Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Simply Sartre
    Simply Sartre
    Simply Sartre
    Ebook191 pages

    Simply Sartre

    By David Detmer

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “This is a delightful introduction to the life and ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre. Detmer’s writing is clear, engaging, and fun to read. The book weaves together accurate overviews of Sartre’s main ideas with convincing reasons these ideas are still relevant today. The book ends with useful summaries of 50 of Sartre’s works—a perfect roadmap for anyone who wishes to read Sartre himself. If I had to recommend one book to a friend, colleague, or family member on Jean-Paul Sartre, this would be it.”
    —Joshua Tepley, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Saint Anselm College
    Born in Paris, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was largely raised by his mother and his maternal grandparents after his father died when he was two. He attended the renowned École Normale Supérieure, where he studied psychology, philosophy, ethics, sociology, and physics. In 1929, he met Simone de Beauvoir, who went on to become a celebrated feminist writer and philosopher, with whom he had a lifelong intellectual and romantic relationship. After serving briefly in the French army during World War II and spending nine months as a prisoner of war, Sartre lived under the Occupation in Paris, where in 1943 he wrote his best-known philosophic work, Being and Nothingness, one of the foundational texts of existentialism. Following the war, and for the rest of his life, Sartre was deeply engaged in left-wing, anti-colonialist politics, while producing a prodigious number of plays, novels, philosophical works, and critical essays. With the popularization of existentialism in the 1960s, Sartre became a household name, and his celebrity (or notoriety) was heightened in 1964 when he declined the Nobel Prize in Literature.
    In Simply Sartre, Professor David Detmer tells the story of Sartre’s life and work, focusing on the contemporary relevance of his ideas—ideas that maintain their power to inspire, entertain, enlighten, and enrage. Uniquely, Prof. Detmer covers all periods of Sartre’s career and his many different kinds of works, providing the general reader with the opportunity to fully appreciate Sartre’s many contributions to intellectual and political thought.
    For anyone interested in one of the towering figures of the twentieth century or the development of a philosophy that lies at the heart of modern human experience, Simply Sartre is an indispensable biographical work.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimply Charly
    Release dateJun 21, 2020
    ISBN9781943657438

    Read more from David Detmer

    Related to Simply Sartre

    Titles in the series (27)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Biography & Memoir For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Who Gets to Claim Kafka?

      Aug 9, 2018

      Who Gets to Claim Kafka?
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What’s Philosophy For?

      Aug 10, 2020

      What’s Philosophy For?
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Swimming Always Against the Tide

      Jan 13, 2020

      Swimming Always Against the Tide
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Sebastian Milbank

      Oct 31, 2024

      Sebastian Milbank
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Enemies of Writing

      Jan 23, 2020

      The Enemies of Writing
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Letters From a Young (Female) Poet

      Jan 31, 2018

      Any argument about poetry is one worth having. So it’s been equally thrilling and disappointing to see recent debates decrying the proliferation of “artless” poetry in a market irrevocably changed by social media. A particularly scathing

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Nick Laird and Zadie Smith

      Nov 2, 2020

      My appreciation for the writing of Zadie Smith began January 30, 2007 at Foyles Bookshop on Charing Cross Road. I spotted the most beautiful book cover I’d ever seen, for a book called On Beauty. I bought the book without knowing anything about Smith

      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Celebrity Culture And The Mechanics Of Fame

      Jun 20, 2019

      It’s the interactions of media, publics, and stars that create celebrity culture, and those interactions are dynamic and unpredictable. The post Celebrity Culture and the Mechanics of Fame appeared first on The Millions.

