Sartre Studies International, Volume 19, Number 2, Winter 2013

Although Sartre denounces Descartes’ two principles, he nevertheless draws inspiration from him. No doubt this is close to being paradoxical; we shall have to be no less paradoxical in our explanation. For although the text entitled “Cartesian Freedom,” which introduces a volume of selections from Descartes, , confers some coherence on this apparent non-sense, once the texts surrounding this work have been taken into account, we have to conclude not only that this text predates , even though it was published afterwards, but that it is a collection of Descartes’ writings on Sartre, even though it is a writing by Sartre on Descartes. For beyond the Sartrean analysis of the Cartesian analyses of the Fourth Meditation, we find Sartre’s existential psychoanalysis of his predecessor, in which takes place not a transference, but a counter-transference.

 

S’il déclame contre les deux principes qui sont ceux de Descartes, Sartre se réclame pourtant de lui. Sans doute n’est-il pas à un paradoxe près. Reste qu’il nous faudra ne pas l’être moins pour expliquer le sien. Car certes, le sens du texte qu’il intitule « La li berté cartésienne » et qui articule ce volume de morceaux choisis qu’est Descartes 1596-1650 confère quelque cohérence à cet apparent non-sens. Mais une fois présenté de cette œuvre le paratexte, il nous faudra affirmer non seulement que celle-ci se lit avant L’être et le néant quoiqu’elle ait été publiée après, mais, plus encore, qu’elle est un ensemble d’écrits de Descartes sur Sartre quoiqu’elle soit un écrit de Sartre sur Descartes. C’est qu’outre l’analyse sartrienne des analyses cartésiennes de la Méditation quatrième, on y trouve une psychanalyse existentielle par l’auteur de son devancier, à l’occasion de laquelle a lieu non pas un transfert, mais un contre-transfert.

This article explores the Sartrean concept of the spirit of seriousness so as to better understand contemporary sightseeing tourism. Sartre’s spirit of seriousness involves two central characteristics: the first understands values as transcendent, fixed objects, and the second—less acknowledged—understands material, physical objects as instantiating these transcendent values. I interpret the behavior of at least some contemporary tourists who travel to “mustsee” destinations as a subscription to both aspects of the spirit of seriousness and to a belief that the objects and destinations of tourist sites contain these transcendent, immutable values, such as “Art,” “Culture,” “Liberty,” etc. These “must-see” objects and destinations can thereby be understood to make “obligatory demands” of tourists, compelling them to visit. I argue that this serious mode of traveling to “must-see” sites is a form of Sartrean bad faith, as well as an evasion of the potential existential anguish that travel can evoke.

As seen in his enthusiastic praise of John Dos Passos’s 1919, Sartre evaluated literary works by how effectively they aim to play a role in fundamental social change. This essay has two goals. One is to show that Sartre’s endorsement of committed literature is not undercut if literature fails to play a role in fundamental social change and the other is to show at least some of the ways in which committed literature is successful. Both goals are pursued through a consideration of the literary works of Kurt Vonnegut and Don DeLillo. The former was mentioned briefly but favorably by Sartre in 1971 and the latter, while lacking such direct ties to Sartre, was accused of “sandbox existentialism.” I read both writers as arguments in favor of Sartre’s instrumentalist take on literature.

In The Words, Sartre elevates the premature death of his father to the rank of a providential event which, by depriving him of a Super-Ego and relieving him of any legacy, consigned him to contingency and condemned him to be free. In this way, Sartre derives his uniqueness from this happy lack, this salutary void, i.e. a negated father, and casts himself in the role of an Aeneas liberated from the weight of his Anchises. Fatherless son, Sartre was nonetheless condemned to return incessantly to a father who was destined to remain imaginary. The omnipresence of paternal figures in his oeuvre, from “Childhood of a Leader” to The Family Idiot, through The Freud Scenario and The Condemned of Altona, is the expression of a double project, as systematic as it is paradoxical: to incarnate the Father, interrogate him and place him centre-stage—as he does with Flaubert’s father—in order to eliminate all the better, through an unrelenting prosecution, that of which the Father is, in Sartre’s view, the crystallization: the past, inheritance, the temptation of inauthenticity, the alienation of freedom by a foreign power. The Sartrean Father reveals in a privileged way the heart-rending paradoxes of freedom.

