Alexandre Kojève (born Aleksandr Vladimirovich Kozhevnikov ; 28 April 1902 – 4 June 1968) was a Russian-born French philosopher and statesman whose philosophical seminars had an immense influence on 20th-century French philosophy , particularly via his integration of Hegelian concepts into twentieth-century continental philosophy .
123-555: Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre ( / ˈ s ɑːr t r ə / , US also / ˈ s ɑːr t / ; French: [saʁtʁ] ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic , considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism . Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology ). His work has influenced sociology, critical theory , post-colonial theory , and literary studies . He
246-610: A " useful idiot " due to his uncritical position. Sartre came to admire the Polish leader Władysław Gomułka , a man who favored a "Polish road to socialism" and wanted more independence for Poland, but was loyal to the Soviet Union because of the Oder-Neisse line issue. Sartre's newspaper Les Temps Modernes devoted a number of special issues in 1957 and 1958 to Poland under Gomułka, praising him for his reforms. Bondy wrote of
369-882: A 1949 essay called for a "United States of Europe". In an essay published in the June 1949 edition of the journal Politique étrangère , Sartre wrote: If we want French civilization to survive, it must be fitted into the framework of a great European civilization. Why? I have said that civilization is the reflection on a shared situation. In Italy, in France, in Benelux, in Sweden, in Norway, in Germany, in Greece, in Austria, everywhere we find
492-546: A bourgeois substitute for real commitment in the world. In October 1964, Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature but he declined it. He was the first Nobel laureate to voluntarily decline the prize, and remains one of only two laureates to do so. According to Lars Gyllensten , in the book Minnen, bara minnen ("Memories, Only Memories") published in 2000, Sartre himself or someone close to him got in touch with
615-547: A contemporary of Kojève and his friend, during their meeting in Paris c. 1946-1947, they talked about Stalin and the USSR. Berlin comments on his relations with Stalin, saying "(...) Kojéve was an ingenious thinker and imagined that Stalin was one too. (...) He said that he wrote to Stalin, but received no reply. I think that perhaps he identified himself with Hegel, and Stalin with Napoleon. (...)" The most important result of this era
738-517: A drama concerning Christmas. It was during this period of confinement that Sartre read Martin Heidegger 's Sein und Zeit , later to become a major influence on his own essay on phenomenological ontology . Because of poor health (he claimed that his poor eyesight and exotropia affected his balance), Sartre was released in April 1941. According to other sources, he escaped after a medical visit to
861-537: A form of hermeneutics : knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions – including the interpretation of texts which themselves interpret other texts. In the British and American literary establishment, the New Criticism was more or less dominant until the late 1960s. Around that time Anglo-American university literature departments began to witness
984-484: A little noticed book on Immanuel Kant and articles on the relationship between Hegelian and Marxist thought and Christianity. His 1943 book Esquisse d'une phenomenologie du droit , published posthumously in 1981, elaborates a theory of justice that contrasts the aristocratic and bourgeois views of the right. Le Concept, le temps et le discours extrapolates on the Hegelian notion that wisdom only becomes possible in
1107-594: A meeting that the Socialisme et Liberté assassinate prominent war collaborators like Marcel Déat , but de Beauvoir noted his idea was rejected as "none of us felt qualified to make bombs or hurl grenades". The British historian Ian Ousby observed that the French always had far more hatred for collaborators than they did for the Germans, noting it was French people like Déat that Sartre wanted to assassinate rather than
1230-791: A repetition of the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. According to Isaiah Berlin , Kojève was not fond of the idea of a state of Israel. Berlin's several different accounts, like the ones published in the Jewish Chronicle in 1973, in The Jerusalem Report in October 1990, and in his interview with Ramin Jahanbegloo in 1991 (also published as a book), are about his meeting with Kojève. According to
1353-674: A resister who wrote. In 1945, after the war ended, Sartre moved to an apartment on the rue Bonaparte , where he was to produce most of his subsequent work and where he lived until 1962. It was from there that he helped establish a quarterly literary and political review , Les Temps modernes ( Modern Times ), in part to popularize his thought. He ceased teaching and devoted his time to writing and political activism. He would draw on his war experiences for his great trilogy of novels, Les Chemins de la Liberté ( The Roads to Freedom ) (1945–1949). The first period of Sartre's career, defined in large part by Being and Nothingness (1943), gave way to
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#17327761356431476-408: A revolution. Sartre went to Cuba in the 1960s to meet Fidel Castro and spoke with Ernesto "Che" Guevara . After Guevara's death, Sartre would declare him to be "not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age" and the "era's most perfect man". Sartre would also compliment Guevara by professing that "he lived his words, spoke his own actions and his story and the story of
1599-617: A rise of a more explicitly philosophical literary theory , influenced by structuralism , then post-structuralism , and other kinds of Continental philosophy . It continued until the mid-1980s, when interest in "theory" peaked. Many later critics, though undoubtedly still influenced by theoretical work, have been comfortable simply interpreting literature rather than writing explicitly about methodology and philosophical presumptions. Today, approaches based in literary theory and continental philosophy largely coexist in university literature departments, while conventional methods, some informed by
1722-540: A second period—when the world was perceived as split into communist and capitalist blocs—of highly publicized political involvement. Sartre tended to glorify the Resistance after the war as the uncompromising expression of morality in action, and recalled that the résistants were a "band of brothers" who had enjoyed "real freedom" in a way that did not exist before nor after the war. Sartre was "merciless" in attacking anyone who had collaborated or remained passive during
1845-536: A second time and virtually tied for first place with Beauvoir, although Sartre was eventually awarded first place, with Beauvoir second. From 1931 until 1945, Sartre taught at various lycées of Le Havre (at the Lycée de Le Havre, the present-day Lycée François-Ier (Le Havre) [ fr ] , 1931–1936), Laon (at the Lycée de Laon, 1936–37), and, finally, Paris (at the Lycée Pasteur , 1937–1939, and at
