Sartre Studies International

This article focuses on the relation between philosophy and literature in early Sartre, showing how his literary writing can be seen as philosophically significant by interpreting Sartre as practising a variant of phenomenological method. I first clarify Sartre’s approach to phenomenological method by comparing and contrasting it with Husserl’s. Despite agreeing that philosophy is a reflective descriptive study of essences, Sartre sees no use for phenomenological reduction and free variation. I then consider the philosophical function of Sartre’s literary works, arguing that, although these cannot reliably convey philosophical theories, their significance lies in describing concrete situations that ground reflective theoretical concepts. However, this grounding function can be understood only if Sartre is seen as realising Husserl’s phenomenological method – including phenomenological reduction and free variation – more fully than he acknowledges. Finally, I address two challenges to my view and briefly assess the value of literary phenomenology as a philosophical method.

Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble has been one of the most influential theoretical works of the past twenty-five years. Both within and without philosophy, it is a touchstone for discussions of subjectivity and identity of all kinds. In her writings, and in conversation, Butler has made clear her indebtedness to the phenomenological and existential tradition, while revising it within a poststructuralist framework. In this article, I explore just one strand of that indebtedness by comparing the performative account of gender identity, which she offers in Gender Trouble, with the imaginary personages which form the basis of Sartre’s account of individual and social identities. I suggest that some of the problems encountered by performative accounts are a consequence of this inheritance.

Cet article se concentre sur l’érotisme et sur les relations sexuelles dans les écrits et la biographie de Sartre, et en particulier sur la notion de sadisme, explorant l’hypothèse que la biographie de Sartre sur Charles Baudelaire ainsi que Faut-il brûler Sade? de Simone de Beauvoir nous aident à explorer indirectement érotisme, désir et sadisme chez Sartre. Le texte est appuyé par une variété de sources secondaires, en particulier par des articles de Christina Howells et de Serge Doubrovsky. L’accent est mis sur la matérialité physique de l’acte sexuel et de l’érotisme mais sans jamais négliger les structures psychologiques et existentielles du sadisme et du masochisme.

In this article, I explore the question of whether authentic love is possible in Jean-Paul Sartre’s early philosophy. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre claims that love is inauthentic and doomed to failure. I dismiss a prominent view that is built upon Sartre’s account of love in Notebooks for an Ethics, which states that authentic love is possible after a radical conversion to authenticity. The continued existence of patriarchal oppression prevents men and women from undergoing such a conversion. Adopting a different approach, I examine a form of love which Sartre largely overlooks: the love between mother and child. Before the boundaries between Self and Other are fully formed, mother and child exist in an ambiguous union. It is here, I argue, that the existence of authentic love is possible.

One of the biggest threats in the contemporary world is the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism, which is increasingly becoming a facet of everyday life in Europe. In this article, I question whether it is possible to define Islamic terrorism as a form of counter-violence, according to how Jean-Paul Sartre presented this concept in Notebooks for an Ethics, and, as a consequence, whether it can be legitimized or justified. According to this argument, the freedoms that perceive themselves as oppressed can try to liberate themselves through violence, given certain conditions. However, with terrorism we do not simply face the paradox inherent to counter-violence. The key point, which clearly distinguishes Islamic terrorism from counter-violence, is the fact that behind this nihilistic fury there is no concept of freedom to be liberated.

In this response to ‘Counter-Violence and Terrorism’, I argue, with Maria Russo, that fundamentalist Islamic terrorism transcends the boundaries of legitimate counter-violence on the Sartrean model, since this violence primarily oppresses Muslim communities. The ideological imperative of the jihadists’ way of being-in-the-world, based on a literalist Salafist/Wahhabist interpretation of sacred texts eschewed by a majority of Muslims, is the radical negation of otherness in all its forms: political, religious, cultural, civilisational and ideological. This jihadist worldview is nevertheless supported by millions of Muslims worldwide who seek to impose, by force if necessary, the global hegemony of sharia (Islamic) law as a divinely mandated system of government. By asserting the divine right to rule, the jihadists appear to give a (false) religious legitimacy to their fascist, totalitarian agenda.