story, which one ca n tell la
complete with its conclus ion. O
I n a chilling 1944 dl1lma.£xil. Same showed that helthe suffe ring thai people inupon each other and themselv
can live a story or leU it. but nboth at once. When one is liv
an event, the future, which give
shape and meaning, is not alrea
there. (Thorn ton Wilder hauntinly illustrated this same phenom
non in Our To"",,. in which
dead Emily. choosing a signific
day to relive. finds that on th e ditself she was so unaware of
significance thaI she was ba rco nscious of the events
around her, And contempora
playwrights illustrate it unce
sciously by failing to write a tel!
play ab out the revolution in LJ
racial relations l:Je(;ause , while co
scious of it, they are inside il a
cannot yet see it whole, from o
side.)
Suddenly Roquentin reali
COr.:TINU
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Jean Genet's rich,
full life of crime
SARTRECOHl lNUEO
tha t his lifc cann ot be wha t he
wanted. a succession of mome ntsfollo wi ng one another inevitably .li kc a tife read in a boo k. All atonce it is clear; the past docs not
exist. Th ere are tatters and traces.likc thc t rails of subatom ic pa rti·cles in a cloud chamber. wi th noth·
ing behind the m.He has discove red that every
thing in the world. induding hi mself, is contingent- dependent on
others, but also dependent o n hisown efforts to give life meaning.Finally Roquentin decides that ifonly he can create something. anovel perhaps. hiscreativity wouldmean commitment. and commit
ment would mean engagemf'lll. Hisexistence would acquire meani ng.
and perhaps he would evcn be able10 sce his own past without disgust.Thus ends La Nausee. the mostapt ly named novel of our time.
Al most everybody accepted Roquentin as Sanre himself and de-manded to know whether Roq ue nt in's hope of s a lva t io n
th roug h artistic crea t ion eve rproved foun ded. Sanre said he'd
answer that part icular question inlat er wo rk s. Jt was to be 26 years
before he got around to it.In the interven in g period. Sa rtre
mainly concerned himsel f with try
ing to go beyond mere d isc uss ionof pe rsonal salvat ion throug h artand li terature. He wanted, as Iris
Murdoch put it . " to eonn e<: t, in agreat equation, literature. meaning, truth and democracy." Awa rethat words may disguise or j ustifyviolence. he wanted to find a middle way between the petrifactionof language and its deteriorat ioninto meaninglessness. between themau"aise /o i of the oourgeois and
spiritual chaos. betwee n the blackand-white standards ofooth Com·
munism and capitalism on the onehand, and poli tical cynicism on
the othe r.
"The fun cti on of a writer: ' Sar·tre wrote in Whal is Lirerature?,"i s to call a spad e a spade, lfword sare skk . it is up to us to cu re them.. . . I distrust the incommunicable: it is the source of all violence."
Language had been getting sicklong before Sartre's time. The ac-cent on subject iv ity that followedKi erkegaard made more peop lethan ever aware that all thingsdo not loo k the sa me to al l people. First, the traditional painter'sworld of spatially defined , self
conta ined figures was shattered byimpressionism, which became the
"
new '"rea lism. " a ne w way of trutfully capturing the look of thworld right now. at this instant.
Writers didn' t respond to th
new ideas of perception so quic klWhe n they did. it was the poetwho are most inti mate lyconcernewith word s and their connotation
""iho showed a reaction first. Thdel berate obscurity of Be<:kell an
lonesco. of Lasl Year al Marie
bad and started with the symbolis ts Rimbaud and Ma llarmc.
In the wa ke of Rim baud an
Mallarmc came the most savagattack of a ll on meaning, surreaism. born (natura lly) afte r WorWar I, animated by a ha tredbourgeois soc iety, and dedicatedtu rn ing meaning upside down bidenti fying reality with the d ream
S artre. 13 at war's end. gf'ew uin the shadow of surrealism. Hshared the surrealist s' hatred of thbourgeoisie and their delight upending bourgeois va lues, SaIre' s method was to sub :; titute fothe litemry hero an anti-hero heroic proportions.
He pulled off a tour de. forcethis department when, in [952 .Saint Gl'nrl: Comedil'lJ 1'1 Marlyhe canonized l ean Genet. the ootempomry French poet and plawright who used hi s life of crim
and degeneracy as a springboarto literary fame. Sartre lauded Gnet for choosing the existence o
thief. traitor, pederast and ponographer. In an earl ie r essa y, Sa
tre had pol ished off Baudelaire foa ~ i n g made, when he was only
years o ld. an admirablet ial choice. anti social solitude, anthen spoiling it all by feeling guand thu s show in g that he acceptet ile bourgeois Catholic moral ity othose around him.
