OK, let's unpack this. Welcome back to The Deep
Dive. Today we are wrestling with a figure who
is, well, he's just gigantic, so complexly woven
into the fabric of the 20th century. He really
is. He essentially gave the concept of the intellectual
its modern definition, Jean -Paul Charles and
Mard Sartre. Indeed. We're talking about the
French philosopher, the novelist, the playwright,
and maybe most importantly, the tireless and,
uh... often very contradictory political activists.
Right. Lived from 1905 to 1980. And Sartre wasn't
content to just, you know, sit back and observe
history or write these dense treatises. He believed
a philosopher's duty was to be engaged. to try
and fundamentally reshape the world. Our sources
for this deep dive give us this really comprehensive
and frankly challenging view of the man. We're
spanning his sometimes difficult biography, his
foundational philosophical concepts. Especially
that famous slogan, existence precedes essence.
Exactly. And his intense, often compromising
career as a public figure. So our mission today
is pretty laser focused. We need to unpack the
central conflict that defined his entire body
of work and really his whole life. This constant
tension. between what he called Mauvais' foie.
Bad faith. Right, the spiritually destructive
conformity and the struggle for a truly authentic
way of being. It's a huge area to cover. Because
Sartre, he never stood still. He rejected any
single static label you tried to put on him.
And to give you just one key nugget right up
front that I think absolutely encapsulates this
man's uncompromising stance. Oh, I think I know
where you're going with this. It has to be the
Nobel Prize. In 1964, he was offered the Nobel
Prize in literature. I mean, arguably the highest
cultural honor in the world. And he just flatly
refused it. And the reason he gave is just so
perfectly Sartre. He said a writer should not
allow himself to be turned into an institution.
You don't want the Nobel Prize to define him.
It's it's incredible. philosophy in action fascinating
it sounds like the perfect example of his philosophy
applied to his own public life So we're going
to start, as always, at the beginning, section
one, the formation of an existentialist. Sartre
was born in Paris, 1905, and his early life was
really marked by both tragedy and this intense
intellectual immersion. His father, Jean -Baptiste
Sartre, was a French Navy officer, but he died
when Jean -Paul was just a toddler. Yeah, from
a tropical fever when Sartre was only two years
old. So he's left to be raised primarily by his
mother, Anne -Marie, who moves back into her
parents' house. The single most important early
figure in his life becomes his maternal grandfather,
Charles Schweitzer. And Charles Schweitzer was
a fascinating character in his own right. A professor
of German, a very strict academic. So not a relaxed
household. Not at all. He essentially homeschooled
the young Jean -Paul for a while, introducing
him not just to classical German literature,
but also to mathematics and this incredibly rigorous
intellectual discipline from a very, very early
age. That deep immersion, that kind of intellectual
hothouse environment, it must have set him apart
immediately. Oh, completely. And speaking of
the Schweitzer family, it's worth loading a truly
remarkable connection here. The world -famous
theologian, physician, humanitarian, Albert Schweitzer.
Who won his own Nobel Peace Prize. He was actually
Sartre's first cousin. I mean, that's an intellectually
powerful family tree. It certainly was. But that
privileged intellectual start was then juxtaposed
with some pretty significant physical and social
difficulties later on. This is when his mother
remarries and they move to La Rochelle. Exactly.
And there he experienced frequent and by all
accounts, really unpleasant bullying. And a major
factor in that bullying, which must have shaped
his outlook on the gaze of the other, something
we'll get into, was his physical appearance.
Right. He suffered from poor vision, specifically
a condition that's often described as a wandering
blind right eye. Sensory exotropia is the clinical
term. But the real consequence, of course, was
social alienation. He was perpetually marked
as different. That physical difference combined
with the social friction it caused, you have
to think it pushed him inward, made him rely
more on his own intellectual landscape. Absolutely.
So it's no surprise then that his attraction
to philosophy began so powerfully in his teens,
specifically after reading a work by Henri Bergson.
Time and free will. That's the one. An essay
on the immediate data of consciousness. And that's
where the path really began. He eventually follows
the elite academic track, earning his way into
the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, the
ENS in Paris. Which was the intellectual incubator
for France's future elite. This is where the
best of the best went. His studies were broad
psychology, logic, ethics, even physics. And
he completes his MA thesis in 1928 on consciousness.