1968-525: A simple man with few possessions, actively committed to causes until the end of his life, such as the May 1968 strikes in Paris during the summer of 1968 during which he was arrested for civil disobedience . President Charles de Gaulle intervened and pardoned him, commenting that "you don't arrest Voltaire ". In 1975, when asked how he would like to be remembered, Sartre replied: I would like [people] to remember Nausea , [my plays] No Exit and The Devil and
2091-407: A statement by Sartre explaining his refusal. He said he did not wish to be "transformed" by such an award, and did not want to take sides in an East vs. West cultural struggle by accepting an award from a prominent Western cultural institution. Nevertheless, he was that year's prizewinner. Though his name was then a household word (as was "existentialism" during the tumultuous 1960s), Sartre remained
2214-648: A substantial role in politics, noting the disastrous results of Plato in Syracuse . Philosophers should influence politics only to the extent that they can ensure that philosophical contemplation remains free from the seduction and coercion of power. In spite of this debate, Strauss and Kojève remained friendly. In fact, Strauss would send his best students to Paris to finish their education under Kojève's personal guidance. Among these were Allan Bloom , who endeavored to make Kojève's works available in English and published
2337-746: A triumph of liberal capitalism . Kojève's lectures on Hegel were collected, edited and published by Raymond Aron in 1947, and published in abridged form in English in the now classic Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit . His interpretation of Hegel has been one of the most influential of the past century. His lectures were attended by a small but influential group of intellectuals including Raymond Queneau , Georges Bataille , Maurice Merleau-Ponty , André Breton , Jacques Lacan , Raymond Aron , Michel Leiris , Henry Corbin and Éric Weil . His interpretation of
2460-465: A true reunification between intellectuals and workers only to criticize it for "losing socialist base". In 1964 Sartre attacked Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" which condemned the Stalinist repressions and purges . Sartre argued that "the masses were not ready to receive the truth". In 1969 Sartre, along with other fifteen prominent French writers, including Louis Aragon and Michel Butor , signed
2583-403: A typesetted copy, had been completed in the first week of March 1941, and one of them was given to Soviet vice consul in person by Kojève. Soviet consul "... promised to send the letter with the next diplomatic bag to Moscow." However, "[l]ess than three months later, the embassy and its contents would be put to the torch by Nazi troops." It's not known whether Kojève's work had reached the USSR or
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#17327761356432706-400: Is a form of necessity for freedom, which can never be given up." This theory relies upon his position that there is no creator, and is illustrated using the example of the paper cutter . Sartre says that if one considered a paper cutter, one would assume that the creator would have had a plan for it: an essence. Sartre said that human beings have no essence before their existence because there
2829-471: Is a matter of some controversy. For example, The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism draws no distinction between literary theory and literary criticism, and almost always uses the terms together to describe the same concept. Some critics consider literary criticism a practical application of literary theory, because criticism always deals directly with particular literary works, while theory may be more general or abstract. Literary criticism
2952-487: Is an attempt to expand the philosophical project to its ultimate historical and social borders". According to Groys, "Kojève sees the end of history as the moment of the spread of wisdom through the whole population – the democratization of wisdom; a universalization that leads to homogenization. He believes that the Soviet Union moves towards the society of wise men in which every member will have self-consciousness." According to Weslati, several versions of Sofia , including
3075-400: Is no Creator. Thus: "existence precedes essence". This forms the basis for his assertion that because one cannot explain one's own actions and behavior by referring to any specific human nature, they are necessarily fully responsible for those actions. "We are left alone, without excuse." "We can act without being determined by our past which is always separated from us." Sartre maintained that
3198-594: Is often published in essay or book form. Academic literary critics teach in literature departments and publish in academic journals , and more popular critics publish their reviews in broadly circulating periodicals such as The Times Literary Supplement , The New York Times Book Review , The New York Review of Books , the London Review of Books , the Dublin Review of Books , The Nation , Bookforum , and The New Yorker . Literary criticism
3321-489: Is that people, as humans, are "condemned to be free". He explained, "This may seem paradoxical because condemnation is normally an external judgment which constitutes the conclusion of a judgment. Here, it is not the human who has chosen to be like this. There is a contingency of human existence. It is a condemnation of their being. Their being is not determined, so it is up to everyone to create their own existence, for which they are then responsible. They cannot not be free, there
3444-428: Is the study, evaluation , and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory , which is the philosophical analysis of literature's goals and methods. Although the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists. Whether or not literary criticism should be considered a separate field of inquiry from literary theory
3567-686: Is thought to have existed as far back as the classical period. In the 4th century BC Aristotle wrote the Poetics , a typology and description of literary forms with many specific criticisms of contemporary works of art. Poetics developed for the first time the concepts of mimesis and catharsis , which are still crucial in literary studies. Plato 's attacks on poetry as imitative, secondary, and false were formative as well. The Sanskrit Natya Shastra includes literary criticism on ancient Indian literature and Sanskrit drama. Later classical and medieval criticism often focused on religious texts, and
3690-599: The Café de Flore between intellectuals had changed, as the fear that one of them might be a mouche (informer) or a writer of the corbeau (anonymous denunciatory letters) meant that no one really said what they meant anymore, imposing self-censorship. Sartre and his friends at the Café de Flore had reasons for their fear; by September 1940, the Abwehr alone had already recruited 32,000 French people to work as mouches while by 1942
3813-579: The French Navy , and Anne-Marie (Schweitzer). When Sartre was two years old, his father died of an illness, which he most likely contracted in Indochina . Anne-Marie moved back to her parents' house in Meudon , where she raised Sartre with help from her father Charles Schweitzer, a teacher of German who taught Sartre mathematics and introduced him to classical literature at a very early age. When he
