Reading Sartre

Reading Sartre

In this volume, Joseph S. Catalano offers an in-depth exploration of Jean-Paul Sartre's four major philosophical writings: Being and Nothingness, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, The Critique of Dialectical Reason, and The Family Idiot. These works have been immensely influential, but they are long and difficult and thus challenging for both students and scholars. Catalano here demonstrates the interrelation of these four works, their internal logic, and how they provide insights into important but overlooked aspects of Sartre's thought, such as the body, childhood, and evil. The book begins with Sartre's final work, The Family Idiot, and systematically works backward to Being and Nothingness. Catalano then repeats the study by advancing chronologically, beginning with Being and Nothingness and ending with The Family Idiot and an afterword on Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Readers will appreciate Catalano's subtle readings as well as the new insights that he brings to Sartre's oeuvre. Joseph S. Catalano is Professor Emeritus at Kean University of New Jersey and a former Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the New School University for Social Research. He is the author of A Commentary of Jean-Paul Sartre's "Being and Nothingness"; A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's "Critique of Dialectical Reason"; Good Faith and Other Essays: Perspectives on a Sartrean Ethics; and Thinking Matter: Consciousness from Aristotle to Putnam and Sartre.

Reading Sartre

JOSEPH S. CATALANO Professor Emertius at Kean University, New Jersey

H I CAMBRIDGE ^ 0

UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521152273 © Joseph S. Catalano 2010 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2010 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Catalano, Joseph S. Reading Sartre / Joseph S. Catalano. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-521-76646-3 (hardback) 1. Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1905-1980. I. Title. B2430.S34C346 2010 i94-dc22 2010014790 ISBN 978-0-521-76646-3 Hardback ISBN 978-0-521-15227-3 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLS for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Marisa

I have tried to do the following: To indicate the limit of psychoanalytical interpretation and Marxist explanation and to demonstrate that freedom alone can account for a person in his totality. Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr

Contents

Preface Acknowledgments Works Frequently Cited

page ix xiii xv

PART ONE: A RETROSPECTIVE OVERVIEW

I

The Family Idiot

2 3 4

Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr The Critique of Dialectical Reason Being and Nothingness

3 21 43 69

PART TWO: THE WORKS THEMSELVES

5 6 7 8 9

Being and Nothingness The Critique of Dialectical Reason Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr The Family Idiot: Part One - Constitution The Family Idiot: Concluded

Afterword: Madame Bovary Index

91 113 137 162 182 201 207

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Preface

About forty years ago, I was introduced to Jean-Paul Sartre's thought as a pure accident of a teaching career in philosophy. For reasons that are too complicated to mention here, the late Dean Ruben Abel of the New School for Social Research in Manhattan asked me to teach a series of courses in Existentialism. Neither my undergraduate nor graduate training in philosophy prepared me for the subject matter; but the challenge came at a time in my life when I was looking for a change. I found it. But I did not know at first that I would keep returning to the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, particularly to the four works I consider here, namely, Being and Nothingness, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, The Critique of Dialectical Reason, and The Family Idiot. I offer no excuse. These works continue to nourish my own thinking about the world. One might nevertheless ask whether my personal interest in Sartre justifies another book about his thought. I could answer that these four works give the substance of Sartre's philosophy as it developed from his first essay on the imagination published in 1936 until the appearance of the last volume of The Family Idiot in 1972, and that I do not think many people have had either the leisure or the commitment to study these long and difficult books. Perhaps, then, it is sufficient to say that I simply wish to share the fruits of my labor. Because I am mainly concerned with presenting my understanding of Sartre's thought, it is appropriate for me to admit that this text is not a critique in the usual sense of that word. I seek understanding rather than criticism. On the other hand, I would not have spent so much of my life reading and thinking about Sartre's thought if I did not think that it is, for the most part, true. This truth, however, is not something closed; it is itself an invitation. You may wish to read more deeply about Sartre yourself, and even in these brief reflections, you may discover that Sartre can help you, as he has helped me, understand more fully our place in this strange and wonderful world in which we live. IX

X

Preface

As my invitation to you, I think I should expand briefly about the quality of my own effort. I do not feel comfortable in thinking philosophy in any language other than English. Others are able to go from one language to another with fluency and precision, and clearly literary writers have this ability, Samuel Beckett for example. I, however, need to situate philosophy in my home language, English, and indeed, American English. One of the reasons is that when I was much younger I was rather fluent in the Latin of Thomas Aquinas. Now I wonder about it all; my competence seems to dilute itself when I attempt to rethink terms such as per se in English. That Latin, however, was well defined, and it made sense as long as one did not go outside the fixed framework. Sartre, on the other hand, uses the rich vocabulary of the entire French language into which he situates technical terms such as the "foritself" and the "in-itself" borrowed from the German of Hegel. For the most part, however, Sartre uses commonsense words such as "consciousness" and "man," and he then slowly gives these ordinary words new meanings. Sartre is helpful in the numerous examples he gives, and I try to follow him by giving examples of my own. Granting that I rethink Sartre in English, one may be concerned whether this attempt alters his philosophic thought. That is difficult to say. Sartre himself held that prose writing is aimed at communication, and that, unlike poetry, it can be adequately translated. There are errors in translation, of course; some I have been able to spot, when comparing the English with the French. I must confess, however, that I have never found any fundamental enlightenment in this pursuit. Of course, we get closer to the actual text that Sartre wrote, but every thinker who writes a great deal nods as the pen moves on. But the real task is to make sense of the text, whether it is given to us in the original French or in English, and, in that respect, nothing helps except a dedication to grasp the underlying structure of his entire philosophy. This has always been my goal. Nevertheless, the reader should be aware that I sometimes take a gamble with a text. I am not referring to the vast amount of material that I do not examine, but to my expositions themselves. Some of the text is very difficult, but I have never felt right about skipping these passages. When a particularly difficult section appears, and I am confused about its exact meaning, I will inform the reader. When I faced the task of writing about Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason - and thus producing a companion to my commentary on Being and Nothingness - the book was reviewed in Les Temps Modernes and praised for being an original study. Every writer likes to be regarded as original, but I was just trying to be clear. In the first part of this text, I work backwards from the almost-threethousand page study on Gustave Flaubert, The Family Idiot, to the earlier six-hundred-page work on ontology, Being and Nothingness. I should note that, in both parts, I make an exception to the chronological order, namely, Sartre's study of Genet, which I keep close to the study of Flaubert, whereas

Preface

XI

his study of history, The Critique of Dialectical Reason, should come between these two works. As Hazel Barnes aptly remarks, The Family Idiot is a "synthesis" of all of Sartre's philosophy. Of course, this synthesis signifies also a development of Sartre's thought over the years, and I will point this out as I proceed. My task in this first part is to sketch an overview, and thus I frequently move from the end of a work to the beginning. In the second part, I retrace my steps in a more chronological order, moving from Being and Nothingness to The Family Idiot. Here I am more attentive to internal logic and the philosophic style that operate within each work. Sartre writes books and he expects his readers to read whole books, even if they are several hundred or a few thousand pages long. He loves to expand and he is not in any way a stingy writer. Still, matters will fall in place. You must be patient. You may have to wait twenty, thirty, or more pages before he reminds you of the context of his remarks, and, in the meantime, the discussion - which may not give Sartre's own views on the matter - will continue without qualifications of the sort, "as we see from this perspective," or "in this view," or "according to so and so." Then too, Sartre calls a spade a spade. He writes that the just are in bad faith. We would like him to qualify by writing, "the seeming just" or "those who consider themselves just but who are not truly just." But is the qualification needed? Those who are indeed just question their own justice, and those who are in good faith wonder about their own good faith. Philosophy engenders wonder and questioning, while our society aims to smother both in an anxious pursuit for security. There is another potentially disturbing aspect to Sartre's style - the constant use of man for humanity and the general use of the masculine. But then Sartre is a male and he frequently uses himself as an example. What is more important, Sartre is concerned with oppression on all levels. He is aware of the oppression of women and he refers to the work of his life-long companion, Simone de Beauvoir. He might have thought of substituting the pronoun "he" with "she" or with she/he. But the attempt to avoid the masculine would be distracting, when his aim is to reveal the distinctive oppression of the Indian untouchables, African American blacks, the poor, the hungry, the criminal class of the world, and the oppression of children by adults, perhaps the most singular type of oppression that Sartre examines after writing Being and Nothingness. I am aware that feminists would object that, in each group, women are more oppressed than men. Perhaps this is formally true. Still, there is a vast concrete difference between the oppression of a middle-class African American man of today when compared to a middle-class white woman, or, in general, of a starving man when compared to a woman of means, or of the man in prison when compared to any woman who is, at present, outside of prison. Nevertheless, I grant that the constant use of male terminology is alienating, as is much of our vocabulary. Sartre explicitly notes that, since World War

Xll

Preface

II, we continue to use words that are too old for us. Sartre's ontology has its own alienating terms; for example, to refer to "being" is somewhat archaic, belonging more to an earlier thinking pattern. Still, if we are to communicate, we sometimes have to use alienating masculine terms as well as terms that seem to reach too far. On a more philosophic level, we can refer with Martin Heidegger to "Dasein," and with Karl Jaspers to "the encompassing which is us," instead of referring to man. In the issue of choice of vocabulary, I have always been sympathetic to Martin Buber, whose philosophic views are close to Jaspers', but who preferred to give ordinary words new meanings, referring simply to u I-Thou." On the other hand, I also grant that the attempts to eliminate masculine terms from our discourse, as well as the effort to clarify thinking by inventing new terms, can be appropriate as a specific effort, one among many. Efforts are efforts; let us not demean them. They are all valuable if they help us think more clearly and more honestly about ourselves. It is in this spirit that I present this work.

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Professor James L. March of Fordham University who read earlier versions of the manuscript and who encouraged me to itsfinalproduction. Also, I wish to extend a word of thanks to Beatrice Rehl of Cambridge University Press for actually reading my submitted material. Finally, to those who accepted one of the most thankless tasks in the world, being a reader of a manuscript, my gratitude for your gracious comments, which paved the way to publication.

Xlll

Works Frequently Cited

The nine chapters of this book as well as the Afterword all deal with specific books. Thus, when quotes are given that refer to these books, the citation will only give the page number and the volume number, where appropriate. The specific edition and complete titles will be given in the text and in footnotes. This is particularly important in the English editions of Being and Nothingness, because the hardback and paperback pagination do not agree. I have used a hardback edition, which to the best of my knowledge, seems to exist in only one edition, and I have made a special attempt to give the part, chapter, and section, for easy identification no matter what English edition the reader may be using. Because one of the purposes of my writing this book is to show the interrelation of Sartre's principle philosophical works, I will frequently refer to all four works in a particular chapter; for example, I will refer to Being and Nothingness in a chapter on The Family Idiot. With the exception of Being and Nothingness, which I think is clear as BN, I have chosen citations as follows: BN Genet Critique Method Family Notebooks

Being and Nothingness Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr Critique of Dialectical Reason, 2 vols. Search for a Method The Family Idiot, 5 vols. Notebooks for an Ethics

Other works, such as Transcendence of the Ego, will be cited including their full titles. Main Secondary Sources: Full references given in notes Aronson Barnes

Sartre's Second Critique Sartre & Flaubert

xv

1

Works Frequently Cited

Catalano, BN

Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason Sartre's Political Theory

Catalano, Critique McBride

PART ONE

A RETROSPECTIVE OVERVIEW

I

The Family Idiot

Achille-Cleophas and Caroline Flaubert had plans for their children, and Sartre observes, that when parents have plans their children have destinies. Achille, the first born son, fulfilled his destiny by becoming a doctor like his eminent father, and Caroline, the only daughter, made a good match in marriage like her mother for whom she was named. Only Gustave, the second son, did not seem able or willing to conform to the family plan. He paid a price for his resistence. Sartre does not mince words: "Gustave's relationship with his mother deprived him of affirmative power, tainted his relationship to the word and to truth, destined him for sexual perversion; his relationship with his father made him lose his sense of reality" (2: 69).* Do parents have this much influence over a child? Usually parental presence is tempered by the influence of relatives and friends; but when the family structure is tight, as it was with the Flaubert family, the infant can enter the real world only through the family. But, if through lack of love, this door to the real world is closed, only one other path beckons the infant, that of the imaginary. (Later, the child or the adolescent may choose death.) Thus, the infant Gustave Flaubert chooses the imaginary. Too young to put a bundle of cloths over his shoulder and leave a home in which he felt unwanted, he found a way - as do many others - of keeping his fragile body at home while living elsewhere. In this way, from his earliest years until he was about seven, Gustave Flaubert gave himself over to his daydreams and he seemed always to be in a stupor. He was incapable of that quick learning that characterized his 1

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot. Gustave Flaubert 1821-1857, Vol 2, translated by Carol Cosman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 69. The whole work, Volumes 1-5, were all translated by Carol Cosman, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1981, 1987, 1989; 1991; 1993) In the chapters dealing with this work, only the volume and page numbers will be given in the references. Otherwise, the work will be cited as "Family" with appropriate volume and page number. For the French title and a discussion of the division of this massive work, see the introductory remarks to Chapter 8 of this text. See also the excellent study, Hazel E. Barnes, Sartre & Flaubert (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)

3

4

A Retrospective

Overview

older brother and was later true of his younger sister. In comparison, Gustave seemed to be a dunce. Nevertheless, by ten or eleven years of age, he who could not read was already writing with exceptional competence. "Indeed, let us not forget," Sartre writes, "that from his thirteenth year the cards were on the table, Gustave wrote books and letters, he had permanent witnesses. It is impossible to take liberties with facts so well known" (i: 46). Let us begin an initial reflection on Gustave's passage from extreme linguistic backwardness to fluency in both spoken and written language. Skipping for the present his infancy and reflecting on his early childhood - from two or three until he is seven years of age - let us try to understand his imaginary life. All children love the imaginary; but to make it one's true home, even for a while, requires dedication, even for a child. A few years later, however, we witness this same child rerouting himself back to reality, speaking and writing stories. What are these early stories like: They are veiled stories about his hatred of his family, particularly, his father. Indeed, for Sartre, this "family idiot," throughout his entire life, will carry within himself a permanent psychic wound that will influence his writing of Madame Bovary. If we are to understand this idiot become genius, we must pause and examine this psychic wound induced in Gustave by his family. THE W O U N D

History in the form of culture permeates the fibers of our lives; yet an infant has a unique dependence on the adults that are immediately attentive to it, usually the mother and father. A baby needs milk, love, and the names of things. Without milk a baby dies, and without love it begins to resent its survival, and without gradually acquiring the names of things it gazes at the world in an unknowing stupor. Just as malnutrition can harm this vulnerable body, rejection can stunt its psychic and linguistic growth. Is this indeed the case with Gustave? The written testimony makes at least this much clear: Gustave was frequently in a daze, confused by questions, incapable of learning the alphabet, and yet his senses were biologically sound. Whatever the source of his linguistic backwardness, it must have been different from that of our deaf and blind American, Helen Keller. We may also note in passing that Keller's parents were not at fault for her early separation from language and for her consequent rage at not being able to name things. To a great extent, the connections of touch to language had to be forged anew, and, although these efforts did not then and do not now fully acknowledge the linguistic power of true sign language, they worked - Keller learned to communicate. Further, when through the generous efforts of Ann Sullivan, Keller was awakened from her linguistic slumber, she could advance to reading and writing without carrying the weight of childhood rejection.2 For the child Gustave, 2

Helen Keller was not congenitally deaf and blind, but she was deprived of both sight and hearing before she was two See, Helen Keller, The Story of My Life (New York: Doubleday,

The Family Idiot

5

on the contrary, a linguistic slowness and a habit of daydreaming were hastily judged by the parents as abnormal and this sentence induced in the child a "wound," which he nursed throughout his life: "What we must try to understand," Sartre writes in the Preface, "is the origin of the wound that is 'always hidden' and dates back to his earliest childhood. That will not, I think, be a bad start" (i:x). What, then, is this wound? It is the strange bond that Gustave has to the very family that cruelly considers him to be incurably slow-witted. Although Gustave would not conform to the destiny his parents had mapped out for him, he would also not completely divorce himself from his family. If he refused to add luster to the family by entering one of the honored professions like his father and older brother, he would, nevertheless, always cherish the belief in the nobility of his Flaubert blood. This childhood tension might have dissipated as Gustave grew older; but its roots were deep. The father was an established doctor-philosopher and the mother was socially established. It was the father's project that each child, each "Flaubert," was to combine the new bourgeois belief in the merit of works with the older belief in nobility of blood. The mother, Caroline, totally approved of this (probably never formulated) family project: The blood from her well-established family would mix with the blood of her self-made husband to give the children the gratuity of inherited grace. Further, to repeat, this family bond was tight and closed. The mother taught the children at home and she never let them forget their father's importance as well as her own social standing. They too were destined for great things, and they could not be spoiled by a tenderness that would make them soft and unfit to make their mark in the world. There was also another facet to the family life, one that particularly affected Gustave. The children's destiny was controlled by a return to the older notion of the right of primogeniture - the firstborn son was to be the Flaubert child. Caroline's first born was, in fact, a son, Achille. No doubt, the mother would have dutifully cared for a firstborn daughter, but the expectation of a son would have shadowed this birth. When, in fact, a daughter, another Caroline, was born, she was the only daughter and thus she had her own special place within the family. Gustave, however, was at birth an in-between, a second son who could never surpass the firstborn status of his older brother. Finally, there was another consideration that made Gustave's childhood life somewhat ambiguous. The family wanted more children, particularly sons, but there were deaths, one before Gustave was born and one after. Indeed, as far as sons were concerned, only the first seemed both strong and fully awake to the world: "Big brother Achille became, alone, the fragile hope Page & Company, 1903), particularly the first three chapters. See also, Joseph P. Lash, Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy (New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1980), particularly chapter four, "The Key Is Turned "

6

A Retrospective

Overview

of a family plagued by death. When Gustave arrived, the chips were already down" (i: 101).

The reference to "the chips are down" recalls the language of Being and Nothingness, and the general implication of the phrase is that reflective decisions frequently follow upon more basic earlier attitudes. For example, we may wonder where to take a vacation, but this question keeps firm the choice of our profession - indeed it retains our hold on our general view of life. In the present context, the phrase, "the chips are down," refers not only to the precarious position of Gustave as a child who might die, but more specifically to his twofold secondary place within the family project - he was not only the second-born son but also fragile in body and slow in mind. Thus, whatever attention was given to Gustave, this attention arose from the doubt whether he would survive and, if he did survive, whether he would make the grade as a Flaubert. THE FAMILY PROJECT

Thus, during Gustave's life, the historical conditions that were always present and always knocking at the family door - the rising bourgeoisie, the ambiguous status of the former nobility, and the painful efforts of the working class to gain recognition, as well as a France simmering under the defeat of Napoleon and looking for its own way out of resentment - were kept at a distance by this family group and what Sartre terms its "project." The notion of a project, more specifically the "fundamental project," takes us back again to Being and Nothingness. For each of us, this project is our general outlook on life, an outlook that outlines our relations to others as well as our bond to our planet, Earth. In Part Four of Being and Nothingness, Sartre observes, "My ultimate and initial project - for these are but one - is, we will see, always the outline of a solution of the problem of being," and he adds, "But this solution is not first conceived and then realized; we are this solution."3 For the father, Achille, the solution to the problem of being was to establish a small but an important family dynasty, based on the mystical union of merit and blood. This choice was specific and temporal. Earlier, it would have merely reflected the accepted belief in nobility of blood; later, it would 3

Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, translated with an introduction by Hazel E. Barnes (New York. Philosophical Library, 1956), 463 (pagination from the hardback edition and paperback editions differ, and thus I will generally give the part, chapter, or section). Hereafter this work will be cited as, BN. Chapter 5, note 1 gives the French title and date of publication. See also, Joseph S Catalano, A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" (New York Harper & Row, 1974, with added preface: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980; Midway Reprint: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 196-202 (pagination the same in all editions) Hereafter this work will be cited as "Commentary, BN;" but, in general, I will not cite further references to this work.

The Family Idiot

7

be reinvented in many ways as the new rich attempt to bred "gifted" children. The Flauberts, however, were ambiguously placed within the social milieu of the time. The father did not belong to the rising merchant class; he was a doctor equally distinguished in practice and in medical research. Still, he was a self-made man and could thus fit within the rising class. The father's project imbued a sense of urgency within the family. The bloodline was not yet firmly established, and it was crucial that the children should be considered exceptionally talented. An idiot or two among the older nobles could be considered the exceptions that prove the rule or the price that one had to pay for keeping blood pure. Or, where it was clearly the rule and not the exception, enough money, then as now, imparts a glow to the offspring. For Achille-Cleophas and Caroline Flaubert, however, an idiot in the family would be a disaster. In our reading, we should keep recalling the title of this massive work: The Family Idiot. Achille-Cleophas's project, however, was not merely urgent; it was also effective. It was a mystical arm reaching out and molding his children's freedom from within. Caroline, the mother, could have intervened; she could have placed her love between her husband and her children's needs. She might have thus given Gustave the additional love that his linguistic backwardness seemed to demand. She simply did not do so; for she accepted her husband's family project and thereby increased its effectiveness. We are thus concerned with a family adventure. Sartre constantly warns us against early generalizations. It is impossible to decide beforehand whether the historical or family situation will be the more important for a particular life. For a slave or for one born in deep poverty or for one culturally fixed by color, race, or sex, the historical forces are frequently primary, tending to overdetermine a life by limiting the paths on which freedom may follow. This inner restructuring of a budding freedom is not innocent: "One does not make use of the oppressed as a machine, contrary to what is often said, but as a limited freedom," Sartre had earlier observed in the Notebooks for an Ethics - written after Being and Nothingness but published posthumously.4 Nevertheless, even in the most oppressed conditions, there are family dramas, and while enough love cannot overcome every disadvantage, it can do a great deal. Here, however, Sartre's point is that, even in a socially advantaged family, the parental attitude can move a child in the direction of subhumanity, as frequently occurs with daughters. In the case of the Flauberts, however, Gustave was the one most deeply affected; the family project instilled in him a deep inferiority. Sartre writes: Far from touching the child's "human nature" and affecting some so-called universal faculty for suffering, this inferiority assaults the Flaubert in him; in the younger son's Flaubert-being lies his concrete determination, his singularity; as for 4

Jean-Paul Sartre, Notebooks for an Ethics, translated by David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, i992)> 328.

8

A Retrospective

Overview

sufferings, they do exist but they will be Flaubert sufferings. For the excellent reason that a family drama is involved, (i: 365)

AN IDIOT CHILD?