L 'image dans la vie psychologique. Role in nature.
Image in psychological life. Role and nature.
But the sources are clear that this academic
grind, it didn't dull his mischievous side. Oh,
not at all. The sources highlight that Sartre,
you know, the future icon of existential gloom,
was known during his ENS years as one of the
school's fiercest pranksters. I love that. It's
this deeply rebellious, almost collegiate jokester
side to this intensely serious philosophical
icon. And it wasn't just, you know, harmless
fun either. His pranks often targeted the institution
itself. In 1927, he co -wrote this anti -militarist
satirical cartoon in the school's review. And
it caused a huge scandal. A massive scandal.
It severely upset the director, a man named Gustav
Lansson. But the real masterpiece of mischief,
that came later in 27. And it centered around
one of the most famous events of the entire decade.
Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight. New
York to Paris. The Lindbergh incident perfectly
illustrates Sartre's early willingness to just
undermine and mock authority. He and his friends
orchestrated a media stunt. They contacted a
bunch of major newspapers, including Le Petit
Parisien. And they told them completely falsely
that the school director, Gustave Lanson, was
going to award Lindbergh an honorary degree at
the ENS. And the result was chaos, wasn't it?
Absolute pandemonium. Thousands of people, reporters,
spectators, officials, they all show up at the
school. Only to find a Lindbergh lookalike performing
some kind of staged antic. The resulting scandal
was so severe and the director, Lanson, was so
humiliated by the media attention that he was
forced to resign. That's not just a prank. I
mean, that's revolutionary action in miniature.
It just shows this early contempt for institutional
pretense. It really sets the stage for his whole
career. He's challenging the integrity of a major
French institution before he's even published
a philosophy book. But 1929, that brings an encounter
that will define not only his personal life,
but his entire philosophical trajectory. He met
Simone de Beauvoir. Right. They met while studying
for their final teaching certification exams,
the aggregation. which Sartre passed first in
his class and de Beauvoir second. They quickly
became inseparable, lifelong companions. And
their relationship was just radical in its rejection
of the bourgeois norm. A non -monogamous open
partnership. It wasn't just a personal arrangement,
was it? It was a living, breathing, philosophical
experiment. Absolutely. It was a concrete public
challenge to social and sexual conformity that
mirrored the very concept of radical freedom
they would later articulate in their writings.
It was an intellectual pact, a commitment to
mutual freedom and shared intellectual output
that defined both of their lives, even as its
specific dynamics would become, well, intensely
controversial later on. Meanwhile, his philosophical
foundation continued to deepen. Who were the
major intellectual architects of his thought
beyond that initial spark from Bergson? Oh, crucially,
it was German thought. He was heavily influenced
by the work of Edmund Husserl, whose phenomenology.
That's the study of consciousness and how objects
appear to it. Exactly. And he studied it firsthand
in Berlin in 1933 and 34. This study of intentionality,
the idea that consciousness is always consciousness
of something. was just foundational to his later
concept of the self. And he also absorbed the
other major German influences, Martin Heidegger,
who we will definitely come back to, and the
neo -Hegelian revival led by Aleksandr Kozhev.
Yes, Kozhev's seminars revived interest in Hegel's
phenomenology of spirit and gave Sartre the framework
to combine that introspective focus of phenomenology
with the dramatic historical sweep of Hegelian
thought. And all these influences, they culminate
in a single definitive philosophical statement,
which is where we're going. now in section two,
existence precedes essence. This is the core
doctrine. The title of his main philosophical
work, Being and Nothingness, or Lettres le Néant
from 1943. It sounds dense. It sounds incredibly
dense. But its central idea, which he crystallized
in his later essay, Existentialism is a Humanism,
is remarkably simple and profoundly disruptive.
Existence precedes essence. Let's clarify this
through his famous analogy. Right. If you consider
a manufactured object, say a paper cutter, when
an artisan sets out to create it, the essence,
the plan, the definition, its purpose exists
in the craftsman's mind first. So the essence
is determined before the object itself even exists.
Precisely. The purpose of the paper cutter defines
its existence. It has a predetermined nature.