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3936-817: The Lycée Condorcet , 1941–1944; see below ). In 1932, Sartre read Voyage au bout de la nuit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline , a book that had a remarkable influence on him. In 1933–34, he succeeded Raymond Aron at the Institut français d'Allemagne in Berlin where he studied Edmund Husserl 's phenomenological philosophy. Aron had already advised him in 1930 to read Emmanuel Levinas 's Théorie de l'intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl ( The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology ). The neo-Hegelian revival led by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite in
4059-744: The New Critics , also remain active. Disagreements over the goals and methods of literary criticism, which characterized both sides taken by critics during the "rise" of theory, have declined. Some critics work largely with theoretical texts, while others read traditional literature; interest in the literary canon is still great, but many critics are also interested in nontraditional texts and women's literature , as elaborated on by certain academic journals such as Contemporary Women's Writing , while some critics influenced by cultural studies read popular texts like comic books or pulp / genre fiction . Ecocritics have drawn connections between literature and
4182-788: The Vietnam War and, along with Bertrand Russell and others, organized a tribunal intended to expose U.S. war crimes , which became known as the Russell Tribunal in 1967. His work after Stalin's death, the Critique de la raison dialectique ( Critique of Dialectical Reason ), appeared in 1960 (a second volume appearing posthumously). In the Critique Sartre set out to give Marxism a more vigorous intellectual defense than it had received until then; he ended by concluding that Marx's notion of "class" as an objective entity
4305-417: The concierge forced the door, you would find two chairs standing close together in the hall with the fag-ends of German cigarettes on the floor between their legs. If the wife or mother of the man who had vanished had been present at his arrest, she would tell you that he had been taken away by very polite Germans, like those who asked the way in the street. And when she went to ask what had happened to them at
4428-462: The history of the book is a field of interdisciplinary inquiry drawing on the methods of bibliography , cultural history , history of literature , and media theory . Principally concerned with the production, circulation, and reception of texts and their material forms, book history seeks to connect forms of textuality with their material aspects. Among the issues within the history of literature with which book history can be seen to intersect are:
4551-547: The master–slave dialectic was an important influence on Jacques Lacan 's mirror stage theory. Other French thinkers who have acknowledged his influence on their thought include the post-structuralist philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida . Kojève had a close and lifelong friendship with Leo Strauss which began when they were philosophy students in Berlin. The two shared a deep philosophical respect for each other. Kojève would later write that he "never would have known [...] what philosophy is" without Strauss. In
4674-804: The offices in the Avenue Foch or the Rue des Saussaies she would be politely received and sent away with comforting words" [No. 11 Rue des Saussaies was the headquarters of the Gestapo in Paris]. Sartre wrote the feldgrau ("field grey") uniforms of the Wehrmacht and the green uniforms of the Order Police which had seemed so alien in 1940 had become accepted, as people were numbed into accepting what Sartre called "a pale, dull green, unobtrusive strain, which
4797-512: The École Normale Supérieure (ENS), an institution of higher education that was the alma mater for several prominent French thinkers and intellectuals. (His 1928 MA thesis under the title "L'Image dans la vie psychologique: rôle et nature" ["Image in Psychological Life: Role and Nature"] was supervised by Henri Delacroix .) It was at ENS that Sartre began his lifelong, sometimes fractious, friendship with Raymond Aron . Perhaps
4920-687: The 1930s inspired a whole generation of French thinkers, including Sartre, to discover Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit . In 1939, Sartre was drafted into the French Army , where he served as a meteorologist . He was captured by German troops in 1940 in Padoux , and he spent nine months as a prisoner of war —in Nancy and finally in Stalag XII-D [ fr ] , Trier , where he wrote his first theatrical piece, Barionà, fils du tonnerre ,
5043-618: The 1930s that capitalism and democracy were failed artifacts of the Enlightenment that would be destroyed by either communism or fascism . While initially somewhat more sympathetic to the Soviet Union than the United States, Kojève devoted much of his thought to protecting western European autonomy, particularly relating to France, from domination by either the Soviet Union or the United States. He believed that
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5166-418: The 1930s, the two began a debate on the relation of philosophy to politics that would come to fruition with Kojève's response to Strauss' On Tyranny . Kojève, a senior statesman in the French government, argued that philosophers should have an active part in shaping political events. On the other hand, Strauss believed that philosophy and politics were fundamentally opposed and that philosophers should not have
5289-587: The 1950s, Kojève also met the rightist legal theorist Carl Schmitt , whose "Concept of the Political" he had implicitly criticized in his analysis of Hegel's text on "Lordship and Bondage" . Another close friend was the Jesuit Hegelian philosopher Gaston Fessard , whom with also had correspondence. In addition to his lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, Kojève's other publications include
5412-611: The 1973 account, "ten years ago or more" he was "dining in Paris with a distinguished historian of philosophy who was also a high official of the French Government", namely, Kojève. 1990 account also records that they were talking in Russian . While talking, the issue of Israel and zionism was also discussed. Kojève, who "was plainly taken aback" at Berlin's defence of zionism, asked Berlin: "[...] Jews [...], with their rich and extraordinary history, miraculous survivors from
5535-500: The 9th century, notably by Al-Jahiz in his al-Bayan wa-'l-tabyin and al-Hayawan , and by Abdullah ibn al-Mu'tazz in his Kitab al-Badi . The literary criticism of the Renaissance developed classical ideas of unity of form and content into literary neoclassicism , proclaiming literature as central to culture, entrusting the poet and the author with preservation of a long literary tradition. The birth of Renaissance criticism