      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Lost Art of Not Knowing Something

      Feb 10, 2022

      I'd posit that there is a bit of Larry David in Socrates. They both puncture hypocrisy, force us to question our own moral platitudes, and deign that we must defend our presuppositions, even if doing so seems rude. The post The Lost Art of Not Knowin

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Your Bookshelf May Be Part Of The Problem

      Jun 6, 2020

      Anti-racist reading lists are making the rounds right now — and they can be useful if people do the work of reading. But critic Juan Vidal suggests you look closer to home, to your own bookshelf.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Introduction: The Political Economy of Great Works of Literature

      Nov 1, 2020

      The Independent Review aims to be an “interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of political economy and the critical analysis of government policy,” which covers “economics, political science, law, history, philosophy, and sociology.”1 This iss

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency

      Jul 14, 2017

      I read non-fiction books that I thought might indirectly tell me something about fiction, even though they were really about something else. The post Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Our Library

      Sep 25, 2023

      His father's boot Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned towards the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Schlock Of The New

      Sep 22, 2021

      Have you noticed that, as a group, prophets tend to be a grumpy lot? From Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah, right down to Carlyle, Ruskin, Spengler and beyond: gloominess and bad weather as far as the eye can see. There are many reasons for this, beginni

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In Which a Susan Sontag Fan Learns to Love Her Fiction

      Nov 16, 2017

      To say I love Susan Sontag’s writing means I must come to terms with the fact that much of her fiction just isn’t that good. The post In Which a Susan Sontag Fan Learns to Love Her Fiction appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In Which a Susan Sontag Fan Learns to Love Her Fiction

      Nov 16, 2017

      To say I love Susan Sontag’s writing means I must come to terms with the fact that much of her fiction just isn’t that good. The post In Which a Susan Sontag Fan Learns to Love Her Fiction appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Forward Thinkers

      Oct 9, 2023

      by Wolfram Eilenberger (Allen Lane, $65 hb) is out now in ebook and in hardback on October 10. Every era has its defining questions that animate the self and the world, and in the 20th century, such questions of philosophy in the Western world were f

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Debut Literary Nonfiction

      Aug 15, 2018

      IT’S a good time to write nonfiction. Not just in terms of its popularity—though it’s exciting to see so many debut essay collections and literary memoirs being published by small and large presses alike—but because it’s a genre that can serve as som

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Art of Fiction No. 249

      Jun 8, 2021

      The Art of Fiction No. 249
      30 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      To The Future And Beyond

      Feb 25, 2023

      To The Future And Beyond
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      To The Future And Beyond

      Feb 25, 2023

      To The Future And Beyond
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The New Establishment

      Jan 26, 2023

      THIRTY YEARS AGO, when the Secret Author was but a young shaver wandering wide-eyed along the approach roads to Grub Street, people used to be very exercised by an entity known as the “literary establishment”. In the manner of Bloomsbury, half a cent

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Simply Sartre

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Simply Sartre - David Detmer

      Simply Sartre

      Simply Sartre

      David Detmer

      Simply Charly

      New York

      Copyright © 2020 by David Detmer

      Cover Illustration by José Ramos

      Cover Design by Scarlett Rugers

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

      [email protected]

      ISBN: 978-1-943657-43-8

      Brought to you by http://simplycharly.com

      Contents

      Praise for Simply Sartre

      Other Great Lives

      Series Editor's Foreword

      Preface

      Acknowledgements

      Abbreviations

      1. A Full, Varied, and Highly Unusual Life

      2. Responsibility

      3. Consciousness

      4. Freedom

      5. Sartre's Legacy

      Suggested Reading

      About the Author

      A Word from the Publisher

      Praise for Simply Sartre

      This is a delightful introduction to the life and ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre. Detmer’s writing is clear, engaging, and fun to read. The book weaves together accurate overviews of Sartre’s main ideas with convincing reasons these ideas are still relevant today. The book ends with useful summaries of 50 of Sartre’s works—a perfect roadmap for anyone who wishes to read Sartre himself. If I had to recommend one book to a friend, colleague, or family member on Jean-Paul Sartre, this would be it.

      —Joshua Tepley, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Saint Anselm College

      "David Detmer’s new book will stimulate first-time readers of Sartre, challenge advanced students, and offer political activists as well as scholars much to think about. It demonstrates the clarity of a first-rate teacher and the awareness of Sartre’s relevance by someone keenly involved in today’s world. Detmer shows a deep understanding of the whole range of Sartre’s work, how that work connects with other trends of philosophy, and a fine writer’s ability to tell a good story—all in a short introduction."