Got it. Now, Sartre applies this to humans. In
a universe without a creator, which is his starting
point, we can't appeal to a divine craftsman
who has a blueprint for human nature. We're just
thrown into the world. Exactly. We exist first
as beings, raw and undefined. And it's only through
our subsequent engagement with the world, our
actions, our choices, our commitments, that we
define ourselves. We create our own essence.
So if I spend my life being a doctor, it's my
sustained action of being a doctor that defines
me, not some pre -programmed docterness that
was planted in me at birth. That makes sense.
But it also sounds terrifyingly open ended. It
is terrifying. And this radical openness is what
leads to that famous paradox. Humans are condemned
to be free. Condemned to be free. I mean, it's
an incredibly powerful phrase. What is the inherent
burden that comes with this condemnation? The
burden is total responsibility. Because there's
no external law, no universal human nature, no
God to appeal to. We are entirely and individually
responsible for everything we do. You can't use
your past actions or your temperament or your
circumstances as an excuse? Never. Sartre puts
it very starkly. We are left alone without excuse.
And if we try to shirk that responsibility, if
we try to pretend that a societal role does define
us or that our past actions do excuse our present
behavior, that's when we fall into the state
that defines inauthenticity for Sartre. Which
is Mauvais' foi. bad faith. Mauvaise foi. It's
the dominant spiritual malaise that Sartre and
de Beauvoir diagnosed in modern life. It's this
act of self -deception, the lie we tell ourselves
to avoid the anguish that comes from recognizing
our absolute freedom. Can you give us a practical
example of bad faith, something that makes it
relatable? The famous example is the waiter,
the waiter who acts too much like a waiter. Ah,
yes. His movements are a little too precise,
his voice a little too solicitous. He's trying
to convince himself and the patrons that he is
nothing more than the role of waiter. He's denying
his freedom to choose other actions, other identities,
other possibilities. Right. He's reducing himself
from a dynamic, free consciousness, the pour
soi, or being for itself to a fixed object, the
en soi, or being in itself. Bad faith is when
you try to become a thing. That makes the concept
so immediate and applicable. who says, well,
I can't leave this terrible job because I'm a
banker, is acting in bad faith. They're denying
their ability to choose otherwise. So authenticity
then is about confronting that anguish and choosing
to act in spite of it. And authenticity is earned.
It's not learned. And Sartre felt that one of
the most vital experiences required to achieve
this authentic understanding is death consciousness.
That sounds incredibly heavy. How does understanding
death contribute to authenticity? Well, it provides
the ultimate boundary. As long as we're alive,
we're dynamic freedom, we're constantly recreating
ourselves through choice. Okay. But death is
the moment when we cease to live for ourselves
and we permanently become an object for the outside
world. At death, our essence is finally fixed.
Exactly. We are defined forever by the sum total
of our actions. It's the final emphasis on the
burden of free existence. You only have this
limited time to create meaning through action.
And when that window closes, the judgment of
the others fixes your legacy. The knowledge of
that impending finality, it drives the urgency
for committed, authentic action. If you run away
from that urgency by adopting an inauthentic
role, you're essentially lying to the one thing
that can't be denied. Your ultimate fate. Now,
as earth shattering as this philosophy was, it
generated intense criticism, even from those
who influenced him. It's important to acknowledge
these views, particularly from Martin Heidegger.
Right. If Heidegger, the phenomenological master
who influenced Sartre, was critiquing him, what
was the core issue? Heidegger argued that by
merely reversing the traditional metaphysical
statement, you know, moving from essence precedes
existence. to existence precedes essence. Sartre
was still trapped. Trapped within the very framework
of metaphysics that philosophy needed to escape.
Precisely. Heidegger accused Sartre of missing
the truth of being. What he meant was that Sartre
focused too much on the human subject, on Dasein
and its activity, rather than asking the more
fundamental question about the source of being
itself. So Sartre was too concerned with the
immediate human condition, the anxiety of choice,
and not enough with the fundamental mechanics
of the universe. Exactly. He was still stuck
in the subject -object loop, just flipped around.
And then you have critiques like the one from
Herbert Marcuse, another major critical philosopher.
Marcuse used a very academic term, suggesting
Sartre's existentialism Hypostatized certain
conditions. What does that mean in plain terms?
