On Sartre...

 

It is Paris, 1974, and the great Jean-Paul Sartre, who has dominated the philosophical life of that city for almost three decades, is blind and ill, his body worn out by the excesses of his life.  He does not stop thinking and reflecting, however, and records two series of interviews – one with his long-term partner Simone de Beauvoir, and the other with Benny Levy.  It is the former, which appear at the end of her tribute to him, La Cérémonies des Adieux, published in 1981, that reveal the extent to which his neurosis, his fear of being swamped by women, and the ambivalence of his incestuous feelings towards his mother, had dominated his sexuality and his thought. His fear of being abandoned to and by her had prevented him from ever being able to give himself totally to a woman, and – more significantly, and amazingly – he admitted that this lay behind much of his philosophy. In many ways, his life and philosophy were shaped by the need to free himself from the influence of his mother and from the super-ego that he pretended not to have. From a precocious childhood of playing games to manipulate his family, to the tyranny of being an acknowledged philosophical giant, his life may be examined in the light of his own criterion – to see if he acted with authenticity or in mauvaise foi (bad faith). The fact that he was French, brilliant, prolific and opinionated, and that he disliked both children and animals, may be enough for some to condemn him. Whether this might be called ‘bad behaviour’ is quite another matter.

 

 

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