Gen et was a perfect anti-herA bastard, he wa s sent from a
orphanage to be brought up
Mo rvan by peasant foster parent(Sartre envied Genet hi s bastardand referred to himself as an "hoorary ba stard" ; Sartre'S father, a
though ma rried to hi s mother, diealmost immediately after JeanPaul was OOrn .) Naturally, be indeprived. Genet pilfered th ingWhen he was found out . peopcalled him a thief. When he heartha t " ve rt iginou s word; ' Sartsays, Genet de<: ided to be whhe was sa id to be and, gloriousfree of guilt feelings, lived a liof crime and every kind of whthe {Wl il bourgeois consid ers vil
ness. Genet' s cr im es and debaucheries and sojourns in prisons an
CONTINUE
- - • • - . +'," .
)1 ';'" .r. . . . . ... , '"
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Being existential
is very hard workPuff
••
you
need not
inhale
, , to enjoy
rmatories he transcended by
the mltleria! of lit
re.o eap th c irony, of course. ascritic Maurice Cranston has
, Genet. the persecuted
having tormented the
as It thief. and thenefft!Ctively as a talented poetauthor. commun ica ting \0
too well hi s h o m o s e ~ u a lhe thrill of his c rim
ife. has become a literary ce. Freed from prison because
hi s literary achievements (ViI't
FraM't'!) and made prosperousthem, Gene t no longer has an y
stealing. He has b«ome
for his gen tility and gener
. the typica l bourgeois.
he ironies of Ihe bourgeois reb
e not limited 10 Genel, EquatSanre's savagely antibourgeo is
his own mode of exisl
has been a paradox bo th
philosop hy after 1944 and to
tourists who came 10 gape at
I n .lean Genet's The B/uch.
a prime example of existential
theater, Negro actor; don whilemasks in a symboli<:: display of
the 5 C l c s s n c : s s of mcial cruelty.
him in St. Germa in and later at
the beatniks in G ~ n w i c h Village.
Th e ringing, marvelously nega
ti,"e apothegms (, ' Man is a uselesspassion: ' "Ufe is meaningless : '
" The bo urgeoisie an: swine" )
inevi tably aroused the young, the
dispossessed, and the disoontented,
and conjun:d up visions around
the Lions clubs of a picturesquenonconformist advocating mora l
anarchy in the streets and bed
roo ms of 51. Gennain. The Iruth
about Sartn: comes as quite a
blow 10 adolescenl nihilists. Helurns ou t to be a stern moralist,
speaking and ....-ri l ing in beau tifully articulated sentences. While he
happily that life is miserable, he pleads above all for respon
sibililY and malurity. He opincsthat virtue is possible, even though
diflkult. And I 'ngagl!IIIl!nI , il devel·
ops, means Ihal with resolute effOTllhe world can be changed for
the better.
SaTIre's personal life, moreover,
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SARTRECO NTIN UED
contrasts nicely wi th what he rec
ommends for others. A quietlyweB-dressed middle-aged man , heis a retired teacher who lives nextdoor to his mother in an elevatorapartment. You can' t get much
more bourgeois than that. And thepact that he made with Simonede Beauvoir)O yeal"li ago. flouting
bourgeois matrimony and permit·ting what they callcd "'contingentloves" (but al the same time making no provision for divorce) hasproved, as one observer put it,"more binding than a stack of
marriage licenses."Worst of all for Sanrc's existen
tialist image, of course, is hi s pros
perity. H s books sell Ii ke crepes suzelle (when Le.f Mars came out inFrench early this year it headed thebest-seller list for months) and hisoccasional lectures draw crowdswhich cou ld be duplicated in theUnited Slates only by the Beatles.
But Sanre has clearly learned to
bear what one critic calls "'the indignit ies of success."' Anot her critic, Melvin Maddocks, asks howthe post-Bohemian anist, "'suffe r-
ing acceptance instead of rejection,"' will relate 10 this new humble, even overadoring, aud ience.Not like Truman Capote . preciously defiant in his hammock.
Maddocks ventu res. Nor like bellicose Norman Mailer. No, Maddoc ks thinks the hipster may "'turnout to be in the likeness of the lateWa llace Stevens, poet and insurance executive, sitting behind avice president's polished desk atthe Accident and Indemnity Company of Hartford." '
One thinks, says Maddocks, of
Kierkegaard's suggestion that theChristian saint, the " knight of
faith." ' may not be the holy hermit in the desert no r the monk inhis conspicuous hair shirt. but Ihegreengrocer down the street.