5658-403: The Enlightenment theoreticians so that the business of Enlightenment became a business with the Enlightenment. This development – particularly of emergence of entertainment literature – was addressed through an intensification of criticism. Many works of Jonathan Swift , for instance, were criticized including his book Gulliver's Travels , which one critic described as "the detestable story of
5781-768: The French in Algeria. He became an eminent supporter of the FLN in the Algerian War and was one of the signatories of the Manifeste des 121 . Consequently, Sartre became a domestic target of the paramilitary Organisation armée secrète (OAS), escaping two bomb attacks in the early '60s. He later argued in 1959 that each French person was responsible for the collective crimes during the Algerian War of Independence . (He had an Algerian mistress, Arlette Elkaïm , who became his adopted daughter in 1965.) He opposed U.S. involvement in
5904-554: The German occupation; for instance, criticizing Camus for signing an appeal to spare the collaborationist writer Robert Brasillach from being executed. His 1948 play Les mains sales ( Dirty Hands ) in particular explored the problem of being a politically "engaged" intellectual. He embraced Marxism but did not join the Communist Party . For a time in the late 1940s, Sartre described French nationalism as "provincial" and in
6027-474: The Germans, and also contributed to both legal and illegal literary magazines. In his essay "Paris under the Occupation ", Sartre wrote that the "correct" behaviour of the Germans had entrapped too many Parisians into complicity with the occupation, accepting what was unnatural as natural: The Germans did not stride, revolver in hand, through the streets. They did not force civilians to make way for them on
6150-557: The Good Lord , and then my two philosophical works, more particularly the second one, Critique of Dialectical Reason . Then my essay on Genet , Saint Genet . ... If these are remembered, that would be quite an achievement, and I don't ask for more. As a man, if a certain Jean-Paul Sartre is remembered, I would like people to remember the milieu or historical situation in which I lived, ... how I lived in it, in terms of all
6273-855: The Korean War, Sartre wrote: "I have no doubt that the South Korean feudalists and the American imperialists have promoted this war. But I do not doubt either that it was begun by the North Koreans". In July 1950, Sartre wrote in Les Temps Modernes about his and de Beauvoir's attitude to the Soviet Union: As we were neither members of the [Communist] party nor its avowed sympathizers, it was not our duty to write about Soviet labor camps; we were free to remain aloof from
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#17327761356436396-740: The Last Man , the traditionalist conservative thinker Roger Scruton calls Kojève "a life-hating Russian at heart, a self-declared Stalinist, and a civil servant who played a leading behind-the-scenes role in establishing both the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the European Economic Community " and states his opinion that Kojève was "a dangerous psychopath ". Kojève's correspondence with Leo Strauss has been published along with Kojève's critique of Strauss's commentary on Xenophon 's Hiero . In
6519-519: The Nazis and their local allies. A good many escaped. But 600,000 Jews in Palestine did not leave because Rommel was at their door. That is the difference. They considered Palestine to be their own country, and if they had to die, they would die not like trapped animals, but for their country." "We reached no agreement.", records Berlin. In a commentary on Francis Fukuyama 's The End of History and
6642-475: The Paris Kommandantur was receiving an average of 1,500 letters per day sent by the corbeaux . Sartre wrote under the occupation Paris had become a "sham", resembling the empty wine bottles displayed in shop windows as all of the wine had been exported to Germany, looking like the old Paris, but hollowed out, as what had made Paris special was gone. Paris had almost no cars on the streets during
6765-601: The Swedish Academy in 1975 with a request for the prize money, but was refused. In 1945, he had refused the Légion d'honneur . The Nobel prize was announced on 22 October 1964; on 14 October, Sartre had written a letter to the Nobel Institute, asking to be removed from the list of nominees, and warning that he would not accept the prize if awarded, but the letter went unread; on 23 October, Le Figaro published
6888-423: The Wehrmacht meant he had been complicit in the Occupation. Ousby wrote: "But, in however humble a fashion, everyone still had to decide how they were going to cope with life in a fragmenting society ... So Sartre's worries ... about how to react when a German soldier stopped him in the street and asked politely for directions were not as fussily inconsequential as they might sound at first. They were emblematic of how
7011-401: The Wehrmacht which led Sartre to remark "We could not be natural ". French was a language widely taught in German schools and most Germans could speak at least some French. Sartre himself always found it difficult when a Wehrmacht soldier asked him for directions, usually saying he did not know where it was that the soldier wanted to go, but still felt uncomfortable as the very act of speaking to
7134-495: The Yahoos". The British Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century introduced new aesthetic ideas to literary studies, including the idea that the object of literature need not always be beautiful, noble, or perfect, but that literature itself could elevate a common subject to the level of the sublime . German Romanticism , which followed closely after the late development of German classicism , emphasized an aesthetic of fragmentation that can appear startlingly modern to
7257-434: The already crystallised and dead cultures of the West and East – should also accept everything that contributes to this appearance. It seems to me, for the time being of course, that the Party's policies directed against bourgeois (that is, ultimately Western) culture is really preparation for a new culture of the future. (...)" Mark Lilla notes that Kojève rejected the prevailing concept among some European intellectuals of
7380-425: The aspirations which I tried to gather up within myself. Sartre's physical condition deteriorated, partially because of the merciless pace of work (and the use of amphetamine ) he put himself through during the writing of the Critique and a massive analytical biography of Gustave Flaubert ( The Family Idiot ), both of which remained unfinished. He had hypertension, and became almost completely blind in 1973. Sartre
7503-514: The author's psychology or biography, which became almost taboo subjects) or reader response : together known as Wimsatt and Beardsley's intentional fallacy and affective fallacy . This emphasis on form and precise attention to "the words themselves" has persisted, after the decline of these critical doctrines themselves. In 1957 Northrop Frye published the influential Anatomy of Criticism . In his works Frye noted that some critics tend to embrace an ideology, and to judge literary pieces on
