WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.299 OK, let's unpack this. Welcome back to The Deep 00:00:03.299 --> 00:00:06.660 Dive. Today we are wrestling with a figure who 00:00:06.660 --> 00:00:10.919 is, well, he's just gigantic, so complexly woven 00:00:10.919 --> 00:00:13.439 into the fabric of the 20th century. He really 00:00:13.439 --> 00:00:16.699 is. He essentially gave the concept of the intellectual 00:00:16.699 --> 00:00:19.719 its modern definition, Jean -Paul Charles and 00:00:19.719 --> 00:00:22.379 Mard Sartre. Indeed. We're talking about the 00:00:22.379 --> 00:00:24.320 French philosopher, the novelist, the playwright, 00:00:24.359 --> 00:00:27.320 and maybe most importantly, the tireless and, 00:00:27.379 --> 00:00:30.100 uh... often very contradictory political activists. 00:00:30.239 --> 00:00:33.439 Right. Lived from 1905 to 1980. And Sartre wasn't 00:00:33.439 --> 00:00:35.079 content to just, you know, sit back and observe 00:00:35.079 --> 00:00:38.020 history or write these dense treatises. He believed 00:00:38.020 --> 00:00:40.579 a philosopher's duty was to be engaged. to try 00:00:40.579 --> 00:00:42.840 and fundamentally reshape the world. Our sources 00:00:42.840 --> 00:00:45.100 for this deep dive give us this really comprehensive 00:00:45.100 --> 00:00:47.899 and frankly challenging view of the man. We're 00:00:47.899 --> 00:00:50.759 spanning his sometimes difficult biography, his 00:00:50.759 --> 00:00:53.020 foundational philosophical concepts. Especially 00:00:53.020 --> 00:00:55.399 that famous slogan, existence precedes essence. 00:00:55.659 --> 00:00:58.060 Exactly. And his intense, often compromising 00:00:58.060 --> 00:01:00.299 career as a public figure. So our mission today 00:01:00.299 --> 00:01:03.479 is pretty laser focused. We need to unpack the 00:01:03.479 --> 00:01:06.040 central conflict that defined his entire body 00:01:06.040 --> 00:01:09.159 of work and really his whole life. This constant 00:01:09.159 --> 00:01:11.390 tension. between what he called Mauvais' foie. 00:01:11.549 --> 00:01:13.390 Bad faith. Right, the spiritually destructive 00:01:13.390 --> 00:01:17.069 conformity and the struggle for a truly authentic 00:01:17.069 --> 00:01:19.969 way of being. It's a huge area to cover. Because 00:01:19.969 --> 00:01:23.569 Sartre, he never stood still. He rejected any 00:01:23.569 --> 00:01:25.790 single static label you tried to put on him. 00:01:25.930 --> 00:01:28.170 And to give you just one key nugget right up 00:01:28.170 --> 00:01:31.349 front that I think absolutely encapsulates this 00:01:31.349 --> 00:01:33.870 man's uncompromising stance. Oh, I think I know 00:01:33.870 --> 00:01:35.549 where you're going with this. It has to be the 00:01:35.549 --> 00:01:38.930 Nobel Prize. In 1964, he was offered the Nobel 00:01:38.930 --> 00:01:41.670 Prize in literature. I mean, arguably the highest 00:01:41.670 --> 00:01:44.530 cultural honor in the world. And he just flatly 00:01:44.530 --> 00:01:47.049 refused it. And the reason he gave is just so 00:01:47.049 --> 00:01:49.189 perfectly Sartre. He said a writer should not 00:01:49.189 --> 00:01:51.530 allow himself to be turned into an institution. 00:01:51.890 --> 00:01:53.650 You don't want the Nobel Prize to define him. 00:01:53.750 --> 00:01:56.989 It's it's incredible. philosophy in action fascinating 00:01:56.989 --> 00:01:59.469 it sounds like the perfect example of his philosophy 00:01:59.469 --> 00:02:02.060 applied to his own public life So we're going 00:02:02.060 --> 00:02:04.280 to start, as always, at the beginning, section 00:02:04.280 --> 00:02:07.319 one, the formation of an existentialist. Sartre 00:02:07.319 --> 00:02:10.500 was born in Paris, 1905, and his early life was 00:02:10.500 --> 00:02:13.180 really marked by both tragedy and this intense 00:02:13.180 --> 00:02:16.259 intellectual immersion. His father, Jean -Baptiste 00:02:16.259 --> 00:02:19.199 Sartre, was a French Navy officer, but he died 00:02:19.199 --> 00:02:21.520 when Jean -Paul was just a toddler. Yeah, from 00:02:21.520 --> 00:02:23.639 a tropical fever when Sartre was only two years 00:02:23.639 --> 00:02:26.360 old. So he's left to be raised primarily by his 00:02:26.360 --> 00:02:28.860 mother, Anne -Marie, who moves back into her 00:02:28.860 --> 00:02:32.509 parents' house. The single most important early 00:02:32.509 --> 00:02:35.270 figure in his life becomes his maternal grandfather, 00:02:35.669 --> 00:02:37.969 Charles Schweitzer. And Charles Schweitzer was 00:02:37.969 --> 00:02:40.050 a fascinating character in his own right. A professor 00:02:40.050 --> 00:02:43.610 of German, a very strict academic. So not a relaxed 00:02:43.610 --> 00:02:46.830 household. Not at all. He essentially homeschooled 00:02:46.830 --> 00:02:48.849 the young Jean -Paul for a while, introducing 00:02:48.849 --> 00:02:50.990 him not just to classical German literature, 00:02:51.050 --> 00:02:53.750 but also to mathematics and this incredibly rigorous 00:02:53.750 --> 00:02:56.969 intellectual discipline from a very, very early 00:02:56.969 --> 00:02:59.669 age. That deep immersion, that kind of intellectual 00:02:59.669 --> 00:03:01.729 hothouse environment, it must have set him apart 00:03:01.729 --> 00:03:04.389 immediately. Oh, completely. And speaking of 00:03:04.389 --> 00:03:06.409 the Schweitzer family, it's worth loading a truly 00:03:06.409 --> 00:03:09.169 remarkable connection here. The world -famous 00:03:09.169 --> 00:03:12.949 theologian, physician, humanitarian, Albert Schweitzer. 00:03:13.370 --> 00:03:16.030 Who won his own Nobel Peace Prize. He was actually 00:03:16.030 --> 00:03:18.909 Sartre's first cousin. I mean, that's an intellectually 00:03:18.909 --> 00:03:22.310 powerful family tree. It certainly was. But that 00:03:22.310 --> 00:03:25.729 privileged intellectual start was then juxtaposed 00:03:25.729 --> 00:03:28.270 with some pretty significant physical and social 00:03:28.270 --> 00:03:30.530 difficulties later on. This is when his mother 00:03:30.530 --> 00:03:33.169 remarries and they move to La Rochelle. Exactly. 00:03:33.449 --> 00:03:36.849 And there he experienced frequent and by all 00:03:36.849 --> 00:03:40.639 accounts, really unpleasant bullying. And a major 00:03:40.639 --> 00:03:43.020 factor in that bullying, which must have shaped 00:03:43.020 --> 00:03:45.300 his outlook on the gaze of the other, something 00:03:45.300 --> 00:03:47.580 we'll get into, was his physical appearance. 00:03:47.840 --> 00:03:50.819 Right. He suffered from poor vision, specifically 00:03:50.819 --> 00:03:53.520 a condition that's often described as a wandering 00:03:53.520 --> 00:03:56.340 blind right eye. Sensory exotropia is the clinical 00:03:56.340 --> 00:03:58.430 term. But the real consequence, of course, was 00:03:58.430 --> 00:04:00.710 social alienation. He was perpetually marked 00:04:00.710 --> 00:04:03.289 as different. That physical difference combined 00:04:03.289 --> 00:04:05.389 with the social friction it caused, you have 00:04:05.389 --> 00:04:07.569 to think it pushed him inward, made him rely 00:04:07.569 --> 00:04:10.210 more on his own intellectual landscape. Absolutely. 