We are merely at the door of this family drama; let us enter and begin our reflection anew. Gustave is slow to learn, very slow - at six and even seven years of age he is not able to make any sense of the alphabet. Worse, he is always in a fog. What can be the cause? Neither nature - the blood from the parents - nor culture - the mother's effective instruction, her social refinement, and the like - seem at fault. Nevertheless, at the intersection of nature and culture, accidents may happen; for example, an infant may die or be born blind, all through no fault of the parents. In the case of Gustave, fate did not cause death; but it did seem to have induced a weakness of will that encouraged excessive daydreaming and made learning difficult. On other hand, perhaps only additional help was needed. Thus, the source of all learning was called upon, the father, who "set himself to work and bungled everything; humiliated by his son, he humiliated him for the rest of his life" (1: 355). Nevertheless, this idiot child who could not make sense of the alphabet when he was almost seven years of age, would write of himself when he is not yet eleven years of age, "I have nearly thirty plays and Caroline and I act out many of them" (2: 119). How is this possible? However it happened, it is important to note that the family held firm to its initial judgement: Gustave is slow-witted, and thus if he who was not able to read could now write, why that writing must also be a form of linguistic backwardness. That is to say, while Gustave previously daydreamed, now he writes and acts out his daydreams in his writings; but a Flaubert - even a second son Flaubert - is supposed to do something important with life. Still, the parents would wait and see. Perhaps some good would emerge from this child. The parents do observe, but this is not a casual affair: "The paternal power is manifest everywhere; from the cellar to the attic" (1: 329). The firstborn son and only daughter accept the father's pervasive presence as a sign of his love, and they do not question their role within the family. Somehow, Gustave, just awakening into freedom, reacts to his father's presence as a terrible force molding him in a direction that he does not wish to go: "The child feels moved by a secret malice: I will not become a bad copy of my older brother" (3: 32). Why does the young Gustave experience malice? After all, even within the rule of primogeniture, there are many ways a second son can cope with this situation. For example, when Gustave was older and able to support himself, he could have restructured his life with his friends and broken the tie to his family. He refused, however, to make the break: "Flaubert lived within the domestic group and never left it. From one end of his life to the other, the younger son regarded himself as an inessential accident: the essential thing

The Family Idiot

9

for him would always be the family" (i: 71). Again, our attention is drawn to the distinctness of this family drama, and thus Sartre writes, "Certain universal circumstances might be found if we could compare lives. But this doesn't concern me; what is important here is Gustave's choice" (2:174). The specificity of Sartre's analysis accounts for the length and complexity of this study of Gustave Flaubert. Nevertheless, universality is also an issue and it too has its own motif in the book, as Sartre makes clear in the first page of his Preface: For a man is never an individual; it would be more fitting to call him a universal singular. Summed up and for this reason universalized by his epoch, he in turn resumes it by reproducing himself in it as singularity. Universal by the singular universality of human history, singular by the universalizing singularity of his projects, he requires simultaneous examination from both ends. Thus, even as Sartre is mainly concerned with the singularity of Gustave's own project, universal as well as historical characteristics do emerge and interact in his study. Indeed, no human life begins with a neutral outlook on the world. The infant's cloths, the crib, the crucifix on the wall or statue of the Buddha on the mantle or the colored objects floating above it as well as the smiles, the frowns, the touches, the feeding and care - all this comes to the infant as from some heaven, transcending and enveloping its budding freedom, inclining it to develop in this way rather than in another way. This is normal and healthy. Nevertheless, a child who is loved for itself will later begin to think for itself, moving forward in life on the memory of its early days in paradise: The valorization of the infant through care will touch him more deeply the more this tenderness is manifest... Let a child once in his life - at three months, at six taste this victory of pride, he is a man, never in all his life will he be able to revive the supreme voluptuousness of this sovereignty or to forget. But he will preserve even in misfortune a kind of religious optimism based on the abstract and calm certainty of his own value. We shall say, in any case, that an adventure begun in this fashion has nothing in common with Flaubert's. (1: 129-130, note 2) Still, Caroline was a dutiful mother, and Sartre goes so far as to admit that she would have died for her children. He is not, however, impressed by this Kantian duty. The same sternness that might require a mother to sacrifice her life for her child could require the child to sacrifice its life to measure up to family standards. These parents would never require their children to die rather than tarnish the family honor; they did, however, require something like death - unquestioned obedience to their ideal of the good life. In some remarkable way that we have yet to examine, Gustave learned to resist the family project. We have, nevertheless, reached a more informed beginning. Let us thus once again pause to wonder about this idiot of the Flaubert family. How shall we approach the unfolding event of his passage from deep linguistic backwardness to remarkable linguistic fluency? Is the

10

A Retrospective

Overview

young Gustave acting the role of an idiot? Does he cloak his genius with a prolonged feigned stupor? Shall we believe that Gustave succeeds in outwitting his parents for six or seven years? Or, rather, are we witnessing a genuine adventure with language, an adventure born of and opposed to the parent's own adventure? AN IDIOT BECOMING A G E N I U S ?

The quality of genius is not a general trait that exists in each individual with slightly different characteristics; it is, in each instance, a radically unique manifestation of freedom. Granting this specificity, we can still note that in cases such as Jean-Genet and Gustave Flaubert, where the family conditions aim at limiting a child's developing freedom, genius, according to Sartre, is the child's own discovery of a path out of the family prison - out of the hell of others. Toward the end of his study of Genet, in answer to someone who insisted that Genet's path from prison life to the life of a writer was due to some inborn natural talent, Sartre writes, "What do you think talent is? Mildew of the brain? A supernumerary bone?" And, he answers his own question: "I have shown that his work is the imaginary aspect of his life and that his genius is one with his unswerving will to live his condition to the very end."5 A few pages later he adds: "I have tried to do the following: to indicate the limit of psychoanalytical interpretation and Marxist explanation and to demonstrate that freedom alone can account for a person in his totality" (Genet: 584). Sartre has never wavered from this view of freedom; rather, his analysis of freedom has only become more complete and complex, as it shows how only the freedom of one person can limit that of another. True, extreme poverty limits freedom, but, as the Critique will make clear to us, the "scarcity" of the person in need is created by those with wealth and power. Our task is thus to understand Gustave's early adventure with life and language, not by seeking causes that would eliminate in advance his budding freedom, but rather by seeking the intelligible conditions that made his freedom possible: I, for my part, do not conceive an act as having causes, and I consider myself satisfied when I have found in it not its 'factor,' but the general themes which it organizes: for our decisions gather into new syntheses and on new occasions the leitmotiv that governs our life. (Genet: 427-428) We thus begin by accepting the reality of the phenomenon before us, no matter how strange it appears. We accept the following temporal evolution: A child truly linguistically backward becomes, in a short time, a child truly linguistically brilliant. We allow ourselves to f.ace the possibility that we here 5

Saint Genet- Actor and Martyr, translated by Bernard Frechtman. (New York, George Braziller, 1963), 569 (See Chapter 2, note 2 for a discussion of the translation of the title.)

The Family Idiot

II

encounter a genuine adventure with freedom and language. Every child, of course, has an adventure with language, and thus Sartre notes, "invention characterizes speech - we will invent if the conditions are favorable; if not, we will have badly named experiences and live them badly. No, nothing is guaranteed" (i: 29). Nothing is guaranteed, not even the naming power of language. Can Gustave name things as other children? Can he reinvent for himself the language he has received from his parents? All children invent language without knowing it. They receive words and then remake them as their own, sometimes using received words against the adults who gave them the words. Still, a child does not normally question the existence of words as names of things. Things have names and one learns the names without the wonder of their connection - that is, unless, like Helen Keller one has from almost infancy been deprived of their social connections. All of which is to note that the child learns within the prelinguistic web of family life. (Imagine parents, who like Descartes's demon, aim at deceiving their child by inventing words that have no social use.) This prelinguistic web existed for Gustave; otherwise his brother and sister could not have learned to speak and read so quickly. Sartre writes, "Thus the verbal act can in no instance be defined as the passage from one order of things to another. How could this be possible, since the reality of man living and speaking is created from moment to moment by the mingling of these two" ( I : 28). But with the Flauberts, the intermingling of words and things were constantly within the family project - the father's watchfulness and the mother's dutiful care; that is to say, the price of the admission into this linguistic web is the child's acceptance of his role within the family, a role that Gustave resists. True, we are in danger of projecting a too explicit reflective consciousness onto this young child. But let us not go to the other extreme: A child is not an infant; there is childhood awareness. We have seen that the child daydreams excessively. Through these daydreams, Gustave hears words, words that he somewhat accepts but does not reinvent for his own use. This condition continues until he is about seven years of age. Then, sometime between eight and eleven years of age he invents all-speaking, reading, and writing. Let us proceed; but let us not cheat and dilute the wonder. We are in the face of a profound linguistic leap, one that is beyond the power of a normal child. But then a normal child does not have the need to make such a linguistic jump.> Gustave, however, could not communicate in a normal way with his family, for everything in that family belonged to them and not to him. Thus, before he could leave daydreaming and speak in a normal way, he had to solve for himself the relation of words to the naming of things: "The question then bears on everything, and this is the stupor: why do names exist?" (1: 154 ). Strangely, the child solves this problem, and with this solution, Gustave has the totality of language within his grasp. How are we to understand this childhood solution to the problem of language?

12

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Overview

GUSTAVE A N D T H E BIRTH OF H I S GENIUS

Once again, let us make a fresh start. Gustave receives words from his parents, no doubt, first from his mother. Do these linguistic gifts differ in quality from the touches and gazes he receives? It is more reasonable to assume that both the sounds, the touches, and the looks all had the same motherly quality. The child lives in the milieu of duty, not of generosity. Sensing this weight of duty, he may intuitively respond by not being generous in his own childhood relations. We do not know this for certain, and yet Gustave complains of certain passivity throughout his life. He works hard, but he must overcome an initial inertia. Sartre remarks that, even if we grant that Gustave had low blood pressure, this would not have accounted for the degree of his linguistic daze nor for the way he later related to his own passive constitution. Gustave's passivity seems to result from the tension caused by his need to depart from the family project and still remain within it to the extent that he prided himself on being a Flaubert. Did this internal conflict exhaust Gustave? Clearly not, but it must have had its price, and his passivity does not appear to be excessive dues for suppressing his hate-love relation to his family. We are beginning to approach the area of Gustave's understanding of himself, that is, his notions about himself, or more accurately, his ego. For Sartre, the ego is that aspect of the self, the I, that comes to us from others and from the world - especially but not exclusively when we are young or vulnerable and which we slowly mold until it becomes part of our personality. While initially arising from others, the ego almost immediately begins to reflect our own response to the world's view of us. Every child sees itself reflected in the eyes and gestures of adults, but then the child gradually learns how to impart to this image a spark of its budding personality and freedom. Indeed, what distinguishes our personality from our ego is that this later is the quasi frozen image of our freedom that is equally accessible to us and to others. Thus, in Sartre's early and blessedly short monograph, The Transcendence of the Ego, we read the remarkable words: "My I, in effect, is no more certain for consciousness than the I of other men. It is only more intimate."6 That is, we can never discover within us a pure center that is our self, independent of its relation to others. Although a child receives all of its initial notions about itself from others, usually its parents, these will normally be given to him in such a way that he is invited to reexamine them, and this possibility is usually made real by other childhood relationships, for example, grandparents, relatives, or young companions. But Gustave is locked within a tight family, and later, when he can break the bond, he chooses not to do so. Sartre's reflections, which we will gradually expand upon, lead him to conclude that the young Gustave found it difficult to impart anything of 6

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego, translated by Forest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick. (New York: Noonday Press, 1957), 104

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13

himself into his ego. His older brother and younger sister could advance in self-knowledge securely, for both the scope and limits of this knowledge were not only fixed but almost guaranteed by the family project, which they accepted: "For Gustave, on the contrary, the ego comes to him through others', he doesn't dream of ratifying it but only of playing it in the sense it is proposed to him and in the way that confirms the demands of others" (1:166-167, note 7). The young Gustave neither rejects nor affirms nor truly responds to others about him; rather, he "plays" with actions and responses: he is asked to do this or to do that and he obliges, but it is as if he is performing on stage this child's real world is in his daydreams. No doubt this is somewhat true of all or many children, but surely by six or seven they learn where their feet touch the ground - at least they better do so if they are not headed for insanity, suicide, or, as in the case of the young Gustave, genius as a way out of an impossible situation. THE ROOTS OF GUSTAVE'S G E N I U S : THE PROGRESSIVE-REGRESSIVE METHOD

We have made some advance; but, once again, we need yet another fresh start. We have been here loosely using a method that Sartre develops at great length, namely, the "progressive-regressive," method. As the name suggests, the "progressive-regressive" method involves a movement in two directions. The "progressive" aspect begins with what is obvious to inspection, namely, a behavior, or pattern of behavior that indicates, directly or indirectly, a choice or intention. The regressive stage goes back to its past roots. The difference between the progressive and the regressive stages of the method is important; it is only in the progressive stage that we can see the working out of freedom. In the regressive stage, everything appears to be caused and determined. Thus, Gustave did not choose to be born in this family as their second son nor did he choose his time or place of birth. From a regressive aspect, he appears caught as a fly in a spider's web. The progressive aspect alone reveals the degree to which his condition is the result of both parental freedom and his own free reaction to this freedom. As we begin a simple progressive stage, we must keep in mind that because we are here concerned with an infant and then a young child, we must allow the significance of Gustave's behavior to unfold gradually. Still, if Gustave had fallen and had a concussion, his excessive daydreaming and linguistic slowness would have occasioned concern but not wonder. He was physically weak, but all his organs seemed to his doctor-father to be fit. While it would be foolish to claim that this child consciously chose his childhood idiocy in order to avoid conforming to the family project, let us not impose on the child a quasi-mechanistic response to a family situation. The child, to repeat, is aware with childhood awareness. What is that like? Every case will be different, and yet the dependence on adults is always present. Let us attempt to understand

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Gustave's childhood awareness, and thus initiate the first regressive aspect of our methodology. We now imagine ourselves alongside the infant-becoming-a-child, and we observe Gustave breaking out of his linguistic fog, writing his early stories - stories that reveal a deep hatred of his parents, particularly, his father. We keep the total phenomenon in mind, namely, the backwardness and the linguistic breakthrough, and we search for the roots of this complex phenomenon. We thus note the family project, the father's watchful presence and the mother's dutiful care, and we must add Gustave's relation to his older brother and younger sister. Now the process begins again and we enter a new progressive stage; indeed, Sartre continues the process at great length only reminding us now and then whether he is doing a progressive or regressive study. As we observe this child breaking out of his fog, we keep his whole life in mind. We are not attempting to guess how Gustave's life will develop. We are examining the life of the author of many works, the most famous of which is Madame Bovary. We know how Gustave's life will develop, and we take all this knowledge with us as we imagine ourselves alongside this infant developing into a child and then into a writer. We observe his young excessive daydreaming. What is it about? We do not know. But later - not much later - stories will appear almost fully formed. And then there will be plays. There are thus two linguistic giant steps, or perhaps, indeed, only one - from daydreaming to using spoken words, to connecting to things, and then - very quickly - to reading and to writing stories and plays. Let us continue with our progressive movement: We allow our imagination to carry us alongside this budding freedom. For this child, speaking and writing seem to be one. His parents were trying to teach him to read, but he still had problems with speaking. All of language seemed to him to belong to others, to his parents and to his older brother. He enjoyed listening to stories; but he had no desire to learn to read the stories for himself, not even at six or seven years of age. Again, given his remarkable breakthrough, we are forced to note a genuine linguistic adventure, one that was connected to his role within the family: "To learn how to read, he would have to shatter his inner conception of language, that is, radically to change his relation to the self and to others" (i: 351). Thus, at almost one and the same time, this child learns to connect spoken words to things and recognize the letters of the alphabet as forming written words that work their own magic on the printed page. Can a child do this? Why not? Indeed, this child must have done just that, for where else could those almost fully developed plays and stories have arisen except from the initial fog. Admittedly, however, this claim invites further reflection, one that would justify Sartre's interpretation of Gustave's young consciousness. Thus, in a sense, we pause in our methodology as we gather before us evidence for deeper progressive-regressive reflections.

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15

THE EVIDENCE FOR OUR SPECULATIONS

"Readers may wonder," Sartre writes, "how I know all this. Well I have read Flaubert; the boy had such lively memories of these lessons [with his father] that he couldn't help sharing them with us" (1:355). Thus, Un Parfum a Sentir, written at fifteen, tells the story of a father who tries to teach his sons how to dance on a tightrope: "It was Ernesto's turn. He trembled in every limb, and his fear increased when he saw his father take a little rod of white wood." (I: 356) And again on the same page Sartre gives a long quote that he emphasizes by giving it his own italics: The rod, for its part, followed the dancer's every movement, encouraging him by lowering itself gracefully, threatened him by shaking with fury, showed him the dance by making the measure on the rope, in a word, it was his guardian angel, his safeguard, or rather the sword of Damocles suspended over his head by the thought of a false step. Sartre concludes, "All of Flaubert is here." Gustave's father would always be there to watch and judge just what this "idiot" would do next, and the idiot would perform for his father. Why? For the infant as for the child Gustave, the family is necessary: How else is he to survive? For the adult and the author, the family is again necessary; but this time by free choice, for Gustave accepts and wishes to live within the mystic of the gift of his election, an election arising from the union of his brilliant father with his socially established mother. In the third volume, as Sartre is reflecting on Gustave's school days, he notes that Gustave joins only the most elite group as if it was precisely where he belonged: "The hierarchy established among the Flauberts concerns only them. ... In other words, a Flaubert idiot is still good enough to make a stir" (3:15). Gustave Flaubert would always regard himself higher than the rest of humanity. His father had it wrong about greatness, but he would get it right. The Flauberts were indeed destined; but he, Gustave Flaubert, was their destiny. Toward the end of this long study, after Gustave had achieved international recognition, Sartre writes, "Gustave had wanted to gain glory, to lay it at Achille-Cleophas's feet, and make him weep with remorse" (5: 556). This father, however, never had regrets or second thoughts; Gustave was, for him, always the idiot of the family. A DIALECTIC OF FREEDOM: THE SPIRAL L E A D I N G TO MADAME BOVARY

In the working out of The Family Idiot, the progressive-regressive method is joined to a "dialectic" - a give and take between two phases of freedom. Let us then note the dialectic - the reciprocal tension - that directs Gustave's development within his family, while we also moving deeper within the progressive-regressive stages that lead to his writing Madame Bovary.

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The father is watchful, always wondering what this "idiot" will do next. The "idiot" responds by getting his own way. Clearly, an "idiot" cannot be a doctor. His father agrees; but surely he could at least become a lawyer. Gustave has no answer, and thus he wears himself out preparing for his law classes. Exhausted, he collapses: "Six months later, moreover, in January, 1846, the unloved son of Doctor Flaubert began his solitary strike against his father, entering neurosis the way one enters a convent" (3: 60, note 48). He has the best doctors, his brother and his watchful father. From morning to night, entering at whim, he stares at his son, takes his pulse, casts that 'surgical gaze' upon him that detects all lies. ... But the practitioner's scrutinizing gaze shakes him to the core. Gustave believes that he is suspected and hence 'receives' the intuition of his deep commitment, the vow he has made to remain forever afflicted. (4: 119) The reference to the "gaze" recalls Sartre's notion of the look in Being and Nothingness, and indeed, there is a long section on the look in The Family Idiot. The look, for Sartre, does not refer only, or indeed, foremost, to bodily eyes, but, rather, to the way we discover our own body through contacts with another's body. Further, the significance of the look is that our initial interaction with others is utterly contingent, both in the sense that it may never occur and in the sense that it may not be fruitful. The gift of humanity may be lost as happens if a child is brought up in the wild, or, this gift may be measured out miserly, as in slavery, inducing a form of subhumanity from which there may be no way out. Indeed, the look comes to the infant as from God; for what is a parent except a god reaching down to breathe humanity into an infant's soul: "By the Other's look I effect the concrete proof that there is a 'beyond the world.' The other is present to me without any intermediary as a transcendence which is not mine" (BN: 270)? Let us go back and introduce a new regressive stage: Under the parent's gaze, Gustave discovers his body not as a center of action, but as pool of innate weakness. Strangely, Flaubert molds this physical weakness toward his own end - good for no real work, nursing his inferiority complex the way he himself was never nursed - he writes his stories, bound to "a room of his own" subsidized by his family. He has "won," but only by playing "the negative theology of 'Loser Wins'" (5:7). The notion of loser wins is a form of bad faith by which one finesses doing an unpleasant task, while retaining a belief that the task has in fact already been done. It applies to Gustave in the sense that he cannot actually break from his family and yet he thinks that he has done just that by becoming a writer. He has become a writer but not by openly breaking from a family that despised him, but by a series of painful efforts to avoid the family project while staying within its halo. 7

See Chapter 4 of this text, "the look "

The Family Idiot

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Specifically, for Gustave, the game of loser wins is a way out of an impossible situation, and it is indeed a sign of his genius: "I have said elsewhere that genius is a way out, the only way out when all is lost. I say so again, specifying that this way out is not neurotic and usually even allows one to spare oneself a neurosis" (5:34-35). Thus, we will see in the following chapter that Genet's genius was also a way out of an impossible family situation, one that did not lead to neurosis. With Flaubert, however, the way out was a stroke of genius; but it was also neurotic. Gustave's neurosis is not only an integral part of his life; it is, for Sartre, the driving force of his writing. Let us return to the time - thereby initiating a new progressive stage - when Gustave, wearing himself out trying to become a lawyer, collapsed before his brother. The conceptual apparatus at the time judged it to be a form of epilepsy. According to Sartre, we now have the means to understand Gustave's collapse as a genuine neurosis that was slowly aimed at allowing Gustave to write while remaining vAthin the family. The particular form of the neurosis arose from his strange unwillingness to confront his family and, particularly, his father. He becomes ill precisely so that his father will judge that this "idiot" can do no better than write. Still, even as a neurosis, the collapse represents a "conversion," a radical and total orientation to a life of writing. Again, recalling the language of Being and Nothingness - indeed, using the same phrase - Sartre writes soon after the reference above to loser wins: "There is no doubt that in response to an emergency situation ... this illness saved him from the worst. But at what a price?" And Sartre continues, "what does it matter to him, basically, if he is sometimes compelled to have convulsions on his couch?" And again, on the same page, "The illness removes him from the law and assures him the freedom to write - quite simply the freedom of leisure. He says so, and that is not in doubt" (5:7). When his father dies, Gustave recovers and writes in the open. Still, the childhood wound continually reappears. "There are men," Sartre writes, "who have been created more by their histories that by their prehistories, mercilessly crushing within them the child they once were ... But Gustave! ... the whole question is contained in these few words: Gustave never left childhood behind" (1: 45). Indeed, when Sartre is summing up Flaubert's relationship with the world and others, outlining his "spiral" of existence - the project that moves him from childhood to adulthood, carrying forward his past, confirming this past anew in all future success, failures, and accidents of his life - Sartre continually returns to deeper levels of the neurosis. This "spiral" existence of Gustave never achieves a synthesis of the past with the present; rather, it moves forward in time through a "stress" that is itself the tension of his need and his hatred of his family. Still, no life stands still; as one gets older, one learns something about one's self. Gustave, however, always sees himself as a victim. Thus, Sartre writes of the man who is suffering with his nation its

A Retrospective

i8

Overview

defeat by the Prussians: What Flaubert cannot tolerate in 1870 is the surgical gaze of the Prussians, inherited from the paterfamilias, which isfixedon naked France writhing in the mud, reducing it to what it is. When Nature imposes her reality on us, we hardly have occasion to feel shame because it does not think us. But, as in his childhood, Flaubert realizes himself through the gaze and the manipulations of others; beneath the eyes of the Other - who is at once Bismarck and Achille-Cleophas - the great choices of his life are revealed to him as Other. (5: 555) But here we encounter a great mystery. With all his neurosis, Gustave Flaubert is able to mold his hidden hatred of his father into the written language of Madame Bovary. In reading this book, we seem to enter a realistic narrative of a tragic life; but, for Sartre, we are being led down a road damning all human hope. Nevertheless, the dialectic between the author and his great novel is complex. "Madame Bovary is defeat and triumph," Sartre writes early in the Preface, "the man depicted in the defeat is not the same man summoned in its triumph. We must try to understand what this means" (1: x). The projected fourth volume in French was to give us the final answer to this question. Nevertheless, throughout Sartre's massive text, Sartre provides frequent hints of what he has in mind, some of which I will consider in the last two chapters and in the Afterword. Here, we can, at least, allow ourselves a glimpse of what Sartre has in mind.

