4/5 Stars.
I haven't read much by Jean-Paul Sartre. I have read a few plays including Huis clos (No Exit) and when I was studying French I struggled through a couple chapters of Les jeux sont faits (The Chips are Down) in the original language. Yet Sartre is one of those “Western Canon” authors I know is “important” and I aspire to read more by him. In the meantime, I have read a short book just to get a handle on the man and his oeuvre.
“Existentialism” is the name for Sartre's particular brand of philosophy. I knew that, but before reading this book I didn't know exactly what that philosophy entailed. Very simply: mankind is totally free. For Sartre only a being that knew it was free would be able to imagine a condition of not being free. We are free to choose whatever we want to at anytime, meaning we are responsible for our own actions. However we don't like responsibility so we create fictions about ourselves which say we are not free to choose. These fictions include social institutions, family ties and gods. We prefer to lie to ourselves and others about our level of freedom so he don't have to bare the full responsibility of making all our own choices in life. We operate in “bad faith” with everyone we meet because when we present our set of lies, others can see through them. Most human struggles stem from the competition between rival falsehoods about our freedom of choice. This is most clearly presented in L'étre et le néant (Being and Nothingness) where Sartre says our free selves always know our lies are lies so the best we can do is play at being the unfree people we wish we were.
Before reading this book I knew nothing about Sartre's life. Turns out it was a very interesting one. He was no mere arm-chair thinker. He served two stints in the army (as a meteorologist) and was taken captive by the Germans during the Second World War. Later he played a part in the French Resistance. These experiences led his to accept Marxism as the philosophy for the future. He saw it as the only way for a society to escape from the “bad faith” of Capitalism. He never joined a Communist party (or any political party) but was what the Soviet Union called a “Fellow Traveler.” He defended Marxism (he said Stalin was the problem, not Marx) and opposed French imperialism in both Vietnam and Algeria. He turned down the Nobel Prize as “too establishment.” He was out on the streets hawking Communist pamphlets right into his later years.
As writers do, Sartre turned his life experiences into grist for his stories. His unique life and his focus on Existential questions created some stories I definitely want to read. In Les mains sales (Dirty Hands) he writes about Hugo, a Communist idealist assigned to get close to and kill another Communist named Hoederer who is willing to compromise with the opposition. Hugo comes to like Hoederer and can't bring himself to kill the man, until he finds his own wife, Jessica, has also fallen for Hoederer. Hugo flies into a rage and is able to complete his mission. But why did he kill? Was it a crime of passion or a political act? He is free to define himself by either motivation. In Les séquestrés d'Altona (The Condemned of Altona) Franz von Gerlach is a former Nazi torturer haunted by the violence he perpetrated in the war. He lives in a fantasy of the past while the modern world around him is falling apart. He attempts to justify his actions and leaves a record of his point of view. It is found 10 centuries later by crab-like beings who don't understand anything about von Gerlach's story. The idea of a Tribunal of Crabs which awaits us all blows my mind.
The text of this short book is great. I feel thoroughly introduced to Sartre. Philip Thody was a long-time professor of French literature, so he ought to know. Occasionally, Thody points out inconsistencies and weaknesses in Sartre's philosophy. For me, this strengthens the over-all presentation of Sartre's ideas. By acknowledging faults, the tone of the book is not “this is the way to think,” but “this is the way Sartre thought.” I am very impressed that such a short text could do such a complete job. The book is 175 pages, but the text is so short because more than half of the space of each page is an illustration. I was skeptical at first about the format, but after reading it I think it helps convey the ideas well. I rather enjoy the caricature of Sartre which appears throughout the book. From birth to death he is portrayed with the same glasses and knowing frown, for easy identification. Sartre's face is juxtaposed to maps, looming authority figures, the iconography of Communism and Nazism and Howard Read's take on Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. All these images give a quick visual sense of Sartre's relationships which his world and reinforce the text on the page. The characters and the action of Sartre's fiction are also displayed in sequential panels to help those who haven't read the stories quickly understand them. I would have preferred the illustrations to be a little bit better; neither details, realistic proportions, nor backgrounds are the focus here, but I think they accomplished their goal.
It was a nice little book which did exactly what it set out to do, introduce me to Jean-Paul Sartre. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an Existential reading list to get started on.
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