Hypostatized essentially means taking something
that is a product of a specific temporary historical
situation. Like post -war Europe. Right. And
treating it as if it were a universal, eternal
characteristic of existence itself. Marcuse suggested
that the extreme anxiety, the meaninglessness,
the radical sense of isolation that Sartre described,
these were largely products of post -war capitalist
European society. So by calling this ontological
a basic truth of all being, Sartre was making
his radicalism seem universal when it might have
just been historically specific. Which would
make his radicalism less universal and perhaps,
as Marquis suggested, illusory. What's fascinating
here is that whether the philosophers were attacking
or praising him, the debate he generated just
confirmed the immense intellectual force of his
work. But these abstract concepts of freedom
and anguish were about to be brutally tested
by the concrete horrors of World War II. A perfect
transition. As we move into Section 3, World
War II and the Moral Crucible. Sartre's personal
life and his philosophical output, they changed
fundamentally when the war broke out. In 1939,
he was drafted into the French Army. Serving
as a meteorologist, which, given his subsequent
career, is almost an amusing detail. He was captured
by German troops in 1940. And he spent nine months
as a prisoner of war, first in Nancy and then
at Stalag 12d in Trier. Now, this confinement,
despite all its hardship, proved crucial for
his philosophical development. He wasn't just
surviving, he was writing. He actually composed
his first play there, Bariona, a Christmas drama.
But most significantly, he read the work of the
man who critiqued him, Martin Heidegger. Yes.
During his time as a POW, he was able to read
Heidegger's masterpiece, Sign and Sight, Being
and Time. This intense exposure to Heidegger's
phenomenological ontology became the primary,
deep structural influence on his own major work,
Being and Nothingness, which he started formulating
immediately. He was released in April 1941, returning
to teaching in occupied Paris. He claimed it
was due to poor health, though there are suggestions
he might have escaped after a medical visit.
And he took up a teaching spot at Lycée Condosé.
a position that had become vacant because the
Jewish teacher who previously held it was forbidden
to teach under Vichy law. So this immediately
plunges him into the ambiguities of collaboration
and resistance. Straight away. He and de Beauvoir
co -founded an underground group, Socialisme
et Liberté, in 1941, aimed at active resistance.
But this is where the theory of radical action
meets the practical reality of revolution. And
the result was, well, frankly, a bit comical.
It's one of the great ironies in the history
of ideas. In the spring of 41, Sartre, with what
was described as cheerful ferocity, suggested
at a meeting that they should execute prominent
French collaborators. Naming names. Naming names,
like Marcel Dyat. However, the group quickly
dissolved. And why? Because, as de Beauvoir recorded,
none of us felt qualified to make bombs or hurl
grenades. Wait, so the world's most prominent
philosopher of committed action and responsibility
called for practical terrorism. And his revolutionary
group disbanded because the intellectuals couldn't
figure out how to wire a simple explosive device?
Precisely. It's a striking example of the gap
between theoretical commitment and the messy
implementation required for real revolutionary
change. So he recognizes the limits of his practical
utility in that realm? and shifts his focus to
cultural resistance through writing? Yes, producing
Being and Nothingness and his famous plays and
his analysis of the psychological environment
of occupied Paris became one of his most lasting
contributions to understanding political oppression.
His essay, Paris Under the Occupation, is incredibly
profound because it doesn't focus on German brutality,
but on German... Correctness. Yes. He observed
that the German soldiers maintained correct behavior.
They offered seeds to old ladies. They spoke
French politely. They weren't swaggering oppressors.
And he found this politeness to be a trap. A
moral trap, yes. Sartre argued that this correctness
entrapped many Parisians into complicity and
passivity. The very act of a Parisian speaking
politely to a Wehrmacht soldier, maybe to offer
directions, meant complicity. It gave citizens
an excuse to retreat into bad faith. It allowed
them to pretend things were natural and avoid
the responsibility of resistance. As he noted,
we could not be natural. It's the application
of bad faith on a national scale. The French
retreat into the inauthentic role of polite,
occupied citizen rather than recognizing their
radical freedom to resist. This brings us directly
to his 1944 play, No Exit. Which is where we
find his most famous and frequently misunderstood
line. Hell is other people. For so many people,
that line is just a statement about annoying
roommates or bad relationships. But the wartime
context adds this crucial layer of meaning, doesn't
it? Oh, it absolutely does. The sources note
that les autres, the others, was a common, slightly
coded term the French often used to refer to
the German occupiers. So given the context of
occupation, the line takes on a sharp political
edge. Hell is being constantly defined, judged,
and constrained by the inescapable defining gaze
of the occupying others. It's perpetual judgment,
the ultimate denial of radical freedom. Exactly.