00:04:10.330 --> 00:04:12.469 So it's no surprise then that his attraction 00:04:12.469 --> 00:04:15.270 to philosophy began so powerfully in his teens, 00:04:15.449 --> 00:04:18.269 specifically after reading a work by Henri Bergson. 00:04:18.529 --> 00:04:21.350 Time and free will. That's the one. An essay 00:04:21.350 --> 00:04:23.730 on the immediate data of consciousness. And that's 00:04:23.730 --> 00:04:26.170 where the path really began. He eventually follows 00:04:26.170 --> 00:04:28.589 the elite academic track, earning his way into 00:04:28.589 --> 00:04:31.529 the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, the 00:04:31.529 --> 00:04:34.790 ENS in Paris. Which was the intellectual incubator 00:04:34.790 --> 00:04:37.769 for France's future elite. This is where the 00:04:37.769 --> 00:04:39.910 best of the best went. His studies were broad 00:04:39.910 --> 00:04:43.490 psychology, logic, ethics, even physics. And 00:04:43.490 --> 00:04:46.829 he completes his MA thesis in 1928 on consciousness. 00:04:47.370 --> 00:04:50.560 L 'image dans la vie psychologique. Role in nature. 00:04:50.879 --> 00:04:54.139 Image in psychological life. Role and nature. 00:04:54.319 --> 00:04:56.160 But the sources are clear that this academic 00:04:56.160 --> 00:04:58.899 grind, it didn't dull his mischievous side. Oh, 00:04:58.920 --> 00:05:01.339 not at all. The sources highlight that Sartre, 00:05:01.480 --> 00:05:03.660 you know, the future icon of existential gloom, 00:05:03.660 --> 00:05:06.420 was known during his ENS years as one of the 00:05:06.420 --> 00:05:09.199 school's fiercest pranksters. I love that. It's 00:05:09.199 --> 00:05:11.899 this deeply rebellious, almost collegiate jokester 00:05:11.899 --> 00:05:14.000 side to this intensely serious philosophical 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:16.680 icon. And it wasn't just, you know, harmless 00:05:16.680 --> 00:05:19.740 fun either. His pranks often targeted the institution 00:05:19.740 --> 00:05:24.019 itself. In 1927, he co -wrote this anti -militarist 00:05:24.019 --> 00:05:26.379 satirical cartoon in the school's review. And 00:05:26.379 --> 00:05:29.060 it caused a huge scandal. A massive scandal. 00:05:29.259 --> 00:05:32.500 It severely upset the director, a man named Gustav 00:05:32.500 --> 00:05:35.740 Lansson. But the real masterpiece of mischief, 00:05:35.939 --> 00:05:39.079 that came later in 27. And it centered around 00:05:39.079 --> 00:05:41.920 one of the most famous events of the entire decade. 00:05:42.259 --> 00:05:45.089 Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight. New 00:05:45.089 --> 00:05:47.649 York to Paris. The Lindbergh incident perfectly 00:05:47.649 --> 00:05:50.889 illustrates Sartre's early willingness to just 00:05:50.889 --> 00:05:54.399 undermine and mock authority. He and his friends 00:05:54.399 --> 00:05:56.980 orchestrated a media stunt. They contacted a 00:05:56.980 --> 00:05:59.420 bunch of major newspapers, including Le Petit 00:05:59.420 --> 00:06:02.240 Parisien. And they told them completely falsely 00:06:02.240 --> 00:06:04.600 that the school director, Gustave Lanson, was 00:06:04.600 --> 00:06:07.279 going to award Lindbergh an honorary degree at 00:06:07.279 --> 00:06:09.560 the ENS. And the result was chaos, wasn't it? 00:06:09.680 --> 00:06:12.639 Absolute pandemonium. Thousands of people, reporters, 00:06:12.959 --> 00:06:15.180 spectators, officials, they all show up at the 00:06:15.180 --> 00:06:17.980 school. Only to find a Lindbergh lookalike performing 00:06:17.980 --> 00:06:20.860 some kind of staged antic. The resulting scandal 00:06:20.860 --> 00:06:23.819 was so severe and the director, Lanson, was so 00:06:23.819 --> 00:06:26.540 humiliated by the media attention that he was 00:06:26.540 --> 00:06:28.699 forced to resign. That's not just a prank. I 00:06:28.699 --> 00:06:30.259 mean, that's revolutionary action in miniature. 00:06:30.439 --> 00:06:32.620 It just shows this early contempt for institutional 00:06:32.620 --> 00:06:35.470 pretense. It really sets the stage for his whole 00:06:35.470 --> 00:06:38.069 career. He's challenging the integrity of a major 00:06:38.069 --> 00:06:40.189 French institution before he's even published 00:06:40.189 --> 00:06:44.170 a philosophy book. But 1929, that brings an encounter 00:06:44.170 --> 00:06:46.430 that will define not only his personal life, 00:06:46.529 --> 00:06:49.790 but his entire philosophical trajectory. He met 00:06:49.790 --> 00:06:52.750 Simone de Beauvoir. Right. They met while studying 00:06:52.750 --> 00:06:55.050 for their final teaching certification exams, 00:06:55.389 --> 00:06:58.439 the aggregation. which Sartre passed first in 00:06:58.439 --> 00:07:01.220 his class and de Beauvoir second. They quickly 00:07:01.220 --> 00:07:04.959 became inseparable, lifelong companions. And 00:07:04.959 --> 00:07:07.279 their relationship was just radical in its rejection 00:07:07.279 --> 00:07:09.829 of the bourgeois norm. A non -monogamous open 00:07:09.829 --> 00:07:11.769 partnership. It wasn't just a personal arrangement, 00:07:11.889 --> 00:07:15.089 was it? It was a living, breathing, philosophical 00:07:15.089 --> 00:07:18.050 experiment. Absolutely. It was a concrete public 00:07:18.050 --> 00:07:21.089 challenge to social and sexual conformity that 00:07:21.089 --> 00:07:23.449 mirrored the very concept of radical freedom 00:07:23.449 --> 00:07:25.250 they would later articulate in their writings. 00:07:25.490 --> 00:07:27.610 It was an intellectual pact, a commitment to 00:07:27.610 --> 00:07:30.230 mutual freedom and shared intellectual output 00:07:30.230 --> 00:07:32.569 that defined both of their lives, even as its 00:07:32.569 --> 00:07:35.430 specific dynamics would become, well, intensely 00:07:35.430 --> 00:07:38.220 controversial later on. Meanwhile, his philosophical 00:07:38.220 --> 00:07:41.480 foundation continued to deepen. Who were the 00:07:41.480 --> 00:07:43.519 major intellectual architects of his thought 00:07:43.519 --> 00:07:47.379 beyond that initial spark from Bergson? Oh, crucially, 00:07:47.439 --> 00:07:49.860 it was German thought. He was heavily influenced 00:07:49.860 --> 00:07:52.660 by the work of Edmund Husserl, whose phenomenology. 00:07:52.860 --> 00:07:54.920 That's the study of consciousness and how objects 00:07:54.920 --> 00:07:57.439 appear to it. Exactly. And he studied it firsthand 00:07:57.439 --> 00:08:01.939 in Berlin in 1933 and 34. This study of intentionality, 00:08:02.040 --> 00:08:03.959 the idea that consciousness is always consciousness 00:08:03.959 --> 00:08:07.319 of something. was just foundational to his later 00:08:07.319 --> 00:08:09.600 concept of the self. And he also absorbed the 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:12.079 other major German influences, Martin Heidegger, 00:08:12.199 --> 00:08:14.480 who we will definitely come back to, and the 00:08:14.480 --> 00:08:17.500 neo -Hegelian revival led by Aleksandr Kozhev. 