MADAME BOVARY: THE EMBODIMENT OF ART FOR ART'S SAKE

Among the many references to Madame Bovary throughout The Family Idiot, let us begin with the following: This is the role of the immediate in Madame Bovary: to symbolize, strictly speaking, to allude to the macrocosm or the void that is its equivalent, and above all to distract attention, to fool the reader, and while the reader is absorbed in reading a contemporary story, to inject him with an ancient, eternal poison through style. (5- 13-14)

I am not concerned here with the correctness of Sartre's interpretation, but only in understanding what Sartre has in mind. Let us begin simply. If we grant Sartre's view of the work, why was a throughly misanthropic work praised as a work of "realism?" Sartre's general answer is that the readers were living within an imaginary empire, the so-called Second Empire, that arose after the defeat Napoleon Bonaparte. They were thus prepared to accept a false realism, one that disguised defeat as victory. Still, these few words do not explain how Flaubert could make the novel work. Sartre's answer is Gustave's unique literary technique, namely, the surface meanings of the narrative

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moves along on its own level while the "poison" is being injected through the denotation of the words: Far from using it to designate an external signified of the Word, he employed his art to make the thing pass into the materiality of the world, so that the sentence, sonorous and closed, cut off from its references to the world, tended to be posited for its own sake, to become what we call today a text, referring entirely and exclusively to language. (5: 564) The point of this "text" is to mask a general and a relentless misanthropy in the narrative of a personal tragedy. It appears to the reader that this tragedy could have been avoided if the social conditions were better; but this is all illusion. For Flaubert, this entire world is the realm of Satan, a realm in which the worst will always happen. Indeed, the worst did happen to Flaubert: He was denied love by his father. We have seen that he masked this lack of love and his hatred for that lack in his early stories. But now he knows all the tricks. The hatred is deeply hidden in the narrative of Madame Bovary. For Sartre, as we read, we are being imbued with a belief in the hopelessness of all human activity, with the smallness and the pettiness of all human existence: "One of the principle themes of his work - which runs from his first stories up to and including Madame Bovary, where it is exhausted ... might be formulated as follows: 'I am too small for myself" (5: 551). But if Flaubert is too small for himself, then how vain and useless is the existence of the common person? Granting this interpretation of Madame Bovary, we must press further the question of how could this strange literary enterprise be praised as a work of realism, indeed, as the "father" of realism. To discover the answer to this question we must reflect upon the literary model of the times, "art for its own sake." The imperative "art for art's sake," had a healthy and praiseworthy historical birth. It arose from the aim to separate art in all its forms from a dependence upon patronage and public opinion, rightly calling attention to the perfection of the work of art itself. As it developed into its final form, however, it implied a "black humanism," a humanism without God or People. In this black humanism, there are no true answers to seek concerning the human condition, because all the answers are already part of the furniture of the world and merely have to be discovered by science. We are thus things in a universe of things; our lives are govern by the laws of survival of the fittest. Recalling explicitly the language of Being and Nothingness, Sartre writes of this humanism: Man is not afar-its elf but fundamentally an in-itself, susceptible to being known in his objectivity and exteriority. This knowledge already acquired, can be exploited, strictly speaking, or developed to practical ends, but there is no more specific problematic of human reality. (5: 205) That is, for the eminent practitioners of art for art's sake - and, for Sartre these are the Knights of Nothingness such as Baudelaire Marllame, and

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Flaubert - science alone has the key to truth, but truth is unimportant, for there is only beauty. There is beauty, yes, but this beauty is unfit for human or divine eyes - it exists only for itself. Nevertheless, art in all its forms is only one aspect of our lives. What gave the imperative art for art's sake its wider scope is the way it became incorporated in the overall social structure of the times. Philosophically, Sartre explains this by reinterpreting an Hegelian notion of the objective spirit. Sartre writes: "In fact, the Objective Spirit - in a defined society and in a given era - is nothing more than culture as practico-inert" (FI, V, 35). The term "practico-inert" comes from Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason (soon to be examined), and it points to the "weight" of the social structures: the forms of art and architecture, the codification of laws that tend to regulate our behavior and which also reflect our beliefs, as complex and as contradictory as these may be. We develop our freedom within this web, sustaining it or challenging it: "The Objective Spirit, while never on the side of pure lived experience and free thought, exists as an act only through the activity of individuals" (5: 41). The individual Gustave Flaubert both personified and gave life to the objective spirit of Second Empire. But all of this is still abstract. For there was in the life of Gustave Flaubert a meshing of the neurosis of his personal life with the social neurosis of the Second Empire. It is this that guides the almost three thousand pages of The Family Idiot. The notion of "absolute-art" fitted this Second Empire, allowing one to remain asleep in the dream of a beauty that was always elsewhere, seemingly here in the world but more in the imaginary than in the real. Although I will return to this notion of art for art's sake both in the study on Genet that follows and in the last chapters, the point here is that the Empire needed its neurosis as much as Gustave Flaubert needed his. The two fit together, and thus Gustave is named Knight of Legion of Honor. Gustave realizes that he is such only as a Knight of Nothingness; but "he rejoices in it" (5 : 534)- He and the Empire fit as a glove fits a hand. Sartre does not shy away from accusing him of "sin," the sin of opting for the imaginary over the real. Still, when all is said and done, Sartre recalls his readers and himself to his empathy for Gustave Flaubert: He wanted to return to his early childhood, to that nursing baby kneaded, manipulated, made passive by hands that were too expert, not tender enough. (5: 545)

2

Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr

At seven years of age the orphaned Jean Genet is placed in a Morvan peasant home by The National Foundling Society. The government action is normal and Genet is grateful for his adoption. True, he is brought up to say, "Thank you!" for everything; but he is not resentful. He is a good boy and at the head of his classes. He is said to be pious. Moreover, he wishes to please, for he has a dream: He will work, save, own things, and be a respected peasant like his foster parents. There is more. This orphaned child wants to be a saint. How are the dreams of having property and of being a saint related? No doubt, the young Genet has not troubled himself about such matters. Still, he clearly learned respect for property from his foster parents, and, perhaps, one can say that he substituted saintly election for the lost relationship to his real parents. At first, adoption allowed Genet to live as happily as any other child. He seems to have regarded his orphaned former life as merely another childhood circumstance such as the color of his hair or his height. In the language of Being and Nothingness, we might say that Genet "passed through" his early orphaned state somewhat as a lame child may run and limp happily with friends.1 In Sartre's terms, the young Genet is "innocent." Still, innocence is fragile: "Everything comes to us from others, even innocence" (6). 2 Genet's adoption could have healed the wound of his orphaned state. Adoption usually involves choosing a particular infant or child, and that 1

2

Of course, even as I "pass through" my body in use, the relation of my body to the world remains the "ground" upon which I act. See, for example, Sartre's discussion of pain: BN: 331-339. Saint Genet Actor and Martyr (translated by Bernard Frechtman). (New York, George Braziller, 1963) In his prefatory note Frechtman admits that his translation, "actor and martyr," loses the allusiveness of the French Comedien et Martyr (Gallimard, 1952): "Saint Genet evokes the memory of St Genestus - the third Roman actor and martyr and the patron saint of actors. ...In addition the word com&dien (which means actor - not necessarily comic) is used familiarly to designate a person who shams or "puts on an act." (Translators italics) 21

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choice can successfully substitute for the love of the child's biological parents. Tony Hillerman admirably describes such love concerning his own six adopted children in his memoir Seldom Disappointed? Unfortunately, Genet was more effectively orphaned when adopted than when deprived of his real mother and father. Sartre is clear that this new fundamental alienation did not occur merely because he was placed in a home, which action did not prohibit a true love developing between the parents and the child. Therefore, there must have been a specific reason for Genet being deprived of love; this was the fundamental attitude of the foster parents toward property. These foster parents created an atmosphere in which the child experienced everything as a loan. Recalling again the language of Being and Nothingness, Sartre writes, "Whether judged from the viewpoint of Having or Being, he is equally at fault" (9). Still, during the next two or three years, this parental judgement remains merely a milieu that does not violate Genet's innocence. Then something happens. THE EVENT

The child is playing games to substitute for his future dream of owning things and of being a saint; that is, he is engaged in "saintliness and pilfering" (10). But Genet's games are about reality. He does not use his imagination to make paper money real or useless things valuable; rather, he "borrows" reals things and pretends that they are his own. Saintly abstraction helps: He is here in the kitchen and he is with God; perhaps he is more with God than in the kitchen. Then too, no one is looking, not his foster parents and surely not God who must be more interested in people than in possessions. Besides, nothing is really happening - one moment something is in a drawer, the next moment it is in his pocket. It is a game. Then one day the game becomes real. Sartre writes: A drawer is opening; a little hand moves forward. Caught in the act. Someone has entered and is watching him. Beneath this gaze the child comes to himself. He who was not yet anyone suddenly becomes Jean Genet... A voice declares publicly: 'You're a thief.' The child is ten years old. (17)4

3

4

Tony Hillerman, Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir (New York. HarperCollins, 2001), chapter 19, particularly 227-228 We can, of course, trace Genet's alienation to earlier roots. It is clear that, already in this work, Sartre had understood the importance of the mother's fleshy relation to a child: For want of having known the primordial relationship with naked flesh, with swooning fertility of a woman, he will never have that tender familiarity with his own flesh, that abandon which makes it possible for others to reproduce within themselves and by themselves the indissoluble intimacy of mother and nursling. (7) But again, enough love from the foster parents could have gone a long way in healing this original condition

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Let us reflect upon this crucial experience, for it is the birth of a new Genet: "he who was not yet anyone suddenly becomes Jean Genet." But the child is ten years old and had already been named. What then is Sartre's point? To begin our understanding of the significance of this naming, we must grant that Sartre is here capsuling a series of events that approximated the clarity of this singular experience. Early in his exposition Sartre explicitly informs us that he sees his task as one of entering Genet's universe, as given to us in his writing, and examining the myths so as "to re-establish the facts in their true significance" (5). Thus, in his writing, Genet refers to a quasi instant in which he began to formulate his project of becoming the thief he was seen to be by his foster parents. But the instant is here probably several such events, judged to be more or less serious by the foster parents. Nevertheless, once again we encounter the force of the Sartrean look - the penetrating gaze that comes to us early in life either through sight, sound, or touch, and enters us on the path of our humanity. The look imbues us with our initial awareness of how we appear to others; then too, it initially socializes our interior life so that when we reflect we meet first and foremost a self already judged by others. In general, this is normal and healthy, particularly when the child encounters its budding self as a lovable object in the eyes of adults. With Genet, however, the true force of the look appeared rather late in life. True, he was always seen as an orphan, but, to repeat, this did not disturb his childhood innocence. Now, however, Genet interprets his orphaned state in a new light, and what he sees is condemnation: Genet the Orphan! Genet the Thief! Genet's name now begins to have a new significance. He who was called Jean Genet and who happened to be an orphan is now Jean Genet who deserved to have been orphaned: "Because he is regarded as a thief Genet becomes a foundling" (19). Genet can longer "pass through" his orphaned state and live it as if it were a natural condition that some children have and others happen not to have. Moreover, the condemning judgement of the foster parents embodies what is already latent in this peasant community: Genet is now a thief because he was orphaned and he was orphaned because he was, from birth, destined to be a thief. Still, we must move carefully as we attempt to follow Sartre's study. There was no necessity in Genet's tragedy. Here, as always, freedom is situational. If Genet had been brought up in a city with childhood friends, who took their parents criticisms lightly, or "had he been called a thief at the age of seventeen, Genet would have laughed. But it is a child who has been caught... He is trapped like a rat: he has been so thoroughly inculcated with the morality in whose name he is condemned that is its part of his fiber" (17).5

5

And later, Sartre writes, "Genet's 'original crisis' can be understood only within a village framework." (52)

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Further, even if the circumstances remained as they were, Genet might have chosen to live his tragic experience differently. He could have asked for forgiveness and promised to repent, and, perhaps, he spontaneously did act thus in the beginning. Of course, he would be watched for future thefts, and this watching would never end. But, he might have accepted it all as his "fate." Rather, both like and unlike Flaubert, Genet chooses to remain true to his original condition - for Flaubert that of being the family idiot and for Genet that of being the family thief. Sartre writes on the first page of this study: 'An accident riveted him to a childhood memory, and this memory became sacred." The memory becomes sacred, but how is he to live it? Genet has his own subjectivity, his own freedom, child that he is. Could he not retreat to a safe place within his soul and rediscover his innocence? But there is no safe place within a psyche, unless it has been built brick by brick. Such construction takes time and discipline, and, if this habitat is to exist in good faith - that is another issue - its foundation must be set in a fortuitous upbringing in which the fragile infant and then child is seen, touched, and spoken to, as the Cherished One.6 None of this happened to Genet. Thus, at ten years of age, this youth had no safe inner retreat in which to discover his innocence. Still, Genet is free. We are all free, even if our freedom has been molded by forces stronger than us into a limited creative force more fitting a subhuman than a human: "One does not make use of the oppressed as a machine, contrary to what is often said, but as a limited freedom" (Notebooks: 328). Thus, even with his freedom oriented to guilt, Genet can still respond. But what can he say to his foster parents? Here is the object in his hand. Will he say that he did not mean to steal it and that he only wanted to pretend to own it for a while. How could the child thus express himself and what meaning would such an excuse have to these parents for whom property is life and life is property. The result is that Genet will have to work out his freedom in ways that differ from the destinies and adventures of normal people: "Let there be no misunderstanding: I am not saying that his original crisis resembles a rape, I say it is one" (79). A rape cannot be undone; still one is free to situate oneself in respect to it. Genet's rape - that damming judgement, "thief" - robbed him of the possibility of belonging to the class of respected people by honestly owning things. But, how will this damning judgement affect his dream of becoming a saint? Despite the verdict, he retains the dream. Traditional saintliness would have manifest to all that, he, the orphaned Genet, was one of the elected, forsaken by parents but chosen by God. If the dream is to be retained, some kind of change, yet to be clarified, will have to be made in the fundamental

6

See Chapter 1, "An Idiot Child? :

Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr

25

meaning of being a saint. In this initial response - although somewhat vague, we see the beginnings of Genet's remarkable creative freedom. Sartre writes, "He does not want his childhood desires to be fulfilled. He retains them as wounds" (253). Genet holds his childhood wounds tight to his chest. He uses them to forge a way out of an impossible family situation in which he is effectively seen born to evil: He, Genet, will become the thief he is seen to be and he will also become the saint of thieves. All of this, slowly formulated to himself, will be a labor that will lead Genet through three stages, namely, to evil as evil, to evil as beauty, and to evil as the written word. It may be best, however, to begin our reflection with the slow and strange formulation of the general project of becoming the saint of thieves. T H I E F ? " Y E S , " A N D SAINT TOO!

Genet gradually prepares himself to become the very thief he is falsely judged to be. Robbed of the right to own, he will steal; barred from the saintliness of the good, he will forge a saintliness of evil. What will this imply? The child, Sartre notes, is lucid beyond his age, but this does not mean that he knows the full import of his own decisions. We all set goals and then learn what is required to fulfill them. That is, we all work to make something of ourselves from what others have made of us. We were all children in an adult world, and, if we were lucky, we were also being prepared for our own adventure with life. Again, it useful to return to Sartre's original insight in The Transcendence of the Ego, namely, that we understand ourselves more intimately but not necessarily more truly than others understand us. For example, I might deny being angry and those around me might smile, making me aware that I am indeed angry. In the normal course of events, there will be a give and take between how people see me and how I see myself. That is, there will exist a kind of natural reciprocity in the sense that each of us is aware of a certain individuality, a uniqueness that can only be reached either through friendship or at least through some degree of effort at understanding another. Sartre writes: "I feel that I am other than Peter and I know that Peter resembles me because he feels that he is other than I" (22). For Sartre, Genet will always lack a normal sense of reciprocity. We have already mentioned its roots in the foster parent's judgment of Genet as a thief. We are thus brought back again to the "look" described in Being and Nothingness; but, we here encounter, in this later work, a new dimension of our relation with others, namely, the possibility of restructuring an innocent soul toward subhumanity or deep oppression. For Genet, normal relations with others belong only to property owners, to the just, and to the respected of the world. Genet's saintliness is that he accepts this initial rejection and he recreates it as a personal norm to govern his life: He, Genet, will be now and forever, alone. His biological mother rejected him and then his foster parents,

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and the later rejection was deeper than the former. Yes, he will speak and relate to others, but only as an outcast. Once again, we must reflect that we would totally misunderstand Sartre's interpretation of Genet's life, if we attempted to see within it the briefest thread to an early original reciprocity that was blocked but that could appear again if the proper conditions were present. Every child sees its humanity only through the image given to it by adults. Thus, a child seen only as inferior to others, will interiorize this inferiority as its natural condition. Freedom will still exist for this child-becoming-adult, but it will have to battle that initial "inferiority," which, in this case, is not a "complex," but a "terror" born of men. Thus, while Flaubert always lived under the family judgement, "Idiot!," a different type of terror restructures Genet's young consciousness. No matter which way Genet turns, he meets himself as guilty - guilty for being an orphan and not having normal loving parents, guilty for stealing from his foster parents who were generously provided by the state, guilty for not asking for forgiveness even where there is no hope of receiving true forgiveness, and, most of all, guilty for dreaming to become a saint. On the other hand, Genet's conversions introduce real alterations in his life. Genet the "author" will generate a certain kind of reciprocity that will include, for example, an interest in family life. Still, even as he appears to be most "normal," he remains, for Sartre, the "saint of evil," except that now he seems to have placed this monster of himself safely in his writings. But shall we accept this dichotomy between his life and his writings? It cannot stand. His conversions are real; but each level retains the initial wounds, the wounds that have slowly and painfully recreated him in his unyielding project of being forever the evil that defines our good. His saintly consistency continually returns. It returns, as we will see, even in his writings. He thus never lets himself or us forget his original rejection from humanity: Paralyzed by men's gaze, marked by man in his very depths and transformed by man in his perceptions and even his inner language, he encounters everywhere, between him and men, between him and nature, between him and himself, the blurred transparency of human meanings. Only one question confronts this homunculus: man. The child Genet is an inhuman product of which man is the sole problem. How to accepted by men? (46) How to be accepted by men? The dream is impossible, and the impossibility arises from two sources - from Genet himself and from society. In short, Genet will require that he be "accepted" as a thief and that the social order recognize its own need for thieves to keep itself in proper working order: "Bandits," Sartre observes, "have always been the best collaborators of the wealthy" (579). Genet merely wishes us to acknowledge the bond between owning property and being able to steal it; he does not seek our approval for his actions. Catch him stealing and put him in prison - he deserves it. He will, of course, attempt to escape; that is the task of a true

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thief. Genet does not wish to change the social order, not in the slightest. He desires merely our recognition that, as the saint of thieves, he defines property owners as the just. Or rather, he doesn't want any recognition, for that would be a kind of success. He is intelligent enough to realize that society would never recognize a "role" for evil, and even if it did, his saintliness would reject that form of success. He, Genet, merely wishes to be evil, and to suffer all the defeat of evil by good. Once more, let us attempt to be clear about the evil that Genet wishes to embody - even as we admit that he himself became clear about it only gradually. There is poverty and war, but Genet is not interested in these historical and social tragedies. Evil, for Genet, is your money and your property. But Genet is not a Robin Hood. He wants your money for himself, and he wants it precisely because you have worked and earned it. You are just and he is a criminal; that is the way of the world. Indeed, what is private property except that which can be stolen? As for our life, do we not keep our doors locked to be safe from criminals? We are surrounded by criminals; or, at least, that is the social milieu which, for the most part, those who are in political power wish to keep in existence. The extent of our criminal system cannot be explained by isolated acts of criminal behavior, which in its own way merely signify a particular perverse use of freedom. The comfort in reading mystery stories is that the criminal act is individual, or nearly so, and the criminal system appears as if its main function is to protect us from the individual vagrant criminal. To some extent this is true; the mystification would not work if our criminal system did not actually aim at catching individual criminals. Nevertheless, the vastness of our prison-industrial complex aims at something deeper, namely, at revealing the constant presence of dangerous Others. Where and who are these Others? They are you and me, if not here and now, then, perhaps later in a different place. Am I inventing this? Go to an airport or ride a New York subway and listen to the repeated and constant recorded announcements that we are to report any "suspicious" person or thing to the authorities. The day before writing these words I noticed a new poster in a New York subway: rows and rows of eyes and underneath them the words, "We are counting on all of these: 'if you see something say something!"' Of course, the explicitness of our fear of others is a relatively recent phenomenon born of our converting an act of terrorism into an unending fear of universal terrorism; but this itself would not have been possible if it did not reflect a previous deep unspoken bond both to criminal life and to enemies in general. Sartre interprets our need for dangerous others as an aspect of our "Manichaen" social structure. Manichaeism, in its Persian and Roman roots during the third and fourth centuries (AD), held that history reflects the eternal battle between two supernatural forces - Good and Evil. In its Sartrean context, the emphasis is on the way we have structured society so that the task of doing good is one with that of discovering and fighting evil We act as

A Retrospective

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Overview

if we want to live in a world without this evil, but we need our thieves and our wars, for these define our good. And, if we turn to constructing good, we are tame and hesitant, afraid to assert the creative aspect of our humanity: "Our species has set out upon the road of no return toward self-domestication" (Family, I: 98).