      —Ronald Aronson, author of Jean-Paul Sartre: Philosophy in the World and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the History of Ideas at Wayne State University

      "The task of introducing Sartre is challenging and doing so for a short book is daunting. Detmer triumphs, revealing himself as a premier teacher of Sartre’s life and philosophy. This accessible and accurate introduction captures how a bookish child became one of the most prominent intellectuals on the twentieth-century world stage and created a legacy that continues to grow well into the twenty-first century. Additionally, with chapters on responsibility, consciousness, and freedom, this introduction conveys the importance and magnetism of Sartre’s philosophy."

      —Damon Boria, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University

      "As a community college professor, I have longed to integrate Sartre’s philosophy into the introductory courses I teach, but have struggled to find a good way to do so. Simply Sartre solves the problem all the way around: Here we have a brief, comprehensive, and truly engaging introduction to Sartre’s alternative takes on issues including the nature of morality, free will and determinism, and the metaphysics of mind and body. Furthermore, it also will require students to consider Sartrean thinking on anti-black racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. This book is a gift to all instructors who see the value of getting students to take Sartre seriously."

      —Chris McCord, Professor of Philosophy, Kirkwood Community College

      Other Great Lives

      Simply Austen by Joan Klingel Ray

      Simply Beckett by Katherine Weiss

      Simply Beethoven by Leon Plantinga

      Simply Chekhov by Carol Apollonio

      Simply Chomsky by Raphael Salkie

      Simply Chopin by William Smialek

      Simply Darwin by Michael Ruse

      Simply Descartes by Kurt Smith

      Simply Dickens by Paul Schlicke

      Simply Dirac by Helge Kragh

      Simply Einstein by Jimena Canales

      Simply Eliot by Joseph Maddrey

      Simply Euler by Robert E. Bradley

      Simply Faulkner by Philip Weinstein

      Simply Fitzgerald by Kim Moreland

      Simply Freud by Stephen Frosh

      Simply Gödel by Richard Tieszen

      Simply Hegel by Robert L. Wicks

      Simply Hitchcock by David Sterritt

      Simply Joyce by Margot Norris

      Simply Machiavelli by Robert Fredona

      Simply Napoleon by J. David Markham & Matthew Zarzeczny

      Simply Nietzsche by Peter Kail

      Simply Proust by Jack Jordan

      Simply Riemann by Jeremy Gray

      Simply Tolstoy by Donna Tussing Orwin

      Simply Stravinsky by Pieter van den Toorn

      Simply Turing by Michael Olinick

      Simply Wagner by Thomas S. Grey

      Simply Wittgenstein by James C. Klagge

      Series Editor's Foreword

      Simply Charly’s Great Lives series offers brief but authoritative introductions to the world’s most influential people—scientists, artists, writers, economists, and other historical figures whose contributions have had a meaningful and enduring impact on our society.

      Each book provides an illuminating look at the works, ideas, personal lives, and the legacies these individuals left behind, also shedding light on the thought processes, specific events, and experiences that led these remarkable people to their groundbreaking discoveries or other achievements. Additionally, every volume explores various challenges they had to face and overcome to make history in their respective fields, as well as the little-known character traits, quirks, strengths, and frailties, myths, and controversies that sometimes surrounded these personalities.

      Our authors are prominent scholars and other top experts who have dedicated their careers to exploring each facet of their subjects’ work and personal lives.

      Unlike many other works that are merely descriptions of the major milestones in a person’s life, the Great Lives series goes above and beyond the standard format and content. It brings substance, depth, and clarity to the sometimes-complex lives and works of history’s most powerful and influential people.

      We hope that by exploring this series, readers will not only gain new knowledge and understanding of what drove these geniuses, but also find inspiration for their own lives. Isn’t this what a great book is supposed to do?