00:08:17.639 --> 00:08:20.060 Yes, Kozhev's seminars revived interest in Hegel's 00:08:20.060 --> 00:08:23.040 phenomenology of spirit and gave Sartre the framework 00:08:23.040 --> 00:08:25.759 to combine that introspective focus of phenomenology 00:08:25.759 --> 00:08:29.100 with the dramatic historical sweep of Hegelian 00:08:29.100 --> 00:08:31.319 thought. And all these influences, they culminate 00:08:31.319 --> 00:08:33.779 in a single definitive philosophical statement, 00:08:33.820 --> 00:08:35.850 which is where we're going. now in section two, 00:08:36.049 --> 00:08:39.649 existence precedes essence. This is the core 00:08:39.649 --> 00:08:42.809 doctrine. The title of his main philosophical 00:08:42.809 --> 00:08:46.470 work, Being and Nothingness, or Lettres le Néant 00:08:46.470 --> 00:08:50.289 from 1943. It sounds dense. It sounds incredibly 00:08:50.289 --> 00:08:53.570 dense. But its central idea, which he crystallized 00:08:53.570 --> 00:08:56.450 in his later essay, Existentialism is a Humanism, 00:08:56.549 --> 00:08:59.129 is remarkably simple and profoundly disruptive. 00:09:00.460 --> 00:09:03.059 Existence precedes essence. Let's clarify this 00:09:03.059 --> 00:09:05.360 through his famous analogy. Right. If you consider 00:09:05.360 --> 00:09:08.279 a manufactured object, say a paper cutter, when 00:09:08.279 --> 00:09:10.820 an artisan sets out to create it, the essence, 00:09:11.080 --> 00:09:14.299 the plan, the definition, its purpose exists 00:09:14.299 --> 00:09:16.580 in the craftsman's mind first. So the essence 00:09:16.580 --> 00:09:19.080 is determined before the object itself even exists. 00:09:19.360 --> 00:09:21.179 Precisely. The purpose of the paper cutter defines 00:09:21.179 --> 00:09:23.379 its existence. It has a predetermined nature. 00:09:23.519 --> 00:09:26.480 Got it. Now, Sartre applies this to humans. In 00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:28.940 a universe without a creator, which is his starting 00:09:28.940 --> 00:09:31.899 point, we can't appeal to a divine craftsman 00:09:31.899 --> 00:09:33.820 who has a blueprint for human nature. We're just 00:09:33.820 --> 00:09:35.919 thrown into the world. Exactly. We exist first 00:09:35.919 --> 00:09:38.980 as beings, raw and undefined. And it's only through 00:09:38.980 --> 00:09:40.980 our subsequent engagement with the world, our 00:09:40.980 --> 00:09:43.240 actions, our choices, our commitments, that we 00:09:43.240 --> 00:09:45.419 define ourselves. We create our own essence. 00:09:45.679 --> 00:09:48.500 So if I spend my life being a doctor, it's my 00:09:48.500 --> 00:09:51.159 sustained action of being a doctor that defines 00:09:51.159 --> 00:09:53.980 me, not some pre -programmed docterness that 00:09:53.980 --> 00:09:56.799 was planted in me at birth. That makes sense. 00:09:56.860 --> 00:09:59.779 But it also sounds terrifyingly open ended. It 00:09:59.779 --> 00:10:02.440 is terrifying. And this radical openness is what 00:10:02.440 --> 00:10:05.639 leads to that famous paradox. Humans are condemned 00:10:05.639 --> 00:10:08.379 to be free. Condemned to be free. I mean, it's 00:10:08.379 --> 00:10:11.200 an incredibly powerful phrase. What is the inherent 00:10:11.200 --> 00:10:13.519 burden that comes with this condemnation? The 00:10:13.519 --> 00:10:16.320 burden is total responsibility. Because there's 00:10:16.320 --> 00:10:18.559 no external law, no universal human nature, no 00:10:18.559 --> 00:10:21.620 God to appeal to. We are entirely and individually 00:10:21.620 --> 00:10:24.259 responsible for everything we do. You can't use 00:10:24.259 --> 00:10:26.059 your past actions or your temperament or your 00:10:26.059 --> 00:10:29.019 circumstances as an excuse? Never. Sartre puts 00:10:29.019 --> 00:10:31.659 it very starkly. We are left alone without excuse. 00:10:32.019 --> 00:10:34.120 And if we try to shirk that responsibility, if 00:10:34.120 --> 00:10:36.679 we try to pretend that a societal role does define 00:10:36.679 --> 00:10:39.519 us or that our past actions do excuse our present 00:10:39.519 --> 00:10:41.799 behavior, that's when we fall into the state 00:10:41.799 --> 00:10:44.360 that defines inauthenticity for Sartre. Which 00:10:44.360 --> 00:10:47.509 is Mauvais' foi. bad faith. Mauvaise foi. It's 00:10:47.509 --> 00:10:50.330 the dominant spiritual malaise that Sartre and 00:10:50.330 --> 00:10:53.409 de Beauvoir diagnosed in modern life. It's this 00:10:53.409 --> 00:10:56.309 act of self -deception, the lie we tell ourselves 00:10:56.309 --> 00:10:59.250 to avoid the anguish that comes from recognizing 00:10:59.250 --> 00:11:02.409 our absolute freedom. Can you give us a practical 00:11:02.409 --> 00:11:04.990 example of bad faith, something that makes it 00:11:04.990 --> 00:11:07.429 relatable? The famous example is the waiter, 00:11:07.610 --> 00:11:10.779 the waiter who acts too much like a waiter. Ah, 00:11:10.799 --> 00:11:13.360 yes. His movements are a little too precise, 00:11:13.519 --> 00:11:16.399 his voice a little too solicitous. He's trying 00:11:16.399 --> 00:11:18.860 to convince himself and the patrons that he is 00:11:18.860 --> 00:11:21.259 nothing more than the role of waiter. He's denying 00:11:21.259 --> 00:11:24.120 his freedom to choose other actions, other identities, 00:11:24.259 --> 00:11:26.559 other possibilities. Right. He's reducing himself 00:11:26.559 --> 00:11:29.559 from a dynamic, free consciousness, the pour 00:11:29.559 --> 00:11:32.440 soi, or being for itself to a fixed object, the 00:11:32.440 --> 00:11:35.639 en soi, or being in itself. Bad faith is when 00:11:35.639 --> 00:11:37.919 you try to become a thing. That makes the concept 00:11:37.919 --> 00:11:40.080 so immediate and applicable. who says, well, 00:11:40.120 --> 00:11:42.039 I can't leave this terrible job because I'm a 00:11:42.039 --> 00:11:44.639 banker, is acting in bad faith. They're denying 00:11:44.639 --> 00:11:47.419 their ability to choose otherwise. So authenticity 00:11:47.419 --> 00:11:50.059 then is about confronting that anguish and choosing 00:11:50.059 --> 00:11:53.840 to act in spite of it. And authenticity is earned. 00:11:54.039 --> 00:11:56.620 It's not learned. And Sartre felt that one of 00:11:56.620 --> 00:11:59.000 the most vital experiences required to achieve 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:02.580 this authentic understanding is death consciousness. 00:12:03.019 --> 00:12:05.500 That sounds incredibly heavy. How does understanding 00:12:05.500 --> 00:12:08.370 death contribute to authenticity? Well, it provides 00:12:08.370 --> 00:12:10.230 the ultimate boundary. As long as we're alive, 00:12:10.370 --> 00:12:12.549 we're dynamic freedom, we're constantly recreating 00:12:12.549 --> 00:12:16.269 ourselves through choice. Okay. But death is 00:12:16.269 --> 00:12:18.590 the moment when we cease to live for ourselves 00:12:18.590 --> 00:12:21.409 and we permanently become an object for the outside 00:12:21.409 --> 00:12:24.309 world. At death, our essence is finally fixed. 00:12:24.549 --> 00:12:27.809 Exactly. We are defined forever by the sum total 00:12:27.809 --> 00:12:30.590 of our actions. It's the final emphasis on the 00:12:30.590 --> 00:12:33.009 burden of free existence. You only have this 00:12:33.009 --> 00:12:34.889 limited time to create meaning through action. 