Cassandra
Cuddy
Rex
Gilliland
Philosophy
408
Presentation
on Sartre
1
October 2012
Jean-Paul
Sartre’s Literary Works
Jean-Paul Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher,
playwright, novelist, and short story fiction writer. He was one of the key figures in existential
philosophy and one of the leading figures in 20th century French
philosophy and Marxism. He was awarded
the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature for his work which was rich in ideas and
filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth. However,
Sartre refused it, saying “that due to his conception of the writer’s
task he had always declined official honors...a writer's accepting such an honor
would be to associate his personal commitments with the awarding institution,
and that, above all, a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an
institution” (Österling 1).
One of Sartre’s main ideas as a philosopher was that
people, as humans, are “condemned to be free.”
This idea comes from his position that there is no creator. For example, he explains the idea of the
paper cutter. If one considered a paper
cutter, one would assume that the creator would have had a plan for it, or an
essence. According to Sartre, human
beings have no essence before their existence because there is no Creator. Thus, existence precedes essence, and human
beings cannot explain their own actions and behaviors by referencing any
specific character to human nature.
Therefore, human beings are fully responsible for their actions. These themes are seen in Sartre’s literary
works.
Through
looking at his literature, one can see how Sartre was influenced by the
concepts of authenticity and inauthenticity.
These concepts assert that individuality had to be earned and not
learned. In conception of these ideas,
human beings need to experience “death consciousness” in order to reach
clarification and to wake up our inner selves as to what is really
important. Thus, life experience is more
important that knowledge. Moreover,
humans’ ideas are the product of experiences of real-life situations. Novels and plays can well describe such
fundamental experiences, having equal value to discursive essays for the
elaboration of philosophical theories in existentialism, which is why Sartre
sought the mediums of the short story and play to explore existential philosophical
ideas.
Sartre’s
short story, “The Wall,” depicts many existential ideas, such as authenticity
and inauthenticity, and the condemnation for human beings to be free. This story coldly depicts a situation in
which prisoners are condemned to death.
Sartre wrote this story in 1939 and it is set in the Spanish Civil
War. The title refers to the wall used
by firing squad to execute prisoners.
The wall itself symbolizes the inevitability and unknowing of one’s
death. The protagonist, Pablo Ibbieta,
along with two others in his cell, is sentenced to death. He is offered a way out if he reveals the
location of his comrade, Ramon Gris.
Pablo refuses to cooperate until just before his scheduled execution,
when, seeing no harm in it, he gives the authorities what he believes to be
false information on Ramon Gris’ whereabouts.
Ironically, it turns out that Gris has moved from his previous hiding
place to the very spot where Pablo tells authorities he may be found, thus, Gris is shot and Pablo’s life is, at
least temporarily, spared from death.
We
can easily see the ideas of transcendence and facticity in this story. For example, when the Belgian doctor who is
there in the cold cell to examine Pablo and the other prisoners before they are
to be killed: “He never took his hard eyes off me. Suddenly I understood and my hands went to my
face: I was drenched in sweat…[He had] thought: this is the manifestation of an
almost pathological state of terror; and he had felt normal and proud because
he was cold.” Scrutinized by the doctor,
Pablo was forced to see his situation through facticity: he was reduced to a
medical category.
Sartre’s
short story, “The Room,” seems to be inspired by Husserl’s philosophy. In a particular scene, the father is speaking
to his daughter, Eve, about her life: “…don’t think I don’t understand you” (he
had a sudden illumination) “but what you want to do is beyond human
strength. You want to live solely by
imagination, isn’t that it? You don’t
want to admit he’s sick. You don’t want
to see the Pierre of today, do you? You
have eyes only for the Pierre of before.
My dear, my darling little girl, it’s an impossible bet to win” (27). Thus, the father is trying to make Eve see
her situation for what it is, while she wants nothing to do with this. In this story, we also see the concepts of
facticity and transcendence. During one
part of this story, Eve is watching in humiliation as her father looks at her
husband Pierre: “I hate him when he looks at him, when I think that he sees
him.” Alone with Pierre, she can almost
believe in a special complicity between them, from the sheer effort of trying
to enter into Pierre’s madness, of being with him as he is with himself. Her father’s presence destroys that fragile
complicity. She is forced to see Pierre
as the rest of the world does. Pierre
becomes simply a poor thing, one of the mentally ill.
No Exit,
one of Sartre’s most influential literary works, is considered to be a
masterpiece because it shows his ability to translate philosophy into a
dramatic form (McCall 111). The play is
about three damned souls, Garcin, Inez, and Estelle. These three strangers are brought into a room
in hell by a mysterious Valet. None of
these characters admit their reason for damnation. In reality, they were brought together to
make each other miserable: the conclusion is that “hell is other people.” No Exit’s
central themes relate to freedom and responsibility, which comes from Sartre’s doctrine
that “existence precedes essence.” Sartre
believed that human consciousness or a “being-for-itself” existence because
humans have the responsibility to choose and define their individual characteristics,
or essence. The fear and anxiety of this
responsibility leads many people to ignore their freedom and their responsibility
by letting other people make their choices for them, resulting in bad
faith. This is why, at the end of the
play, Garcin is unable to leave the room when the door opens. He can’t handle the responsibility of
confronting his essence. Thus, the
characters in the room are not only “condemned to be free,” but are willing to
condemn themselves in order to avoid being free.
This
emphasis on bad faith establishes Sartre’s underlying argument of the play: “Hell
is other people.” Using only three
people and an empty room, Sartre evokes scenes of utter torture and
despair. The very existence of other
people in the room reduces their feelings of autonomy. Each person attempts to justify their
existence by only thinking about their past experiences: as Garcin, one of the
men in the room, explains, his “fate” is the evaluation of his past actions by
other people.
Sartre
seemed to be influence by some of Kant’s fundamental ideas; Sartre uses the
idea of the autonomy of the will (that morality is derived by our ability to
choose in reality; the ability to choose being derived from human freedom;
embodied in the famous saying “condemned to be free”) as a way to show the
world’s indifference to the individual.
McCall,
Dorothy. The Theater of Jean-Paul Sartre.
N.p.: Colombia Paperback, 1969. Print.
Österling,
Anders. "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1964 Jean-Paul Sartre." Nobel
Prize. N.p., n.d.
Sartre,
Jean-Paul. No Exit and Three Other Plays.
New York, NY: Vintage International, 1989.
Sartre,
Jean-Paul. The Wall (Intimacy) and Other
Short Stories. 26th ed. New York: New
Directions, 1975. Print.
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