The Life of Jean-Paul Sartre - Essay Example

The Life of Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, regarded as the "father of Existentialist philosophy," (Stanford Encyclopedia), was born in Paris on June 21, 1905 in a bourgeois family to father Jean-Babtiste (who died fifteen months later) and mother Anne-Marie (Schweitzer)1 Sartre. He was affectionately called Poulou. Following the passing of his father at such a tender age, he grew up with his grandfather, Karl 'Charles' Schweitzer (Jean-Paul Sartre 1905-1980) and his wife in Paris, but moved with his mother to La Rochelle, when she remarried in 1917. The years that followed marked the life of a man with great creativity, talent in writing, deep thinker and a man of strong political will and persuasion. All these characteristics coupled with his childhood experiences led to his astounding achievements through his plays, novels, books, essays and lectures. Childhood experiences Sartre's childhood was filled with much bitterness and confusion. The first natural pain to deal with was having no father, after the first fifteen months of his life. Sartre was clearly hurt by the fact that he never had a chance to be acquainted with his father, and was never told anything significant about the relationship they had; whether his father had ever taken him "in his arms," or if he had even loved him (The Words 20). Sartre then grew up with his grandparents who were rather fond of him, or at least depicted that in their mannerisms (Experiential Influences, par. 5). However, he felt that it was just family "play-acting," and a "system" that "horrified" him. (The Words 84; 112; 222). Sartre also faced an identity crisis. Despite his family's claim of him being the "miracle child" and "wonder child," he saw himself as ugly. His peers had also given him that impression. He was short, small-built cross-eyed and awkward in stature. Added to this, his mother treated him like a girl, not allowing him to play the seemingly rough games that other males would play, and keeping his hair long. It was his belief that she had silently prayed for a girl (Experiential Experiences, par. 7). He also felt forced into a lifestyle of reading and writing, because that was what his grandfather Charles admired, having been a writer himself. It however became a pleasant escape for him from the unhappiness he experienced at home. In his autobiography The Words, he states that "By writing I was existing. I was escaping from the grown-ups." It also positively affected his intellectual development as he became familiar with famous authors of his time (qtd in Experiential Influences, par. 11). As if this was not enough for Sartre to deal with, he also suffered from ill health. He notes in his autobiography, The Words: Things would have been fine if my body and I had got on well together. But the fact is that we were an odd couple [] If he suffers bodily as a result of needs and sickness, his unjustifiable state justifies his existence. His right to live is based on hunger, on the constant danger of death. Breathing, digesting, defecating unconcernedly, I lived because I had begun to live. I was unaware of the violence and savage demands of that gorged companion, my body, which made itself known by a series of mild disturbances, much in demand among grown-ups [] I had almost died at birth (88). His father had actually been quite ill himself when he met Ann-Marie in 1904. At that time he was suffering from entercolitis, which he developed when he visited China. He however married her and soon after she became pregnant with his child, Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre feels that his father's illness had a major role to play in his own illness. He describes in The Words how his mother had stayed up many nights worrying and had stopped breastfeeding him very soon because "her milk dried" (16). He was thus sent away nearby to be nursed. He meanwhile was ailing from enteritis. His mother's re-marriage had a negative effect on him as well. He felt alienated and lonely. Moreover, he was unhappy about having had to move from Paris to La Rochelle, where he knew no one. Strangely enough, it was this situation that led him to discover his notion of freedom. As he later described in his play No Exit, freedom was when one did not exist through and for others, which was not authentic (Jean-Paul Sartre). Although Sartre now felt alienated, he now felt free from the "play-acting" which he felt that he had to subject himself to while living with his grandparents. He was truly bitter and unhappy for the most part. His statement, "Death was my vertigo because I had no desire to live," underscores the bitterness and emptiness that he obviously felt (The Words 192). It was mostly around his friends that he felt more comfortable, when he did not need to "play-act." He described this as "a moment of grave happiness" as they would all run from school "yelling around the Place Du Pantheon" (The Words 222). School life Soon his destiny as a writer would become apparent. He attended high school at the Lyce Henri IV and after two years went on to the cole Normale