00:12:35.049 --> 00:12:37.629 And when that window closes, the judgment of 00:12:37.629 --> 00:12:40.230 the others fixes your legacy. The knowledge of 00:12:40.230 --> 00:12:42.470 that impending finality, it drives the urgency 00:12:42.470 --> 00:12:46.049 for committed, authentic action. If you run away 00:12:46.049 --> 00:12:48.409 from that urgency by adopting an inauthentic 00:12:48.409 --> 00:12:50.950 role, you're essentially lying to the one thing 00:12:50.950 --> 00:12:53.980 that can't be denied. Your ultimate fate. Now, 00:12:54.039 --> 00:12:57.559 as earth shattering as this philosophy was, it 00:12:57.559 --> 00:13:00.860 generated intense criticism, even from those 00:13:00.860 --> 00:13:03.559 who influenced him. It's important to acknowledge 00:13:03.559 --> 00:13:05.740 these views, particularly from Martin Heidegger. 00:13:05.820 --> 00:13:08.539 Right. If Heidegger, the phenomenological master 00:13:08.539 --> 00:13:11.960 who influenced Sartre, was critiquing him, what 00:13:11.960 --> 00:13:14.740 was the core issue? Heidegger argued that by 00:13:14.740 --> 00:13:17.000 merely reversing the traditional metaphysical 00:13:17.000 --> 00:13:19.740 statement, you know, moving from essence precedes 00:13:19.740 --> 00:13:23.529 existence. to existence precedes essence. Sartre 00:13:23.529 --> 00:13:26.149 was still trapped. Trapped within the very framework 00:13:26.149 --> 00:13:28.389 of metaphysics that philosophy needed to escape. 00:13:28.710 --> 00:13:31.190 Precisely. Heidegger accused Sartre of missing 00:13:31.190 --> 00:13:34.110 the truth of being. What he meant was that Sartre 00:13:34.110 --> 00:13:37.230 focused too much on the human subject, on Dasein 00:13:37.230 --> 00:13:39.830 and its activity, rather than asking the more 00:13:39.830 --> 00:13:41.769 fundamental question about the source of being 00:13:41.769 --> 00:13:44.750 itself. So Sartre was too concerned with the 00:13:44.750 --> 00:13:47.169 immediate human condition, the anxiety of choice, 00:13:47.289 --> 00:13:48.970 and not enough with the fundamental mechanics 00:13:48.970 --> 00:13:51.350 of the universe. Exactly. He was still stuck 00:13:51.350 --> 00:13:53.090 in the subject -object loop, just flipped around. 00:13:53.450 --> 00:13:55.330 And then you have critiques like the one from 00:13:55.330 --> 00:13:57.769 Herbert Marcuse, another major critical philosopher. 00:13:58.049 --> 00:14:01.090 Marcuse used a very academic term, suggesting 00:14:01.090 --> 00:14:04.919 Sartre's existentialism Hypostatized certain 00:14:04.919 --> 00:14:07.519 conditions. What does that mean in plain terms? 00:14:08.220 --> 00:14:10.340 Hypostatized essentially means taking something 00:14:10.340 --> 00:14:13.080 that is a product of a specific temporary historical 00:14:13.080 --> 00:14:16.279 situation. Like post -war Europe. Right. And 00:14:16.279 --> 00:14:18.179 treating it as if it were a universal, eternal 00:14:18.179 --> 00:14:21.980 characteristic of existence itself. Marcuse suggested 00:14:21.980 --> 00:14:24.679 that the extreme anxiety, the meaninglessness, 00:14:24.820 --> 00:14:27.840 the radical sense of isolation that Sartre described, 00:14:28.240 --> 00:14:31.039 these were largely products of post -war capitalist 00:14:31.039 --> 00:14:34.350 European society. So by calling this ontological 00:14:34.350 --> 00:14:37.009 a basic truth of all being, Sartre was making 00:14:37.009 --> 00:14:39.149 his radicalism seem universal when it might have 00:14:39.149 --> 00:14:40.909 just been historically specific. Which would 00:14:40.909 --> 00:14:43.070 make his radicalism less universal and perhaps, 00:14:43.269 --> 00:14:46.110 as Marquis suggested, illusory. What's fascinating 00:14:46.110 --> 00:14:48.210 here is that whether the philosophers were attacking 00:14:48.210 --> 00:14:50.809 or praising him, the debate he generated just 00:14:50.809 --> 00:14:52.909 confirmed the immense intellectual force of his 00:14:52.909 --> 00:14:55.750 work. But these abstract concepts of freedom 00:14:55.750 --> 00:14:58.230 and anguish were about to be brutally tested 00:14:58.230 --> 00:15:00.850 by the concrete horrors of World War II. A perfect 00:15:00.850 --> 00:15:03.559 transition. As we move into Section 3, World 00:15:03.559 --> 00:15:06.179 War II and the Moral Crucible. Sartre's personal 00:15:06.179 --> 00:15:08.879 life and his philosophical output, they changed 00:15:08.879 --> 00:15:11.639 fundamentally when the war broke out. In 1939, 00:15:11.940 --> 00:15:14.399 he was drafted into the French Army. Serving 00:15:14.399 --> 00:15:16.679 as a meteorologist, which, given his subsequent 00:15:16.679 --> 00:15:19.500 career, is almost an amusing detail. He was captured 00:15:19.500 --> 00:15:22.220 by German troops in 1940. And he spent nine months 00:15:22.220 --> 00:15:24.620 as a prisoner of war, first in Nancy and then 00:15:24.620 --> 00:15:27.950 at Stalag 12d in Trier. Now, this confinement, 00:15:28.110 --> 00:15:30.990 despite all its hardship, proved crucial for 00:15:30.990 --> 00:15:33.409 his philosophical development. He wasn't just 00:15:33.409 --> 00:15:35.850 surviving, he was writing. He actually composed 00:15:35.850 --> 00:15:38.830 his first play there, Bariona, a Christmas drama. 00:15:39.149 --> 00:15:41.529 But most significantly, he read the work of the 00:15:41.529 --> 00:15:44.370 man who critiqued him, Martin Heidegger. Yes. 00:15:44.509 --> 00:15:47.289 During his time as a POW, he was able to read 00:15:47.289 --> 00:15:50.649 Heidegger's masterpiece, Sign and Sight, Being 00:15:50.649 --> 00:15:54.559 and Time. This intense exposure to Heidegger's 00:15:54.559 --> 00:15:56.860 phenomenological ontology became the primary, 00:15:56.919 --> 00:15:59.840 deep structural influence on his own major work, 00:16:00.080 --> 00:16:02.639 Being and Nothingness, which he started formulating 00:16:02.639 --> 00:16:05.679 immediately. He was released in April 1941, returning 00:16:05.679 --> 00:16:08.440 to teaching in occupied Paris. He claimed it 00:16:08.440 --> 00:16:10.279 was due to poor health, though there are suggestions 00:16:10.279 --> 00:16:12.419 he might have escaped after a medical visit. 00:16:12.679 --> 00:16:15.659 And he took up a teaching spot at Lycée Condosé. 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:18.779 a position that had become vacant because the 00:16:18.779 --> 00:16:21.360 Jewish teacher who previously held it was forbidden 00:16:21.360 --> 00:16:24.240 to teach under Vichy law. So this immediately 00:16:24.240 --> 00:16:26.419 plunges him into the ambiguities of collaboration 00:16:26.419 --> 00:16:28.980 and resistance. Straight away. He and de Beauvoir 00:16:28.980 --> 00:16:31.139 co -founded an underground group, Socialisme 00:16:31.139 --> 00:16:34.840 et Liberté, in 1941, aimed at active resistance. 00:16:35.379 --> 00:16:37.840 But this is where the theory of radical action 00:16:37.840 --> 00:16:40.419 meets the practical reality of revolution. And 00:16:40.419 --> 00:16:43.299 the result was, well, frankly, a bit comical. 