Post -war, Sartre's engagement just intensified
dramatically. In 1945, he co -founded the literary
and political review Les Temps Modernes. And
this was specifically to popularize existentialist
ideas and, crucially, to advocate for specific
political causes. And he used his war experiences
directly for his great literary project, the
novel trilogy The Roads to Freedom. The war just
fundamentally changed him. It cemented his transformation
from an apolitical, liberal intellectual into
a figure whose life was wholly defined by public,
often polarizing, commitment. And this launches
him right into the highly polarized world of
the Cold War, which is the subject of Section
4, The Uncompromising Activist. After 1945, the
role of the intellectual became politicized like
never before. And Sartre just embraced this,
viewing culture as a process of continual invention
and reinvention. One that required the intellectual
to systematically challenge every institution
and every injustice. What's most complex about
his activism, though, is his relationship with
communism. He was fiercely drawn to Marxist theory
and critique, but he maintained this deeply contradictory
stance toward the practical reality of the Soviet
bloc. That contradiction really defined the 1950s
for him. Critically, he never joined the French
Communist Party, the PCF. Right. He objected
specifically to its later authoritarian tendencies.
And yet, for a significant period, he maintained
a belief in the moral superiority of the Eastern
Bloc. Arguing that this belief was necessary
to keep hope alive for a global revolution. The
famous French phrase that summarized his political
attitude then was Il ne faut pas désespérer Bilencourt.
We must not despair Bilencourt. And Bilencourt
was the location of a major Renault factory.
So it symbolized the French working class, the
communist activist base. So Sartre's stance meant
that activists and intellectuals had a duty to
withhold certain truths, particularly about Soviet
failures, if revealing them might extinguish
the revolutionary enthusiasm of the workers.
And this led him down some very precarious ethical
paths. The sources highlight that he opposed
any criticism of Soviet labor camps in 1950,
arguing he and de Beauvoir were free to remain
aloof from the quarrel over the camps, as long
as no events of sociological significance had
occurred. His reasoning was that he saw Western
anti -communism as fundamentally a move against
the proletariat, and he felt compelled to defend
the idea of revolution at all costs. Which led
to these moments of astonishing idealism completely
detached from reality. In 1954, after visiting
the Soviet Union, he claimed to find complete
freedom of criticism there. A claim that was,
to put it mildly, difficult to sustain given
the historical context. At the same time, he
was condemning the United States for sinking
into pre -fascism. So his focus wasn't on validating
the political reality of the USSR, but on maintaining
the ideological integrity of the revolutionary
idea against Western interests. That's a crucial
distinction. It is. The contradictions really
came to a head following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution,
where workers and intellectuals spontaneously
rose up against Soviet control. And initially,
Sartre praised it. He did. He called it a magnificent,
spontaneous explosion, a true act of the masses.
But later he backtracked, criticizing it for
losing its socialist base once the revolution
turned decisively anti -Soviet. He was always
more committed to the theoretical Marxist path
than the messy reality of political uprisings.