Suprieure where he pursued Philosophy. His initial interest was that of the Cartesian tradition which focused on the proposition that I think, therefore I am. He soon departed from this and became more concerned with phenomenology, was associated with philosophers such as Edmond Husserl, with whom Sartre studied for a year in Berlin, Germany. He was successful at passing the Agrgation2 on his second attempt, "by adapting the content and style of his writing to the [] traditional requirements of the examiners. (Internet Encyclopedia). This qualified him as a teacher in one of the highest categories. From 1931 until 1945 Sartre taught in the lyces of Le Havre, Laon, and Paris. He published several works during this period. He gave up teaching in 1944, to pursue a career in politics. His military and political involvement Twice Sartre's teaching career was interrupted, once by a year of study in Berlin and the second time when he was drafted to the French Army in 1939 to serve in World War II. He was captured a year later by the Germans and put in prison in Padoux (Glossary of People: SA, par. 3; Sartre Online sec. 2). While in prison he re-read Heidegger, and even wrote and directed a play, Barona. Due to his poor health, he was released from prison in 1941 (Sartre Online sec. 2). He continued with teaching after being released. At this time he formed, along with Merleau-Ponty, an intellectual Resistance group called Socialisme et Libert. At this time he also published L'Etre et neant (Being and Nothingness) and the play Les Mouches (Sartre Online sec. 2). During the early fifties Sartre developed a highly active political life, but one which writing was very much a part of. He wrote The Communists and Peace in 1952, as well as several other publications - Age of Reason, The Reprieve, and Troubled Sleep - collectively called Roads to Freedom. These were all based on war times, and particularly France's indifference. It was contradictory though, in that in the pre-war years he had seemed to be uninterested in politics and had despised the Fascist parties and the bourgeoisie from which they and also he belonged). He never even voted in those years, but then he made a complete switch and got so deeply involved that he started to advocate quite a lot (Jean-Paul Sartre). During these years, much of his activities centered on advocating for peace. He signed a manifesto against the Cold War in 1952, and protested against the Rosenberg executions. In 1954 he participated in a meeting of the World Council for Peace in Berlin. He visited the USSR, China and the Soviet Union, and was even named vice-president of the France-USSR Association in 1955. He however left this Association when Soviet troops invaded Hungary to eradicate anti-Communist demonstration there. He visited many other countries including Cuba, Yugoslavia, Algeria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Japan, Rome and Israel, and met with their leaders (Sartre Online sec. 2). His political activities became more intense by the later 1960s when he supported the student movement in France. However by the late 1970s his health deteriorated and he was forced to take a step back from active politics. By 1978 he had to withdraw completely when he was hospitalized and went into a coma. He was also completely blind by this time (Sartre Online sec. 3). Sartre's personal life - Simone de Beauvoir Simone de Beauvoir was the lady who became Sartre's lover and lifetime partner. They had met at cole Normale Suprieure in 1929, and remained together until his death in 1980. Despite being together throughout all those years, they never lived together, and she was certainly not the only love in his life. They had a very open relationship where they could freely have external lovers. In fact, in 1936 they introduced another woman into their love affair, Olga Kosakiewicz, but this did not last long (Sartre Online sec. 2). Beauvoir enjoyed writing herself and had much in common with Sartre. She too was of an existentialist persuasion as evidenced in her famous book, The Second Sex, which speaks to women's oppression. She used expressions such as women are the "other," and "that women [are] not born." One of her final novels was a diary that detailed the illness of Sartre leading to his death, titled Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre (Philosophers: Simone De Beauvoir). They had no children together, and never shared a house despite their relationship and intellectual partnership for 51 years (Our relationship). Beauvoir is quoted as having said that the relationship with Sartre was "the greatest achievement of [her] life" (Our relationship, qtd in The Guardian). Twelve years after Sartre's death, his adopted daughter Arlette el Kaim-Sartre authorized the publication of several collections of letters that detailed the private life and thoughts of Sartre, and particularly about his open relationship with Simone de Beauvoir. These were titled Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir, 1926-1939 (Jean-Paul Sartre). Sartre's life with drugs Sartre's life was one mixed with drugs and tobacco, which he relied