"A DAILY

LABOR,

LONG AND

DISAPPOINTING"

It is one thing to write down the words expressing Genet's desire to be a thief and a saint; it is another to understand them. How are we to change our initial antipathy to empathy "the one attitude necessary for understanding" (Family, I: x). Perhaps, it would help if we observed that Genet does not want anything of us, except the honesty to admit that we need evil to define our good and that he provides us with that evil. Of course, Genet is not unaware that this makes us also evil: For the specialist, magistrates, criminologists, sociologists, there are not evil acts: there are only punishable acts. For the man in the street, there are evil acts, but it always the Others who commit them. Genet wants to reveal to the former that Evil exists and to the latter that its roots are to be found in themselves. (490) Still, Genet does not intend to instruct us about evil. At least, he does not seek instruction for the purpose of social change. Genet wishes you to keep your justice and he will keep his evil, for you and he are dialectically united each defines the other. We are back to our socially constructed Manichaeism. Nevertheless, we still confront the task of unveiling the specificity of Genet's bond to the just of the world. This effort leads us deeper within Genet's strange desire to be the "saint" of evil. We must recall that the name "thief" was given to a child playing an innocent game. He will keep the name "thief" and make the name true; but for his own "saintly" purpose: "Jean Genet is a thief who wanted to change his motives for stealing and who thereby transcended his original situation" (158). Genet, to repeat, transcends his original condition in stages - to evil as evil, to evil as beauty, to evil as the written word. It is this last stage that illuminates all the previous ones; for if Genet had not become a writer, we would not know about his life. Thus, if we ask how Sartre knows about Genet's intentions, we must keep in mind that the publisher Gallimard had asked Sartre to write an introduction to Genet's writings. Perhaps, the six-hundred-and-more-page introduction was not a surprise to Gallimard, but one suspects that it shook Genet. In an attempt to throw light onto Genet's desire to unite saintliness with evil, Sartre makes several lengthy comparisons - with Saint Teresa, Marcel Jouhandeaus, Friedrich Nietzsche, and S0ren Kierkegaard. Saint Teresa wishes to be blamed for the sins of the world; but she will not actually commit sin. She cannot join the sinners, and although rejected by many she was

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accepted and praised by many of her superiors. Jouhandeaus "wants to play the dangerous game of betraying God out of love" (221). His sins do not amount to much; more talk than action. Genet acts; he robs and consorts with thieves. He does not murder, but he admires those who do murder. Also, unlike the saint of God, Genet looks for no redemption outside of this life, and, even here, his redemption must be on his own terms: to be accepted as the evil men need to be good. In a similar way, Sartre notes that Nietzche's doctrine of the overman and the eternal recurrence distract us from the true temporality of the world, which always embodies unique social oppressions and struggles for freedom.7 In his comparison with Kierkegaard, Sartre concentrates on Kierkegaard's view of Abraham, and he thereby departs from his frequent praise of Kierkegaard's emphasis on the individual. Sartre reflection is here particularly complex. To begin, we note that Abraham and Genet have this much in common, namely, that the deed about to be done has in a sense already been done; it merely awaits the time of its happening. Thus, for Abraham, the deed has always existed in the mind of God; for Genet, the theft has always existed in the fixed milieu of private property. Let us now observe the deeds themselves: Abraham is about to take the life of his son. Everything is properly and dutifully prepared. Nothing is being done in anger at God. The sacrifice is ready but the saving Angel appears. True, Abraham does not know this and therein lies his individuality, his freedom, and his merit. In like manner, Genet is about to steal this pearl necklace. He is calm. He might be caught, but that is the way of the world. If indeed he escapes, he will sell the pearls to buy things. But, in his saintliness, he seeks the stolen pearls not mainly for their monetary value but to manifest his evil, and therein lies his individuality, his freedom, and his "merit." In Sartre's terminology, both Abraham and Genet, subordinate praxis (action) to Being - both are what they are prior to their deeds, which merely give evidence of their convictions. Thus, Abraham is Abraham because God loves him and Genet is Genet because the just hate him.8 Then too, Abraham was willing to take the life of his son because it was the will of God, and so too Genet is willing to rob because it is the will of men. Again, in both cases, the will of the other becomes one's own will, and thus Sartre rejects both Kierkegaard's Abraham and Genet's ethics of Being. It is, however, to Kierkegaard's credit that he does not attempt to avoid embarrassment by claiming that Abraham was under orders from God to take 7 8

See Genet- 346-350. See also Notebooks, 329-398. "No doubt Abraham is seeking himself in anguish ... Whatever his uncertainty, for God he either is Abraham or is not. God's gaze has constituted him from without: Abraham is an object. In other words the very form of the question, A m I Abraham 9 ' subordinates praxis to Being" (186). See also the entire section 185-192 In Sartre's philosophy, the term "praxis" refers to action taken in an historical context: Abraham as the father of the Jews and Genet as working evil amidst the milieu of private property

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the life of his son; for the question remains, "How did Abraham know that the voice he heard was the voice of God and not of the Devil?" Kierkegaard's answer is to reflect upon the subjectivity of Abraham, which alone could guarantee to him that the voice he heard was the voice of God. In a sense, Sartre's "answer" to how Genet could have truly convinced himself that his mission was to do evil is to examine Genet's subjectivity. And what is the general form of Genet's subjectivity? It is born of the naming: Genet was called a thief by those whom he judged to be good; his saintliness is that he does not challenge either their verdict of him or their own goodness in judging him evil. Rather, he throws his whole being in the effort to coincide with that initial naming and verdict. Genet must thus learn to will himself the way the just will him, namely as the source of their evil. Is this possible? THE DIALECTIC OF EVIL A N D S A I N T L I N E S S

Immanuel Kant would have us do good regardless of reward or punishment. Sartre sees Genet devoting himself to a reversal of this ethical norm: Genet first trains himself to rob not for profit but for the evil in the act. Sartre writes, "he invented the willing of Evil for Evil's sake. And not only Evil for its own sake, but Evil in itself" (158). What Sartre means is that Genet invented pure Evil here on earth, namely, himself. Or, to be more accurate, he invented pure evil in the sense that it was his goal to live a life of pure evil. Let us reflect again upon this strange project. We have seen that Genet's life is governed by an ethics of Being - good and evil already exist and he merely participates in the general form of evil. Still, he must also truly steal. A theft, however, is an "absent" deed: It does not create; it merely removes what is here and places it there. Still, a piece of private property is taken from its owner and the genuine thief makes a living from stealing. Genet thus encounters the first among many tensions between good and evil; namely, real thefts provide food and clothing and are thus too close to good deeds to be pure evil. Strangely, Genet calls upon saintliness to move the evil act tainted with good ever closer to pure evil. The saint lives both in this world and in that other world, heaven. So too the saintly act is, frequently, nothing very much here on earth but it shines in heaven with the purity of the saint's intention. Genet, however, has to create his own heaven, which will be in his imagination, and thus every theft tainted with good here on earth becomes purified in Genet's imagination. Now, however, a new tension arises: How can an imaginary evil affect the world? The good of the just exists in the world; must not Genet's evil also exist in the world? Genet must pursue a pure evil and somehow make this effort genuine, one that exists in the world. That is, the imaginary must be brought over into the real and the real lifted into the imaginary. How will this be accomplished? Early in the text, Sartre reminds us of the general give and

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3i

take between the real and the imaginary: "To imagine is to give the imaginary a bit of the real to chew at" (14). Genet will thus both steal and contemplate his thefts. He will witness his evil acts, and, as his own god, he will cleanse them of selfish motives. But more is needed. The act thus purified of any relation to the good must now return to make future real thefts more like the imaginary ones. Is this not the task of the saints of the good, namely, to make their efforts here on earth resemble the very purity that God grants them by forgiving their weakness? Again, a new tension haunts Genet's project: God is Good, and this Goodness has elected the saints. True, the Devil is Evil, but the Devil has not elected Genet. Men have elected Genet. He, Genet, is their evil, a small and defeated evil: "If Genet were a Communist he would be worthy of the hatred of the middle class people; he is only evil: his sufferings, his spasms and his terrible work will fail to disturb the composure of these good consciousness; he tortures himself in vain" (170). All too true, Sartre acknowledges, but this is the destiny Genet seeks; he has been vanquished by good people and he must live that defeat. Moreover, as a saint, he must deepen his defeat, but in calmness and in acceptance of his role in society. The Devil loses, but he rants, rages, and connives to lead others into hating God. Genet does not want any part in this game. You are just; he is evil. As the just, you defeat him and put him in prison; you make his life bound to prison-life even when he is "free": He is out of prison now, later he will be in again. You win, he loses, and this is the way of the world. Nevertheless, no one can live defeat as defeat. Genet must somehow find victory in his defeat. A first, Genet seems to approach those in bad faith who attempt to wrest success by playing at the game we have already noted in our reflection on Flaubert, "loser-wins"; for example, the "writer" who seldom writes but who believes firmly that he would be a great writer, if he chose to dedicate his life to writing. The lucid Genet could never fall into such a trap. If he, Genet, wins by losing, this loss must itself be a true adventure; that is, it must itself be a new act that aims to deepen the bond of hatred between himself and the just of the world. Genet, to repeat, will not follow Satan in his attempt to lead others into evil; for he, Genet, is the only true saint of evil. On the other hand, Satan had a characteristic act that named his evil - pride. Genet must forge his own act, at once characteristic and new. It must be something that had not occurred to him before but which would be recognized as characteristic of his evil. On the one hand, this new act must continue to break his bond with the good citizens of the world who mutually encourage and trust each other in their efforts to purge the world of criminals such as himself. On the other hand, more is needed. He must also break the bond with his fellow criminals, for otherwise he merely substitutes a false society for the true one of the world. Genet's sacred act of evil will be betrayal, the betrayal of his fellow thieves.

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Making His Destiny Work As the years pass, Genet learns more and more about the strange destiny he has chosen for himself.9 How is he going to make it work? Always, he returns to his beginnings; he is haunted by the just who named the very core of his being. Sartre writes, "the being which Genet thinks he has received from grownups is already made" (60). This "already made" being is not merely that the child was called a thief, but that behind his naming, giving it its force, is the implicit claim that he was born to be a thief. The game the just play is a game of election - the election of the good by God, nature, or whatever, and the election of those on the other side by the Devil, nature, or whatever. The deeds of the just merely indicate their election and if the deeds fall short, they are never as reprehensible as the same evil done by those who represent evil. The evil of the just is a weakness, something to be forgiven and then forgotten; the evil of the criminal is his or her strength, something to watch for and to expect, even when it does not appear. On the other hand, Genet does not really believe in election; he is not that simple. He knows the just have chosen both themselves and their criminals. Or better, let us grant that election does exist. It becomes then a practical human forging of the social milieu that divides the world into those who are good and those who are evil, as if the division came from heaven. Genet thus appears as one predestined to evil, that is, to the life of stealing private property. Genet, of course, is also a homosexual; but, as we will see in our more formal discussion of Saint Genet in Chapter 7, the distinctness of Genet's homosexuality is that it is itself a rejection of normal homosexual relations. Genet's lucidity allows him to see the truth of both aspects of evil, namely, that of its daily occurrence and that of the social structure. Genet does not seek to avoid either: He is not play-acting - he truly sees himself as condemned to evil. He tries to reflect upon himself to better understand his life - his strange destiny to do evil. In all his reflections, the condemning other is already there awaiting him: The truth about himself escapes him, and yet others know it: they see him. ... In order to combat them, to wrest his truth from them he tried to watch himself The Other's gaze did not disappear thereby. It too jumped to the higher level, and this time it focused on the reflective consciousness. (241) 9

As one reads Sartre's study, it is possible to recognize a simplified use of the progressiveregressive method that will be formally introduced in The Search for a Method and then fully developed in The Family Idiot I apply the method to Sartre's study of Genet in chapter seven. It is also appropriate to call attention to the chapter on temporality in Being and Nothingness in which Sartre had noted that we create our past. Of course, we can not alter the actual circumstances of our birth as Sartre clearly indicates in the later section, Freedom and Facticity: The Situation; but, we can freely retain certain aspects of our past as more important than others. As Genet recalls his experiences of listening to stories, he begins to play with the sounds of words, and he initiates his conversion from evil as beauty to evil as the written word.

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The good opinion of oneself- the gift we give others - was denied Genet, and wherever he turns, outward toward the world or within toward his own consciousness, he encounters rejection: Pinned by a look, a butterfly fixed to a cork, he is naked, everyone can see him and spit on him. The gaze of the adults is a constituent power which has transformed him into a constituted nature. (49) And his own constituted nature received from others, what is it? It is himself as evil. He will accept this strange gift of the other to himself and he will become the Evil of the world. However, in the course of his life, Genet, to repeat, will transform this saintliness of evil, moving to different levels, as he makes those free creative leaps, which, recalling again the ontology of Being and Nothingness, Sartre describes as "conversions." Although I will return to these in Chapter 7,1 think it is fitting that we here sketch Sartre's description of Genet's conversion to becoming an author. THE GESTURE A N D THE UGLY

We must continually recall that Sartre begins these reflections immersed within the writing and life of Genet. Sartre is seeking to explain to himself and to us the origin and the significance of those strange writings, not in the sense of a search for necessary causes, but for those conditions that made his final conversion to writing possible. Conversions imply that we use our freedom within the possible conditions of a new orientation to life. If I have been playing a clarinet for years for personal enjoyment and then decide to leave a safe job and become a professional clarinetist, the conversion is both understandable and yet a true manifestation of radical freedom. It could not be otherwise: A decision made relatively late in life to earn my living playing a woodwind instrument could not be a mere act of the will; it would require that my body be tuned as well as my instrument. True, one could decide to begin on the long path of forging these conditions, as supposedly Van Gogh did for acquiring the skills needed to be a painter. Nevertheless, when Genet first decided to be the saint of evil, he did not plan to write about it. Indeed, if he had done so, it would have nullified his original project of "saintliness," as strange as that was; it would have meant that he was seeking reward and approval for his evil deeds. Sartre knows, however, that Genet did begin to write - first slowly but then, almost like Gustave Flaubert, with a quick and strange remarkable skill. Sartre, therefore, seeks the hidden preconditions that made this writing possible. Where does Sartre expect to find these preconditions? They will be revealed in Genet's own writing, and to some extent from talks with Genet, since he is still alive when Sartre is writing about him. Needless to say, we are not initiating an absurd quest into Genet's unconscious. Sartre has never believed in the existence of an unconscious mind - and neither do I, although I

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admit its pursuit creates jobs. Rather, we are seeking those aspects of his conscious life that, while not directly related to writing, can be seen as making the conversion to writing possible. Strangely, these conditions appear in the very effort to purify his thefts of their relation to concrete rewards. Specifically, we can see the possibility of a conversion to the written word, in Genet's most remarkable effort of robing the stolen object of its beauty. In the concrete world, evil and beauty are frequently joined - storms and engines of war can all be considered as spectacles. We allow ourselves to become lost in the power of a battle. The ripping of torn limbs is made silent either by the coming victory or, at least, by an unspoken necessity - our justice requires this war, this evil. But Genet wishes to escape this trap; it masks evil. Evil must be shown to be simply evil; it must not slide into the domain of the beautiful and thereby into the domain of the good. Thus, for evil to remain pure, it must ultimately be shown to be an aspect of the ugly. How will Genet make this dialectic of evil and the ugly work in his life? His task will be to show that when he steals your possessions, he gains nothing. What he steals is your shit.10 Your precious possessions are thus altered, and to see how this is accomplished, we must initiate a dialectic, relating beauty to value, value to art, and both to the gesture. Beauty and Value In the following discussion, it is useful to keep in mind the context, which is Sartre continuing attempt to explain Genet's writings as works of art that attract our imagination, despite their strange attachment to evil. The argument is especially complex, and I must, more than' usual, take a gamble at reaching its core. At least the beginning is simple. Sartre invites us to reflect upon the relation of value to freedom: "The proper object of freedom is value" (371). For Sartre, this claim is to be interpreted in its strongest sense, namely, that values exist in the world only through free human acts. Of course, a child first acts within the values given by adults. For Genet, and indeed for the most of us, the context of values within which we first mature reflect "acceptable" and "unacceptable" categories of things and peoples. There are those who 10

The passages on the relation of good and beauty in this section are among the most difficult in Sartre's writings: I will reexamine the issue again in Chapter Seven. A substantive part of the problem is Sartre's philosophic style to which I have already alluded in the introduction. Sartre does not remind us of the qualified nature of his discussion when he believes the context is clear - and sometimes even when the context is not clear. For example, what begins on page 355 in the section, "Strange Hell Of Beauty...," as a study between good and beauty is revealed on page 385 as a relative discussion: "For the time being, it is Beauty alone that concerns us. We have been considering it in its pure form as a simple relationship of being to appearance. But we must not forget that this relationship is particularized in each case .." This qualification would be easy to understand if Sartre merely meant that the preceding discussion was general and that now we are going to be more concrete. That is not the exactly the case. We remain, for the most part, within Genet's view of beauty

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work to own things and those who steal. Indeed, there is an underside to our safe world, inhabited by the "lazy poor," as well as by a host of dangerous others. These others have their own freedom and values; but, for the most part, the elimination of their values define our virtues. As we grow older we may hopefully become awakened to the degree to which we ourselves constitute these dangerous others. But, as members of the "just," we are kept busy and watchful; our good deeds aim to keep wealth where it is. In the language of Being and Nothingness, we are in bad faith. Still, even in bad faith, freedom transcends itself-we are not things like tables and chairs. People change, and those in power are aware of that danger: The unspoken moral imperative is to allow only that change which will guarantee that the social order remains the same. Still, let us not pass too quickly over the truth that every value implies transcendence. We have been too abstract, and we must attempt to become more specific. In the concrete, value and its transcendence exist simultaneously in both pure and concrete states, and each of these can be either in good or in bad faith. I will give my own example: We Americans aimed to put our pure values in our constitution, and, given human frailty, we also allowed for the possibility of change. Consider thus the claim, "All men are equal." The bad faith aspect of this ideal is that it explicitly signified at first only white men and only property owners. Still, it included its own transcendence, both in its pure form and concrete form -All people are equal and slavery is morally wrong both in principle and in deed. With this realization, slavery may still exist, but it is brought over into the realm of an evil that must be eliminated. So far so good, and transcendence seems to get us out of our social bad faith. But does it? Transcendence is a surpassing of a certain given, and here the given is the right to own property and to vote. But suppose you do not wish to own things, or at least you do not wish that to be the goal of society. Suppose you think that the aim of the social order should be to allow you to work out your creative freedom? Can we not imagine such a society? Surely we can. After all, the point of the industrial revolution was to relieve the human race of that toil directed to acquiring the necessities of life. It is one thing to farm for pleasure and another for need. Let the robots and machines do whatever they can do for us - here, I speak for myself. Sartre, however, is aware of the degree to which we inhibit radical change, by allowing only minor changes. He writes, "the reality of a society involves the socialization of certain unrealities" (421). There must be hope in a society, even if it is not real. A society that gave no hope for its citizens would either collapse, lead to revolutions, or to mass suicides. Those in power are aware that they must provide the appearances of hope. But even appearances are dangerous; thus the just must be kept constantly busy as well as alert to the dangerous others. These observations, however, are still on a very abstract level in relation to Genet's life and writings. In order for us to move to a more concrete level, we must reflect on the relation of value to art.

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Value and Art By the simple fact of being in a museum, a work of art is an "accepted" commodity. We look at this art and we learn something about the values of our society. Then too, the budding artist imagines his or her work alongside this "accepted" art. All of this is normal and an aspect of every work of art, including writing - an author wants to be read, an artist wants his or her work to be seen. Nevertheless, a tension arises between the creative act and the social need to be accepted. This too is normal; it implies that the ideals reflected by the work of art are both within a social structure and beyond it - an ideal would not be an ideal if it did not include the possibility of its own surpassing. The artist can thus work against the ideal of acceptance. But where shall we discover this "different" art? Why in a museum, among the "accepted" art.11 Nevertheless, the artist's effort is real and in good faith. The point, however, is to be aware of the trap; once crowned, the artist tends to repeat - he or she wishes to remain crowned. Thus Sartre writes, "what chiefly repels Genet in the man of letters is that he remains, regardless of what he does, on the right side of the barricade" (484). All of the above is fairly obvious and it only touches the surface of Sartre's reflection on Genet. Let us continue. The professional critics, the very wealthy - all those who wish to keep the established order - are implicitly aware that art has an imaginary structure. For example, an architect's plan reaches imaginatively toward the building and the building toward the city. A completed painting, while it does not formally point to anything else than its own beauty, still fixes what was in the artist's imagination on canvas or on other material. This presence of the imaginary introduces a deeper dialectic between beauty and art to haunt the established order. The power of the imagination is present in us all and it may lead to unsettling results. In order to contain the imagination of the viewers of art, value is made to appear more on the side of the beautiful than on the side of the good. The art critique insists that the value of the painting is only in the painting. This may seem harmless and, indeed, proper to a work of art. But, in the practical course of the relation of art to the possibility of social change, we notice that the human imaginary power is now placed harmlessly on the side of the beautiful. Let the citizens be absorbed in contemplating new and unsettling values - values now fixed and stable in the works of art displayed in the museums supported by the wealthy. Still, these paintings might spark of a blaze of freedom. Any creative action points to a creator, and citizens looking at the painting may begin to think of themselves as new centers of action: "There can be a causality of the imaginary. 11

For the next few pages, I will be elaborating more than usual in my own voice.

