Sartre Studies International

This paper critically examines Sartre's argument for the meaninglessness of life from our foundationless freedom. According to Sartre, our freedom to choose our values is completely undetermined. Hence, we cannot rely on anything when choosing and cannot justify our choices. Thus, our freedom is the foundation of our world without itself having any foundation, and this renders our lives absurd. Sartre's argument presupposes, then, that although we can freely choose all our values we have a meta-value that we cannot choose: that values are acceptable only if they are justified by some independent factor rather than by one's free choice. I argue that we need not accept this presupposition: subjectivists may well choose to be 'proud subjectivists' who are pleased with, rather than ashamed by, their subjectivism. Indeed, many subjectivists, including those considering the meaning of life - for example, Harry Frankfurt and Brooke Alan Trisel - adopt this position.

Jean-Paul Sartre's account of the Look in Being and Nothingness is not straightforward and many conflicting interpretations have arisen due to apparent contradictions in Sartre's own writing. The Look, for Sartre, demonstrates how the self gains thematic awareness of the body, forming a public and self-conscious sense of how the body appears to others and, furthermore, illustrates affective and social aspects of embodied being. In this article, I will critically explore Sartre's oft-cited voyeur vignette in order to provide a coherent account of the Look and to illustrate the significance of intersubjectivity and self-consciousness in Sartre's work. Through considering Sartre's voyeur vignette and other examples of reflective self-consciousness, this article will examine epistemological, self-evaluative and ontological concerns in the constitution of reflective self-consciousness. It will be contended that Sartre's accounts of the Look and reflective self-consciousness within social relations can provide insight into the intersubjective nature of the shaping of the body and the significance of self-presentation within the social realm.

In this essay, I propose a mutually constructive reading of the work of Jacques Rancière and Jean-Paul Sartre. On the one hand, I argue that Rancière's egalitarian political thought owes several important conceptual debts to Sartre's Being and Nothingness, especially in his use of the concepts of freedom, contingency and facticity. These concepts play a dual role in Rancière's thought. First, he appropriates them to show how the formation of subjectivity through freedom is a dynamic that introduces new ways of speaking, being and doing, instead of being a mode of assuming an established identity. Second, Rancière uses these concepts to demonstrate the contingency of any situation or social order, a contingency that is the possibility of egalitarian praxis. On the other hand, I also argue that reading Sartre with Rancière makes possible the reconstruction of Sartre's project within the horizon of freedom and equality rather than that of authenticity.

This paper looks at Sartre's 1957 papers on Jacopo Tintoretto to examine his reading of action and space in Tintoretto's St George and the Dragon. I suggest that Sartre offers an idea of grace which, far from shoring up a sense of decisive resolution to the action depicted in the painting, speaks instead of an abandonment in the subjective situation. This notion of abandonment appears through the erasure of a conclusive causal point, the disappearance of which lies at the heart of Sartre's reading. Once freed from causal moorings existence is not loosened but rather becomes weighed down in its very situation. Taking support from the work of Levinas this paper considers how Sartre follows the cursive lines of this burdened subjectivity within the deceptive play of Tintoretto's painting.

This article brings together the Sartrean concept of bad faith and Edward Upward's novel, Journey to the Border, first published in 1938. The aim is to provide an overtly political reading that challenges the surreal obscurity of Upward's psychological narrative, while at the same time showing the continuing relevance of Sartre's understanding of the psychological tensions and existential dilemmas of the modern condition. Upward's novel has been the focus of much critical debate as to the meaning of the story - the descent of the main character towards madness in the context of the 1930s threat of fascism and war - as well as the generic characterisation of the text in terms of satire, fable, fantasy or political parable. The article argues in contrast a more unequivocally ideological reading of the series of existential choices, both personal and political, of the main character as a struggle for individual freedom and authenticity through a radical commitment to socialism and responsibility for the Other.

Michael Lewis and Tanja Staehler, Phenomenology: An Introduction Review by Tim Huntley

Gérard Wormser (ed.), Jean-Paul Sartre, violence et éthique Review by Ian Birchall

Sam Coombes, The Early Sartre and Marxism Review by Manuel Braganca

Joseph S. Catalano, Reading Sartre Review by Nik Farrell-Fox

Jean-Pierre Boulé and Benedict O’Donohoe, Jean-Paul Sartre: Mind and Body, Word and Deed

Tony Judt, Marxism and the French Left: Studies on Labour and Politics in France, 1830–1981 and Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals 1944–1956 Reviews by Willie Thompson

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