00:16:43.679 --> 00:16:45.179 It's one of the great ironies in the history 00:16:45.179 --> 00:16:49.399 of ideas. In the spring of 41, Sartre, with what 00:16:49.399 --> 00:16:52.320 was described as cheerful ferocity, suggested 00:16:52.320 --> 00:16:54.299 at a meeting that they should execute prominent 00:16:54.299 --> 00:16:57.259 French collaborators. Naming names. Naming names, 00:16:57.399 --> 00:17:00.320 like Marcel Dyat. However, the group quickly 00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:03.830 dissolved. And why? Because, as de Beauvoir recorded, 00:17:04.150 --> 00:17:06.809 none of us felt qualified to make bombs or hurl 00:17:06.809 --> 00:17:09.029 grenades. Wait, so the world's most prominent 00:17:09.029 --> 00:17:10.970 philosopher of committed action and responsibility 00:17:10.970 --> 00:17:13.990 called for practical terrorism. And his revolutionary 00:17:13.990 --> 00:17:16.230 group disbanded because the intellectuals couldn't 00:17:16.230 --> 00:17:18.609 figure out how to wire a simple explosive device? 00:17:18.930 --> 00:17:21.750 Precisely. It's a striking example of the gap 00:17:21.750 --> 00:17:24.549 between theoretical commitment and the messy 00:17:24.549 --> 00:17:26.849 implementation required for real revolutionary 00:17:26.849 --> 00:17:30.289 change. So he recognizes the limits of his practical 00:17:30.289 --> 00:17:33.480 utility in that realm? and shifts his focus to 00:17:33.480 --> 00:17:36.240 cultural resistance through writing? Yes, producing 00:17:36.240 --> 00:17:38.680 Being and Nothingness and his famous plays and 00:17:38.680 --> 00:17:41.039 his analysis of the psychological environment 00:17:41.039 --> 00:17:43.920 of occupied Paris became one of his most lasting 00:17:43.920 --> 00:17:46.000 contributions to understanding political oppression. 00:17:46.240 --> 00:17:49.119 His essay, Paris Under the Occupation, is incredibly 00:17:49.119 --> 00:17:51.700 profound because it doesn't focus on German brutality, 00:17:51.960 --> 00:17:55.900 but on German... Correctness. Yes. He observed 00:17:55.900 --> 00:17:58.140 that the German soldiers maintained correct behavior. 00:17:58.259 --> 00:18:00.099 They offered seeds to old ladies. They spoke 00:18:00.099 --> 00:18:02.619 French politely. They weren't swaggering oppressors. 00:18:02.720 --> 00:18:04.680 And he found this politeness to be a trap. A 00:18:04.680 --> 00:18:07.619 moral trap, yes. Sartre argued that this correctness 00:18:07.619 --> 00:18:09.799 entrapped many Parisians into complicity and 00:18:09.799 --> 00:18:12.539 passivity. The very act of a Parisian speaking 00:18:12.539 --> 00:18:15.759 politely to a Wehrmacht soldier, maybe to offer 00:18:15.759 --> 00:18:18.640 directions, meant complicity. It gave citizens 00:18:18.640 --> 00:18:21.299 an excuse to retreat into bad faith. It allowed 00:18:21.299 --> 00:18:23.180 them to pretend things were natural and avoid 00:18:23.180 --> 00:18:25.619 the responsibility of resistance. As he noted, 00:18:25.720 --> 00:18:27.720 we could not be natural. It's the application 00:18:27.720 --> 00:18:30.400 of bad faith on a national scale. The French 00:18:30.400 --> 00:18:33.319 retreat into the inauthentic role of polite, 00:18:33.400 --> 00:18:36.299 occupied citizen rather than recognizing their 00:18:36.299 --> 00:18:39.519 radical freedom to resist. This brings us directly 00:18:39.519 --> 00:18:43.779 to his 1944 play, No Exit. Which is where we 00:18:43.779 --> 00:18:46.519 find his most famous and frequently misunderstood 00:18:46.519 --> 00:18:51.430 line. Hell is other people. For so many people, 00:18:51.470 --> 00:18:53.750 that line is just a statement about annoying 00:18:53.750 --> 00:18:56.930 roommates or bad relationships. But the wartime 00:18:56.930 --> 00:18:59.730 context adds this crucial layer of meaning, doesn't 00:18:59.730 --> 00:19:02.049 it? Oh, it absolutely does. The sources note 00:19:02.049 --> 00:19:04.990 that les autres, the others, was a common, slightly 00:19:04.990 --> 00:19:07.329 coded term the French often used to refer to 00:19:07.329 --> 00:19:10.309 the German occupiers. So given the context of 00:19:10.309 --> 00:19:12.170 occupation, the line takes on a sharp political 00:19:12.170 --> 00:19:15.240 edge. Hell is being constantly defined, judged, 00:19:15.500 --> 00:19:18.559 and constrained by the inescapable defining gaze 00:19:18.559 --> 00:19:21.019 of the occupying others. It's perpetual judgment, 00:19:21.220 --> 00:19:24.019 the ultimate denial of radical freedom. Exactly. 00:19:24.259 --> 00:19:27.460 Post -war, Sartre's engagement just intensified 00:19:27.460 --> 00:19:30.799 dramatically. In 1945, he co -founded the literary 00:19:30.799 --> 00:19:33.299 and political review Les Temps Modernes. And 00:19:33.299 --> 00:19:36.059 this was specifically to popularize existentialist 00:19:36.059 --> 00:19:39.000 ideas and, crucially, to advocate for specific 00:19:39.000 --> 00:19:41.500 political causes. And he used his war experiences 00:19:41.500 --> 00:19:43.980 directly for his great literary project, the 00:19:43.980 --> 00:19:46.950 novel trilogy The Roads to Freedom. The war just 00:19:46.950 --> 00:19:49.970 fundamentally changed him. It cemented his transformation 00:19:49.970 --> 00:19:53.609 from an apolitical, liberal intellectual into 00:19:53.609 --> 00:19:56.089 a figure whose life was wholly defined by public, 00:19:56.250 --> 00:19:59.029 often polarizing, commitment. And this launches 00:19:59.029 --> 00:20:00.930 him right into the highly polarized world of 00:20:00.930 --> 00:20:02.509 the Cold War, which is the subject of Section 00:20:02.509 --> 00:20:06.410 4, The Uncompromising Activist. After 1945, the 00:20:06.410 --> 00:20:08.470 role of the intellectual became politicized like 00:20:08.470 --> 00:20:10.839 never before. And Sartre just embraced this, 00:20:10.940 --> 00:20:13.759 viewing culture as a process of continual invention 00:20:13.759 --> 00:20:16.359 and reinvention. One that required the intellectual 00:20:16.359 --> 00:20:18.539 to systematically challenge every institution 00:20:18.539 --> 00:20:21.160 and every injustice. What's most complex about 00:20:21.160 --> 00:20:23.539 his activism, though, is his relationship with 00:20:23.539 --> 00:20:27.039 communism. He was fiercely drawn to Marxist theory 00:20:27.039 --> 00:20:30.420 and critique, but he maintained this deeply contradictory 00:20:30.420 --> 00:20:33.599 stance toward the practical reality of the Soviet 00:20:33.599 --> 00:20:36.779 bloc. That contradiction really defined the 1950s 00:20:36.779 --> 00:20:39.349 for him. Critically, he never joined the French 00:20:39.349 --> 00:20:42.049 Communist Party, the PCF. Right. He objected 00:20:42.049 --> 00:20:45.309 specifically to its later authoritarian tendencies. 00:20:45.910 --> 00:20:48.910 And yet, for a significant period, he maintained 00:20:48.910 --> 00:20:51.849 a belief in the moral superiority of the Eastern 00:20:51.849 --> 00:20:54.140 Bloc. Arguing that this belief was necessary 00:20:54.140 --> 00:20:56.880 to keep hope alive for a global revolution. The 00:20:56.880 --> 00:20:59.099 famous French phrase that summarized his political 00:20:59.099 --> 00:21:02.160 attitude then was Il ne faut pas désespérer Bilencourt. 