on to get through his extensive writing schedules while at the same time managing a political career and numerous love affairs. His daily routine included: two packs of cigarettes and several pipes stuffed with black tobacco, more than a quart of alcohol - wine, beer, vodka, whisky, and so on - two hundred milligrams of amphetamines, fifteen grams of aspirin, several grams of barbiturates, plus coffee, tea, with meals" (The World According to Sartre). One year he reportedly almost killed himself by taking overdoses of the then popular stimulant corydrane to help him finish the reader-proof Critique of Dialectical Reason. He was quite lucky to have lived until the age of 76 with this kind of lifestyle (The World According to Sartre). The Depth of his Works Having grown up reading many books and being influenced by famous writers of his time, during his years of teaching in Le Havre, Sartre published Nausea (1938), which made him quite famous. This novel, written in the form of a diary, seemed to have captured the emotional hell Sartre endured being ill for most of his life. According to some critics, Nausea must be viewed as a pathological case, a form of neurotic escape. (Glossary: SA, par. 4). It was the same themes expressed throughout most of his works - being, nothingness, consciousness, reason for existence, contradictions/ the lack of authenticity, freedom and choice.Some of the very feelings Sartre described in his autobiography The Words, were reflected in Nausea, such as nothingness, the loneliness, and the contradictions (lack of authenticity). In Nausea, it states "nothing seemed true' (106) and "I live alone, entirely alone" (14). In his autobiography, he had described that state of nothingness: I lived in a state of uneasiness: at the very moment that their ceremonies convinced me that nothing exists without reason (86-87). He also describes the loneliness in The Words: I grew older in the darkness, I became a lonely adult, without father and mother, without home or hearth, almost without a name (115). Being influenced by writer and Philosopher Edmund Husserl, Sartre was deeply interested in Phenomenology. This was apparent in his highly successful work, Being and Nothingness (1943). This book further led to him being viewed as a "master of great talent." (Glossary: SA, par. 5). Being and Nothingness was characterized as a "phenomenological investigation into the nature of what it is to be human." (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Sartre describes two types of being, the "in-itself" and the for-itself." He also elaborates on the phenomenology of nothingness, throughout the book, and examines the issue of being and that of consciousness. The notion of being and consciousness is also mentioned when he states in The Words: I witnessed that nakedness, that sense of everyone's direct relationship to everyone else, that waking dream, that dim consciousness of the dangers of being a man (86-87). As observed in his play No Exit, the same theme of consciousness is evident, as stated by the character Inez, "I'm always conscious of myself in my mind. Painfully conscious" (82). The issue of contradiction or "play-acting" is also evident for instance when Inez asks of Garcia "try to be honest with yourself - for once." In his play The Condemned of Altona, the characters discuss the contradiction of Leni not believing in God nor the Devil, yet he and his family attend church and swear on the Bible, just as a social practice (8). This was a contradiction that Sartre wrote about in his autobiography The Words, where although he was baptized as a catholic, his grandparents were really irreligious and indifferent, one beinf Catholic and the other being Protestant (100-1; 250-1). This play also speaks of nothingness, for example where the character of Father says "both your life and your death are merely nothing. You are nothing" (The Condemned of Altona 171). The issue of freedom is clear in No Exit where Sartre speaks of the absence of freedom because people are living for and through others. This he says is not authentic (Jean-Paul Sartre). Again, this is a reflection of his life, wherein he felt freedom when he was not around his grand-parents, "having to play-act." He mixes the theme of freedom and choice in much of his political writings. In his play Morts sans sepultre (The Victors) he depicts that even under torture and death, one is free to choose. Another of his plays, Les Mains (Dirty Hands) depicts that making political choices are difficult, and involves much compromise, and that there is refusal to let one's freedom be alienated by others (Jean-Paul Sartre). Symbolism, particularly in the form of themes/issues relating to God, the Devil or Hell, was also manifest in Sartre's works.3 This was apparent in No Exit where he uses mirror to depict hell and sins. The character of Estelle had six mirrors throughout her life and was then sentenced to hell where she would never see herself again. Meanwhile, for the characters Garcin and Inez, seeing mirrors was representative of them being constantly reminded about their sins and the torture they would experience