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Ep. 212: Sartre on Literature (Part Two)

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Continuing on What is Literature? (1948).

Sartre gives a phenomenology of reading and writing that makes reading into a creative act of completing the writer’s work, and calls this cooperation ethical: the work is an appeal to the reader’s freedom, and also the reader’s responsibility to then know what the work reveals. Are you shirking, all you skimmers?

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End song: “Things I Shouldn’t Have Told You” by Sam Phillips, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #90.

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Ep. 212: Sartre on Literature (Part One)

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On Jean-Paul Sartre’s What is Literature? (1948), ch. 1 and 2.

What’s the purpose of literature? Why write prose as opposed to poetry? Sartre argues that while poetry is about the words themselves, prose is about the ideas, so it’s necessarily political. A written work is essentially an ethical appeal for a reader to apply his or her own faculties and experiences to complete the work through the act of reading.

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Episode 212: Sartre on Literature (Citizen Edition)

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On Jean-Paul Sartre’s What is Literature? (1948), ch. 1 and 2.

What’s the purpose of literature? Why write prose as opposed to poetry? Sartre argues that while poetry is about the words themselves, prose is about the ideas, so it’s necessarily political. A written work is essentially an ethical appeal for a reader to apply his or her own faculties and experiences to complete the work through the act of reading.

End song: “Things I Shouldn’t Have Told You” by Sam Phillips, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #90.

Ep. 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Part Three)

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Moving finally on to Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Black Orpheus” (1948), where he introduces a book of black poetry by praising its revolutionary spirit as embodied in “negritude.” Is this a legitimate consciousness-raising exercise or a weird fetishization of blackness?

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End song: “Punch Bag” by Godley & Creme as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #3.

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Ep. 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Part Two)

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Continuing on Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (1946).

Is there an “authentic” way to respond to persecution? As part of his critique of anti-semitism, Sartre criticized the responses of some Jews to this situation, e.g. denying that the persecution exists, pretending to not be Jewish, or in any way accepting the terms of anti-semitism and setting up one’s life in reaction to it. Sartre instead recommends solidarity and “concrete liberalism,” which we try to figure out.

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Ep. 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Part One)

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On Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (1946) and “Black Orpheus” (1948).

How can we best understand the psychology of racism? Sartre condemns anti-Semitism as denying the facts of the human condition: the responsibility for fixing problems and not blaming them on a demonized other. But he also criticizes “the democrat” for a humanism that pretends we’re in a post-racial world, calling instead for “concrete liberalism” that treats Jews not as abstract individuals but as real people in an an oppressed situation.

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Ep. 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Citizen Edition)

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On Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (1946) and “Black Orpheus” (1948).

How can we best understand the psychology of racism and reactions to it? Sartre not only condemns anti-Semitism as denying the facts of the human condition (the responsibility for fixing problems and not blaming them on a demonized other), he also thinks that the victims of oppression can be inauthentic by denying their situation or otherwise being reactive to the racist’s attitude. “Black Orpheus” further explores this idea in characterizing the “negritude” of black poetry and how uncovering one’s negritude leads to solidarity and hence political and psychological change.

End song: “Punch Bag” by Godley & Creme as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #3.

Nothing So Absurd?

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In the first installment of a two-part series, Nicholas Joll tries to convince us that, for one thing, fire is not hot and, for another, that sincerity is impossible.

Truth and Authenticity in Michael Haneke’s Caché

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The films of Austrian director Michael Haneke seem to start out “normally” and then slowly descend into an abyss—but what if that abyss is in fact living authentically? Could we see Haneke’s award-winning Caché (2005) as an exemplification of Sartrean existentialism? And what are some other philosophical influences in his work?

Judgment without Morality

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Both Sartre and Anscombe say that they’re teasing out the logical consequences of atheism for ethics, and of course we saw this back in Nietzsche too. If you ask “are these figures moral realists or moral irrealists?”, I think they’re going to say you’re missing the point. No, a sentence like “X is right” no longer becomes simply true or Continue Reading …

Not School: Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Nausea”

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Featuring Mark Linsenmayer, Sean Webb, Stan Martin, and Yannick Kilberger. Recorded January 26, 2014.

One of the seminal texts of existentialism, but very slow and hard to get through as an actual book. While ordinarily we see objects as meaningful as things with history and often purpose, we can set that aside and see them instead as brute and meaningless. We can’t handle that, aren’t meant to handle that, and so instead of this being a machine-like, unemotional way of experiencing things, it is (for Roquentin) intolerably icky.

Not Ep. 87 Addendum: Citizen Outtakes from “No Exit”

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A couple of minutes of us chatting with Lucy Lawless and Jaime Murray as we share our preconceptions about the play and give excuses for being unprepared, about 5 minutes of blooper-type material, then the rest is our talking afterward about some of our choices in silly voices, what we think Sartre was talking about, what we were all up to in our lives that week, etc.

Episode 87: Sartre on Freedom and Self-Deception

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On Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Existentialism is a Humanism” (1946), “Bad Faith” (pt. 1, ch. 2 of Being & Nothingness, 1943), and his play No Exit (1944).

What is human nature? Sartre says that there isn’t one, but there is a universal human condition, which is our absolute freedom. If you claim to be determined by your character or circumstances, you’re acting in “bad faith.” Learn more.

End song: “Minnesota Freak” by Mark Lint and the Fake (2000).

About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

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