00:21:02.299 --> 00:21:04.500 We must not despair Bilencourt. And Bilencourt 00:21:04.500 --> 00:21:06.539 was the location of a major Renault factory. 00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:09.380 So it symbolized the French working class, the 00:21:09.380 --> 00:21:12.380 communist activist base. So Sartre's stance meant 00:21:12.380 --> 00:21:15.019 that activists and intellectuals had a duty to 00:21:15.019 --> 00:21:17.500 withhold certain truths, particularly about Soviet 00:21:17.500 --> 00:21:20.119 failures, if revealing them might extinguish 00:21:20.119 --> 00:21:22.220 the revolutionary enthusiasm of the workers. 00:21:22.460 --> 00:21:25.380 And this led him down some very precarious ethical 00:21:25.380 --> 00:21:28.000 paths. The sources highlight that he opposed 00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:30.680 any criticism of Soviet labor camps in 1950, 00:21:31.140 --> 00:21:34.779 arguing he and de Beauvoir were free to remain 00:21:34.779 --> 00:21:37.740 aloof from the quarrel over the camps, as long 00:21:37.740 --> 00:21:40.079 as no events of sociological significance had 00:21:40.079 --> 00:21:42.759 occurred. His reasoning was that he saw Western 00:21:42.759 --> 00:21:45.440 anti -communism as fundamentally a move against 00:21:45.440 --> 00:21:48.059 the proletariat, and he felt compelled to defend 00:21:48.059 --> 00:21:51.059 the idea of revolution at all costs. Which led 00:21:51.059 --> 00:21:53.299 to these moments of astonishing idealism completely 00:21:53.299 --> 00:21:56.839 detached from reality. In 1954, after visiting 00:21:56.839 --> 00:21:59.279 the Soviet Union, he claimed to find complete 00:21:59.279 --> 00:22:02.180 freedom of criticism there. A claim that was, 00:22:02.500 --> 00:22:05.059 to put it mildly, difficult to sustain given 00:22:05.059 --> 00:22:07.400 the historical context. At the same time, he 00:22:07.400 --> 00:22:09.000 was condemning the United States for sinking 00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:12.450 into pre -fascism. So his focus wasn't on validating 00:22:12.450 --> 00:22:15.390 the political reality of the USSR, but on maintaining 00:22:15.390 --> 00:22:17.930 the ideological integrity of the revolutionary 00:22:17.930 --> 00:22:20.950 idea against Western interests. That's a crucial 00:22:20.950 --> 00:22:23.369 distinction. It is. The contradictions really 00:22:23.369 --> 00:22:26.369 came to a head following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, 00:22:26.609 --> 00:22:28.609 where workers and intellectuals spontaneously 00:22:28.609 --> 00:22:31.529 rose up against Soviet control. And initially, 00:22:31.789 --> 00:22:34.450 Sartre praised it. He did. He called it a magnificent, 00:22:34.670 --> 00:22:37.690 spontaneous explosion, a true act of the masses. 00:22:37.950 --> 00:22:41.069 But later he backtracked, criticizing it for 00:22:41.069 --> 00:22:44.390 losing its socialist base once the revolution 00:22:44.390 --> 00:22:47.660 turned decisively anti -Soviet. He was always 00:22:47.660 --> 00:22:50.180 more committed to the theoretical Marxist path 00:22:50.180 --> 00:22:53.059 than the messy reality of political uprisings. 00:22:53.220 --> 00:22:55.579 And his most controversial defense of secrecy 00:22:55.579 --> 00:22:59.220 came in 1964 when he attacked Khrushchev's secret 00:22:59.220 --> 00:23:02.539 speech, which had exposed and condemned Stalin's 00:23:02.539 --> 00:23:05.180 purges. It showed the full scope of the mass 00:23:05.180 --> 00:23:07.920 killings and terror. Sartre argued that Khrushchev 00:23:07.920 --> 00:23:10.460 had made a fundamental mistake by revealing the 00:23:10.460 --> 00:23:13.680 full truth about Stalin's crimes. His logic was 00:23:13.680 --> 00:23:15.759 consistent with the Bill and Court motto, the 00:23:15.759 --> 00:23:18.220 mass. were not ready to receive the truth he 00:23:18.220 --> 00:23:20.299 believed that revealing the full extent of the 00:23:20.299 --> 00:23:22.420 horrors would only demoralize the revolutionary 00:23:22.420 --> 00:23:24.839 class and play into the hands of the capitalist 00:23:24.839 --> 00:23:27.500 west so he's prioritizing ideological utility 00:23:27.500 --> 00:23:30.740 over historical fact which is a truly difficult 00:23:30.740 --> 00:23:33.839 position for an intellectual whose entire philosophy 00:23:33.839 --> 00:23:36.559 demands radical honesty his political focus did 00:23:36.559 --> 00:23:38.859 shift significantly in the late 1950s though 00:23:38.859 --> 00:23:42.579 he became disillusioned with the apolitical European 00:23:42.579 --> 00:23:45.140 working classes. Right, and he started to argue 00:23:45.140 --> 00:23:47.880 that the true engine of revolution would be the 00:23:47.880 --> 00:23:50.980 impoverished masses of the Third World. This 00:23:50.980 --> 00:23:53.339 was heavily influenced by figures like Frantz 00:23:53.339 --> 00:23:56.759 Fanon, and Sartre dedicated his energy to supporting 00:23:56.759 --> 00:23:59.910 the real damned of the Earth. And this shift 00:23:59.910 --> 00:24:03.089 cemented his role as a massive figure in global 00:24:03.089 --> 00:24:06.150 anticolonialism. His opposition to French rule 00:24:06.150 --> 00:24:08.869 in Algeria was perhaps his most prominent public 00:24:08.869 --> 00:24:11.769 fight. He fiercely supported the Algerian National 00:24:11.769 --> 00:24:15.049 Liberation Front, the FLN. He publicly condemned 00:24:15.049 --> 00:24:17.910 French policies, including the widespread use 00:24:17.910 --> 00:24:20.130 of torture, and provided intellectual legitimacy 00:24:20.130 --> 00:24:22.789 to the anticolonial struggle. And this commitment 00:24:22.789 --> 00:24:25.970 carried profound personal risk. It went far beyond 00:24:25.970 --> 00:24:28.430 just writing essays. Absolutely. Because of his 00:24:28.430 --> 00:24:30.930 outspoken support for Algerian self -determination, 00:24:31.089 --> 00:24:33.710 he became a direct target of the organization 00:24:33.710 --> 00:24:37.289 Armée Secrète, the OAS. A far -right paramilitary 00:24:37.289 --> 00:24:40.049 group committed to keeping Algeria French. And 00:24:40.049 --> 00:24:42.349 Sartre narrowly escaped two separate bomb attacks 00:24:42.349 --> 00:24:44.930 aimed at him in the early 1960s. He was putting 00:24:44.930 --> 00:24:46.930 his physical existence on the line for his political 00:24:46.930 --> 00:24:49.549 commitments. He also became one of the most visible 00:24:49.549 --> 00:24:53.269 global critics of U .S. policy, notably organizing 00:24:53.269 --> 00:24:56.410 the Russell Tribunal in 1967. Which aimed to 00:24:56.410 --> 00:24:58.809 expose alleged U .S. war crimes during the Vietnam 00:24:58.809 --> 00:25:01.900 War. He admired revolutionary leaders globally, 00:25:02.160 --> 00:25:05.019 famously declaring Che Guevara to be the era's 00:25:05.019 --> 00:25:07.779 most perfect man. Later, he supported Maoists 00:25:07.779 --> 00:25:10.000 and even described himself as a special kind 00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.039 of anarchist. And this reputation as the uncompromising 00:25:14.039 --> 00:25:16.779 anti -establishment intellectual brings us right 00:25:16.779 --> 00:25:19.319 back to the moment that perhaps defines his rejection 00:25:19.319 --> 00:25:21.579 of the establishment more than any other. The 00:25:21.579 --> 00:25:24.420 1964 Nobel Prize for Literature. The Swedish 00:25:24.420 --> 00:25:26.980 Academy selected him, and he rejected the honor. 