Or a retired teacher wi th a rest
less pen.II is no mere happenstance that
the fil"lit volume of Sanre's autobiography should be titled The
Words. In the beginning, was TheWord- -and for this pamperedonly child. whose father died whenhe was a baby and was replaced bybooks, there was linle clse thatmallered. Words were read to him
by his mother. boomed at him byhis language· teacher grandfather,wrinen and recited by him to audiences of ooh-ing and ah-ing adults.Words were the first preoccupationof the child who was father to the
sardonic philosophers of St. Ge
main, and th is latest work is
Freudian ana lysis of his lo ve affawith them as well as a word-po
tra it of the psyche of the most precocious lillIe boy within memory
What is noteworthy about TI
Words is that it recan ts much o
Sartre's earlier writing- and in thprocess answers, obliquely, hown 26-year-old question abou
the possibilityof a l ~ a t j o n througlite rary creation. What is gloriouis that Sartre is at the peak o
his style- terse. pungent. sardonicwriting with a pen so sharp thatshowers effortlessly the philosophical an d litera ry attitudes of thbourgeoisie from which he sprangand an eye so penetr.ating that
sees through even himself.
~ it became known tha
Sanre was working on his autobography, there was much conjeclUre about how many volumes hwould require to get to age 5. Buin this 255-page volume he carriehis life to a point several yea rs beyond his ea rly novel-writing st!!S(which was his 8th year). "UnlikRoquentin. his fictional creatiowho morosely concluded the pasdidn't even exist, Sanre is exqu
sitely able ex posl [aclo to reconst ruct these early years with sucinsight and total recall that on
thought does indeed follow another almost with the inevitabilitof the notes of a familia r tunecreating the impression that thwhole thing is being written con
temporaneously by a frighteninglgifted child--which may not b
far from the truth.The dea th of Sartre's fathe
meant. among other things. thawhen he turned to books. they wer
the lite rature of an earlier genera tion, the works vene rated by higrandfathe r. So importan t was thliterature to that generation tha
the boy was overwhelmed by thidea that li terary creation was th
route to salvation. ("One writefor one's neighbors or for God.
dedded \0 write for God with thpurpose of saving my neighbors."
Today he takes a dim view o
the idea of sa lvation through creation. He regards his former pose aa sort of selfish idealism in whiche set himself apart from the human condition by describing it andwelt upon the meaning lessnesand absurdity of other lives in order to pump meaning and necessitinto his own. '" [ was Roquentin:
used him to show, without complacency, the te){ture of my life. At th
CON TIN UE
7/27/2019 EXISTENTIALISM: A spurned Nobel Prize calls the world's attention to a lonely philosophy of despair
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/existentialism-a-spurned-nobel-prize-calls-the-worlds-attention-to-a 19/19
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Ultimately, he may
be called religious
SAR TRECONTINUEO
same time I was I , the eiec::l. chron
icler of Hell.... I was a prisonerof that obvious contradiction, but
I did nol see il. I saw the worldthrough it. Fake to the marrow of
my bones and hoodwinked. I joy
fully wrote about OUf unhappystate . . . .
" J have changed ... illusion
has been smashed \0 bits: martyr-dom, salvation and immortality
are falling \0 pie<;cs; the edifice isgoing to rack and ruin: I collared
the Holy Gh ost in Ihe cellar andthrew him Olll; atheism is II cruel
and long-range affair: I lhink I've
carried it through."
After Us Mots was published in
France, there was a great brouhaha about how much of his previous work he was rejecting. At that
time he told an interviewer: "Wha t
J wrote about thi s in LeJ /IIo/s has
been misunderstood. There is nobook of mine that J reject. Tha t
does not mean that J find them all
good. What I regreued in LA Nau·
sl e was not having put myself
completely into the thing. J re
mained outside my hero' s disease ,
protected by my neurosis which,
through writing. gave me happiness . . . Jhave always been happy.Even if I had been mor e honest
wi th regard to myself at that mo
ment. I should still have writtenLA Naush· . What I lacked was a
sense of reality. J have changesince. I have slowly learned to ex
perience reality. J have seen chi
dren dying of hunger. Against
dying child, Lo Naus/e carries nweight."
K ierkegaard started out by d
nouncing his church and woun
up in the textbooks as the exponent of "Ch ristian existentialism
as against Sartre's "atheistic exi
tentialism". Today, Sanre stand
in danger of the same fate. Hwould hate to hear his anguish fo
man called love. Won.e, of coun.
is to hear his phi losophy calle
humanism-or, worst of all , region. But the very hean of hi s s
cial philosophy, to choose fredom for oneself is to choose fredom for al l mankind, is on ly
hairsbreadth (though a few m
lion words) away from the Golde
Rule. Having th rown the Ho
Ghost out of the cellar, havinfound there is no God and no li
after death, and having nonetheleopted for an engagement fo r th
common benefit of mankind,may now suffer the sup reme indi
nity of being told : "You in t
most rea l sense are tru ly religious
I n the till">e_honored mannerParisian writc!"$, SaTtre takcs hease at a sidewalk cafe Be ar hleft-bank llpartmcnt and Sl:ribles new I I IN3 in his noteboo