Sartre Studies International

It is difficult to imagine a modern writer with more wide-ranging interests than Jean-Paul Sartre, and this is reflected in the articles contained in this issue. The first two, Linda Bell’s “Different Oppressions: a Feminist Exploration of Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew” and Vincent von Wroblewsky’s “The Early Sartre and ‘The Jewish Question,’” are inspired by Sartre’s epoch-making Réflexion sur la question juive, which, when initially published in 1946 represented the first reaction of a major French intellectual after the war to the horrific fate suffered by European Jewry, as well as the first postwar reflection on anti-Semitism in general.

Phyllis Sutton Morris, co-founder of the Sartre Society of North America and member of its executive committee for several years, died on May 31, 1997 from complications due to cancer. Phyllis received her undergraduate degree in philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley and her doctorate from the University of Michigan. She taught for several years at Kirkland College in New York and was, at various times in more recent years, on the faculty at LeMoyne College, Oberlin College, and the University of Michigan. She was a devoted teacher who dedicated a great deal of time and energy to preparing her classes and to meeting with students.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew was published shortly after the end of the Nazi occupation of France. Written in France, by a Frenchman, it is about French anti-Semites and French Jews. While this may seem to restrict the application of what Sartre has to say, I felt from my first encounter with the book that his observations and analyses have enormous potential in helping us to understand sexism and even heterosexism as well as racism, including possibly different forms of anti-Semitism.

With the publication of Anti-Semite and Jew immediately after the war, Sartre became the one major French intellectual who considered the specific destiny of the few Jews who came back from the extermination camps. Why only Sartre, a Frenchman with a Christian background? He later explained that he was shocked by the heavy but audible silence accompanying the survivors. But many others would have been able to perceive this silence. Why Sartre?

In his lengthy interview with Bernard Dort, published in Sartre on Theater1, the dramatist gives a detailed justification for the theme and setting of his play. His goal was “to demystify heroism – that is, military heroism – by showing its link with limitless violence.” Sartre decided not to situate the action in France “because [he] wanted [to have] a fairly wide audience” and satisfy in that way “an aesthetic need of theater, the need for distancing the object to some extent by displacing it in space in and time”.

Ronald Santoni’s book, Bad Faith, Good Faith, and Authenticity in Sartre’s Early Philosophy, has been long in the making. Indeed, Sartre’s views on bad faith and the issues related to it have constituted one of Santoni’s life-long philosophical interests, as evidenced by his article of more than twenty years ago.

In “Santoni on Bad Faith and sincerity: A vindication of Sartre,” Xavier Monasterio uses the recent publication of my book, Bad Faith, Good Faith, and Authenticity in Sartre’s Early Philosophy,1 as an occasion to “reevaluate an important piece of the Sartrean heritage” and to take me to task for some of my detailed criticisms and reconstruction of core Sartrean views on bad faith and sincerity. Charging that I have “missed Sartre’s point” in places, he sets out to show how some basic criticisms in two of my chapters are unwarranted and, hence, that Sartre is in no need of the “rescuing operation,” “salvaging efforts,” or “reconstruction” that I offer in these early chapters.

Noureddine Lamouchi, Jean-Paul Sartre et le tiers monde, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996, 346 pp. ISBN 2-7384-4179-3, Ffrs.180.50 Review by Ian Birchall

Thomas R. Flynn, Sartre, Foucault, and Reason in History, Volume 1: Toward an Existentialist Theory. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997, 340 pp., ISBN 0-226-25468-2, $18.95 (paper). Review by Steven Hendley

William L. McBride, ed., Sartre and Existentialism: Philosophy, Politics, Ethics, The Psyche, Literature, and Aesthetics, Garland Publishing. 8-volume set $583/or by volume. Toll-free (U.S.) 800-627-6273 Review by Phyllis Morris

The Notice Board editors will be pleased to publicize events relating to Sartre scholarship, specifically higher degrees, seminars, and conference papers, as well as publications. They will also be pleased to publish conference reports.

Notes on contributors