00:25:27.309 --> 00:25:29.750 making him one of only two laureates in history 00:25:29.750 --> 00:25:32.450 to voluntarily decline the prize. He even tried 00:25:32.450 --> 00:25:34.470 to head it off beforehand, writing to the Nobel 00:25:34.470 --> 00:25:36.809 Institute asking to be removed from the list 00:25:36.809 --> 00:25:38.930 of nominees. Because he didn't want the institution 00:25:38.930 --> 00:25:41.170 to define him. His public statement explained 00:25:41.170 --> 00:25:43.970 that he always refused official honors and that 00:25:43.970 --> 00:25:45.930 accepting the prize would turn him into a pawn 00:25:45.930 --> 00:25:48.690 in the East versus West cultural struggle. He 00:25:48.690 --> 00:25:50.410 didn't want to be turned into an institution 00:25:50.410 --> 00:25:53.230 or be used as a cultural symbol by either side. 00:25:53.410 --> 00:25:55.809 It's the ultimate act of philosophical purity, 00:25:56.049 --> 00:25:58.609 of resistance against institutional classification. 00:25:58.789 --> 00:26:02.490 It is a grand high -minded gesture of ideological 00:26:02.490 --> 00:26:06.240 commitment. But the sources reveal a fascinating, 00:26:06.579 --> 00:26:10.859 almost darkly comic postscript that brings this 00:26:10.859 --> 00:26:13.960 principled stand right back down to earth. Yes. 00:26:14.019 --> 00:26:16.799 Years later, in 1975, when he was in poor health 00:26:16.799 --> 00:26:19.220 and facing financial difficulties. Sartre, or 00:26:19.220 --> 00:26:22.119 someone acting on his behalf, actually contacted 00:26:22.119 --> 00:26:24.740 the Swedish Academy requesting the prize money. 00:26:25.220 --> 00:26:27.559 despite having refused the honor. Wait, so the 00:26:27.559 --> 00:26:29.619 same man who declared that he would never let 00:26:29.619 --> 00:26:32.039 himself be corrupted by Western honors later 00:26:32.039 --> 00:26:34.319 tried to cash the check. He did. And he was, 00:26:34.400 --> 00:26:36.920 of course, refused the money. Now, this small 00:26:36.920 --> 00:26:39.880 anecdote doesn't negate the power of his original 00:26:39.880 --> 00:26:42.259 ideological gesture. But it certainly complicates 00:26:42.259 --> 00:26:44.220 it. It highlights the immense human complexity 00:26:44.220 --> 00:26:46.460 and contradiction in a man who spent his life 00:26:46.460 --> 00:26:49.319 insisting on absolute freedom and radical self 00:26:49.319 --> 00:26:52.299 -responsibility. That moment where grand ideology 00:26:52.299 --> 00:26:55.400 meets messy human need is the perfect launch 00:26:55.400 --> 00:26:58.319 pad for our final section as we examine his vast 00:26:58.319 --> 00:27:01.779 literary output, his enduring legacy, and the 00:27:01.779 --> 00:27:04.119 serious controversies that have clouded his reputation. 00:27:04.960 --> 00:27:07.619 Sartre wrote successfully across almost every 00:27:07.619 --> 00:27:10.720 mode imaginable. Novels, plays, critical essays, 00:27:10.900 --> 00:27:13.559 biographies. His plays, like The Flies, which 00:27:13.559 --> 00:27:15.880 is an existential retelling of the Orestes myth, 00:27:16.019 --> 00:27:18.279 and of course the highly focused No Exit, were 00:27:18.279 --> 00:27:20.460 these symbolic vehicles for communicating his 00:27:20.460 --> 00:27:22.900 philosophy to a broader audience. And his novel 00:27:22.900 --> 00:27:25.599 trilogy, The Roads to Freedom, provided a more 00:27:25.599 --> 00:27:28.559 accessible, less theoretical look at existentialism 00:27:28.559 --> 00:27:30.380 applied to characters facing the complexities 00:27:30.380 --> 00:27:34.009 of wartime existence. But in 1964, the same year 00:27:34.009 --> 00:27:36.450 as the Nobel refusal, he published a really unusual 00:27:36.450 --> 00:27:40.150 memoir, The Words, or Le Monde. The Words is 00:27:40.150 --> 00:27:42.470 a witty, often sardonic account of his first 00:27:42.470 --> 00:27:45.410 10 years. It was an ironic response to the literary 00:27:45.410 --> 00:27:48.150 conventions of the time, specifically the epic 00:27:48.150 --> 00:27:49.809 introspection of someone like Marcel Proust. 00:27:50.009 --> 00:27:51.789 And in this memoir, Sartre renounced literature 00:27:51.789 --> 00:27:54.309 itself. Renounced it. Why? Consistent with his 00:27:54.309 --> 00:27:57.390 political shift, he began to see literature as 00:27:57.390 --> 00:28:00.490 a distraction. He called it a bourgeois substitute 00:28:00.490 --> 00:28:03.720 for real commitment. suggesting that true action 00:28:03.720 --> 00:28:06.440 and philosophical duty had to be found outside 00:28:06.440 --> 00:28:08.740 the comfortable aesthetic realm of the novel. 00:28:08.880 --> 00:28:11.099 Despite this renunciation, he then dedicated 00:28:11.099 --> 00:28:13.920 his later years to arguably the most monumental 00:28:13.920 --> 00:28:16.619 and challenging projects of his entire career. 00:28:17.410 --> 00:28:20.289 Notably, the unfinished analytical biography 00:28:20.289 --> 00:28:23.230 of Gustave Flaubert, The Family Idiot. I mean, 00:28:23.250 --> 00:28:25.690 this became an enormous study of Flaubert's life 00:28:25.690 --> 00:28:27.730 through the lens of psychology and sociology. 00:28:28.210 --> 00:28:30.349 And the second volume of his major philosophical 00:28:30.349 --> 00:28:33.230 work, Critique of Dialectical Reason. And the 00:28:33.230 --> 00:28:35.730 sheer physical and intellectual cost of these 00:28:35.730 --> 00:28:38.250 mammoth projects was just immense. His relentless 00:28:38.250 --> 00:28:41.329 pace, coupled with being a notorious chain smoker 00:28:41.329 --> 00:28:43.970 and a heavy user of amphetamines to stay working. 00:28:44.109 --> 00:28:46.309 It contributed to a significant decline in his 00:28:46.309 --> 00:28:48.250 health. suffered from severe hypertension, and 00:28:48.250 --> 00:28:51.190 became almost completely blind by 1973. When 00:28:51.190 --> 00:28:53.730 asked in 1975 how he wished to be remembered, 00:28:53.950 --> 00:28:57.170 he didn't just pick one work. He offered a cross 00:28:57.170 --> 00:28:59.089 -section, which I think demonstrates the interconnected 00:28:59.089 --> 00:29:01.829 nature of his output. He cited the novel Nausea, 00:29:01.849 --> 00:29:04.049 the plays No Exit and The Devil and The Good 00:29:04.049 --> 00:29:06.710 Lord, the philosophical treatise Contique of 00:29:06.710 --> 00:29:09.630 Dialectical Reason, and his critical essay on 00:29:09.630 --> 00:29:13.049 Genet, Saint Genet. He wanted his legacy to be 00:29:13.049 --> 00:29:15.730 remembered as the conscience of his historical 00:29:15.730 --> 00:29:19.390 moment. And his intellectual power was undiminished 00:29:19.390 --> 00:29:22.369 even as his body failed him. He died on April 00:29:22.369 --> 00:29:26.089 15th, 1980 from pulmonary edema in Paris. And 00:29:26.089 --> 00:29:28.609 the public reaction just confirmed his immense 00:29:28.609 --> 00:29:31.029 status despite all the controversies. The scale 00:29:31.029 --> 00:29:33.490 of public mourning was truly extraordinary. 