Re: Sartre/Others and L'Autres Les Autres

<__________________ Nice to see some pick ups on this line of thought; the S
of earlier is conserved in later works esp.in Flaubert and Idiot. However
as you quote and we had stated earlier, Depasse is the correct term. But
even correct terms are provisional and contingent. To say correct these days
seems slightly dangerous puritanical political correct etc. Not my forté. It
might interest you or any else for that matter to read interviews with
Sartre edited by Michel Contat I think it was. To me reading Sartre has
always been a question of learning yet again and moving with him along the
Spiral of his thoughts self-=questionings... Re Heidegger. Well I cannot
think of where but there are several interviews wherein Sartre states his
thoughts about the old Nazi. I think Sartre understood Heidegger very well,
but had no use for the areas of the German which did not interest him;
Heidegger seems not have lived History as an activity but in his own terms
inauthentically and in denial. Whereas Sartre made many mistakes he did take
action; Heidegger reacted -- ie his well-known support of the Nazi party in
the period of What is Metaphysics, and his life long silence on these
matters - and by reacting he of course make dubious his earlier work; not
completely. Levinas recognizes H. as the great in the early work fo BEing
and Time. As did Sartre. But in his own words 'I had no use... for it...' It
seems a little specious to imply or state for that matter that JP did not
know his Heidegger. I am sure he knew it very well; I am sure t hat Sartre
could absorb anything; But Sartre unlike the motley crew of post-modernists
did not play relativists games. One simply has to consider that in France in
the last year 5 new books have come out to reexamine his work and life. No,
to me he was the Great guy if one wants to use this sort of term: his talent
and achievements in almost every field of writing and thought are
staggering. He makes Derrida and the others look poor. They are prolific and
he was the genii, the genius of the multiple.... Only Deleuze is perhaps his
real equal. And the works of Guattari combined with Deleuze; But among
thinkers it is Sartre and then Deleuze with Foucault trailing in along....
But I mention these last two not to make them look weaker in achievement but
to suggest that Sartre is the real diverser of writing in philo-- the many
handed one eyed wall-eyed genii of the text. Theatre, novels, essays in the
hundres, prefaces, intros, bios. the major philosophical works; what other
writer has acheived so many levels of intelligence and insight and in so
many fields ? I am writing this very quickly and so forgive the faulty prose
or whatever... and now also with Regard to the criticisms of Edward Said
towards Sartre because he did not write --- according to Said enough about
the Palestinians --- well, I mean apart from the endless carping of that
writer on his beloved people and their problems, I mean, really who does
Said think he is to expect, to have expected Sartre already an old man and
sick and even dying and half-out of it, to have taken the pen up in defense
of Palestinains; DIdnt he do enough already, from Fanon onwards? BEsides it
was not clear perhaps to Sartre and others what had happened back then with
the Palestinains; and even if he had, one say why not the Irish and why not
this and that and so on; to each his own cause, and his own love.
>
>Sartre's own Questions de methode [Search for a Method in English
>translation], which was originally called Marxism and Existentialism,
>and was then published in Critique de la raison dialectique is
>invaluable. The Laing and Cooper book Clifford mentioned is also useful.
>
>
>Laing and Cooper suggest:
>
>'The key positions of the earlier work are conserved in the later, but
>conserved through a dialectic transformation as one moment in the later
>synthesis' (p16)
>
>In Questions de methode, Sartre declares
>
>'Je considere le marxisme comme l'indepassable philosophie de notre
>temps' (p. 14)
>
>'I consider Marxism as the insurpassable philosophy of our time' (my
>translation, pxxiv in Search, but this misses the point)
>
>'insurpassable' is barely adequate: Sartre's translation of the
>Hegelian Aufheben is depasser.
>
>then on p30/p21 he says he is:
>
>"convinced _at one and the same time_ that historical materialism was
>the only valid interpretation of history and that existentialism
>remained the only concrete approach to reality. I do not pretend to
>deny the contradictions in this attitude. I simply assert that Lukacs
>does not even suspect it"
>
>I'm not convinced that this is adequate to explain the transition in
>Sartre's thought, but it makes a little more sense of the ways in which
>his thought can be understood.
>
>One question: Sartre quotes a letter from Engels, which he says was to
>Marx, the French editor corrects to say it was to Hans Starkenberg, 25
>Jan 1894 [p. 37 n], in a few places. The key phrase is 'Men themselves
>make their own history but in a given environment which conditions them'
>. Sartre says he accepts this without reservation. He wants to stress
>the phrase before the 'but' which he claims determinists miss, whilst
>recognises constraints. But why does Sartre quote this letter, and not
>the very similar, and yet much more detailed and explicit, phrase in
>The Eighteenth Brumaire?
>
>By the way, Sartre's relation to Lefebvre is very evident - sometimes
>explicit - in this work. Interesting stuff.
>
>Stuart
>
>--


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