And his most controversial defense of secrecy
came in 1964 when he attacked Khrushchev's secret
speech, which had exposed and condemned Stalin's
purges. It showed the full scope of the mass
killings and terror. Sartre argued that Khrushchev
had made a fundamental mistake by revealing the
full truth about Stalin's crimes. His logic was
consistent with the Bill and Court motto, the
mass. were not ready to receive the truth he
believed that revealing the full extent of the
horrors would only demoralize the revolutionary
class and play into the hands of the capitalist
west so he's prioritizing ideological utility
over historical fact which is a truly difficult
position for an intellectual whose entire philosophy
demands radical honesty his political focus did
shift significantly in the late 1950s though
he became disillusioned with the apolitical European
working classes. Right, and he started to argue
that the true engine of revolution would be the
impoverished masses of the Third World. This
was heavily influenced by figures like Frantz
Fanon, and Sartre dedicated his energy to supporting
the real damned of the Earth. And this shift
cemented his role as a massive figure in global
anticolonialism. His opposition to French rule
in Algeria was perhaps his most prominent public
fight. He fiercely supported the Algerian National
Liberation Front, the FLN. He publicly condemned
French policies, including the widespread use
of torture, and provided intellectual legitimacy
to the anticolonial struggle. And this commitment
carried profound personal risk. It went far beyond
just writing essays. Absolutely. Because of his
outspoken support for Algerian self -determination,
he became a direct target of the organization
Armée Secrète, the OAS. A far -right paramilitary
group committed to keeping Algeria French. And
Sartre narrowly escaped two separate bomb attacks
aimed at him in the early 1960s. He was putting
his physical existence on the line for his political
commitments. He also became one of the most visible
global critics of U .S. policy, notably organizing
the Russell Tribunal in 1967. Which aimed to
expose alleged U .S. war crimes during the Vietnam
War. He admired revolutionary leaders globally,
famously declaring Che Guevara to be the era's
most perfect man. Later, he supported Maoists
and even described himself as a special kind
of anarchist. And this reputation as the uncompromising
anti -establishment intellectual brings us right
back to the moment that perhaps defines his rejection
of the establishment more than any other. The
1964 Nobel Prize for Literature. The Swedish
Academy selected him, and he rejected the honor.
making him one of only two laureates in history
to voluntarily decline the prize. He even tried
to head it off beforehand, writing to the Nobel
Institute asking to be removed from the list
of nominees. Because he didn't want the institution
to define him. His public statement explained
that he always refused official honors and that
accepting the prize would turn him into a pawn
in the East versus West cultural struggle. He
didn't want to be turned into an institution
or be used as a cultural symbol by either side.
It's the ultimate act of philosophical purity,
of resistance against institutional classification.
It is a grand high -minded gesture of ideological
commitment. But the sources reveal a fascinating,
almost darkly comic postscript that brings this
principled stand right back down to earth. Yes.
Years later, in 1975, when he was in poor health
and facing financial difficulties. Sartre, or
someone acting on his behalf, actually contacted
the Swedish Academy requesting the prize money.
despite having refused the honor. Wait, so the
same man who declared that he would never let
himself be corrupted by Western honors later
tried to cash the check. He did. And he was,
of course, refused the money. Now, this small
anecdote doesn't negate the power of his original
ideological gesture. But it certainly complicates
it. It highlights the immense human complexity
and contradiction in a man who spent his life
insisting on absolute freedom and radical self
-responsibility. That moment where grand ideology
meets messy human need is the perfect launch
pad for our final section as we examine his vast
literary output, his enduring legacy, and the
serious controversies that have clouded his reputation.
Sartre wrote successfully across almost every
mode imaginable. Novels, plays, critical essays,
biographies. His plays, like The Flies, which
is an existential retelling of the Orestes myth,
and of course the highly focused No Exit, were
these symbolic vehicles for communicating his
philosophy to a broader audience. And his novel
trilogy, The Roads to Freedom, provided a more
accessible, less theoretical look at existentialism
applied to characters facing the complexities
of wartime existence. But in 1964, the same year
as the Nobel refusal, he published a really unusual
memoir, The Words, or Le Monde. The Words is
a witty, often sardonic account of his first
10 years. It was an ironic response to the literary
conventions of the time, specifically the epic
introspection of someone like Marcel Proust.
And in this memoir, Sartre renounced literature
itself. Renounced it. Why? Consistent with his
political shift, he began to see literature as
a distraction. He called it a bourgeois substitute
for real commitment. suggesting that true action
and philosophical duty had to be found outside
the comfortable aesthetic realm of the novel.
Despite this renunciation, he then dedicated
his later years to arguably the most monumental
and challenging projects of his entire career.
Notably, the unfinished analytical biography
of Gustave Flaubert, The Family Idiot. I mean,
this became an enormous study of Flaubert's life
through the lens of psychology and sociology.
And the second volume of his major philosophical
work, Critique of Dialectical Reason. And the
sheer physical and intellectual cost of these
mammoth projects was just immense. His relentless
pace, coupled with being a notorious chain smoker
and a heavy user of amphetamines to stay working.