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Nothingness can, without ceasing to be nothingness cause real results" (368). There arises a new effort of containment of that "nothingness," which in our discussion of Being and Nothingness, we will see to be the power of freedom itself. This effort is directed to imparting a particular concrete meaning to the rule, "art for art's sake," and we here notice Sartre somewhat anticipating his discussion of art in The Family Idiot. The point for the present, however, is that the art critique, who favors the notion of art for art's sake, aims to have viewers believe that a work of art points to nothing real within the real social structure, not even to the artist. This mystification can work because it is partly true. When value and beauty meet, the work of art is itself a value. The painting on the wall or the poem on paper are each a thing of beauty and an embodiment of value - true, but only half of the truth. The other half is the creative effort of the artist. Nevertheless, a deeper movement of the dialectic is again needed to mask the social significance of value. This effort tends to make beauty socially real and value subjective. If you see a social value in a work of art, that is fine for you but it is not true of the work of art itself. Sartre considers this view of art to be in bad faith. If art for art's sake means that the work of art somehow surpasses human efforts and speaks only of and about itself, with no social significance, our notion of art is in bad faith. If nothing else is true, we must still note that the brushes, the paints, the canvases, all embody a long history of human practices, without which the work of art could not now exist. Further, the very enjoyment of the work requires the use of the viewer's imagination, and this itself implies the viewer's freedom. In short, granting, all the dangers of creating a work of art only to be "accepted," the opposite must also be avoided, namely, working as if the work of art had no relation to the social order. We are now somewhat prepared to examine how Genet attempts to alter freedom, value, beauty, and art into the ugly and the gesture. The Ugly and the Gesture For Genet, the power of the imaginary and its connection to value exist first and foremost in our gestures. We are all creators of our gestures. Thus, the attempt of the just to place value safely within the work of art misfires precisely because a human gesture can also be a work of art. Genet will alter this "can be a work of art" into "will be a work of art." In Sartre's words, "Genet's act is the insertion of a gesture into being. By his gesture-creating act he reenters the world and installs himself in it." (421). But how does Genet insert himself into the world through his gestures? The gesture will be aimed at robbing the just of their own creation of him as a thief. True, initially they made him a thief; now he makes himself a thief through his creative gestures of stealing. He is graceful; he is efficient, no movement is wasted or misdirected. Indeed, to create the gesture of stealing

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as art and value is to threaten the very seriousness that would keep the world stable.12 But Genet cannot be satisfied with that effort. It remains too close to the good, both on both the level of the gesture itself and of the object stolen, which retains its intrinsic value. First, the gesture itself must be shown to be ugly and the good citizen must be revealed to love it because it is ugly. Then too, that which is stolen must be shown to be ugly and yet so refined that the just will swallow it. The good citizen will love anything if it is refined enough, even his own shit: "The art of making you eat shit," Sartre quotes Genet (389). For example, as we approach old age, we attempt to hide from our bodies. Our graceful gestures dress our body and they reach for jewels to adorn our fading beauty. It is all self-deception, and thus Sartre writes of Genet's Divine: The true Divine is neither the Queen of the fairies nor this old eunuch, but rather a man who is resisting old age inch by inch, who laces himself in a corset, who, in the morning, out a sense of decency in relation to himself, places his denture in his mouth even before looking in the mirror. We are not natural being, our modest and tenacious defenses against death define us as much as does the progress of death in our organs. (383) For Sartre, Genet wishes to reveal this new bad faith to us by altering the significance of his gesture of stealing. At first, the gesture merely took what was in your home and put it into his pocket. Now, however, Genet aims to rob the stolen object of its initial value to you. He takes your pearls. But what are these? Of themselves, pearls are an irritant in the digestive system of an oyster. You, as one of the just, have given them value and you see them as beautiful. But he is the saint of evil, and he can give the same value and beauty to false teeth. False teeth help the toothless eat, but as Divine (Genet) removes them and places them on his head - behold a diadem! The pearls about your neck are no more beautiful than the false teeth on the head of a queen of fairies. Of course, prior to his conversion to the act of writing, the significance of the gesture was revealed only to Genet himself. But, as his own god, this was sufficient for Genet. He could now witness himself stealing what the just regarded as beautiful, but that he saw as evil and ugly. If he attained some good from his thefts - if he bought food - it was not the beautiful stolen object that provided the good, but the evil and the ugly. He may have taken your pearls from a drawer and put them in his pocket, but what he put in his pocket was the oyster's shit, and if you caught him, he would give your shit back to you to put once again in your drawer or to wear once again around you neck.

12

"His intention is to transform the good citizen into an aesthete, is there any finer revenge against the spirit of seriousness?" (Genet: 373).

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THE LAST CONVERSION: THE WRITTEN WORD

For Sartre, Genet's gestures prepare him for the act of writing. The gesture becomes the written word. Art, beauty, and value become the "sumptuousness" of the written word. We should recall once again that prior conditions for this new conversion had to be present; nevertheless, the "leap" itself was a genuine manifestation of creative freedom. Thus, we may reflect that the written word was always there awaiting Genet's use. He may have invented evil as evil, but not writing. Further, we might consider the spoken word as a form of gesture. All of this is general; but there were more specific conditions. Genet had listened to a song writer, and he had already tried his hand at poetry while in prison. But, this effort was merely one game among many that he played in prison. Writing was moved from it's occasional place in his life when the written word began to appear to him in its remarkable permanent character - scripta manent. Genet begins to write, even though there is little chance of anyone seeing the written words. Perhaps, also, his unique "saintliness" encourages him; the true significance of his gestures were known only to him, and why should not the permanent visibility of the written word be only for his eyes. Still, the permanent visibility of words written on a scrap of paper in prison is already something that another can see and read. False teeth can be "read" as pearls only by Genet's unique consciousness as the saint of evil. Thus, although, at first, Genet wrote for himself, those private attempts were already the possibility of writing for a public. Also, while he was not initially aware of it, the tensions between a life dedicated to pure evil and the need to live, can, as a writer, be now handled more effectively: "The stroke of genius, the illumination that finds the way out, is the choice of writing. He will create himself as a thief in another domain by establishing other relationships with the good citizens" (549). If he can put his real self in his books, then another self can exist in the world, one that can participate in the good of society. On the other hand, Genet is lucid; he cannot be easily deceived by bad faith. Besides, he does not really wish salvation. He has not forgotten his bond to the just, his tie to them as the truth of their evil. Thus, even as an author, he never apologies for his former life of crime. Genet, Sartre notes, does not inform us about criminals or homosexuals, he writes as one of them. But we have advanced too quickly. We must return to ask, "How will Genet write? Writing implies the desire to have readers; it is a form of reciprocity. This last conversion requires the deepest change: "In order for him to reach the point of planning to make himself understood, a radical conversion of his attitude toward others is required; and even that is not enough: he must relearn to speak" (425). Genet's former speech was not a form of normal discourse. Even when he used normal words, it was to prepare the way for a theft. When he spoke to other homosexuals, it was in argot, where a queen is neither

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a woman nor a man but a man-woman. If Genet is going to have a public, he must be able to communicate, even when using argot. In order to clarify this tension in Genet's writings, Sartre examines at some length the distinction between prose and poetic writing, some of which we have already considered in the previous chapter on The Family Idiot. The prose writer aims primarily at communication. If the style is good, it is a byproduct of the desire to communicate. Poetry is more intimately connected to style; in fact, it is very closely allied to the specificity of a particular language. True, poetry, for Sartre, cannot be translated. Although Sartre does not here refer to fiction writing, it would seem that fiction is thus between ordinary prose and poetry; it can be somewhat adequately translated, although it also reflects the uniqueness of a specific language. The inability of poetry to be translated adequately from one language to another is merely a sign of deeper distinction between prose and poetry, a distinction that is not easy to fix. First, let us consider what we might call ordinary poetry, and as an American, I will use Robert Frost as an example. The language of Frost's poetry appears to be within the natural speech cadence of a New Englander, particularly one from Maine or New Hampshire; but it is all artifice. This also occurs when fiction writers use dialect; but the fiction writer normally aims at producing the dialect as it is spoken. True, the fiction writer cannot but impart a more elevated character to the dialect simply because it is written; but to a certain extent, this is secondary. In poetry, however, the aim is primarily to create a written language that appears to be natural but which cannot be rephrased in normal discourse. I will not pursue my own thoughts in this direction because they do not illumine Sartre's own views, to which I now briefly turn. Sartre has a very restricted notion of modern poetry. Here, the poet does not aim to know the universe, but to use it to create poems, "like the poems of Mallarme," which aim "to make the world useless" (556). I am not qualified to determine whether Sartre's judgement of Mallarme is correct; but Sartre's general view about Mallareme and Baudelaire is clear.13 Sartre's point is that so-called "modern" poetry aims at removing beauty from its relation to a spectator, whether human or divine. For these poets, viewing the world sullies its purity. Even though Aristotle had praised the sense of sight as the most immaterial of all the senses and the one that most reveals things as they are, untouched by human presence, all vision is either from this perspective or from another. For the "modern" poet, only a specially crafted poem is a thing of beauty, whole, complete, and unsullied by any witness divine or human. "The poets ambiguous situation lies in taking God's creation in reverse: he puts the Word at the end. To absorb the universe into language is to destroy the universe, but it is to create the poet" (557). But the written words remain 13

It seems to be somewhat true of the Romantic English writers, perhaps even of Keats, although not Shelley.

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on the page, and the poet's name is given for all to see. True, but the poet, while anxious to receive royalties and recognition, would rather we not consider these small deviations. The point of Sartre's rather long digression is that, while Genet seems to write in poetry, he actually writes in prose. All the so-called poems can be translated into prose statements. The poetic form, both explicit and implicit is a ruse: Genet does not really wish to communicate to you and thus he veils his thoughts in false poems that seem more obscure than they really are. The tension that appeared in the first two conversions - namely, between evil and good and evil and beauty - now reappears on the level of the written word. The written word communicates, and, even Genet cannot destroy this "good." But what Genet can do is make it seem that he is communicating one thing while he is communicating something else. He writes of love, of the world, but what do these mean? "Men, women, trees: yes; but when the reader puts out his hand it is Jean Genet that he touches" (522). The words Genet writes aim to reveal himself as the evil that you and I need to be good, and he seeks to replace all our beauty by the ugly. Whatever the value of Genet's writings, they do not belong to the category of "committed" writings that point to human creative freedom and responsibility. Nevertheless, while recalling that all understanding of another requires empathy, we are perhaps now prepared to evaluate Genet's writings. SARTRE'S EVALUATION

Sartre does not think that Genet's desire to will evil can work, for evil can only be willed under the guise of good.14 Genet is correct in his claim that the good of those in power is related to a humanly constituted evil; but one can never will evil for its own sake. Wars kill millions and this killing is caused by men; but war is offered as a good, a good in bad faith, but still a good. Also, Genet's attempt to raise theft, which, unlike hunger, is only a relative evil, into the realm of pure evil is too individualistic. True, it is a way out for Genet and understandable as such, but not admirable in itself. Indeed, the desire to imbue this will for evil with the mystic of the saintliness makes matters worse. Genet is here deceived by the just; saintliness supports the system of private property. It is true that the saint renounces private property, but what is renounced is a good. Like the vow of chastity, which affirms the nobility of proper sex, the vow of poverty and of living in filth acknowledges the value of earned wealth. Sartre writes: As for myself, I am not as fond of shit as some people say I am. That is why I reject Saintliness wherever it manifest itself, among the canonized saints as well as in Genet; and I smell it, even beneath their secular disguises, in Bataille, in Gide, in 14

"As soon as evil is achieved, it changes; Being deals with it in its own way and engulfs it" (Genet: 234).

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Jouhandeaus. Always from the same reason, to wit, that it is, to my way of thinking, only the mystical bough of the generosity of consumption. (246)

Still, Sartre sympathizes with Genet's desire to join evil with saintliness. Sartre understands it on two levels of Genet's personal life. First, it is a substitution for the love denied him both by his foster parents and by the just of the world. And then, the effort to unite evil with saintliness reveals his implicit need to cling to the dignity of election, even if it is the election to do evil. Nevertheless, Genet is objectively right on two very important points: Evil exists and it is caused by us. Finally, we should note that Genet's victory is only verbal: The unjust rule and Genet's judgement of their evil is only in his books. Of course, this weakness is true of all writing; but it is more explicit in that of Genet. In the only "warning" that I know Sartre to have written about anyone, he gives this title to the concluding section - "Please Use Genet Properly."15 Sartre, however, is not afraid that you or I will be led into evil by reading Genet. Rather, his concern is with Genet's project of retaining the status quo, because he is to be the evil of our social order. We might escape this danger if Genet were to explain himself. But we should not expect this; he would now appear to us as one of the unfortunate people of the world, and he would be looking to us to forgive and understand him. Sartre realizes that Genet does not wish this. Also, Sartre understands that, while Genet writes well and that his salvation is in the "sumptuousness" of his terms, Genet does not wish you or me to have any part in his salvation; it is all of his own making.16 With all these reservations in mind, Sartre's warning also implies that, if you are to read Genet properly, you must allow yourself to be horrified. You must temporarily yield to the strange union of evil with beauty, precisely as this union points to the reverse side of our socially constituted just acts. We must enter into his world, not to "understand" him or his characters, but to see anew our own bond to evil. A "novelist," Sartre writes, "invents in order to write; Genet writes in order to invent" (562-563). What does Genet invent? Himself as the saint of evil. The invention will not stand; but the task of keeping this impossibility alive is the life and writings of Genet. This impossibility is also you and me, as we attempt to live in good faith in a world saturated with bad faith: "If every man is all of men, this black sheep must be only a pebble or must be me" (587). 15

16

Genet: 584-599. There are three appendices' "Self-Portrait of the Good Citizen, The Tzedek Test, The Maids. I consider these briefly in Chapter 7. The section from pages 544-583 is titled "My Victory is Verbal and I Owe It to the Sumptuousness of the Terms."

3 The Critique of Dialectical Reason

We experience history first in our cribs and then through the artifacts of our home and our culture. This crafted world - what Sartre terms the "practicoinert" - envelops and follows us throughout life. But many situations follow us throughout our life, such as the ones described in part four of Being and Nothingness. In that earlier work, to be examined in the next chapter, Sartre had already discussed the relation between freedom and facticity under such headings as "My Place," "My Past," My Environment," "My Fellowman," and "My Death." The practico-inert adds to these outlines of our human situation the awareness of a distinctive inertial system that frequently inhibits our best intentions. Thus, Sartre writes, "In other words, we shall reveal, through it [the practico-inert], that a permanent anti-praxis is a new and necessary moment of praxis" (i: 124-125). As we reflect upon Sartre's Critique in this chapter, returning in some detail to a study of the practico-inert, it is important to keep in mind that "praxis" is Sartre's term for human action precisely as it acts within an historical context, confronting the antipraxis of the practico-inert. The human drama is now revealed in its full complexity. We are free; but our budding freedom develops in relation to an ambiguous totality resulting from the health of our body, the bonds among family, friends, and acquaintances, as all this meshes with the forces of history. We have been witnesses to this adventure in the lives of Gustave Flaubert and Jean Genet. We have seen how the constituting force of the label "thief" on the child Genet arose both from the provincialism of his foster parents as well as from the Manichaeism of our whole Western society. And, we have also watched Gustave's life unfold, both as a family drama and as a meshing with the Second Empire. Finally, if we examine our own lives, we can also witnesses how our individual efforts to give our life a meaning - our personal solution to the "problem of being" - introduces us into the network of history, whether we wish it or not. History will thus tend to assign us a place among our fellow humans, but we are free to do something unique with the position assigned to us: "Valery is 43

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Overview

a petit bourgeois intellectual, no doubt about it," Sartre writes. And he adds, "But not every petit bourgeois intellectual is Valery."1 Thus, in our attempt to understand our place in history, we must avoid a lazy historical perspective, one that would attempt to reduce our individual lives to preestablished categories: "The point is to subordinate nothing a priori" (Method: 75). AN INTRODUCTORY OVERVIEW

Sartre's project in the Critique is ambitious. His goal is to reveal that we each can understand the basic outline of the history in which we live. Although this unveiling of our ability to understand our history is complex, its basic theme is simple and direct - the human race has the history it deserves to have. If wars and violence have characterized our existence on our planet, this is because we have freely embedded in the social structure an image of a human nature filled with potential violence. Thus, although we may live comfortably within the limited bounds of our family and friends, we also live in fear of those who are different from us. This fear is not abstract; it arises in a context of a freely cultivated scarcity that silently proclaims that there will never be enough for all, and thus we had better take care of ourselves regardless of the cost to others. In the concrete, this cultivated scarcity is wedded to a Manichean ethics, which reveals the world filled with dangerous "others." Sartre writes: Nothing - not even wild beasts or microbes - could be more terrifying for man than a species which is intelligent, carnivorous and cruel, and which can understand and outwit human intelligence, and whose aim is precisely the destruction of man. This, however, is obviously our own species as perceived in others by each of its members in the context of scarcity. ... The first movement of ethics, in this case, is the constitution of radical evil and of Manichaeism.2 Scarcity, a Manichaeism that proclaims that good is basically the destruction of evil, and the placement of that radical evil in those dangerous others who appear capable of threatening our possessions - these are the three main 1

2

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Search for a Method, translated with an introduction by Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1963), 56. Hereafter cited as "Method." Although published separately in English, this work is part of the French Edition of the Critique, see Chapter 6, note 2. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume 1. The Theory of Practical Ensembles, translated by Alan Sheridan-Smith and edited by Jonathan Ree (London: NLB and Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1976), 132. Hereafter cited as Critique 1, except in chapters dealing with this work, where only the volume and page number will be given See Chapter 6, note 2 for this original French edition. See also Joseph S Catalano, Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's "Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume i- Theory of Practical Ensembles" (Chicago* University of Chicago Press, 1986), n2-116; for a discussion of Manichaeism see 36,125 note 1,140-141, 212-213, 241-242; 245-246; 249-250; 261, 264. Hereafter cited as Commentary, Critique; but for the most part, I will not in the future indicate references to parallel sections in the original work.

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moral facets of the practico-inert. This hellish cycle keeps us distracted from doing real good, which would require us to change the world. We keep this hell alive through the constant rebirth of enemies. We need enemies as we need the air we breath. Sometimes these dangerous others are "over there," but always they are under our feet; they are the poor and the marginalized, and, what is more, we see them as responsible for their condition. Now, perhaps, we are safe from them; that is, we are safe from you and you are safe from me, but who knows what will happen? Let us begin to take a closer look at what Sartre has in mind when he writes about scarcity. It is not an exaggeration to say that scarcity is the central theme of the entire Critique, and thus Sartre writes, "Scarcity is a fundamental relation of our history" (i: 125). If, for the present, we do not seek further clarification about this scarcity, turning rather to the question why we allow scarcity to define our history, the answer is complex. Partly, it is because of cultural bad faith. Those of us who are relatively financially safe see ourselves superior to those affected by deep poverty - they are lazy and stupid, we are not. Their poverty defines us as superior. On the other hand, a hierarchy based on money or differences of possessions does not, of itself lead to scarcity. Something else has to be added, namely, a hatred of the common man. This hatred reveals itself in what Sartre refers to as "super-exploitation," - the extra dollar not merely as profit, but aimed specifically to keep others down. We are back to a Manichean ethics in which we see the essence of good to be our ability to spot and destroy the dangerous other. We can now ask a different question, namely, granting that we have in the past cultivated a scarcity joined to a Manichaen ethics, why does this situation continue, despite the efforts of good people to change history for the better. Sartre's answer to ths question is "seriality." Seriality is our political impotence to remove scarcity; it arises from our false sense of privacy. Our privacy keeps our neighbor at a psychological distance from us, but, more importantly, it also keeps a part of our own self distant from another part of our self: We are kept too busy or too worried to reflect upon historical evils. Thus, whether it is the unspoken "everyone for himself" or the more sympathetic "every person is very much alone," Sartre notes that we are wedded to our social isolation, which effectively keeps us politically impotent.3 A scarcity wedded to a Manichean ethics that imparts to us a serial existence that makes us politically impotent - these aspects of the practico-inert reveal its "counter-finality." Somewhat like a locomotive that needs people to direct and operate it, the practico-inert has its own engineers and conductors; that is, it has slots for such, which, if not filled by this person will be filled by another. Once started and kept in motion, the practico-inert carries us with a force of its own which frequently works against our best intentions. Of course, 3

"Thus isolation is a project. And as such it is relative to particular individuals and moments ..." (r 258).