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#17327761356437626-464: The basis of their adherence to such ideology. This has been a highly influential viewpoint among modern conservative thinkers. E. Michael Jones, for example, argues in his Degenerate Moderns that Stanley Fish was influenced by his own adulterous affairs to reject classic literature that condemned adultery. Jürgen Habermas , in Erkenntnis und Interesse [1968] ( Knowledge and Human Interests ), described literary critical theory in literary studies as
7749-452: The burden of our free, individual existence. "We can oppose authenticity to an inauthentic way of being. Authenticity consists in experiencing the indeterminate character of existence in anguish. It is also to know how to face it by giving meaning to our actions and by recognizing ourselves as the author of this meaning. On the other hand, an inauthentic way of being consists in running away, in lying to oneself in order to escape this anguish and
7872-508: The capitalist United States represented right-Hegelianism while the state-socialist Soviet Union represented left-Hegelianism . Thus, victory by either side, he posited, would result in what Lilla describes as "a rationally organized bureaucracy without class distinctions ". Kojève's views of Stalin, while changing after World War II, was positive. Kojève's interest for Stalin, however, might have been continued, whether positive or negative, after World War II. According to Isaiah Berlin ,
7995-489: The classical age of our common civilisation – that this fascinating people should choose to give up its unique status, and for what? To become Albania ? How could they want this? Was this not [...] a failure of national imagination, a betrayal of all that the Jews were and stood for?" In return, according to the interview with Jahanbegloo, Berlin replied: "For the Jews to be like Albania constitutes progress. Some 600,000 Jews in Romania were trapped like sheep to be slaughtered by
8118-425: The concepts of authenticity and individuality have to be earned but not learned. We need to experience "death consciousness" so as to wake up ourselves as to what is really important; the authentic in our lives which is life experience, not knowledge. Death draws the final point when we as beings cease to live for ourselves and permanently become objects that exist only for the outside world. In this way death emphasizes
8241-441: The condition of African Americans in the United States—specifically the racism and discrimination against them in the country—in his second Situations collection. Then, in 1948, for the introduction of Léopold Sédar Senghor 's l'Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache (Anthology of New Negro and Malagasy Poetry) , he wrote "Black Orpheus" (re-published in Situations III), a critique of colonialism and racism in light of
8364-422: The development of authorship as a profession, the formation of reading audiences, the constraints of censorship and copyright, and the economics of literary form. Alexandre Koj%C3%A8ve Aleksandr Vladimirovich Kozhevnikov was born in the Russian Empire to a wealthy and influential family. His uncle was the abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky , about whose work he would write an influential essay in 1936. He
8487-462: The dilemmas of the Occupation presented themselves in daily life". Sartre wrote the very "correctness" of the Germans caused moral corruption in many people who used the "correct" behavior of the Germans as an excuse for passivity, and the very act of simply trying to live one's day-to-day existence without challenging the occupation aided the " New Order in Europe", which depended upon the passivity of ordinary people to accomplish its goals. Throughout
8610-429: The dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work Being and Nothingness ( L'Être et le Néant , 1943). Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism Is a Humanism ( L'existentialisme est un humanisme , 1946), originally presented as a lecture. Jean-Paul Sartre was born on 21 June 1905 in Paris as the only child of Jean-Baptiste Sartre, an officer of
8733-485: The empty sky. Cut off from the rest of the world, fed only through the pity or some ulterior motive, the town led a purely abstract and symbolic life". Sartre himself lived on a diet of rabbits sent to him by a friend of de Beauvoir living in Anjou . The rabbits were usually in an advanced state of decay, full of maggots, and despite being hungry, Sartre once threw out one rabbit as uneatable, saying it had more maggots in it than meat. Sartre also remarked that conversations at
8856-474: The end of his life, Sartre began to describe himself as a "special kind" of anarchist. In 1964 Sartre renounced literature in a witty and sardonic account of the first ten years of his life, Les Mots ( The Words ). The book is an ironic counterblast to Marcel Proust , whose reputation had unexpectedly eclipsed that of André Gide (who had provided the model of littérature engagée for Sartre's generation). Literature, Sartre concluded, functioned ultimately as
8979-437: The end of the nineteenth century Western thought effectively concluded its development [...] turning into a philosophical school of 'scholasticism' in the popular, negative sense of the term. (...) being a philosopher, one can nevertheless welcome 'philosophical politics' leading to the complete prohibition of the study of philosophy. (...) The Party is fighting against bourgeois culture in the name of proletarian culture. Many find
9102-408: The eye almost expected to find among the dark clothes of the civilians". Under the occupation, the French often called the Germans les autres ("the others"), which inspired Sartre's aphorism in his play Huis clos (" No Exit ") of " l'enfer, c'est les Autres " ("Hell is other people"). Sartre intended the line " l'enfer, c'est les Autres " at least in part to be a dig at the German occupiers. Sartre
9225-564: The failures of "bourgeois" states were due to their innate shortcomings. The Swiss journalist François Bondy wrote that, based on a reading of Sartre's numerous essays, speeches and interviews "a simple basic pattern never fails to emerge: social change must be comprehensive and revolutionary" and the parties that promote the revolutionary charges "may be criticized, but only by those who completely identify themselves with its purpose, its struggle and its road to power", deeming Sartre's position to be "existentialist". Sartre believed at this time in
9348-425: The first edition of Kojève's lectures in English, and Stanley Rosen . According to his own account shortly before his death, Kojève was a communist from youth, and was enthusiastic regarding Bolshevik revolution. However, he "knew that the establishment of communism meant thirty terrible years.", so he ran away. From now on, he once claimed in his letter to Tran Duc Thao , dated October 7, 1948, that his "... course
9471-406: The first full-fledged crisis in modernity of the core critical-aesthetic principles inherited from classical antiquity , such as proportion, harmony, unity, decorum , that had long governed, guaranteed, and stabilized Western thinking about artworks. Although Classicism was very far from spent as a cultural force, it was to be gradually challenged by a rival movement, namely Baroque, that favoured
