Jean Paul Sartre

[Anonymous No.23440153]

Can someone /lit/pill me on the chain smoking, turtleneck wearing Frenchie philosophers from the 20th century?

I'm reading Jean Paul Sartre's preface commentary to "the wretched of the earth" and man this guy is long winded. He literally just repeats the same blabbering points over and over again. I have no idea what the rest of his writing is like, but I'm not impressed so far.

[Anonymous No.23440794]

>>23440153
Camus mogs him in every way.

[Anonymous No.23441232]

>>23440153
From what I heard he's just a hack and I never read him because of that.

[Anonymous No.23441254]

>>23440153
They look like they’re a greyhound racing track

[Anonymous No.23441256]

>>23440153
Seems like he never had the makings of an artist nor a philosopher so tried to find a middle ground with disappointing results. Keep in mind though I've barely read any of his works except a few essays in college.

[Anonymous No.23441277]

>>23440153
I attempted reading him, but forced myself to quit because the man and his writings are insufferable. It was as if he found his own existence to be an attack on himself by some unseen force, and every word he let out was a shoddy attempt at defending himself.

[Anonymous No.23441280]

>>23440153
I don't see the turtleneck in that picture, though.

[Anonymous No.23441297]

>>23440153
Its quite simple. Imagine someone who read Heidegger but misunderstood him thoroughly, and then wrote about it. Now consider the fact that Sartre looked the way he did. Really dwell on this. Look at his face, his stature, his bad eye. Consider what sort of life a man of this appearance would have. Mix in Communist resentments, the identification with a permanently downtrodden underclass who will (any day, for real this time) rise up and overthrow all the systems which created someone who looked like Sartre did. Its unsurprising that his example of encountering "the other" is being caught peeping through a keyhole. You can know everything you need to know about Sartre as a philosopher from examining Sartre as a person.

Derrida, on the other hand, is worth reading, but thats another story for another time.

[Anonymous No.23441428]

>>23440153
Drop whatever you are reading and begin with Existentialism is a Humanism, easily digestible and have some idea of Kierkegaard and nihilism. The biggest thing about continental 20th century French/European philosophy is that it's a direct criticism of nihilism. The purpose of existentialism and absurdism is to defeat nihilism by way of absurdism to rebel against the absurd and existentialism to be "condemned" with freedom, while also positing that existence precedes essence, rejecting greek/religious thought. (and rejecting analytic philosophy indirectly) Another topic in existentialism is about the "look" or "gaze" when one is perceived by another observer in the world. and how when he choose by our own freedoms our choice of what we want to be, we are choosing a universal ideal for what everyone should be. For example, what we think as a man to be, i.e what i want to look like, Sartre argues we are actually believing in universal like truth that we are also choosing for everyone to be like this. (this is all in Existentialism is a Humanism) Absurdism, which can be extremely similar to existentialism at first glance is different. Where Sartre believes freedom as a burden we have, Camus would argue otherwise that we should embrace our freedom and live an authentic life rebelling against the absurd. The absurd from what Camus wrote a lot about in the Myth of Sisyphus is mans wanting for meaning in a universe indifferent to our need for meaning and without any answer to it. This is all for tackling the biggest logical conclusion to nihilism, suicide, which Camus thought was the biggest philosophical problem, and his solution is absurdism.

Although the biggest philosophical discussions are existentialism and absurdism vs nihilism, (and the most interesting) Beauvoir comes into play with her book the Second Sex, which many criticize as Sartre 2.0 but for women, which i would agree but nonetheless worth reading. It has an argument about freedom being shared by others which is politically extremely dangerous and sorta contradicts Sartre's real life actions but anyways....

In another portion of this era of philosophy is Frantz Fanon and Mearlu-Ponty which discuss the former discusses an existentialist phenomenological view on the colonialism and being black, whereas the latter is in regard to a phenomenological existence, in essence a holistic view on how we experience the world rejecting classical dualism (although it distinguishes consciousness and the body- it's very confusing and terrible to read i would avoid phenomenology waste of fucking time).

[Anonymous No.23441442]

>>23440153
I suppose I can try to offer a /Lit/ pill, if you are interested in Sartre try reading Nausea and Being and Nothing first. If you like his writing then by all means continue, if you decide you do not like his writing then you can stop there and at least be able to say you have read his 2 most important pieces.

[Anonymous No.23441476]

>>23440153
His right eye sees the future and his other left eye sees the past

[Anonymous No.23443016]

>>23441232
He certainly seems like a hack from the little I read. It's literally on the level of an undergraduate of philosophy or sociology desperately trying to reach the word limit. It's actually really bad.

I'm just going to write him off as a new left boomer meme.

[Schizoidberg No.23443026]

>>23440153
You see anon, le age du consent is le social construct

-Jean Paul Satre, probably

[Anonymous No.23443046]

>>23441297
The commieshit I really don't understand. I've only had a cursory look at the process of colonization and decolonization, the most basic cursory look. Every expert in the field has been dismissive of the commieshit being peddled. The dependency theory so common in sociology is not backed by statistics, not backed by anything, and the rapid rise of East Asian economies proved them wrong embarrassingly. The colonies were ran as a net loss through 90% of their existence, most africans were pretty eager and happy to sign treaties with europeans to give a slight advantage over a neighboring tribe, and Europe never got wealthy at the expense of the third world.

This information was publicly available in the 1960s, you could go to a government archive and pull up the 1950s French cabinet's perspective and accounting figures on Black Africa. You can find what these aforementioned researchers found, that the colonies were a money sink and France had been losing money for decades. You can even pull earlier commentary and debates from the latter half of the 19th century where Germany and France were like "these colonies are a moneysink but our constituency demands it".

Yet these people pushed the most extreme version of dependency theory, took it as a given, never proved or justified anything with statistics, and just ran with it. The sadistic fucking glee this Sartre cunt takes in detailing at how the goodhearted and wholesome socialist westerners are guilty of bloodshed by virtue of living in a western society, saying nothing can redeem them from the violence that's coming. Meanwhile this wonky eyed nigger with a gigantic pile of wealth and money tours commieshit countries schmoozing with the elite of the elite of those depotistic shitholes, knowing his money and status is all safe.

The sick fuck gushes about the thought of Europe being reversed colonized and starving, only that, would give Europe back its humanity. Although he thought that would never happen, it's disgusting that a man that lived in such privilege would write with such passion about his own people suffering.

All this, could be forgiven, if he kept his fucking gay commentary to two to three pages and didn't bloviate repetitively with WORDS WORDS WORDS and make himself so intentionally hard to understand.

[Anonymous No.23443059]

>>23440153
He was the lib equivalent of Robert Braschille, a mid novelist who got a professional boost by being a spineless collaborator. The kind of man to get released from a concentration camp then turn around and shove one of his coworkers right into a new one once the regime changed. Even if his writting was good he'd be an irridimable piece of shit, but it's not, every book he ever wrote was mid at best, and more often just terrible. The entire US military industrial complex got behind trying to make this bug eyed cuckhold seem cool, but he's not.