46

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Overview

a train takes us where we wish to go; and, to some extent, the momentum of our institutions and laws aims toward the more human aspect of our lives. On the other hand, despite the industrial revolution, the advances of science, and with all our enlightenment, it is still true that mass poverty and wars increase. The Critique would have us ponder whether this is the way the world must be or is it the way we want - or, at least allow - the world to be? Even if we grant that Sartre more or less accurately describes our Western world, one could question whether he has provided the key to understanding the whole world. The answer to this question presupposes answering the question, "Does the world indeed have one history?" Sartre begins his explicit reflection on this question in the posthumously published and never completed second volume of the Critique, where he simply observes, "Past history is a pluralist history."4 There was an age of civilization in which cultures were more or less separate from each other. During the last few hundred years, however, the West - today, mostly the United States of America - has effectively directed the destiny of the entire world. Or, at least, this pervasive influence of the West is the conditional supposition that directs Sartre's attempt to obtain a unified view of all of history. I think the supposition is true. Granting a forged unity to history, we may still wonder - "can we indeed understand it?" Sartre's answer is an unqualified "yes," and the intellectual tool for the job is the dialectic. Sartre's view of the dialectic fits his view of history; that is, we ourselves produce the dialectic in our everyday give-and-take relations with the world: "There can be no pre-established schema imposed on individual developments, neither in someone's head nor in an intelligible heaven; if the dialectic exists it is because certain regions of materiality are structured in such a way that it cannot not exist" (i: 37). In our attempt to understand the dialectic, Sartre reminds us that this intellectual tool has its own history. Both Hegel and Marx used a dialectic to understand history, and thus it is necessary to examine these early uses. Indeed, the use of the word "critique" in the title of Sartre's work, The Critique of Dialectical Reason, indicates the degree to which Sartre views his own task to be a dialogue with these early efforts - efforts that are themselves ambiguous because they have schools of thought associated with them. Sartre's major dialogue is with the schools associated with traditional Hegelian and Marxist dialectic. Nevertheless, in some cases, it will become clear that he is opposing both Hegel and Marx themselves. Thus, while it is a general rule of Sartre's philosophy that methodology can never be separated from content, Sartre begins his study with a reflection on 4

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume 2. The Intelligibility of History, translated by Quintin Hoare and edited by Arlette Elkaim-Sartre (New York, London: Verso, 1991), 299. Hereafter, Critique 2, except in chapters dealing with the Critique where only the volume and page number will be given See Chapter 6, note 3, for the original French edition. See also Ronald Aronson, Sartre's Second Critique. An Explanation and a Commentary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)

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the dialectic. In this overview, however, I will begin with what I consider to be the more accessible and concrete aspects of his thought, examining first, the practico-inert, then scarcity, seriality, and finally the dialectic itself. THE PRACTICO-INERT

Let us return to examine the practico-inert. Sartre writes, "Therefore, for a given society, the correct procedure will be to take into account both the living ends which correspond to the particular effort of a person, of a group or of a class and also the impersonal finalities, the by-products of our activity" (Method: 164). For example, racism and sexism exist in the job market and it appears that this is the "way things are." The truth, however, is that these oppressive situations reflect back to us the history of our own unjust practices. On the other hand, Sartre reminds us that not everything is reducible to human intentions; for example, geographical conditions can either favor or hinder our lives. Still, even here, we ourselves frequently give the situations their specific historical values: The same warm weather that is a pleasure for the original inhabitants of a tropical island is a hindrance for industrialists looking for cheap labor. Nevertheless, we can frequently control the results of our actions on the world. In the second volume of the Critique, Sartre writes, "History has two principles. One is human activity, simultaneously all and nothing, without which the inertia of things would evaporate like a volatile spirit. The other is inert matter, within the agents themselves and outside them."5 The practico-inert is the union of these two principles: it is the world made artifact together with the possibility of a negative robot-like re-action. For example, a hammer can be used to kill someone, but it does not have that power of itself. Suppose, however, that every proper use of a hammer awakened in it the power to hit me over the head. The example limps badly, but then the practico-inert is unique and has no examples outside of itself. Sartre uses the example of Chinese peasants who, in order to make their land arable, deforested it and were thereby themselves the cause of floods.6 Floods, of course, are also caused by nature; but the point here is that the very intention to plant crops hid the counterfinality of a land barren of trees. While it was impossible for the Chinese peasants to foresee the result of deforesting their land, 5

6

The complete quote: "History has two principles. One is human activity, simultaneously all and nothing, without which the inertia of things would evaporate like a volatile spirit. The other is inert matter, within the agents themselves and outside them, which supports and deviates the whole practical edifice at the same time as having stimulated its construction (inasmuch as it was already a synthetic and passive deviation of previous praxis)" (2: 135-136). "Inert praxis which imbibes matter transforms natural, meaningless forces into a quasihuman practices, that is to say, into passivised actions . For four thousand years, they [Chinese peasants] have been appropriating arable land ..."( I : *6i).

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the message of the Critique is that we are now capable of such foresight and consequent control of our actions. In the second volume, Sartre extends the notion of practico-inert to what he terms "totalization-of-envelopment" - or perhaps better - "totalizingof-envelopment."7 The totalizing-of-envelopment is the practico-inert plus the ensemble of our actions within it. For example, if I purchase a newspaper mainly to read the sports, I nevertheless participate in the collective of all those reading newspapers for whatever reason. Indeed, I also participate in the ensemble of all those connected with the production and sales of newspapers throughout the world. If we all stopped buying newspapers and used only our computers, this collective would, like others in the past, cease to exist. We are thus back - as is always the case with Sartre - to the importance of the individual and the project: "It is actually through the project which condenses them that the mediating fields receive a new status of efficacy" (2: 49). If we extend our act of buying newspapers to all such actions that participate in more or less world-wide relations - working in offices, driving cars, flying airplanes, renting apartments or buying homes, eating internationally produced foods and cloths - the question that both volumes invite us to consider is whether we must suppose a single person, or group, or even nation, uniting all of this toward some end. Sartre's answer is "No!" We are indeed presently experiencing a grand totalizing of the entire planet, for which we are collectively responsible, and yet no particular person or group of persons is doing the totalization - but more of this below in Chapter 6. What I wish to note here is that the practico-inert is not some dark residue within our individual or collective consciousness secretly directing our history. Rather, this grand historical meshing of nature and culture has been caused by us and is now being sustained by our collective actions. The practico-inert and the

7

The terminology is complex as is, indeed, the notion itself, and I will examine both in Chapter 6. Briefly, for the present, I agree with the English translator's use of hyphens in "totalization-of-envelopment" to correspond to the use of "group-in-fusion." And, while I prefer "totalizing" to "totalization," I will use both to aid the reader of the English text. Nevertheless, within all this terminological confusion, I believe that the following is clear- The terms "totality," totalizing," and "totalization" refer to the meshing of our individual and collective projects within the practico-inert, and in this sense the terms refer to the embodiment of practices. These are clear in particular applications; their conditional status exists in their union into one grand open-ended totalization, which condition the entire Critique is aimed to answer: "This means very concretely that the totalization-ofenvelopment, if it exists, must not be a mere rule - or even a synthetic schema - ensuring the temporalization of particular events from the outside" (2. 188). That is, just as the dialectic will be true only if our everyday praxis is itself dialectical, so too there will be a totalizingof-envelopment only if our individual and collective practices are de facto related to ever widening series of practices, which condition them even as they condition it. Sartre illustrates this notion in his excellent example of boxing, in which there is a feedback between a particular boxing match and the world of boxing See Chapter 6, "Boxing."

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extended notion of the totalization of envelopment is the full situation from which and upon which our freedom acts: It must be pointed out both that the practico-inert field exists and that it is real, and that free human activities are not thereby eliminated, and that they are not even altered in their translucidity as projects in the process of being realized." (i: 323) On the other hand, insofar as our actions take place within the practicoinert - that is, insofar as they are praxis - they encounter an ambiguity that does not arise when we act in more local contexts, such as having dinner with our family or conversing with friends. Thus, to the above quote, Sartre adds: I need only glance out of the window: I will be able to see cars which are men and drivers who are cars ... hundred of exigencies rise up towards me: pedestrian crossings, notices, and prohibitions.... These being - neither thing nor man, but practical unites made up of man and inert things - these appeals, and these exigencies do not yet concern me directly. Later, I will go down into the street and become their thing, I will buy that collective which is a newspaper, and suddenly the practico-inert ensemble which besieges and designates me will reveal itself on the basis of a total field, that is to say, of the Earth as the Elsewhere of all Elsewheres. (1:323-324) Insofar as our actions arise within the practico-inert, they participate in collective intentions, which, if extended, include the entire planet. If we are looking for an apartment to rent or a home to buy, we are motivated by numerous personal reasons - our income and the location of our work - and yet our choice also reflects an almost worldwide social pressure to live in a "safe" and "acceptable" neighborhood. Perhaps, in the remotest parts of the rain forests, people escape the social milieu of the practico-inert, and yet the force of our collective historical actions are present in acid rain, in deforestation, as well as in our capacities to cause and relieve famine. For better or worse, we are now throughly historical beings, and our actions reflect our history. A Reflection on the Difference between Action and Praxis Our actions within the practico-inert have a distinct character, one that does not become evident from reading Being and Nothingness. To begin, let me illustrate the way I understand freedom in that earlier work on the ontology. Suppose we are walking in a city street and for some reason we stop to admire the architecture of a building. Once we have made the decision to stop walking, we cannot control the subsequent events and we are not responsible for them. Stopping to look at a building, I may meet someone who will become important in my life; or, I may be hit on the head by something thrown from a window. In short, freedom is effort. Intentions do not suffice; we must act, but the results are not within our control. It would be foolish, however, to claim that the results of our actions are not important, and there is nothing to be gained by considering Sartre a fool. Our actions do not normally control the result, but they can aim at controlling

50

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the result. In our personal lives, however, this type of planned control is not always praiseworthy, as we have seen in the Flaubert family's desire to control their children. On the other hand, insofar as our actions take place within history - insofar as they are praxis - we may find it meaningful to aim at controlling the unfolding event. In this domain of future control, Sartre advises us to move carefully. In the second volume of the Critique, he writes, "There are two attitudes that must be rejected equally, because both rest upon dogmatic presuppositions: optimism and pessimism" (2:76). Both optimism and pessimism arise from an intention to give future events meanings before they occur. Sartre's own view is not easy to elicit from the text. For almost ten pages, he continue with a reflection on how subgroups and groups work out their differences, seizing more on present advantages rather than initial optimistic or pessimistic intentions. But then, Sartre gives a clear and rather interesting example of the Byzantium debate over the sex of angels. This debate is intelligible in the sense that there was a victory of one side over the other. The meaning of the victory, however, Sartre observes, "is as confused as that of the conflict" (2: 87). It would be tempting but wrong, Sartre adds, to claim that this battles has, therefore, no significant meaning for our own history - "in the Communist Party, people struggle over the sex of angels" (2: 87). For Sartre, this is what happened to the Communist Revolution under Stalin. Stalin's attempt to control and secure the development of socialism lead to a radical deviation from its goals that was reflected in the slogan "socialism in one country," which meant socialism as controlled by the Russians.8 Thus, the general human adventure of socialism, which, for Sartre, aims at the elimination of oppression and exploitation, became essentially subordinated to what was, in effect, a new Russian Empire.9 And, today, if I may add, we also struggle over the sex of angels: The democratic and republican parties compete over their individual priorities, while both allow essential deviations from democracy to continue, as they guide us to a new empire masked as the quest for "American democracy for all." But to return to Sartre, what then is his view on the correct attitude toward controlling events? It is simply to accept the essential gamble inherent in the nature of human freedom. Sartre elaborates this point in his reflection on Stalin. Communism arose in Russia, but the Stalinist error was to attempt to control the future success of communism both in Russia and throughout 8

9

See Critique T 118-183, I will return to this discussion in Chapter 6. See also, Aronson, Sartre's Second Critique, 33-51; also, William L. McBride, Sartre's Political Theory (Bloomington and Indianapolis. Indiana University Press, 1991), 78-89; 164-166. Hereafter cited as "McBride." "In this entire Sartrean line of reasoning, there is one important assumption that holds it together ... socialism ... in some way a key, at least a regulative ideal, to the historical totalization in which we are participating; were it not so regarded by Sartre, the Stalinist deviation of socialism would not be such a serious development for him" (McBride, 162-164).

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5i

the world. The proper attitude would have been to allow socialism to arise in a way that respected the free development of peoples. The task should have been first and foremost to rebuild the infrastructure and to "gamble" that this would enable Russia to withstand the attempt of the West to destroy it: "It was necessary to tell the Russian people simultaneously: 'We must hold out' and 'We can construct' and Tt is by constructing that we shall hold out'" (2: 99).10 And further in the text, he adds, "History is not rigorous ... because it is in no way a universal schematism, but a unique adventure" (2: 227). Totalizations: The Unity of the Practico-Inert Granting all that has been said thus far, we may still question how the practico-inert receives its unity. To answer this question, we must examine more closely the notion of "totalization." Whether we begin with a whole and then divide it into parts or with parts and then collect them into a whole, we always totalize. We totalize windows, closets, and rooms into an apartment, and we divide an apartment into its rooms, closets, and windows, in which each is now a totality - look at these windows. We totalize apartments into buildings and then totalize these into cities, and nations, and again we m?y work in the opposite direction, working back to the peoples of nations. We totalize, however, in two very different ways. Sometimes we produce genuine totalities, things that are more or less complete: If an apple pie is being made, it is ready when all the ingredients have been put together and baked to the satisfaction of the cook. Sartre uses the more ambiguous examples of a symphony and a painting whose unity is in relation to our imagination; that is, without a human consciousness that can unite the parts into a whole, there would exist in the world only fragments of sound in the air and pigments of paint on a canvass.11 Completed totalities are themselves of two kinds; for example, consider an apple pie and an automobile. A bird might eat an apple pie, but it would not know what to do with an automobile. Certain totalities are extensions of our human body. In a sense an automobile is a human body moving fast on the ground and conversely the driver is the moving automobile. Completed totalities, such as an automobile, approach the most important type of historical totalizations, namely, those that are open ended. For example, the act of driving an automobile is an open-ended totalizing experience: My automobile has needs of its own and thus there is always the question of its proper functioning - will the tires hold out. Then too, I must be awake to traffic rules and to the possibilities of an accident. My bodily awareness of my driving and the car's proper functioning form a unity of diverse 10

11

Some pages later Sartre explicitly relates the attitudes of optimism and pessimism to terror, which is aimed either to force the result or to revenge its failure. See Critique, 2,163. See Critique 1,45.

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materialities - my flesh, blood, and bones together with the car's exterior frame, its gas, and oil. As I drive my car, the operation is also part of a larger open-ended totality, namely, all those who drive cars in other countries with their own codes such as driving on the left side of the road. I may not be aware of this broader open-ended totality, but it exists and I can be aware of it if I choose to do so. Furthermore, this larger open-ended totality does indeed affect my driving; for example, the signs reflect the simple fact that drivers may not read English, and may, in their own countries, have different codes regulating driving. The issue that the Critique invites us to consider is whether all culturally significant open-ended totalizations are united. Sartre's answer is "Yes!" History is itself a single open-ended totalization, but there is no totalizer of this unity. Let us temporarily grant this unity - 1 will examine it more fully in Chapter 6. The question that now arises is whether this unity has a distinctive character. Again, Sartre's answer is, "yes": The overriding quality of our history is scarcity. SCARCITY

In one of the appendixes to the second volume of the Critique, Sartre neatly explains the relationship between scarcity and abundance, a relationship that runs implicitly throughout both volumes. He distinguishes between the man of scarcity and the nonscarce man. The man of scarcity possesses scarce and precious things, and he appears to all to have both the abilities to own great wealth as well as the justification for this ownership. The nonscarce man (the man of necessity, of need) appears as the one whose function is to provide wealth to the man of scarcity, and to justify by his apparent laziness, lack of abilities, and possible danger to society, the wealth of the man of scarcity. These two are bound dialectically to each other, not because this has to be the case but because that is the practical way we have forged our history. Sartre writes: The man of scarcity, seeking his abundance, seeks it as a determination of scarcity. Not abundance for all, but his own, hence deprivation of all ... He is exceptional because he owns the scarce. And that exceptional value is recognized by society. Within himself the man feels like a jewel. (2: 421-422)12 And, after affirming that scarcity is an active element in our history, Sartre continues, "Scarcity is not just the milieu. Becoming interiorized in the man of scarcity, it first constitutes an initial antagonistic relation between every individual and each and every other" (2: 422). 12

"A system of constraints and myths is already needed, to deter the majority (the nonscarce) from demanding sufficiency: in short, exploitation, oppression, mystification are needed. In a word, violence" (2. 423)

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But let us return to the earlier discussion in the first volume - the one completed and published during Sartre's life. It is useful here to give the more complete quasi definition of scarcity given previously: "Scarcity is a fundamental relation of our history and a contingent determination of our univocal relation to materiality" (i: 125). What does Sartre mean by this claim? We must recall that the practico-inert is a matter imbued with our collective historical freedom. This must be true of scarcity itself, and thus Sartre writes, "scarcity is not a simple lack; in its most naked form it expresses a situation in society and contains already an effort to go beyond it" (Method: 91). Confusion may arise because Sartre does indeed refer to a seeming natural scarcity that appears to have nothing to do with freedom; for example, mortality, the need for food and air, and even the need for the proper words to say what we wish to speak. Nevertheless, everything in our world is human; it is simply a question of degree. Sartre writes: Recently an essayist, thinking to refute existentialism, wrote: 'It is not man who is profound; it is the world.' He was perfectly right, and we agree with him without reservations. Only we should add that the world is human, the profundity of man is the world; therefore profundity comes to the world through man. (Method: 145) Sartre's constant refrain from Being and Nothingness to The Family Idiot, a refrain that I take to be absolutely correct, is that all meaning and value enter into the world only through the human reality.13 Limiting ourselves to the Critique, we can note that Sartre consistently reminds us that the so-called "nonhuman" aspect of history is itself the result of a human judgement: "let us understand that non-humanity is a relation between men and could not be anything else" (1:130).I4 Consider, for example, food. We all need food to live. In the concrete, however, this need almost always arises within the milieu of 13

14

See Joseph S Catalano Thinking Matter: Consciousness from Aristotle to Putnam and Sartre (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), particularly, 105-112; 136-144. Also we should note that this movement from a quasi natural way of referring to things to a more humanized way - an anthropocentric but not anthropomorphic way - is consistent throughout Sartre works. In Being and Nothingness, the "in-itself" may appear at first to be a homogeneous "blob," a quasi-putty with which our intentions work to fashion stars and trees, tables and chairs. But then Sartre leads us to understand the in-itself as that aspect of things that cannot be reduced to a human intention, the color and perfume of a rose that intrudes itself onto consciousness. See McBride, 125. I particularly recommend pages 130-131 of Critique 1, and I here give a few additional lines: However, at least up to this moment of our prehistory [the time when we can control our history] scarcity in some form or other has dominated a\\praxis It must therefore be understood both that man's non-humanity does not come from his nature, and that far from excluding his humanity, can only be understood through it. But it must be also understood that, as long the reign of scarcity continues, each and every man will contain an inert structure of non-humanity which is in fact no more than material negation which has been interiorised. So let us understand that non-humanity is a relation between men and could not be anything else (1:130)

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human practices. Gandhi freely denied his body food, but the "hunger strike" of the destitute, particularly children, is not willed by them but by others - or, at least, this is too frequently true. We cultivate scarcity. And the earth on which we work is need. Sartre writes, "everything is to be explained through need; need is the first totalizing relation between the material reality, man, and the material ensemble of which he is a part" (i: 20). In one sense, need is more basic than scarcity. Scarcity is a particular cultural condition that arises from our needs - an infant needs milk, and if milk is scarce, the infant dies. In the abstract, the lack of milk could be a natural tragedy - an accident kills the mother and the child is alone. Such tragedies occur; but they could never be more than isolated events, and as such they would never characterize our history as needs cultivated into scarcity. Aristotle recognized that our animal needs must be satisfied before we attain true culture. Sartre writes in his so-called Rome lecture, "The roots of morality is in need, that is, in the animality of man. Need posits man as his own end."15 But for Sartre, human freedom is not something added to our animality. In the concrete there is no such phenomenon as a human need that is not itself throughly imbued with freedom. We are always a "surpassing toward." True, an infant's freedom and language require the presence and attention of adults; but here, freedom exists even more clearly - an infant life demands the free attention of adults. If, however, a freely collectively forged scarcity characterizes our historical lives, why do we not eliminate it? Sartre's answer is that we have allow ourselves to become socially impotent, and he terms this impotence - "seriality." SERIALITY

We are politically impotent. Why? Because of our false sense of privacy. In the West, we have cultivated privacy over a long period - at least since the demise of the Greek city-states - but like the Chinese peasant's deforestation, we are, for the most part, unaware of its dangerous political feedback. On the other hand, it is obvious that not everyone in our society is politically impotent. In truth, the rich and powerful organize themselves toward their own ends. The common person, however, has been mystified to believe that by not organizing they protect their privacy and freedom. Of course, privacy in our personal relations is, in general, desirable. We are, however, concerned with praxis, our 15

Thomas Anderson Sartre's Two Ethics (Chicago and LaSalle: Open Court, 1993), 121, quoting the unpublished Rome Lecture with the reference R L 100 Although I disagree with Anderson's dichotomy as expressed in his so-called "Two" ethics as well as his consistent neo-Kantian interpretation of Sartre, every Sartre scholar is indebted to his work. See also Elizabeth A Bowman and Robert V. Stone " 'Making the Human' in Sartre's Unpublished Dialectical Ethics," in Writing the Politics of Difference, ed Hugh J Silverman (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991).