      Charles Carlini, Simply Charly

      New York City

      Preface

      Jean-Paul Sartre was, perhaps, both the most celebrated, and the most hated writer of the 20th century. On the one hand, no other philosopher of the period was more famous, more widely read and studied, more influential, or more honored (he was awarded, but rejected, the Nobel Prize in literature; and 50,000 people turned out for his funeral). But, on the other hand, he was regularly vilified for political reasons by both the left and right; the Catholic Church placed all of his works on its Index of works that Catholics, on pain of ex-communication, were forbidden to read; several countries officially prohibited performances of his plays; his apartment was twice bombed (and the office of the journal he co-founded was also bombed); and war veterans once marched through the streets of Paris chanting, Shoot Sartre! This book tells the story of the life and work of this extraordinary philosopher, novelist, playwright, biographer, literary critic, journalist, public intellectual, and political activist, focusing on the contemporary relevance of his ideas, which maintain their power to inspire, entertain, enlighten, and enrage.

      Indeed, showing that Sartre’s work continues to speak to contemporary concerns is one of the primary aims of this book. For while no one can deny the importance of his writings from the standpoint of intellectual history (the experience of the French during World War II and its aftermath can scarcely be understood except by reference to them), some contend that the undoubted power and influence of his work in the 1940s and 1950s is entirely attributable to the fact that it was extraordinarily attuned to the circumstances of the time and place in which it was produced. On this view, Sartre’s thought belongs in a museum of superseded ideas—ideas that can be safely ignored as we attempt to navigate the problems confronting us in the 21st century.

      I attempt to counter this perception by discussing three key ideas—responsibility, consciousness, and freedom—about which Sartre advances powerful ideas that are both frequently misunderstood and highly relevant to contemporary situations. In order to provide a context for that discussion, I begin with a brief account of Sartre’s life. Aside from its intrinsic interest, Sartre’s life, for all its faults, is instructive in that it stands as an example of intense, sustained engagement with certain core ideas over an extended period, spanning a wide variety of activities—most notably philosophy, literature, and political activism. For despite all the changes one can identify in charting Sartre’s intellectual development, his concern for understanding and describing responsibility, consciousness, and freedom remains constant throughout his many and varied writings, just as his diverse political stances and activities, however else they may differ from one another, can still be regarded as a unity insofar as they are informed and motivated by his understanding of these central concepts.

      In his analysis of responsibility, Sartre develops several of the themes that are now most closely associated with the postwar existentialist movement, such as the idea that we are as much responsible for our omissions as for our acts, and that responsibility cannot legitimately be evaded by passively following the dictates of one’s religion, or society, or employer. Not as well known, in part because these aspects of his thought are developed most prominently only in posthumously published works, are his ideas on the importance of truth and freedom, understood in terms of their relation to responsibility, in the development of an approach to ethics that would differ significantly from any contenders that currently dominate the landscape of ethical theory in the western world. While many who read Sartre’s works today may assume that his seemingly extreme stance on responsibility makes little sense outside of the context of something like the French resistance to Nazism (in which one’s day-to-day choices bring life-and-death consequences), it is my burden in this chapter to argue that Sartre’s understanding of this issue applies with equal or greater force to those of us who live in more comfortable circumstances.

      The contemporary relevance of Sartre’s work on the nature of consciousness, by contrast, is largely attributable to the fact that consciousness has, until quite recently, been an unjustly neglected topic. Because of its seemingly subjective, non-measurable, non-quantifiable quality, philosophers and scientists have historically bypassed investigations of consciousness in favor of inquiries into the more objective and tractable domains of observable behavior and brain activity. But Sartre, as a pioneering phenomenologist (the term will be discussed subsequently), makes full use of his literary talents in undertaking the project of describing the different modalities of conscious experience, including perception, reflection, imagination, memory, and emotion. One of the essential features of conscious experience, on Sartre’s account, is that it engages with meanings. Sartre’s contribution to the understanding of conscious encounters with various kinds of meaning is important, in part because the philosophical tradition that has dominated the English-speaking world since about 1900 has largely neglected this topic in favor of a focus on language. Sartre, by contrast, situates language within the broader and more fundamental domain of meaning.