9594-589: The first part of the essay, "Portrait de l'antisémite", the year before in Les Temps modernes, No. 3. In the essay, in the course of explaining the etiology of "hate" as the hater's projective fantasies when reflecting on the Jewish question , he attacks antisemitism in France during a time when the Jews who came back from concentration camps were quickly abandoned. In 1947, Sartre published several articles concerning
9717-578: The fourteenth arrondissement, past all Sartre's haunts, and entered the cemetery through the gate on the Boulevard Edgar Quinet". Sartre was initially buried in a temporary grave to the left of the cemetery gate. Four days later the body was disinterred for cremation at Père-Lachaise Cemetery, and his ashes were reburied at the permanent site in Montparnasse Cemetery, to the right of the cemetery gate. Sartre's primary idea
9840-453: The fullness of time. Kojève's response to Strauss, who disputed this notion, can be found in Kojève's article "The Emperor Julian and his Art of Writing". Kojève also challenged Strauss' interpretation of the classics in the voluminous Esquisse d'une histoire raisonnée de la pensée païenne which covers the pre-Socratic philosophers, Plato and Aristotle , as well as Neoplatonism . While
9963-494: The idea that ideological history in a limited sense had ended with the French Revolution and the regime of Napoleon and that there was no longer a need for violent struggle to establish the "rational supremacy of the regime of rights and equal recognition". Kojève's end of history is different from Francis Fukuyama 's later thesis of the same name in that it points as much to a socialist-capitalist synthesis as to
10086-487: The letter of protest against the expulsion of "the writer most representative of the great Russian tradition, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – already a victim of Stalinist repression", from the Union of Soviet Writers . In 1973 he argued that "revolutionary authority always needs to get rid of some people that threaten it, and their death is the only way". A number of people, starting from Frank Gibney in 1961, classified Sartre as
10209-679: The military governor of France, General Otto von Stülpnagel , and the popular slogan always was "Death to Laval !" rather than "Death to Hitler !". In August Sartre and de Beauvoir went to the French Riviera seeking the support of André Gide and André Malraux . However, both Gide and Malraux were undecided, and this may have been the cause of Sartre's disappointment and discouragement. Socialisme et liberté soon dissolved and Sartre decided to write instead of being involved in active resistance. He then wrote Being and Nothingness , The Flies , and No Exit , none of which were censored by
10332-479: The moral superiority of the Eastern Bloc , arguing that this belief was necessary "to keep hope alive" and opposed any criticism of Soviet Union to the extent that Maurice Merleau-Ponty called him an "ultra-Bolshevik". Sartre's expression "workers of Billancourt must not be deprived of their hopes" ( Fr . "il ne faut pas désespérer Billancourt"), became a catchphrase meaning communist activists should not tell
10455-406: The more controversial criteria of the author's religious beliefs. These critical reviews were published in many magazines, newspapers, and journals. The commercialization of literature and its mass production had its downside. The emergent literary market, which was expected to educate the public and keep them away from superstition and prejudice, increasingly diverged from the idealistic control of
10578-425: The most decisive influence on Sartre's philosophical development was his weekly attendance at Alexandre Kojève 's seminars, which continued for a number of years. From his first years in the École normale , Sartre was one of its fiercest pranksters . In 1927, his antimilitarist satirical cartoon in the revue of the school, coauthored with Georges Canguilhem , particularly upset the director Gustave Lanson . In
10701-399: The natural sciences. Darwinian literary studies studies literature in the context of evolutionary influences on human nature. And postcritique has sought to develop new ways of reading and responding to literary texts that go beyond the interpretive methods of critique . Many literary critics also work in film criticism or media studies . Related to other forms of literary criticism,
10824-587: The new direction taken in the early twentieth century. Early in the century the school of criticism known as Russian Formalism , and slightly later the New Criticism in Britain and in the United States, came to dominate the study and discussion of literature in the English-speaking world. Both schools emphasized the close reading of texts, elevating it far above generalizing discussion and speculation about either authorial intention (to say nothing of
10947-533: The notable contradiction between Sartre's "ultra Bolshevism" as he expressed admiration for the Chinese leader Mao Zedong as the man who led the oppressed masses of the Third World into revolution while also praising more moderate Communist leaders like Gomułka. As an anti-colonialist, Sartre took a prominent role in the struggle against French rule in Algeria, and the use of torture and concentration camps by
11070-399: The occupation as the oil went to Germany while the Germans imposed a nightly curfew, which led Sartre to remark that Paris "was peopled by the absent". Sartre also noted that people began to disappear under the occupation, writing: One day you might phone a friend and the phone would ring for a long time in an empty flat. You would go round and ring the doorbell, but no-one would answer it. If
11193-476: The occupation, it was German policy to plunder France, and food shortages were always a major problem as the majority of food from the French countryside went to Germany. Sartre wrote about the "languid existence" of the Parisians as people waited obsessively for the one weekly arrival of trucks bringing food from the countryside that the Germans allowed, writing: "Paris would grow peaked and yawn with hunger under
11316-776: The ophthalmologist. Given civilian status, he recovered his teaching position at Lycée Pasteur near Paris and settled at the Hotel Mistral. In October 1941, he was given a position, previously held by a Jewish teacher who had been forbidden to teach by Vichy law , at Lycée Condorcet in Paris. After coming back to Paris in May 1941, he participated in the founding of the underground group Socialisme et Liberté ("Socialism and Liberty") with other writers Simone de Beauvoir , Maurice Merleau-Ponty , Jean-Toussaint Desanti , Dominique Desanti , Jean Kanapa, and École Normale students. In spring of 1941, Sartre suggested with "cheerful ferocity" at
11439-584: The pavement. They would offer seats to old ladies on the Metro. They showed great fondness for children and would pat them on the cheek. They had been told to behave correctly and being well-disciplined, they tried shyly and conscientiously to do so. Some of them even displayed a naive kindness which could find no practical expression. Sartre noted when Wehrmacht soldiers asked Parisians politely in their German-accented French for directions, people usually felt embarrassed and ashamed as they tried their best to help out