It contributed to a significant decline in his
health. suffered from severe hypertension, and
became almost completely blind by 1973. When
asked in 1975 how he wished to be remembered,
he didn't just pick one work. He offered a cross
-section, which I think demonstrates the interconnected
nature of his output. He cited the novel Nausea,
the plays No Exit and The Devil and The Good
Lord, the philosophical treatise Contique of
Dialectical Reason, and his critical essay on
Genet, Saint Genet. He wanted his legacy to be
remembered as the conscience of his historical
moment. And his intellectual power was undiminished
even as his body failed him. He died on April
15th, 1980 from pulmonary edema in Paris. And
the public reaction just confirmed his immense
status despite all the controversies. The scale
of public mourning was truly extraordinary. 50
,000 mourners descended onto the Boulevard du
Montparnasse to accompany his cortege. That massive
outpouring of public grief showed that even though
he had rejected institutions and sometimes alienated
both the left and the right, he remained the
quintessential, indispensable, and sometimes
deeply uncomfortable conscience of his century.
However, we have to confront the final and most
complicated layer of his legacy. And this emerged
posthumously and severely complicated the moral
authority of this intellectual giant. Serious
allegations of sexual exploitation involving
his long -term companions, Simone de Beauvoir
and their students. These allegations came to
light in 1993 with the publication of the memoir
Memoire d 'une jeune fille dérangée, published
in English as A Disgraceful Affair. This was
by the French author Bianca Lamblin, who was
formerly Bianca Bienenfeld. Lamblin claimed she
was sexually exploited by her teacher, Simone
de Beauvoir, while still a student at the Lycée
Molière, and that Beauvoir then introduced her
to Sarda a year later. And Lamblin detailed a
disturbing pattern in their open relationship.
What exactly did she describe as this pattern?
Lamblin described a pattern where Beauvoir would
seduce young female students, some of whom were
minors, and then, as part of their non -monogamous
arrangement, pass them on to Sartre for sexual
relationships. They referred to this arrangement
as the family or a trio. Lamblin wrote her memoir
in direct response to the posthumous publication
of Sartre's letters to du Beauvoir, in which
she found herself referred to by the pseudonym
Louise Vidrine, which confirmed the nature of
the relationship and the power imbalance involved.
And this is a critical point. The power dynamics
were overwhelmingly weighted against the young
students, many of whom were minors under Beauvoir's
tutelage. It creates a profound dissonance. Sartre's
entire philosophy demanded radical freedom, radical
responsibility, and the rejection of bad faith.
Yet this conduct, if true, suggests a profound
misuse of intellectual and teaching authority.
Exploiting the very vulnerability he philosophized
against, it forces a complete reexamination of
his entire persona. It certainly challenges the
idea that his life was a consistent pursuit of
authentic selfhood. It juxtaposes his high -minded
ideals with serious allegations of personal misconduct
and exploitation. So where do we land on Jean
-Paul Sartre? We've traversed his massive impact,
seeing how he synthesized metaphysics, literature,
and political philosophy into a single, cohesive
project. A project always centered on human freedom
and radical responsibility. He truly embodied
the engaged intellectual, constantly fighting
against institutions and conformity even as his
political positions appeared to shift with almost
dizzying speed across the Cold War landscape.
He taught us that authenticity must be a product
of difficult, sometimes paralyzing action, not
just passive learning. He lived a life of constant
public commitment, rejecting the Nobel, risking
assassination. But that life was ultimately riddled
with intellectual compromises and. And as the
sources reveal, shadowed by deep and highly problematic
personal contradictions that emerged decades
later. The ultimate synthesis of this deep dive
is that Sartre was the philosopher of freedom.
a freedom he championed for all humanity, but
which he sometimes struggled to manage consistently
or ethically in his own life. Which raises an
important final question for you, the learner,
to carry forward as you reflect on his legacy.
We've discussed Sartre's foundational belief
that existence precedes essence, that you are
defined only by your actions and commitments.
Considering the profound complexities and serious
personal controversies of his own life, from
the ideological gymnastics of the Cold War to
the allegations of exploitation, does Sartre's
ultimate, multifaceted legacy prove or dramatically
complicate his core philosophy that one must
radically create their own authentic self? Something
weighty to mull over as you navigate your own
radical freedom until our next deep dive.