JeanPaul Sartre and Existentialism JeanPaul Sartre 1905 1980
- Slides: 11
Jean-Paul Sartre and Existentialism
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 -1980) Nausea (novel) – 1938 The Wall (stories) – 1939 The Flies (play) – 1943 Being and Nothingness – 1943 No Exit (play) – 1944 Roads to Liberty (novel trilogy) – 1945 -49 Existentialism is a Humanism – 1946 What is Literature? (essay) – 1947 Notebooks for an Ethics (posthum. ) – 1948 Search for a Method – 1957 Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir (1908 -1986) The Condemned of Altona (play) – 1959 Critique of Dialectical Reason – 1960
NY Times, 1964 (Existentialist thinks his writings would be compromised. ) «A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution. »
Existentialism: An Ontology (Being and Subjectivity) Ambiguity of Being Human Being-in-itself (objecthood, facticity, non-conscious) Being-for-itself (indeterminate subjecthood, transcendence, consciousness)
Existentialism: An Ontology (Intersubjectivity) Being-for-others (objectification, alienation, gaze of the other) Human reality is an uneasy combination of the three kinds of being
«What if there is no God? » : Meaning of Life? Love and Death, Woody Allen (1975) https: //youtu. be/Ob 8 my 6 Yr. OAE
Existentialism: An Ethics of Freedom Existence precedes essence Man is what he makes of himself Man is freedom and responsibility Man must choose himself (what he concretely does in a situation) abandonment, anguish The Scream, Edvard Munch (1893 version)
Existentialism: An Ethics of Authenticity Bad faith vs. free choice Seeing as necessity, fact or inevitable what is undecided or a choice Seeing oneself as an object ( «Me» or Ego) Mauvaise foi: Bad faith, self-deception Flight from freedom and contingency
Existentialism contra Bad Faith and Inauthenticity
«The Wall» : Spanish Revolution and Civil War (1936 -39) Tom Mann Company International Brigade fighters from Britain (Tom Steinbock from Ireland) Anarchist and Socialist Workers’ Unions (Spanish anarchist Pablo Ibbieta)
«The Wall» : Questions for Section - What does the figure of the «wall» stand for in the story? - What are the reactions or realizations of the three characters as they wait to be executed in the morning? - What happens when the dimension of the future is closed to the characters? - What kind of choices, if any, are made by the characters under the circumstances depicted in the story? - How can we interpret the ending of the story from an existentialist point of view?