11562-634: The philosopher Martin Heidegger and the historian of science Alexandre Koyré . Kojève spent most of his life in France and from 1933 to 1939 delivered in Paris a series of lectures on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 's work Phenomenology of Spirit . After the Second World War, Kojève worked in the French Ministry of Economic Affairs as one of the chief planners to form the European Economic Community . Kojève studied and used Sanskrit , Chinese, Tibetan , Latin and Classical Greek . He
11685-455: The philosophy Sartre developed in Being and Nothingness. Later, while Sartre was labeled by some authors as a resistant, the French philosopher and resistant Vladimir Jankelevitch criticized Sartre's lack of political commitment during the German occupation, and interpreted his further struggles for liberty as an attempt to redeem himself. According to Camus, Sartre was a writer who resisted; not
11808-473: The quarrel over the nature of this system, provided that no events of sociological significance had occurred. Sartre held that the Soviet Union was a "revolutionary" state working for the betterment of humanity and could be criticized only for failing to live up to its own ideals, but that critics had to take in mind that the Soviet state needed to defend itself against a hostile world; by contrast Sartre held that
11931-447: The reader of English literature, and valued Witz – that is, "wit" or "humor" of a certain sort – more highly than the serious Anglophone Romanticism. The late nineteenth century brought renown to authors known more for their literary criticism than for their own literary work, such as Matthew Arnold . However important all of these aesthetic movements were as antecedents, current ideas about literary criticism derive almost entirely from
12054-542: The responsibility for one's own existence." While Sartre had been influenced by Heidegger, the publication of Being and Nothingness did mark a split in their perspectives, with Heidegger remarking in Letter on Humanism : Existentialism says existence precedes essence. In this statement he is taking existentia and essentia according to their metaphysical meaning, which, from Plato's time on, has said that essentia precedes existentia . Sartre reverses this statement. But
12177-521: The reversal of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical statement. With it, he stays with metaphysics, in oblivion of the truth of Being. Herbert Marcuse also had issues with Sartre's metaphysical interpretation of human existence in Being and Nothingness and suggested the work projected anxiety and meaninglessness onto the nature of existence itself: Literary criticism A genre of arts criticism , literary criticism or literary studies
12300-415: The revolution predicated by Marx, and influenced by Frantz Fanon started to argue it was the impoverished masses of the Third World, the "real damned of the earth", who would carry out the revolution. A major theme of Sartre's political essays in the 1960s was of his disgust with the "Americanization" of the French working class who would much rather watch American TV shows dubbed into French than agitate for
12423-460: The same problems and the same dangers ... But this cultural polity has prospects only as elements of a policy which defends Europe's cultural autonomy vis-à-vis America and the Soviet Union, but also its political and economic autonomy, with the aim of making Europe a single force between the blocs, not a third bloc, but an autonomous force which will refuse to allow itself to be torn into shreds between American optimism and Russian scientificism. About
12546-477: The same year, with his comrades Nizan, Larroutis, Baillou and Herland, he organized a media prank following Charles Lindbergh 's successful New York City–Paris flight; Sartre & Co. called newspapers and informed them that Lindbergh was going to be awarded an honorary École degree. Many newspapers, including Le Petit Parisien , announced the event on 25 May. Thousands, including journalists and curious spectators, showed up, unaware that what they were witnessing
12669-416: The several long religious traditions of hermeneutics and textual exegesis have had a profound influence on the study of secular texts. This was particularly the case for the literary traditions of the three Abrahamic religions : Jewish literature , Christian literature and Islamic literature . Literary criticism was also employed in other forms of medieval Arabic literature and Arabic poetry from
12792-613: The transgressive and the extreme, without laying claim to the unity, harmony, or decorum that supposedly distinguished both nature and its greatest imitator, namely ancient art. The key concepts of the Baroque aesthetic, such as " conceit ' ( concetto ), " wit " ( acutezza , ingegno ), and " wonder " ( meraviglia ), were not fully developed in literary theory until the publication of Emanuele Tesauro 's Il Cannocchiale aristotelico (The Aristotelian Telescope) in 1654. This seminal treatise – inspired by Giambattista Marino 's epic Adone and
12915-420: The twentieth century". He specifically and repeatedly called the Soviet Union the only country in which 19th-century capitalism still existed. His Stalinism was quite ironic, but he was serious about Stalinism to the extent that he regarded the utopia of the Soviet Union under Stalin and the willingness to purge unsupportive elements in the population as evidence of a desire to bring about the end of history and as
13038-734: The whole truth to the workers in order to avoid decline in their revolutionary enthusiasm. In 1954, just after Stalin's death, Sartre visited the Soviet Union, which he stated he found a "complete freedom of criticism" while condemning the United States for sinking into "prefascism". Sartre wrote about those Soviet writers expelled from the Soviet Writers' Union "still had the opportunity of rehabilitating themselves by writing better books". Sartre's comments on Hungarian revolution of 1956 are quite representative to his frequently contradictory and changing views. On one hand, Sartre saw in Hungary
13161-481: The word 'proletariat' not to their taste. This is after all only a word. The essence of the matter does not change, and the essence consists in the fact that a battle is raging with something old, already existing, in the name of something new, which has yet to be created. Anyone who will welcome the appearance of a truly new culture and philosophy – either because it will be neither Eastern nor Western, but Eurasian, or simply because it will be new and lively in contrast to
13284-535: The work of the Spanish Jesuit philosopher Baltasar Gracián – developed a theory of metaphor as a universal language of images and as a supreme intellectual act, at once an artifice and an epistemologically privileged mode of access to truth. In the Enlightenment period (1700s–1800s), literary criticism became more popular. During this time literacy rates started to rise in the public; no longer
