Sartre’s Second Century Sartre’s Second Century Edited by Benedict O’Donohoe and Roy Elveton Sartre’s Second Century, Edited by Benedict O’Donohoe and Roy Elveton This book first published 2009 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2009 by Benedict O’Donohoe and Roy Elveton and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-0161-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-0161-4 To Heather and to Kevin and Solveig TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION............................................................................................ix ROYELVETON AND BENEDICT O’DONOHOE CHAPTER ONE..............................................................................................1 SARTRE:ABIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH DAVIDDRAKE CHAPTER TWO...........................................................................................17 AUTOBIOGRAPHY,ONTOLOGY AND RESPONSIBILITY ROYELVETON CHAPTER THREE........................................................................................35 LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY IN SARTRE’SEARLYWRITINGS ALAINFLAJOLIET CHAPTER FOUR..........................................................................................46 TEMPORALITY AND THE DEATH OF LUCIENNE IN NAUSEA CAMCLAYTON CHAPTER FIVE............................................................................................56 SARTRE AND NIETZSCHE:BROTHERS IN ARMS CHRISTINE DAIGLE CHAPTER SIX..............................................................................................73 1945–2005:EXISTENTIALISM AND HUMANISMSIXTY YEARSON DEBORAHEVANS CHAPTER SEVEN........................................................................................86 SARTRE,INTENTIONALITY AND PRAXIS ROYELVETON CHAPTER EIGHT.......................................................................................104 THENEW SARTRE:APOSTMODERN PROGENITOR? NICHOLASFARRELL FOX viii Table of Contents CHAPTER NINE.........................................................................................123 ASURREPTITIOUS ROMANTIC?READING SARTRE WITH VICTORHUGO BRADLEY STEPHENS CHAPTER TEN..........................................................................................142 HIDDENWORDPLAY IN THE WORKS OF JEAN-PAULSARTRE PETERROYLE CHAPTER ELEVEN....................................................................................155 DESTABILIZING IDENTITIES AND DISTINCTIONS: THELITERARY-PHILOSOPHICAL EXPERIENCE OF HOPENOW IANRHOAD CHAPTER TWELVE....................................................................................173 CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES: SARTRE,CLOONEY,MCCARTHY,MURAKAMI BENEDICT O’DONOHOE CHAPTER THIRTEEN.................................................................................191 SARTRE’SIMPACT ON THE WRITINGS AND MOVIES OF ÔSHIMA NAGISA SIMONE MÜLLER CHAPTER FOURTEEN................................................................................202 SARTRE’SLEGACY IN AN ERA OF OBSCURANTISM WILLIETHOMPSON CONTRIBUTORS........................................................................................215 INTRODUCTION ROY ELVETON AND BENEDICT O’DONOHOE It is reasonable to claim—as does Bernard-Henri Lévy, for example, in the title of his landmark study, Le Siècle de Sartre (2000)—that the twentieth century was “Sartre’s century”. But what might be Sartre’s legacy to the twenty-first? Sartre’s life encompassed two world wars, together with the Cold War that dominated the latter half of the twentieth century. As a political activist and prolific political commentator, Sartre was both immersed in, and an engaged reporter of, the significant events of his century. Being and Nothingness, a philosophical best-seller, confirmed the 1950s as the “existentialist” age—and the age of anxiety—and sounded themes that reverberated in much literature, poetry, film and philosophy. Sartre the phenomenologist extended the relevance of continental European philosophers such as Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Sartre the Marxist philosopher, initially siding with Stalin’s Russia, voiced his support for the proletariat and the victims of colonialism, and effectively aligned his public stances with important themes of western democracies, such as the fight against racism and the centrality of individual freedom. Although philosophical culture in the later twentieth century tended to celebrate the work of Heidegger and Wittgenstein above that of Sartre, a good deal of Sartre’s philosophical contributions have become standards of philosophical culture: “bad faith”, “authenticity”, “the look”, the themes of consciousness and intentionality, to name only a few. A second dimension of Sartre’s enduring significance is his reliance upon the resources of literature—in the forms of drama and the novel, biography and autobiography—and, together with the requirements of ontological analysis, the study of history and historical events, and engaged political commentary. The pathways leading to his exploration of freedom are as diverse as is the richness of their content. The novel and the theatre offer vehicles for communicating the metaphysical depths of human experience that Sartre’s ontology, historical analysis and dialectical methodology may supplement, but not replace. Is there an educated westerner who cannot quote: “Hell is other people”? Sartre’s work is x Introduction unique in embracing such a diversity of genres. The sheer variety of those methods will surely continue to encourage a unique breadth of readership. A third reason for the likely vigour of Sartre’s “second century” is the fact that the great creativity of his later years has only recently been made available. Though unfinished, his Notebooks for an Ethics, for example, can be read as, at least, a sketch of the study of ethics promised in the concluding chapter of Being and Nothingness. Likewise, though unfinished, the Critique of Dialectical Reason appears to signal a considerable shift in his ontology of human consciousness, the “for-itself”. Taken together, Notebook and Critique can prompt a serious re-reading of Being and Nothingness, no doubt Sartre’s most famous work. Great works of literature and philosophy invite continued study and reinterpretation, in the light of repeated close readings and the products of subsequent writers and thinkers. The last century had only just begun the careful study of these late manuscripts. Sartre’s “second century” offers the possibility for a substantial re-reading of his entire œuvre. The centenary of Sartre’s birth in 2005 was the primary occasion for many of the essays collected in the present volume. Hosted by the UK or North American Sartre Societies, contributors participating in Sartre’s centennial celebrations were asked to address the central themes and overall development of his life and thought. It was to be expected, then, that there would be a retrospective dimension to these contributions. However, it quickly became apparent that attempts to view Sartre in a synoptic and retrospective light also provided a basis for assessing aspects of his work that are important here and now, and would probably remain so for the new century. Thus, the following essays reflect the richness of Sartre’s vision of the human condition, the diversity of the means he employed in grappling with it, and the lengthy trajectory of his enquiry, in a variety of wider cultural perspectives. Is Sartre a humanist? How persuasively can he be read as a romantic, a nihilist, an existentialist, a phenomenologist, a post- modernist? Are there significant cultural traditions that Sartre effectively advances by whole-heartedly embracing them or by substantially modifying them, or even by fusing or transcending them? How is it possible to bring him into fruitful dialogue not only with a living Japanese novelist, but also with contemporary movie-makers in Tokyo and Hollywood? What was his life, what was his death? What is his legacy in an “era of obscurantism”? Given the multi-layered quality of that legacy, such questions are less a matter of historical labels than of measuring the plurality of themes, motifs, approaches and genres that make up Sartre’s unique bequest.