      The discussion of consciousness takes us into the heart of Sartre’s famous theory of freedom, as it is Sartre’s contention that freedom, necessarily and in principle, is an essential characteristic of consciousness. In elaborating Sartre’s account of freedom, and attempting to clear away some of the confusion and misunderstanding that have historically distorted its reception, I present Sartre’s reasons for rejecting determinism and compatibilism (two competitor theories), explain his concept of anguish and its relation to freedom, clarify his distinction between two senses of freedom, defend his seemingly outrageous claim that the slave in chains is as free as his master, and underscore the connection between freedom and one of his other central concerns—responsibility.

      David Detmer

      Hammond, Indiana

      Acknowledgements

      Iam greatly indebted to my colleagues in the North American Sartre Society. I have been attending the Society’s conferences regularly since 1990, and I learn something of importance each and every time. Even more important than this intellectual and scholarly contribution, the enthusiasm for Sartre that is evident in their conference presentations always reinvigorates my own enthusiasm; and the generosity with which they treat my work, even when they are to some extent critical of it, gives me renewed confidence every time I take up a new project in Sartre scholarship. I refrain from individually naming these friends and colleagues only because (a) listing them would add unduly to the length of this book, and (b) I do not wish to commit an injustice by inconsistently acknowledging only some while failing to recall others whose contributions have been equally important.

      I would also like to thank Charles Carlini, both for inviting me to undertake this project, and for his helpful suggestions and comments on an earlier draft of this book.

      Finally, my biggest thanks, and love, go to Kerri and Arlo, who inspire me, make me proud, and make my life fun on a daily basis.

      Abbreviations

      The following abbreviations have been used for works cited in the body of the text. In some cases, I have made slight modifications to the translations of quoted passages.

      Works by Sartre

      (Note: The dates in square brackets are those of the original French publications.)

      AHC      The Artist and His Conscience [1950], in Portraits, trans. Chris Turner (New York: Seagull Books, 2017) [originally published in French as Situations IV, 1964].

      ALT        Altona [1959], trans. Sylvia and George Leeson, in Altona and Other Plays (London: Penguin, 1962).

      APAR    Those Who are Confronting Apartheid Should Know They’re Not Alone, translator not credited (1966); https://bit.ly/sartre-apar.

      ASJ         Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. George J. Becker (New York: Schocken Books, 1965) [1946].

      AV          A Victory, included as a Preface in Henri Alleg, The Question, trans. John Calder (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006) [1958].

      BN         Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1992) [1943].

      BO         Black Orpheus, trans. John MacCombie in WILOE [1948].

      CDR      Critique of Dialectical Reason, trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith (London: Verso, 1982) [1960].

      CE          Critical Essays, trans. Chris Turner (New York: Seagull Books, 2010) [originally published in French as Situations I, 1947].

      CF          Cartesian Freedom [1946], in CE.

      COS       "A Commentary on The Stranger" [1943], in EH.

      DGL       The Devil and the Good Lord [1951], trans. Kitty Black, in The Devil and the Good Lord and Two Other Plays (New York: Vintage, 1960).

      DH         Dirty Hands [1948], trans. Lionel Abel, in NETOP.

      EH         Existentialism is a Humanism, trans. Carol Macomber (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007) [1946].

      FOM      Forgers of Myths [1946], in Sartre on Theater, trans. Frank Jellinek (New York: Pantheon, 1976) [1973].

      ICF        Interview at the Café Flore: 1945, in The Last Chance, trans. Craig Vasey (New York: Continuum, 2009) [1945].

      ILTM     "Introducing Les Temps Modernes" [1945], trans. Jeffrey Mehlman, in Ronald Aronson and Adrian van den Hoven, eds., We Have Only This Life toLive: The Selected Essays of Jean-Paul Sartre 1939-1975 (New York: New York Review Books, 2013).

      IM          The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination trans. Jonathan Webber (New York: Routledge, 2004) [1940].

      IOAT     The Itinerary of a Thought [1969], in Between

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1