in hell (Setting vs Story). The question of God and existence was common in Sartre's works. In his work The Devil and the Good Lord he states: God is the solitude of men. There was only me: I alone decided to commit Evil; alone, I invented Good. I am the one who cheated, I am the one who performed miracles, I am the one accusing myself today, I alone can absolve myself; me, the man (Act 10, scene 4). In his essay lecture Existentialism is Humanism, he declares: Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of itThus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism. Undoubtedly, all these themes were intertwined with his experiences while growing up. Sartre's Achievements as a Writer and contribution to Literature In the preface to The Condemned of Altona, Henri Peyre described Sartre as "the most powerful intellect at work in the literature of Western Europe," and the Picasso of literature" (Jean-Paul Sartre). After the war Sartre had gained prominence and had published other great books, Huis Clos, L'Age de raison, and Le Sursis. With his obvious passion for writing, his books began being published in volumes. In 1948, all his works were put on the Index by the Catholic Church (Sartre Online sec. 2). Sartre gave lectures in countries all over the world - including Brussels, Japan Israel, and the United States. In the United States he lectured at Harvard, Columbia, Yale and Pinceton Universities, among others, and became even more famous when he delivered his lecture Existentialism is Humanism. He had developed a particularly close relationship with the Jews, and due to his continued support of their cause, they presented him with an honorary doctorate in the mid 1970s (Sartre Online sec. 3). Sartre is said to have contributed significantly to literature and to the intellectual history of Japan. He is said to have had a strong impact on Japanese post-war literature, and they were greatly influenced by his philosophy of existence. Questions of individual freedom within the context of existentialist thought, is said to be at the heart of post-war Japanese fiction (Sartre's concept of freedom). Sartre had also published many articles on literature including an essay "What is Literature" in Situations II. Throughout his lifetime Sartre wrote nineteen (19) books, four (4) fiction works, twenty-six (26) plays in addition to a few screen plays, twenty-six (26) literary criticism, biographies and political writings, and seventeen (17) published letters and diaries. Some of his works were adapted into films such as Dirty Hands, in the United States in 1951; The Condemned of Altona by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. in 1963, and The Roads to Freedom, a thirteen-week television serial based on Sartre's novels The Age of Reason, The Reprieve, and Troubled Sleep, produced by the British Broadcasting Corp. in 1970. He received several awards and Nobel prizes for his works, some of which he refused. In 1940 he was awarded the Roman populiste prize for Le Mur; In 1945 he was awarded the French Legion d'honneur, but he refused it; In 1947 he was awarded the New York Drama Critics Award for best foreign play of the season, for No Exit; In 1950 he was awarded the French Grand Novel Prize for La Nausee; In 1960 he received the Omegna Prize (Italy) for total body of work; In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he refused it; and he received honorary doctorate from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1976 (Jean-Paul Sartre). The reason Sartre gave for refusing the Nobel Prize is that he felt that this was a sign of his acceptance by the bourgeois society. To him the Nobel Prize was a middle-class recognition, which he did not want. His Final Years Sartre became quite ill by the early 1970s when he suffered two heart attacks two years apart. He was hospitalized for edema of the lungs in March 1978. He went into a coma a couple months later, and died two years later on April 15, 1980. Despite all his achievements, he was considered to be a man of simple taste who cared more for the oppressed, and prized his intellect. Five years before his death he was asked in an interview how he would like to be remembered, and he responded thus: I would like them to remember Nausea, one or two plays, No Exit and The Devil and the Good Lord, and my two philosophical works, more particularly the second one, Critique of Dialectical Reason. Then my essay on Genet If these are remembered, that would be quite an achievement, and I don't ask for more (Sartre Online sec. 3). Clearly, Sartre's writing was what he valued most throughout his life. He departed this world having left his mark in a positive way in the fields of literature, politics and philosophy. He was undoubtedly a deep thinker, creative and skilled writer, and an important man of his era. In fact, Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka in The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, described him as "uncontestably the most outstanding philosopher and writer of our time" (Jean-Paul Sartre). Works Cited "Experiential Influences." Sartre Online. 24 April 2006 Read More