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behavior insofar as it takes place within an historical context. Specifically, we are concerned with our ability to control our history, and, from this perspective, our actions have force only when they are united. Sartre is not particularly interested in the historical development of serially, but rather in its description: "There are serial feelings and serial thoughts; in other words a series is a mode of being for individuals both in relation to one another and in relation to their common being and this mode of being transforms all their structures" (i: 266). Sartre illustrates the notion of a series with several commonsense examples, namely, waiting on line for a bus, listening to a radio broadcast, participating in the free market, and being caught up in a Great Fear such as that of 1789 in France, and, finally, the "class consciousness" of the French proletariat of the early nineteenth century. Each of these are of increasing importance; the last introduces the relation of seriall y to class consciousness and to "class being." The general point of all these examples is to illustrate how our practical social structures tend to forge us into isolated individuals, who, in our isolation, face each other as competitors in the life of survival. The Bus Line and the Radio Broadcast Sartre's first two examples are aspects of our everyday life, namely, waiting for a bus and the radio broadcast. People have to get to work and the first ones on line are, generally, the first ones in the bus. An individual may yield a place to a woman with an infant or to an older person, but the need to do so is not, for the most part, in the bus system. A better example is listening to the news on the radio - today, watching television. The ordinary citizen has no control over the so-called "anchor" men or women, and one wonders how much control these people have over the information that they feed to us. The broadcasting systems that are, to a great extent, owned by the very rich and operated under the auspices of those in political power. True, today, the Internet has already shown its power to alter our political impotence - hopefully, it will continue. Also, for the most part, we cannot and do not get together to discuss the news. Could not every apartment dwelling in a city have a discussion room? The old-fashioned Communists understood this need, but, in the concrete, their discussions were forms of indoctrination. The radio broadcast highlights the collective aspect of our serial existence: "I call the two-way relation between a material, inorganic, worked object and a multiplicity which finds its unity of exteriority in it collective" (1: 269). The radio broadcast - or television - is such a two-way relation. On the one hand, there is the complex system of broadcast studios, with their offices for directors and announcers together with the radios in each of our rooms. This complex awaits people to fill their roles - the chair and the microphone await the announcer and the radio invites me to turn it on. This

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material complex is such that, except in rare instances of publically funded stations that are disappearing, it both awaits and divides the people that are to fill the appropriate places: The place for an announcer is together with but also against the place for the directors and advertisers and all of these places are divided from the homes of the listeners. At least half this group - the audience most of all - fulfills these places in such a way that seriality and impotence result. Sartre notes that when one speaks in public, the audience can participate by shouting approval or disapproval. Thus, there is a form of reciprocity. The broadcaster's voice appears to speak to us and invite us to reciprocal relation; but the reciprocity is false. Of course, we can turn off the radio, but the voice continues to address its audience. On the other hand, there is no doubt that seriality of the listeners is caused and sustained by the group action of those controlling the broadcasting systems, and thus Sartre writes, "what is not serial, of course, is the political action of the government and its propaganda activities" (i: 272). The Market We now approach more substantive examples of seriality, namely, the stock market and the job market. Sartre provides a very detailed and rich study of the market, but I will simple note some of the general characteristics. First, there is something called "the market," even if it is nothing more than the places and systems that allow stocks to be bought and sold. The totality is elusive; that is, its center seems to be always moving. Nevertheless, the market exists precisely because, "everyone yields to the gathering" (1: 286). This yielding results from our indoctrinated belief in ourselves as social atoms. There is a vast difference between a physical and a social atom. The movement of physical atoms do not reflect human freedom - except, of course, that these particles are themselves revealed to us only through our theories and instruments. A social atom, on the other hand, is produced by collective human practices. Indeed, the seeming chance movements of the "free" market are a collectively produced mystification: "For men, separation, like union is a constructed situation, resulting from certain actions performed by certain forces. Price derives its false unity from the fact that separation is a produced reality, a type of relation between men" (1: 292). The job market is also deceptive. We are supposed to be able to trade our talents and training for a suitable job, but the equality of the contract is an illusion. At the moment of contract, we appear to have the choice of accepting the offer of wages or not, and thus, we may seem equal to our employer who is also free to hire us or not. Anyone who has had to work for a living knows the inequality in this so-called equality. There are usually a hundred or more people waiting to take your place. On the other hand, the inequality of the market does not seem to be of anyone's making; it appears to be the way things are at this time in history. That is, sometimes there is more opportunity

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to do what we would like to do and at other times there are very few jobs of any sort. No employer seems to be at fault, and, in a sense, this is true. The inequality exists in the practico-inert; it is an open-ended totalization caused not by this or that employer, but, rather, by all of them working toward the same goal - to keep the labor force larger than the economic needs so that workers have to compete at low wages for any job. This aim does not always work - but it works for the most part. In his discussion of the market - and, indeed, throughout the Critique Sartre insists that alienation, oppression, and repression do not result from a particular monetary system in the abstract, including capitalism. Our dealings with money are wrong, not only because of superexploitation - the extra dollar beyond a decent profit from investment as well as the failure to improve conditions of labor even if they do not significantly lower profits - but because they both participate in and deepen seriality. From the aspect of our attitude toward money, seriality is a produced ontological separation, altering our freedom from within so that we consider antagonistic relations natural.16 Still, freedom exists - an individual can act against this seriality - but, precisely as seriality is a social web, a determined group effort that somehow spreads worldwide is the only force that can alter it. The Great Fear Fear of others, particularly those who seem different from us, is also an essential aspect of seriality. Sartre gives a specific example of the Great Fear of 1789, in which peasants were regarded as bandits, and in which the rule of thought was that one should not seek for evidence of the guilty.17 Sartre's point is that the spread of this fear cannot be explained either by panic, false information, acts of terror, or looting - all of which were present but which, of themselves, would have dissolved as isolated incidents. What propagated the great fear, as some great tidal wave, was that it awakened seriality in the practico-inert; that is to say, it awakened our ever-present latent fear that our neighbor may take our possessions from us. Of course, the Great Fear of 1789 had its own specific causes, as does every such fear. The power of this fear and of all such contagious fears - arose, however, not from specific causes, but from what Sartre terms the "being" of the fear: Whatever the fundamental historical conditions which gave rise to it, it would not have produced itself as a chain-disintegration unless it had taken place in the structured temporality of the practico-inert field and unless the infinite 16 17

"Everyone determines both himself and the Other in so far as he is Other than the Other and Other than himself" (r 285-286). "The conditions which gave rise to the Great Fear must therefore be seen in the context of everyone's discovery of himself as Other (as an object of a History made by others" (1: 296).

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complex of serialises had already been produced as the very grain and web of this field, (i: 299)

Although I wish to postpone until Chapter 5 a formal discussion of "temporality," the notion is relevant to all such fears, as for example, our own great fear of terrorism. When a social fear occurs, time speeds up. On one level this is justified; for example, if an enemy is at our doorsteps, threatening our lives and our country. In a great fear, however, the possibility of an enemy's presence becomes as real as the actual presence. Let me try to be clear about this, and I will use the attack on the World Trade Center in New York. I expected more bombs or suicide planes to fall on us. If tens or hundreds of bombs had continued to fall, and our survival was being threatened, our fear would be justified. In such a case, we would follow our leaders - or better, to anticipate Sartre's notion of a group-in-fusion - we would follow anyone who would show themselves capable of organizing us to protect ourselves and to fight the enemy. For a while, this possibility existed, and on one level it continues to exit; but this level is one of a caution that is not equivalent to going to war or turning the nation into a quasi-fascist state in which everyone is a potential enemy. Indeed, if one reflects upon it, it seems that, having abandoned so much of our freedom, we live as a defeated nation. Beyond this, we would have to question whether we did anything to provoke the attack - as I believe that we did - and this itself should have made us cautious in our responses. Indeed, underlying all great fears is a bad-faith notion of obtaining evidence of an enemy: The rule of thought is not to think very much about evidence. Sartre writes, "At this level, the Idea is a process; it derives its invincible strength from the fact that nobody thinks it" (1:300). Nobody thinks the truth, particularly those in power who have their own agenda. And then too, we are led to believe that evidence is a game that the enemy plays for its own purposes. Reflecting upon his earlier observations in part one of Being and Nothingness in the chapter on "Bad Faith," Sartre here writes: "These are the rules of belief: what everyone believes of the Other is what the Other conveys in so far as he is Other (or in so far as the news comes to him already from an Other)" (1: 298). This "otherness" works on two levels. First, the seriality that is embedded in the practico-inert makes it natural for us to accept what we are told in the newspapers and over the radio. True, we cannot really question the broadcaster; but, even more importantly, we are taught to see questioning of authority as coming from the "enemy." On the other hand, even if our surveys reveal that the majority of people no longer believe what our government reports to us about those whom we should fear, those in power realize that they do not have to pay much attention to this collective thought. We may try to organize and protest, but they have learned to prevent these, relegating the rights of assembly to another form of terrorism. What all governments fear above all else is the union of ordinary people for truly democratic ends. In this

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fear of the government and of those in power, we discover what Sartre terms our class being, or class consciousness. Class Consciousness Sartre's notion of class being is complex; the general perspective, however, is clear. First, we must keep in mind that we encounter the force of our class being only when the historical aspects of our actions are prominent. In our direct interpersonal relations, such as having dinner with friends, our class being is still present; but its force is, as it were, in the background - true friends are equal; that is, they are equal in their consideration of each other's human worth. Nevertheless, the hierarchal view of human nature and human worth may still haunt these relationships, which have to be worked at in order to keep alive reciprocity. More importantly, however, we are concerned with the marginalized who, in the words of William James, are knocking at our doors, while we are enjoying our dinners with our friends. Sartre is more explicit and concrete. He had earlier in the text called attention to the division that occurred in the nineteenth century between skilled and unskilled workers, arising from the use of the lathe. Some tools do naturally require more technical skill than others, but the consequent division did not have to be alienating. There is no abstract reason why the skill in using a lathe should make one more fully human - clearly, the owners did not know how to use a lathe. Mysteriously, even the unskilled workers accepted the division as "natural"; that is, they saw their own lower humanity reflected in the machines.18 For Sartre, the cultural conditions - the possibility of using the dialectic - were not practically present for the unskilled workers. They were not able to understand that their so-called lower status was merely imposed on them by someone's else's need to use a certain kind of machine. On the other hand, both skilled and unskilled viewed themselves as having common interests opposed to those of the owners. They thus began to become aware of themselves as belonging to the same class. This awareness was not focused until sometime later, when "Taylorism," which divided all work into parts, eliminated the distinction between the skilled and the unskilled. Even this division of labor was not itself alienating; it could have been worked out in a human way. Unfortunately, Taylorism was joined to a new and distinctive oppression, one that aimed at making the workers believe that, if they were not working hard at their simple task, they were responsible for their lack of work, for their poverty, and for their suffering. The unspoken moral imperative was that the worker was subhuman: "The bourgeoisie claims to be 18

"But it is crucial that the anarcho-synidcalist humanism was unable to transcend itself" (1. 243). The "anarcho-synidicalist" held for a division between skilled and unskilled workers. See Chapter 6.

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human by virtue of intelligence, culture, scientific knowledge, technical abilities, etc.; and while these powers must belong to everyone, the workers partly lack them" (i: 800). In his discussion of scarcity and class being, Sartre hints at one of the real mysteries of our history, namely, why, with all our technological revolutions, deep poverty still exists on our planet. We, in the United States, can feed all our people, and if we so wished, perhaps most of the peoples of the world, with a very small labor force. There is increased population, but we have lands that are not used and we control what is produced in order to keep the price up. We, together with the other Western countries, now have the means to relieve poverty - only the will is lacking. This "weakness of will" is not abstract; it is part of our seriality. Thus, to understand our history, we must insert ourselves within it. In this way, we recognize how our present sustains our past, by deepening scarcity, seriality, and a Manichean ethics as these become united in our class being. True, a few from the lower classes may advance; and the upper classes do seem to grow in number. These movements, however, do not disturb the social order; they are permitted so that class distinctions can remain the same.19 A DIGRESSION: FREEDOM A N D HISTORY

We seem to be at the mercy of the practico-inert. Does freedom then exist? "Yes," but once again, we must distinguish individual and social freedom on the one hand and historical freedom on the other hand. Although I sometimes identify the term "social" with "historical" - as when I refer to social structures - there is an implicit distinction throughout Sartre's philosophy between these terms. Strictly speaking, the "social" refers to the freedom we experience when our actions are, for the most part, focused on our family or friends. Historical relations, or praxis, occurs when the main focus of our actions brings us into contact with history - for example, when an African American person attempts to rent a home in a white neighborhood. Thus, Sartre notes, that, for the most part, we are free to transcend the limits imposed on us in a particular social context, and this transcendence is real. Neither Genet nor Flaubert, for example, were compelled to respond to their family situations in the ways in which they did.20 19

20

"In certain circumstances, in certain historical moments and in certain societies, there may be real possibilities of moving from one class to another. . However, in fact, though it took him a great of intelligence, work and patience to transcend his common destiny - all he has done is to realize, in his person, one of the possibilities in the structured field of his possibilities" (1. 330-331) That is to say, the practico-inert is structured for class differences. "From this point of view, for an isolated individual - that is to say, for every one of us, in so far as we receive and mteriorise the statue of isolation - the consciousness of OUT praxis as free efficacity remains, through constraint and exigency, our own constant reality in so far as we are the perpetual transcendence of our ends" (1: 328 ).

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Thus, although Sartre's view of freedom is complex, it is also clear and insistent: We are free, not as angels but as situated beings. Let us, however, begin by reflecting upon a quote that at first seems to deny freedom. It would be wrong to interpret me as saying that man is free in all situations, as the Stoics claimed. I mean the exact opposite: all men are slaves in so far as their lives unfold in the practico-inert field and in so far as this field is conditioned by scarcity. (1:331) First, we should note that Sartre has never advocated a stoic notion of freedom. Indeed, the quote does not affirm that to be so. The stoic notion of freedom is directed mainly toward one's inner life, but Sartre has always advocated freedom of action, even if we cannot control the results. An imprisoned person may not be able to escape, but he can do something or at least try. Further, we must stress Sartre's own basic qualification in the quote, namely, "all men are slaves in so far as their lives unfold in the practico-inert field." That is to say, an individual cannot as such alter the practico-inert; that radical change requires what Sartre will term "group praxis." But more important than these qualifications, are Sartre's own frequent and endless references to freedom, specifically the freedom of the project to be examined in the next chapter; and thus with the above quote, one must also consider: We affirm the specificity of the human act, which cuts across the social milieu while still holding on to its determinations, and which transforms the world on the basis of given conditions. For us man is characterized above all by his going beyond a situation, and by what he succeeds in making of what he has been made. ... This is what we call the project. (Method: 91) A project is primarily individual, and even in the Flaubert family project the roots are in the father and the mother. Thus, throughout both volumes of the Critique, Sartre insists on the ontological priority of individual existence as when he writes, "The individual integrates himself into the group and the group has its practical limits in the individual" (1: 524). In the second volume, he writes, "we have clearly noted that totalization is not an ideal and transcendent movement, but operates through the discrete activities of individuals on the basis of the common pledge" (2: 118). Some pages later, Sartre continues: For each of us, it is one and the same thing to exist, to transcend onself toward one's ends, to be totalised by the very transcendence, and to produce the demoniacal, inverted reflection of totalization and the foundation of History: the inert syntheses of worked matter. In short, from this viewpoint there are individuals and that is all. (2: 228)

These types of observations continue throughout, and because the issue is of some importance to understanding Sartre's entire philosophy, I will add here one more quote, given toward the very conclusion of the second volume of the Critique: "we have encountered one praxis in our investigation - that of men" (2: 384). Of course, the Critique also introduces us to

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freedom as tension, namely, the tension between our personal life with our friends and our relation to all of history. Thus, although individual adventures of freedom exist in the practico-inert, the freedom that characterizes the movement and the unity of history is rooted in what Sartre terms "group praxis." THE GROUP-INFUSION

Sartre distinguishes between collectives and groups. A true group is a relatively rare occurrence. Those involved are, as it were, "fused" together as they pursue their common goal, and thus Sartre refers to the union as a "group-infusion." The unity of a group occurs through what Sartre terms "mediations," and again Sartre aids our reflections by giving us an example: From my window, I can see a road-mender on the road and a gardener working in a garden.... they have no knowledge of each other's presence. ... I can see them without being seen, and my position and this passive view of them at work situates me in relation to them: I am 'taking a holiday,' in a hotel; and in my inertia as a witness I realize myself as a petty bourgeois intellectual, (i: ioo) I do not project a unity onto these two workers; they are indeed united, even though they are engrossed in their individual tasks. They are united as workers, and they are united in their use of tools to alter the environment. Also, even as a disinterested observer, Sartre is united to them insofar as they are together in a neighborhood of Paris. On the other hand, we must not exaggerate this unity. Sartre rejects what he terms "hyper-organism," namely, the notion that historical unities, such as cities and nations, have an ontological status that is not reducible to individuals and their behaviors. Unities that are larger than individuals do exist; but they are parasitical, deriving and sustaining their unification from individual praxis and the "mediations" arising from these praxis. 2I Indeed, all collectives and groups occur only through mediations; that is, the union exists through the presence of "third" parties. In the above example, the proximity of the road, the garden, and Sartre's apartment is given in the world. Sartre is the first mediator uniting the workers, but someone could enter Sartre's apartment and notice him looking at the workers. On the other hand, the unity of a group-in-fusion is tighter than the bonds that unite the road-mender, the gardener, and Sartre. But what is the character of this union? In order to understand the union of a group-in-fusion, I must here anticipate a discussion in Being and Nothingness to which I will return more fully in the next chapter. There we will see that Sartre rejects the view that we have an innate, positive relation to other people, a relation that respects their 21

Sartre never explicitly examined the status of large-scale unities such as nations.

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humanity. He terms this view the ontological "we," and its rejection continues here in the Critique. Of course, we do frequently work together and Sartre terms this relation the "us." The main difference between the ontological "we" and the "us" is that the latter is created by effort, and no natural reciprocity exists without this effort. The "us" is constituted on a social level through the "look" of others; for example, Sartre's look unites the gardener and the road-mender. Still, the union between these two is objective - the look gathers together the proximity that is given in the world. The unity of a group-in-fusion is also given in the world, with this important difference: It is there regardless of whether a mediator recognizes the unity. That is to say, on the level of "praxis," in which our actions take place within the practico-inert, Sartre acknowledges that we can experience something resembling a genuine "we-relation." Thus, once an individual is in the group, the individual has a quasi-innate reciprocal relation to every other member. There are no outside mediators. Each member in the group is a mediator in relation to every other member. Thus, in a group-in-fusion, each individual shares in the freedom and power of every other individual; that is, each person mediates his or her action through the action of every other member of the group. I act here alone and yet not alone, for I know that, if and when you can, you will be here to support me. I thus know that what I am doing here, you are also doing in your place in support of our common intention. There is no mystery or unconscious motivation in a group-in-fusion. Each member comprehends that they are bonded to each other through the mediation of every other. In a true group-in-fusion - Sartre uses the example of the storming of the Bastille - there is no outside leader or particular chosen leader. Rather, everyone comprehends what is to be done and each depends upon every other as a possible "regulatory third" who can unite and direct the group for a time.22 The significance of the group-in-fusion, for Sartre, is that, when properly used, it alone can overcome the counterfinality within the practico-inert. Only a union of freedoms can eliminate, at least for a time, the inertia of past frozen freedoms that tend to keep us separated, impotent, and at the mercy of a cultivated scarcity. At present, however, our group actions soon disintegrate into institutions, with leaders that are apt to fight over the sex of angels. Nevertheless, all is not lost, something of the original intention is saved, if only the fact that it could be done. In a small way, we understand that we have the means to change our history. The praxis of a group-in-fusion is eminently dialectical. A group-in-fusion has a natural feedback between each member of the group and every other member. This feedback is itself the group's understanding of its actions as 22

See Joseph S. Catalano, Good Faith and Other Essays' Perspectives on a Sartrean Ethics (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), for a personal description of a group praxis, 44-50. Hereafter cited as Catalono, Good Faith.

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dialectical: The individuals within the group both know and control their actions toward their goal, altering their actions as new circumstances arise. Thus, I conclude this overview, with a brief reflection on Sartre's initial "critique" of the dialectic, to which I will return in Chapter 6.

T H E " C R I T I Q U E " OF DIALECTICAL REASON

We have been using intellectual tools without reflecting upon their efficacy, and, in general, Sartre favors honing intellectual methods by using them. He is thus against a sort of Cartesian dream that one could forge a philosophical method independently of its use. Sartre does not here alter this healthy preference for clarifying methodology in the substantive use of it. Nevertheless, the task of understanding history is unique; it brings into question the legitimacy of the effort itself as well as the relation of the thinker to the method. Also, the dialectic has its own history. I will begin with some general observations that, while not explicitly Sartre's own, are, I believe, within the general spirit of his philosophy. A method is an intellectual tool that we forge to get a job done, just as we forge the very tools to make an automobile or an airplane. All tools work well when they mesh with the matter at hand to produce a desired result. Even an ordinary screwdriver, however, has a history of its formation, a history lost to the ordinary user. Nevertheless, these past efforts are present in the screwdriver itself - the weight and shape of the screwdriver bears the "weight" of this history. Intellectual tools also have a history, with one significant difference from ordinary tools: Intellectual tools may work on us to hide not only their history but their very efficacy. For Sartre, this occurs when an intellectual tool becomes an "ideology;" that is, when the method becomes the truth rather than a way of getting at the truth. Sartre thus notes that, while Hegel and Marx forged the contemporary dialectic as a means for understanding history, many Hegelians and Marxists altered the dialectic into an ideology. Thus, the need for a "critique" of dialectical reason. Sartre thus begins: "The dialectic, if it exists, can only be the totalisations of concrete totalisations effected by a multiplicity of totalizing individuals" (i: 37). Two phrases are particularly important in this quote, namely, "if it exists" - and the last, "effected by a multiplicity of totalizing individuals." Sartre's initial effort is a conditional procedure that seeks to reveal whether we do act dialectically; that is, whether we totalize our environment in such a way that we understand what we are doing and in such a way that our specific presence contributes to the unity of the unfolding event. Sartre writes, "It is therefore necessary for the critical investigation to ask the fundamental question: is there a region of being where totalization is the very form of existence?" (1:45). Sartre's answer is that, in our present history, the Earth itself is such a region of totalizations. Today, wherever we place ourselves within our

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history, we see, for the most part, the same totalization, namely, a humanity fractured into subhumanity for the advantage of the few. Also, Sartre is clear about his own placement in history: "I repeat, it was not the idea [Proletariat] which unsettled us; nor was it the condition of the worker, which we knew abstractly but which we had not experienced. No, it was the two joined together" (Method: 18). And, more generally, later in the same work, he writes, "Research is a living relation between men" (Method: 72). For Sartre, the living relation of research was his constant attempt to come down the stairs from his Paris apartment and from his more or less elitist position in the world in an effort to align himself with the marginalized peoples of the world. Unlike many of his colleagues, Sartre did not consider it demeaning to his profession as a writer to be as active as possible. Still, of course, he was mainly a writer and a philosopher. The point is that, while Sartre's effort in placing himself within the dialectic of history is more formal, it can and should be done by all of us. This effort is itself the first use of the dialectic. When a philosopher places himself or herself within the task of attaining a dialectical understanding of history, he or she first encounters the history of the dialectic itself. Hegel had used the dialectic, but influenced by the optimism of the nineteenth century he placed himself at the end of a great historical epoch rather than within it. Hegel thus considered himself in a position to note that the contradictions and tragedies in history always move us toward a higher synthesis that ultimately ends in the Absolute Spirit. Contemplating ourselves within this grand historical movement, we become aware that this evolving spirit gradually became conscious of itself through us; or, perhaps, better, that we are the World Spirit as this knows itself. Kierkegaard rejected this historical use of the dialectic, insisting that the real movement toward higher states of consciousness is within us. Here, the dialectic ultimately ends in the "religious knight," whose outward movements appear to be ordinary but are always in contact with God. For Sartre, it was Marx alone who reworked the Hegelian dialectic toward a new realism that emphasized the productive forces moving history. At this point of our reflections, however, we must be careful; for we encounter Sartre's fascinating, complex, and, for me, always instructive, attempt to situate his own dialectic in relation to Marx. In the Search for a Method, Sartre introduces us to his general agreement with Marx by quoting Marx: In the social production of their existence, men enter into relations which are determined, necessary, independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a given stage of developments of their material productive forces. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the real foundation upon which a legal and political superstructure arise and to which definite forms of social consciousness correspond. (Method: 13)23 23

The translator, Hazel Barnes, notes that Sartre does not give a reference, but that Eric Fromm quotes the passage and gives the reference, Preface to a Critique of Political Economy. See Method: 13, note 8.