50 00:29:33.490 --> 00:29:36.069 ,000 mourners descended onto the Boulevard du 00:29:36.069 --> 00:29:39.109 Montparnasse to accompany his cortege. That massive 00:29:39.109 --> 00:29:41.529 outpouring of public grief showed that even though 00:29:41.529 --> 00:29:43.970 he had rejected institutions and sometimes alienated 00:29:43.970 --> 00:29:45.650 both the left and the right, he remained the 00:29:45.650 --> 00:29:47.710 quintessential, indispensable, and sometimes 00:29:47.710 --> 00:29:50.009 deeply uncomfortable conscience of his century. 00:29:50.309 --> 00:29:53.910 However, we have to confront the final and most 00:29:53.910 --> 00:29:56.710 complicated layer of his legacy. And this emerged 00:29:56.710 --> 00:29:59.089 posthumously and severely complicated the moral 00:29:59.089 --> 00:30:01.609 authority of this intellectual giant. Serious 00:30:01.609 --> 00:30:03.730 allegations of sexual exploitation involving 00:30:03.730 --> 00:30:05.789 his long -term companions, Simone de Beauvoir 00:30:05.789 --> 00:30:08.190 and their students. These allegations came to 00:30:08.190 --> 00:30:11.730 light in 1993 with the publication of the memoir 00:30:11.730 --> 00:30:15.369 Memoire d 'une jeune fille dérangée, published 00:30:15.369 --> 00:30:18.750 in English as A Disgraceful Affair. This was 00:30:18.750 --> 00:30:21.089 by the French author Bianca Lamblin, who was 00:30:21.089 --> 00:30:24.029 formerly Bianca Bienenfeld. Lamblin claimed she 00:30:24.029 --> 00:30:26.589 was sexually exploited by her teacher, Simone 00:30:26.589 --> 00:30:29.450 de Beauvoir, while still a student at the Lycée 00:30:29.450 --> 00:30:32.130 Molière, and that Beauvoir then introduced her 00:30:32.130 --> 00:30:35.150 to Sarda a year later. And Lamblin detailed a 00:30:35.150 --> 00:30:37.009 disturbing pattern in their open relationship. 00:30:37.410 --> 00:30:39.769 What exactly did she describe as this pattern? 00:30:40.240 --> 00:30:42.380 Lamblin described a pattern where Beauvoir would 00:30:42.380 --> 00:30:44.980 seduce young female students, some of whom were 00:30:44.980 --> 00:30:47.720 minors, and then, as part of their non -monogamous 00:30:47.720 --> 00:30:50.079 arrangement, pass them on to Sartre for sexual 00:30:50.079 --> 00:30:52.299 relationships. They referred to this arrangement 00:30:52.299 --> 00:30:57.180 as the family or a trio. Lamblin wrote her memoir 00:30:57.180 --> 00:30:59.359 in direct response to the posthumous publication 00:30:59.359 --> 00:31:02.200 of Sartre's letters to du Beauvoir, in which 00:31:02.200 --> 00:31:03.940 she found herself referred to by the pseudonym 00:31:03.940 --> 00:31:06.880 Louise Vidrine, which confirmed the nature of 00:31:06.880 --> 00:31:08.859 the relationship and the power imbalance involved. 00:31:09.319 --> 00:31:11.960 And this is a critical point. The power dynamics 00:31:11.960 --> 00:31:14.279 were overwhelmingly weighted against the young 00:31:14.279 --> 00:31:16.740 students, many of whom were minors under Beauvoir's 00:31:16.740 --> 00:31:19.960 tutelage. It creates a profound dissonance. Sartre's 00:31:19.960 --> 00:31:22.980 entire philosophy demanded radical freedom, radical 00:31:22.980 --> 00:31:25.720 responsibility, and the rejection of bad faith. 00:31:25.960 --> 00:31:29.200 Yet this conduct, if true, suggests a profound 00:31:29.200 --> 00:31:31.420 misuse of intellectual and teaching authority. 00:31:32.080 --> 00:31:34.819 Exploiting the very vulnerability he philosophized 00:31:34.819 --> 00:31:37.759 against, it forces a complete reexamination of 00:31:37.759 --> 00:31:40.099 his entire persona. It certainly challenges the 00:31:40.099 --> 00:31:42.759 idea that his life was a consistent pursuit of 00:31:42.759 --> 00:31:46.069 authentic selfhood. It juxtaposes his high -minded 00:31:46.069 --> 00:31:49.470 ideals with serious allegations of personal misconduct 00:31:49.470 --> 00:31:52.150 and exploitation. So where do we land on Jean 00:31:52.150 --> 00:31:54.529 -Paul Sartre? We've traversed his massive impact, 00:31:54.829 --> 00:31:57.509 seeing how he synthesized metaphysics, literature, 00:31:57.730 --> 00:32:00.329 and political philosophy into a single, cohesive 00:32:00.329 --> 00:32:03.089 project. A project always centered on human freedom 00:32:03.089 --> 00:32:06.220 and radical responsibility. He truly embodied 00:32:06.220 --> 00:32:08.920 the engaged intellectual, constantly fighting 00:32:08.920 --> 00:32:11.920 against institutions and conformity even as his 00:32:11.920 --> 00:32:14.279 political positions appeared to shift with almost 00:32:14.279 --> 00:32:16.420 dizzying speed across the Cold War landscape. 00:32:16.910 --> 00:32:19.410 He taught us that authenticity must be a product 00:32:19.410 --> 00:32:22.549 of difficult, sometimes paralyzing action, not 00:32:22.549 --> 00:32:25.309 just passive learning. He lived a life of constant 00:32:25.309 --> 00:32:28.190 public commitment, rejecting the Nobel, risking 00:32:28.190 --> 00:32:30.990 assassination. But that life was ultimately riddled 00:32:30.990 --> 00:32:33.990 with intellectual compromises and. And as the 00:32:33.990 --> 00:32:37.410 sources reveal, shadowed by deep and highly problematic 00:32:37.410 --> 00:32:40.089 personal contradictions that emerged decades 00:32:40.089 --> 00:32:43.450 later. The ultimate synthesis of this deep dive 00:32:43.450 --> 00:32:45.849 is that Sartre was the philosopher of freedom. 00:32:46.490 --> 00:32:49.509 a freedom he championed for all humanity, but 00:32:49.509 --> 00:32:51.589 which he sometimes struggled to manage consistently 00:32:51.589 --> 00:32:54.269 or ethically in his own life. Which raises an 00:32:54.269 --> 00:32:56.569 important final question for you, the learner, 00:32:56.730 --> 00:32:59.049 to carry forward as you reflect on his legacy. 00:32:59.470 --> 00:33:01.569 We've discussed Sartre's foundational belief 00:33:01.569 --> 00:33:04.529 that existence precedes essence, that you are 00:33:04.529 --> 00:33:06.690 defined only by your actions and commitments. 00:33:07.069 --> 00:33:09.710 Considering the profound complexities and serious 00:33:09.710 --> 00:33:12.309 personal controversies of his own life, from 00:33:12.309 --> 00:33:14.589 the ideological gymnastics of the Cold War to 00:33:14.589 --> 00:33:17.329 the allegations of exploitation, does Sartre's 00:33:17.329 --> 00:33:20.650 ultimate, multifaceted legacy prove or dramatically 00:33:20.650 --> 00:33:23.269 complicate his core philosophy that one must 00:33:23.269 --> 00:33:25.970 radically create their own authentic self? Something 00:33:25.970 --> 00:33:28.250 weighty to mull over as you navigate your own 00:33:28.250 --> 00:33:30.970 radical freedom until our next deep dive.