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The Last Great Revolutionary Philosopher

M. de Rollebon | 20.12.2001 15:54

In the age where Sartre is forgotten [*] and the SWP pose as 'Marxists', here is some Seasonal reading.

Among Sartre's many achievements were the ability to maintain a left wing integrity with creative thinking. In so doing he succeeded in reviving Marxism via Existentialism. This text is borrowed from the Marxist Internet Library, which contains many classics, some of which may be of interest even to those of other persuasions...

[*]Note: This was the astonishing theme of a recent posting. Incredible as it seemed at the time, I affirm that Sartre is no longer universally known.

M. de Rollebon
Homepage: www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/index.htm

Comments

Hide the following 7 comments

Not a great philosopher

20.12.2001 22:07

Sartre was not a great philosopher. Nor was he revolutionary. He was a time server. He cribbed his best ideas from Husserl and Heidegger. He rode the crest of a fashionable post WW2 trend, and lived off the accumulated intellectual capital. 'Being and Nothingness' was his best work, and that was published in 1943.

In 1968, the students occupying the Sorbonne insulted him publicly, as others did to Adorno. Merleau Ponty was a better philosopher, and will be remembered when Sartre is deservedly forgotten.

Emmanuel Mounier

Oh hush

21.12.2001 07:41

Why must you blast Sartre?
rip-off or not, he is loved by millions in France, and probably millions more across the world.
He wrote some great works, that I enjoyed.
Maybe he is just an gateway into more in-depth philosophy of his nature by other authors that are lesser known, but that is the case with every body that writes, especially these days. I say respect him for his contribution, as well as the authors you noted. Target him if you will, but i still like him.

a leftist

Interview with an Imbecile

21.12.2001 12:09

Can't comment on Sarte's philosophy really. He always struck me, like all philosophers, as basically an obfuscator. Politically he never fundamentally renounced Leninism, Stalinism even. In this sense at least, he remained, as the Situationists labled him, an imbercile.

As someone once wrote, "philosophers have only only interpreted the world in various ways. The point is, however, to change it."

Guy Debord
Homepage: http://www.slip.net/~knabb/SI/10.sartre.htm

S-club 7 of post war philosophy

21.12.2001 15:45

Sartre was the S club 7 of post war continental philosophy, banal and not especially creative, but much cuddlier than Heidegger. Responsible for flogging existentialism for years after its last creative breath. His greatest achievement was to justify the position of intellectuals through a wet hierarchical leftist politics supported by a pretty mediocre philosophy. I think the situ's called this one about right. Now Baudrillard, Derrida, them's philosophers...

Ernie Hunt

some of these remarks

21.12.2001 19:05

rather sum up why the left is in such a mess nowadays. they always blast their best people and elevate the mediocre. when i saw the title of the piece somehow i guessed it might be about JPS, and again, i guessed the kind of comments to expect. it seems to go in hand with the habitual trotsky- bashing we see so much of... well, if you cant see a great thinker who was ON YOUR SIDE, the left doesnt deserve to win. Pickaxes at three o'clock, anyone ?

auguste

if you're talking french philosophers...

21.12.2001 21:06

give me foucault any day, but actually for preference bourdieu, who may be even more of an anthropologist but has the advantage of being alive and useful, part of a european network of academics against the crudities of neo-liberalism etc.

ps all I've read by sartre was 'nausea' and it made me feel sick. it did make me remember how I felt as a teenager but I wouldn't recommend it...

love, peace and reflexivity.

zedhead

in this day it's Sade, but true...

23.12.2001 23:08

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