 

Dans Les Mots, J.-P. Sartre hisse la mort précoce de son père à la hauteur d’un événement providentiel qui, le privant de Surmoi et le délestant de tout héritage, le livra à la contingence et le condamna à être libre. Ainsi Sartre tire sa singularité de ce manque heureux, de ce vide salutaire, un père nié, et se dépeint en Enée libéré du poids de son Anchise. Fils sans père, Sartre n’en fut pas moins condamné à revenir sans fin à ce père voué à demeurer imaginaire : l’omniprésence des figures paternelles dans son œuvre, de L’Enfance d’un chef à L’Idiot de la famille, en passant par Le Scénario Freud et Les Séquestrés d’Altona, est l’expression d’un double projet, aussi systématique que paradoxal : incarner le Père, l’interroger et le mettre en scène – ainsi du père de Flaubert -, pour mieux liquider, par une mise en procès permanente, ce dont la figure du Père est, à ses yeux, la cristallisation : le passé, l’héritage, la tentation de l’inauthenticité, l’aliénation de la liberté par une puissance étrangère. Le Père sartrien se révèle dès lors comme le révélateur privilégié des paradoxes déchirants de la liberté.

Using an analysis of two of Sartre’s biographies, Baudelaire and Mallarmé , I will show how freedom can be inverted into captivity in order to constitute an affective destiny. If every choice, act and affect of an individual is, through its “original project,” confined to a specific framework, the schema of freedom positing its choice of existence seems to resemble a circle of captivity: total freedom at the outset, and then a trapped freedom, limited by itself. At the basis of this alienating circle lie original emotions: consciousness reacts affectively to its initial situation, before even constituting itself as a person, and adopts these emotions as integral parts of its project, as the structure of its relationship to the world. But the empirical affects which follow are then captured in the vortex of captivity, in accordance with a two-fold criterion: participating in the ultimate end of the individual while at the same time being inscribed in the affective structure which follows from it. Originally the very source of the original project, emotion then becomes its slave.

 

À travers l’analyse de deux biographies sartriennes, Baudelaire et Mallarmé, nous mettons en évidence la manière dont la liberté s’inverse en captivité pour se constituer un destin affectif. Si tout choix, acte et affect de l’individu est, par son projet originel, circonscrit à un cadre d’action précis, le schéma de la liberté posant son choix d’existence paraît assimilable au cercle de la captivité : une liberté totale à l’origine, une liberté piégée, limitée par elle-même, ensuite. Au fondement même de ce cercle aliénant, des émotions originelles : la conscience réagit affectivement à sa situation initiale, avant même de se constituer en personne, et assume ces émotions comme partie intégrante de son projet, comme structure de son rapport au monde. Mais les affects empiriques qui s’ensuivent sont alors pris dans le tourbillon de la captivité, devant répondre à un double critère : participer à la fin ultime de l’individu tout en s’inscrivant dans la structure affective qui en découle. Source même du projet originel, l’émotion en devient l’esclave.

The article advances an interpretation of the self as an imaginary object. Focusing on the relationship between selfhood and memory in Sartre’s The Transcendence of the Ego, I argue that Sartre offers useful resources for thinking about the self in terms of narratives. Against interpretations that hold that the ego misrepresents consciousness or distorts it, I argue that the constitution of the ego marks a radical transformation of the conscious field. To prove this point, I turn to the role of reflection and memory in the creation of the self. Reflection and memory weave past, present and future into a consistent and meaningful life story. This story is no other than the self. I propose to understand the self as a fictional or imaginary entity, albeit one that has real presence in human life.

In this article, I maintain that (1) Sartre’s views on violence are ambivalent and (2) Sartre sometimes justifies violence. More specifically, I attempt to establish the misreadings by Michael Fleming and Marguerite LaCaze (on whom Fleming relies) of both my writing and Sartre’s in these regards. Each, by arguing that, for Sartre, violence is “sometimes acceptable” or “functionally necessary” or “understandable,” but not morally justifiable, is ignoring Sartre’s tendency at times to skirt the issue of justifiability by employing “weasel words” that amount to justification. Both critics seem to forget that Sartre says that, on occasion, violence “could be called just” (qu’on pourrait appeler juste), especially in conditions of last resort defense against oppression, in which case violence, according to Sartre, can restore and regenerate the oppressed. Further, although I acknowledge Fleming’s noteworthy emphasis on “structural violence,” I offer considerable counterevidence against his (and LaCaze’s) claim that I ignore or slight Sartre’s concern for it. I argue, on Sartrean grounds, against his (and Zizek’s) claim that structural violence can be purely objective. Finally, I contend that in arguing that Sartre’s views are not strictly ambivalent, Fleming, following LaCaze, makes the error of equating “consistency” with not being ambivalent.