13407-468: The world ran parallel". However he stood against the persecution of gays by Castro's government, which he compared to Nazi persecution of the Jews, and said: "In Cuba there are no Jews, but there are homosexuals". During a collective hunger strike in 1974, Sartre visited Red Army Faction member Andreas Baader in Stammheim Prison and criticized the harsh conditions of imprisonment. Towards
13530-521: The world view of the new ruling class and new culture, and every other philosophy is subject to destruction. (...) Everything currently taking place in the USSR is so significant and new that any assessment of the Party's cultural or 'philosophical' politics cannot be founded on preconceived cultural values or preformed philosophical systems. (...) the question of the Party's 'philosophical politics' can be assessed, it seems, not entirely negatively. (...) Toward
13653-480: Was Kojève's work addressed to Stalin, Sofia, filo-sofia i fenomeno-logia ( Sophia , Philo-sophy and Phenomeno-logy ), a manuscript of more than 900 pages that was penned between 1940 and 1941. In that manuscript, according to Boris Groys , Kojève defended his thesis that the "universal and homogeneous state in which the Sage can emerge and live is none other than Communism" and "scientific Communism of Marx–Lenin–Stalin
13776-523: Was a notorious chain smoker , which could also have contributed to the deterioration of his health. Sartre died on 15 April 1980 in Paris from pulmonary edema . He had not wanted to be buried at Père-Lachaise Cemetery between his mother and stepfather, so it was arranged that he be buried at Montparnasse Cemetery . At his funeral on Saturday, 19 April, 50,000 Parisians descended onto boulevard du Montparnasse to accompany Sartre's cortege. The funeral started at "the hospital at 2:00 p.m., then filed through
13899-488: Was a stunt involving a Lindbergh look-alike . The scandal led Lanson to resign. In 1929 at the École normale, he met Simone de Beauvoir , who studied at the Sorbonne and later went on to become a noted philosopher, writer, and feminist. The two became inseparable and lifelong companions, initiating a romantic relationship, though they were not monogamous . The first time Sartre took the agrégation , he failed. He took it
14022-452: Was a very active contributor to Combat , a newspaper created during the clandestine period by Albert Camus , a philosopher and author who held similar beliefs. Sartre and de Beauvoir remained friends with Camus until 1951, with the publication of Camus's The Rebel . Sartre wrote extensively post-war about neglected minority groups, namely French Jews and black people . In 1946, he published Anti-Semite and Jew , after having published
14145-699: Was also fluent in French, German, Russian and English. Kojève died in 1968, shortly after giving a talk to civil servants and state representatives for the European Economic Community (now the European Union ) in Brussels on behalf of the French government. Although not an orthodox Marxist , Kojève was known as an influential and idiosyncratic interpreter of Hegel, reading him through the lens of both Karl Marx and Martin Heidegger . The well-known end of history thesis advanced
14268-678: Was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution." Sartre held an open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir . Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois , in both lifestyles and thought. The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity ( mauvaise foi , literally, ' bad faith ') and an " authentic " way of " being " became
14391-693: Was burned with the embassy. In 1999, Le Monde published an article reporting that a French intelligence document showed that Kojève had spied for the Soviets for over thirty years. Although Kojève often claimed to be a Stalinist , he largely regarded the Soviet Union with contempt, calling its social policies disastrous and its claims to be a truly classless state ludicrous. Kojève's cynicism towards traditional Marxism as an outmoded philosophy in industrially well-developed capitalist nations prompted him to go as far as idiosyncratically referring to capitalist Henry Ford as "the one great authentic Marxist of
14514-610: Was educated at the University of Berlin and the University of Heidelberg , both in Germany. In Heidelberg, he completed in 1926 his PhD thesis on the Russian religious philosopher Vladimir Soloviev 's views on the union of God and man in Christ under the direction of Karl Jaspers . The title of his thesis was Die religiöse Philosophie Wladimir Solowjews ( The Religious Philosophy of Vladimir Soloviev ). Early influences included
14637-617: Was essentially a work of propaganda intended to strike people's minds. This is why I consciously reinforced the role of the dialectic of Master and Slave and, in general, schematized the content of phenomenology." His articles from 1920s, talked positively about the USSR, saw it as something developing new. In an article to magazine Yevraziya, a left Eurasianist journal, he praised the CPSU's struggle against bourgeois philosophy, arguing that it would lead to something new, whether one calls it proletarian or not: "(...) Marxist philosophy can express
14760-463: Was fallacious. Sartre's emphasis on the humanist values in the early works of Marx led to a dispute with a leading leftist intellectual in France in the 1960s, Louis Althusser , who claimed that the ideas of the young Marx were decisively superseded by the "scientific" system of the later Marx. In the late 1950s, Sartre began to argue that the European working classes were too apolitical to carry out
14883-434: Was in 1498, with the recovery of classic texts, most notably, Giorgio Valla 's Latin translation of Aristotle 's Poetics . The work of Aristotle, especially Poetics , was the most important influence upon literary criticism until the late eighteenth century. Lodovico Castelvetro was one of the most influential Renaissance critics who wrote commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics in 1570. The seventeenth-century witnessed
15006-407: Was reading exclusive for the wealthy or scholarly. With the rise of the literate public, the swiftness of printing and commercialization of literature, criticism arose too. Reading was no longer viewed solely as educational or as a sacred source of religion; it was a form of entertainment. Literary criticism was influenced by the values and stylistic writing, including clear, bold, precise writing and
15129-809: Was twelve, Sartre's mother remarried, and the family moved to La Rochelle , where he was frequently bullied, in part due to the wandering of his blind right eye (sensory exotropia ). As a teenager in the 1920s, Sartre became attracted to philosophy upon reading Henri Bergson 's essay Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness . He attended the Cours Hattemer , a private school in Paris. He studied and earned certificates in psychology, history of philosophy, logic, general philosophy, ethics and sociology, and physics, as well as his diplôme d'études supérieures [ fr ] (roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) in Paris at
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