Let's ignore Jean-Paul Sartre. A. He's dead. B. He's too demanding.

[Karmadillo]

Better to lust after those SUVs while hurrying to work to discuss the Runaway Bride interview with co-workers than to shoulder responsibility for the shape of today's world.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=105&ItemID=8134

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you." -- Jean-Paul Sartre

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jean-Paul Sartre, the philosopher who was the Nobel Prize laureate for literature in 1964 (a prize which Sartre refused, explaining: "A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.") "The Nouvel Observateur today has a large dossier of links to Sartre material available on-line, and the "Sartre Archive" (in English) has a number of Sartre's writings on-line. America's leading interpreter of Sartre's thought and life, Wayne State University Prof. Ronald Aronson -- author of many books on Sartre, and whose work I've long admired -- has an op-ed in today's International Herald-Tribune explaining why Sartre is still relevant today, and why his birthday is being marked with such extensive public commemoration in France.

Aronson writes...:

"One response, often associated with the political right, claims that we are completely responsible for virtually everything that befalls us. Another, the most conventional of left-wing replies, is that social conditions shape and determine who we become. After beginning by contributing the strongest argument of the 20th century to the side of the dilemma stressing total human freedom, Sartre went on to explore the social, economic and psychic conditions under which we exercise our freedom. Yes, he would say, we do make ourselves -- but the situation within which we do, and even the terms in which we do so, are imposed on us and generally remain beyond our control.

"Sartre made clear that the whole truth lies with both sides taken together. And then, in works like his biography of Gustave Flaubert, he went on to demonstrate precisely how an individual creates himself from what his social class and family situation have made him to be. Like no one else, he gave their due both to freedom and to determinism. Like no one else, he sought to understand exactly what it means to be responsible.

"This suggests another reason for Sartre's continued salience -- his irritating and annoying claims themselves. Sartre teaches that we are constantly tempted to escape our responsibility for creating ourselves from what we have been made -- there is something comforting, after all, in feeling that things are beyond our control. But, as he also teaches, to accept this is to enter into complicity with the powers that would dominate us. Sartre demands that we see ourselves as active agents, even when we might prefer the irresponsibility of seeing ourselves as victims.

"Today Sartre is still as troubling and annoying as ever. He demands that we see a world seemingly out of control as made up of human choices and the structures these create. When he demands that we take responsibility for our lives, for the shape of our world, for the situation of the least favored -- for others as well as ourselves -- he is expressing decisively important conditions for learning to live as responsible citizens in this globalized world. This is no outmoded radicalism, but the message of one of the most challenging and contemporary philosophies."

more...

[DemBeans]

1. thank you for posting this

Fascinating commentary.

I loved Nausea and The Age of Reason. Where are the intellectuals of our day? Buried under the corpse of popular culture?

[harrison]

2. Thank you. That was helpful to me personally and also because

I will probably use Sartre in an article I am writing. Thanks.

[JohnyCanuck]

3. He's dead. He's too demanding

but not only that

He was FRENCH!