Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century

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Summary: Satire as person, provides context
Review: Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century by Bernard Henri Levy (Polity Press) 'A whole man, mode of all men, worth all of them, and .any one of them worth him' This was how .Jean-Paul Sartre characterized himself at the end of his autobiographical study, Words. And Bernard-Henri Lévy shows how Sartre cannot be understood without taking into account his relations with the intellectual forebears and contemporaries, the lovers and friends, with whom he conducted o lifelong debate. His thinking was essentially a tumultuous dialogue with his whole age and himself. He learned from Gide the art of freedom, and how to experiment with inherited fictional forms. He was a fellow-traveller of communism, and yet his relations with the Party were deeply ambiguous. He was fascinated by Freud but trenchantly critical of psychoanalysis. Beneath Sartre's complex and ever-mutating political commitments, Lévy detects a polarity between anarchic individualism on the one hand, and a longing for absolute community that brought him close to totalitarianism on the other. Lévy depicts Sartre as a man who could succumb to the twentieth century's catastrophic attraction to violence and the false messianism of its total political solutions, while also being one of the fiercest critics of its illusions and shortcomings.

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Summary: Insightful, essential reading for students of Sartre's life
Review: Sartre: The Philosopher Of The Twentieth Century is an impressively researched biography by French provocateur Bernard-Henri Levy of Sarte, the famous French novelist whose existential works held up a mirror to reflect the confusion of the twentieth century. Presenting the events of Sartre's life that worked to shape his intellectual and political views; Sartre's fascinat-ion with Freud and psychoanalysis; and the enduring qualities of literature, Sartre: The Philosopher Of The Twentieth Century is a very highly recommended addition to 20th Century Philosophy Studies in general, and insightful, essential reading for students of Sartre's life, thoughts, and works in particular.