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In general, Sartre agrees that our means of production are the infrastructure from which arise our social institutions and our historical consciousness - that is, our general awareness of our place in history. Nevertheless, even this general agreement must be somewhat qualified - alienation does not result from the means of production in the abstract. Of itself, capitalism does not alienate the worker; rather, such alienation results from the specific ways capitalism is united with scarcity and from the ways the owners collectively choose to keep themselves superior to the workers. From this concrete perspective, there is indeed alienation: "man does not recognize himself in his own product, and his exhausting labor appears to him as a hostile force" (Method: 12). Thus, alienation is a distinct historical occurrence whose roots must be found in the specific ways we have made history be our history. It is sometimes popularly said that Marx turned Hegel on his head. But this is not true. An-upside-down Hegel would indeed be materialistic, but the dialectic would remain as fixed and completed as Hegel's own dialectic. For Sartre, "living Marxism is heuristic; its principles and its prior knowledge appear as regulative principles" (Method: 26). But where are these "living" Marxists? Perhaps, in the work of Henri Lefebvre who initiated the progressive-regressive movement, and in a few others. The above remarks hint at the simple part of the tension between Marx and Sartre; but there is a more complex and elusive issue. Let us begin with a note in the section "Scarcity and Marxism" in the first volume of the Critique: It must be clearly understood that the rediscovery of scarcity in this investigation makes absolutely no claim to oppose Marxist theory or to complete it. It is of a different order. (1: 152, note 35)24 This "order" is that of freedom, which is one with the efficacy and value of individual efforts: "The only practical dialectical reality, the motive force of everything, is individual action" (1: 322). Then too, this "different order" is that of Being and Truth, and thus Sartre writes, "But my remarks, though they are possible only on the basis of this reconstruction [Marx's Capital] ... belong logically, before this reconstruction, at a higher level of indeterminacy and generality" (1: 216). I think that it is appropriate, even in this overview, to be more precise about this difference. Again, I must anticipate our study of Being and Nothingness in which Sartre situates his view of truth between realism and idealism. 24

It is interesting that this subdivision is one of the very few given by Sartre; the rest are added by the editor, and then revised in the critical French edition edited by Arlette ElkaimSartre (Gallimard, 1985). In my commentary, I altered some of these where I thought useful and added some of my own.

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Classical realism asserts that the world is the way it is independently of human existence. The notion of truth associated with classical realism is the correspondence theory, in which we have obtained truth if and only if we know the way things would be without our presence in the world. Classical idealism asserts that the world is basically an idea in the mind of God or the result of a projection of the human mind. The idealist notion of truth is, very generally, an attempt to understand how we need to understand the world in relation to our ideas, our values, and our history. In the present context, we can take the idealist perspective on truth to be that of Hegel, in which the adventure of Nature and History are aspects of the unfolding adventure of the World Spirit, thereby explaining our seeming progress. A tension arises, because Sartre rejects both the traditional realist and idealist notions of truth. For Sartre, the world exists independently of our notions about it, but not independently of our existence. That is to say, the world is the way it is because we are the way we are. In the second volume, Sartre terms this view "anthropocentric" as distinct from anthropomorphic. 25 Sartre's notion of truth is thus complex both on the natural and historical orders. In the natural order, we must decode the ways our fleshy body differentiates matter into a world. In the historical order, we must understand the ways human freedom attempts to work out its destiny amidst the counterforces of the practico-inert. The tension between Sartre and Marx unfolds because Sartre views Marx as having held to a classical realist notion of truth, despite Marx's use of the dialectic. Of course, the traditional correspondence theory of truth, in which we have truth only when we know how things would be independently of our existence, concerns the natural order, and we are concerned with the truth of history. Nevertheless, for Sartre, the correspondence theory underlies Marx's dialectic of history to the extent that our awareness of the dialectic reflects the necessary evolution of history: For Marx, capitalism was thus a necessary historical development from which socialism would then arise.26 For Sartre, on the contrary, neither capitalism nor socialism are necessary aspects of human history; rather, each is a distinct human adventure in which "subjectivity is neither everything nor nothing; it represents a moment in the historical process" (Method: 33, note 9). On the other hand, Sartre's critique of Marx is conditioned by the simple recognition that Marx did what was needed and possible for his time. It is thus our task - as reflected here in the Critique - to rethink the dialectic for our own times. This effort will include understanding the ways we have molded 25

26

In my commentary on the first volume of the Critique, I had already advocated the term as well as the substance of the notion "anthropocentrism." The notion, in fact, is central to the ontology of Being and Nothingness. I am not sufficiently expert to judge whether Sartre's view of Marx is correct; for a nuanced discussion, see McBride, 74-80 and passim.

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our world into an inertial force that reflects back to us the need to live our lives amidst scarcity, seriality, and a Manichean ethics that keeps us in fear of each other. But that which we have done we can undue. The implicit message of the Critique, and indeed of all of Sartre's philosophy, is that radical evil can be eliminated by the same individual and collective freedoms that introduced it into the world.

4 Being and Nothingness

If I were a science-fiction novelist, I could not invent an extraterrestrial more strangely wondrous than an earthling child. Every child begins its adventure here on Earth with the capacity to question everything. Who can handle those endless "whys?" Who wishes to try? We feed children stories not merely to suit their tender minds, but because we adults are too often frightened by their questions. True, a question appears harmless. Is it not merely an ordering of spoken or written words directed by one person to another? But these are its secondary manifestations. The nature of a question is revealed when we ask, "Who and what am I?," or "What is this world in which I live?" These interrogations indicate that questioning touches the existence of all things, and it also reveals that we who question must be both united to and separate from what we question. We are united to the question, for it is our question about ourselves or about reality; yet, we are separate from this question insofar as we can take a new stance on it. This bond between a questioner and what is questioned is described by Sartre as a "nothing," or then again, as a "nihilation." Whatever the term used in this context, it is clear that Sartre is not referring to an emptiness; perhaps it can be described as a certain "elsewhereness" that fractures the identity between questioner and what is being questioned so that new possible relations may arise between them. Questioning is, in fact, the archetypical act of our freedom. Our ability to question is the underlying theme throughout Being and Nothingness, connecting all the parts of the book into a whole.1 There is, of course, the issue of freedom, but freedom, to repeat, is one with our capacity 1

Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, translated with an introduction by Hazel E. Barnes (New York- Philosophical Library, 1956) See Chapter 5, note 1, for the publication of the original French edition. I discuss the full significance of this title in my introductory pages to Chapter 5.

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to interrogate the world. Thus, our attitude of questioning becomes the starting point for Sartre's philosophical reflections: "Now this very inquiry furnishes us with the desired conduct; this man that / am - if I apprehend him such as he is at this moment in the world, I establish that he stands before being in an attitude of interrogation" (4). Indeed, it would be fruitless, wrong, and uninteresting to be tame about Sartre's goal in writing Being and Nothingness. His aim is to describe the metamorphosis of matter into a world through human existence both on the natural and historical levels. The Eskimoes distinguish many different kinds of snow in relation to many kinds of needs, and we may wish to claim that these different snows would still exist, even if the Eskimoes did not distinguish them. But then each snowflake and drop of rain is different from every other; each wave of the ocean is different from every other; each current of air that stirs is different from every other; each hair on our head is different from every other, and each coloring of a sunset or reflection of light from a leaf or from a rock is again different from every other. How many "kinds" of things shall we claim exist in the world before we distinguish them? We tend to imagine a transhuman spectator for whom all things are already "there." The question we should ask ourselves is whether a world of trees and stars would exist if we did not have an organic existence to differentiate them into things? If the only consciousness in the universe were embodied in a gaseous cloud that moved among the galaxies as freely as we move among the trees of a forest, would trees, or forest, or even a planet exist as a thing? Might not the only things for this consciousness be the millions of remarkably diverse galaxies themselves? Thus, the world is the way it is because we are the way we are: "My body is co-extensive with the world, spread across all things, and at the same time it is condensed into this single point which all things indicate and which I am without being able to know it" (BN: 318). Another way of putting this general relation of human existence to the world is to refer to the world as "being" and human existence as the "nothingness" that distinguishes one thing from another.2 Thus, the title of the work, Being and Nothingness, is an extended reflection on the relation of the free human organic body to the world of things and peoples. TO WHOM IS BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

ADDRESSED?

In the major works that Sartre wrote after Being and Nothingness, it becomes clear that we are not all equally capable of questioning the meaning of our lives. I have already noted Sartre's pointed remark in The Notebooks for an Ethics: "one does not make use of the oppressed as a machine, contrary to 2

Again, we encounter Sartre's anthropocentrism, which he implies in the second volume of the Critique, 315-346.

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what is often said, but as a limited freedom" (Notebooks: 328). And, even more explicitly in the study of Jean Genet, I have called attention to Sartre's words: "The Indian untouchable thinks he is actually untouchable. He internalizes the prohibition of which he is the object, and makes of it an inner principle which justifies and explains the conduct of the other Hindus toward him" (Genet: 34). Then too, Sartre observes about Genet himself: "We 'normal' people know delinquents only from the outside, and if we are ever 'in a situation' with respect to them, it is as judges or entomologists" (Genet: 586). Our collective freedom then touches everything - including the birth of our children. Here, in this early work on ontology, however, Sartre does not consider the different conditions that may affect a birth. On the other hand, the "look" - to be considered as follows - is the foundation for these later reflections on the ways we may limit or expand another's freedom from within. Nevertheless, one must admit, I believe, that Being and Nothingness is addressed to those of us who, since birth, have been blessed with sufficient love, health, and satisfaction of needs so that we can reflect upon the meaning of life. Indeed, given our vast poverty and wars, is not philosophy and all culture a gift of the many to the few - a gift that they would rather enjoy themselves than be forced to bestow upon us? " O U R " FREEDOM: AN I N I T I A L VIEW

With the above restriction in mind, we can nevertheless observe that our capacity to interrogate everything is both a blessing and a burden. The task of giving meaning to our lives gives rise to anguish; for, in truth, we are responsible for our lives: "It is certain that we can not overcome anguish, for we are anguish" (43). It may happen that, attaining a fleeting glimpse of this anguish, we then make an implicit vow to keep it from appearing on the level of reflective attention. That is, we may attempt to flee our anguish by passing over it, thereby allowing our attention to be fixed only on our daily concerns. Sartre terms the consistent attempt to flee anguish "bad faith." He writes, "J am anguish in order to flee it. This attitude is what we call bad faith" (44). On its most primary level, bad faith is an attempt to escape our very nature as the interrogator of all reality. We tend to abandon responsibility for thought by yielding blindly to so-called experts. Also, if we are comfortable in our lives, it may appease us to hide from the human hierarchy that we have collectively forged and which we now sustain in existence. As we will see more fully as follows, bad faith can indeed arise in us as a primary attitude toward people. Nevertheless, as is true of all such primary attitudes, or "projects," a bad-faith project is neither spontaneous nor blind. Our fundamental project usually arises within us gradually, influenced no doubt by our family or guardians, our friends, or indeed, from a reflection on something we have read. From whatever source it may arise, it will become our project only if we sustain and deepen it by future actions. This seems to

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occur at different times of life. We have seen that Sartre considers Gustave Flaubert to have reached the project of becoming a writer between eleven and thirteen; Jean-Genet seems to have embraced the task of becoming the saint of thieves about ten years of age. Whenever it happens, even small and inconsequential acts, will, for the most part, reflect our fundamental project. OUR F U N D A M E N T A L PROJECT

As Being and Nothingness unfolds, the attitude of interrogation becomes the individual's primary goal in life or what Sartre terms, "the project." Our project is at one and the same time our questioning of the world and our answer to that question, an "answer" that develops and matures as we do: "My ultimate and initial project - for these are but one - is, we will see, always the outline of a solution of the problem of being. But this solution is not first conceived and then realized; we are this solution" (463). It does not matter that we do not intend our lives to be so important; we have no choice: even the most seemingly restricted jobs, such as being a sales clerk in a department store, is both a necessity to survive and an adventure of discovering the meaning of life within this necessity. Our fundamental project may not appear to be an outline of the meaning of all existence, but that is indeed what it is. Every choice we make reveals what is before us in a particular way and indirectly through this revelation, the world itself. For example, I sip coffee from a cup at my side as I am writing. From one perspective, this uneventful decision has no major consequences for my life, and, yet I take coffee from this cup, resting on this table, in this study, in this safe neighborhood, with the leisure to write these words - as wars, slavery, and starvation rage through the planet - and all of this reflects my life and the world itself: "Thus by its very projection toward an end, freedom constitutes as a being in the midst of the world a particular datum which it has to be. ... Freedom causes the datum to be revealed in this way or in another, in this or that light in connection with the revelation of the world itself" (487). Of course, something must exist in order to be differentiated as a thing. The something that exists before it is differentiated, Sartre terms the "initself," and, that which does the differentiation, namely, we humans, he terms the "for-itself." On the other hand, these terms have contextual meanings as they are used throughout Being and Nothingness. For example, a cup is an in-itself insofar as it holds the coffee we pour into it; but, a cup is also a foritself insofar as it exhibits the long history of our craftsmanship. Sartre explicitly observes that he is not concerned with causes or motives for reaching a project. Both causes and motives have their particular values only through our free project. Rather, a fundamental project arises from our interaction with our entire situation. Freedom is always situational; it must act on something - "freedom is not a simple undetermined power. ... One does something with or to something" (485)- But then this "with" or "to" is itself

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imbued with freedom, now, however, coming not so much from us as from others - sexism in the job market, for example, and earlier in our lives, from the look of parents or guardians. For Sartre, there is no unconscious guiding the formation of our fundamental project; indeed, the role of the unconscious is given over to what Sartre terms the "pre-reflective consciousness." Thus, as we have seen, Gustave Flaubert would not allow his hatred of his family to surface to the level of reflective awareness. He went through great pains to keep his hatred from becoming an object of his introspection, allowing it always to slide into suffering and passivity or into the discourse of writing about another. Flaubert thereby became neurotic. It is also true that Flaubert entered "neurosis the way one enters a convent" (Family, 3: 60, note 48); that is, the neurosis was a vow to keep the hatred of his family on a prereflective level, no matter what the cost to himself. PREREFLECTIVE A N D REFLECTIVE AWARENESS

Sartre says of the project that it is not first conceived and then realized, but that we are our project. We would be wrong, however, to interpret this claim as a rejection of the importance of reflection. Clearly, we do reflect. Indeed, on its own level, a reflection is a form of action and knowledge. Still, we could remain on the level of reflection, thinking of achieving this or that plan, but not doing anything real to accomplish our goals. Moreover, as everyone who has had a plan for life knows, even if we do work toward a goal, what we accomplish is frequently different from what we imagined we would do. On the other hand, our actual accomplishments are themselves a gradual understanding of our life's project. Reflection and deeds are thus both forms of action and of comprehension, and Sartre thus invites us to reconsider the traditional distinction between thinking and doing. In this way, we will approach the distinction between prereflective and reflective consciousness. Both prereflective and ordinary reflective awareness are forms of action and of knowledge. Briefly, in ordinary reflection, I have already stopped what I was doing, and I now reflect upon it: "Did I act rightly, when I said no to the invitation?" "Am I wasting my time writing?" In prereflective awareness, on the other hand, I am still engaged in what I am doing. Thus, when I am engrossed in writing, I simply write, with little or no explicit reflection upon my activity. Nevertheless, I implicitly know that / am writing. If someone in another room were to interrupt me and ask, "What are you doing,?" I would answer, "I am writing." Sartre terms our implicit awareness of ourselves as we are engrossed in an action "prereflective." He notes that the "of" is a mere grammatical necessity, and in her translation, Hazel Barnes observes that in English we can simply write "self-awareness." (liv). Thus, even as I am most engrossed in writing, I have an implicit self-awareness.

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Obviously, however, the above description gives us a too stable and monolithic view of engaged consciousness. For, even as I am engaged in writing, strange and fleeting reflections about myself appear. I do not stop writing; but I do glimpse myself, somewhat explicitly, as "one-who-writes." Also, now and then, I become aware of having written a neat sentence, even as I proceed to writing the next one. When I used to play tennis, there were times when the sound of the ball hitting the racket made me explicitly aware that I had hit the ball just right - although whether I would make a "point" was another matter.3 Sartre terms these reflections - midway between prereflective and ordinary reflective consciousness - "pure reflection," for they provide an intuition of the self, while we are in engaged in our activities. Also, I think it is consistent with Sartre's terminology to describe them as "reflexive." Thus, as we are engrossed in an action, we now and then, become reflexively aware of our selfdoing-this-action.4 In a sense, Sartre's ontology is the result of his attempting to capture these "pure reflections." Ordinary reflection can now be termed "impure," precisely because it reflects upon a past event. Sartre does not deny the validity of this type of reflection. Nevertheless, in the task of understanding the world and ourselves, he does break from the long tradition affirming its primacy. We have a truer understanding of the world and ourselves in those fleeting moments of pure reflection, and especially in that form of pure reflection which is introspection. INTROSPECTION

In Being and Nothingness, the significance of the bond between prereflective and reflective consciousness appears on two main levels, one in relation to the world and one in relation to ourselves. Thus, in Part Two, Chapter 3, "Transcendence," the relation of prereflective consciousness to the world is indicated by the title of the first section, "Knowledge As A Type Of Relation Between The For-Itself And The In-Itself." Our very existence within the world is itself a kind of knowledge of the world; that is, we know the world because we are bonded to it. Nevertheless, I prefer to skip this deep 3

4

For a fuller discussion of this important distinction in Being and Nothingness, see Part Two, Chapter 2, section 3, "Original Temporality and Psychic Temporality: Reflection "The apodictic nature of [pure] reflection allows no doubt in so far as it apprehends the past exactly as it is for the consciousness reflected-on which has to be it" (BN: 157). That is, as I glimpse myself as-one-who-has-just-written-these-words - even as I proceed to write other words - I cannot be mistaken. Later, when I have stopped writing, I may be in doubt as to the meaning of my activity: "Should I have been writing at that moment?" Also, see my commentary on this very difficult section. For a discussion in the difficulty of translating the original French terms relating to reflection, see Hazel Barnes comments Part Two, Chapter 2, section 3, page 151, note 8.

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"world-making" and to precede with our understanding of ourselves. The issue then becomes that of introspection, and, here, all the previous distinctions about prereflection and reflection apply. Let us briefly follow Sartre's discussion. Ordinary introspection is allied to ordinary [impure] reflection: I stop what I am doing and I now take myself as an explicit object of my reflections. After all, I could be spending most of my life working in the stock market rather than writing books about philosophy. When, however, I reflect upon myself in this way, my life appears before me as something past - I was that person who wrote those books. Nevertheless, even this ordinary introspection can lead me to "pure" introspection. I am sitting in my chair, not doing anything other than thinking about myself, when I start questioning the value of my life up till now. This may become disturbing; I may begin to experience anguish. Thus, I may, in bad faith, hinder these reflections from continuing. In this case, I use my freedom to flee my freedom. This choice of flight from self knowledge, however, is not only a personal danger. The implication here and throughout Sartre's works is that the social structure encourages such flight: "But as we pointed out at the beginning of this work, most of the time we flee anguish in bad faith" (556). We thus possess the intellectual tools to become aware of our project, although we frequently do not use them. Then too, our daily activities tend to sustain our project. We make choices, but these are usually within the scope of our basic plans for our life. In this sense, our project, while not blind, is not usually an issue for daily deliberation: "When I deliberate," Sartre writes, "the chips are down" (451). Nevertheless, the relationship between one's daily actions and one's project differs in each case. Further, Sartre's own understanding of the project deepens as he reflects upon the lives of Genet and Flaubert. Specifically, the project becomes more complete and complex; he thus describes Flaubert's life as "spiral existence" in which each level repeats all the previous levels but with new meanings. Thus, the "family wound" - the judgement that he was an idiot - would always be retained throughout Gustave's life, an awareness that he would not allow to surface to full reflective consciousness. Was Flaubert in bad faith? For Sartre, we must answer, "Yes"; but how shall we judge this unwillingness to see oneself the "idiot" of one's own family? BAD FAITH

Bad faith is an attempt to avoid freedom. In its most general form, it is a prereflective resolution aimed at relieving us of the responsibility of reexamining our life. One of Sartre's examples is a waiter, who attempts to relate his entire existence to his actions as a waiter. In our contemporary American society, I do not think that a waiter is a very good example, and I will soon consider some of Sartre's other examples.

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Much earlier than Sartre's own examples, however, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, when writing about the "underground man," described the condition of bad faith perhaps better than Sartre himself. The "underground man" says of himself: "Oh if I had done nothing simply from laziness! ... It would mean that I was positively defined, it would mean that there was something to say about me. 'Sluggard' - why it is a calling and vocation; it is a career." And he continues: "I knew a gentleman who prided himself on being a connoisseur of Lafitte. He considered this as his positive virtue, and never doubted himself. He died, not simply with a tranquil, but with a triumphant conscience, and he was quite right, too."5 Sartre's other examples of "patterns of bad faith" are flirting and homosexual behavior - this latter is the most frequently misunderstood, and I will limit my discussion here to it, while returning to the description of flirting in the next chapter. Sartre's point is simply that in the real world - at least during his time - a homosexual cannot avoid the judgement of "good people" that he is guilty of perversity. This judgement exists, not only in this or that person, but as part of the fabric of our social order - the "practico-inert." An individual denial of perversity leaves the structure whole. It would seem that, until the social structure is altered, Sartre would prefer the homosexual to respond with some kind of confrontation. Perhaps, the homosexual should reply to the so-called just of the world, "Yes, I am perverse; I love and prefer my perversion to your justice." On the other hand, perhaps, such a response would not be the wisest course for this homosexual, and, indeed, Sartre is not here concerned with such individual choices. His main concern is in noting that bad faith can be embedded in the social structure to such an extent that it appears to be the normal way to respond to people. Let us consider the "mechanism" by which we restructure our freedom into a pattern of bad faith. Our freedom and our beliefs are closely connected. In bad faith, we freely forge a specific structure to belief, namely, "true" belief should never be questioned. One must believe firmly in one's belief. In this way, an unquestioned belief becomes the very "ideal" of belief. Those others, who question the established order and the life suited to that order, are now viewed to be in bad faith. Thus, bad faith can "work," precisely because it sees itself as good faith; that is, there arises in bad faith, a bad-faith notion about good faith.

5

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground, contained in Walter Kaufann's Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (World Publishing Company: New York, 1956), p. 66, i.e , section vi. There are perhaps better translations, but I have a fondness for this early anthology, which I frequently used as a text in my introductory philosophy courses. I take Dostoevsky's irony as referring not only to the general human condition of the thoughtful person who reflects upon life, but more specifically to the paradox of modern life, which offers the average middle-class person many benefits previously enjoyed only by the rich, only to exact the fee of a meaningless job for most of life.

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Sartre writes about this bad-faith notion of good faith, "The ideal of good faith (to believe what one believes) is, like that of sincerity (to be what one is), an ideal of being-in-itself" (BN: 69). Sartre refers to being-in-itself in this context, because good faith - which should be open-ended - becomes, rather, a fixed ideal, resembling something existing in the natural order. For example, the racists believes that his belief reflects the nature of things: Certain people are subordinate to others by nature, and exceptions only prove the rule. What is the evidence for this belief? The racist forges that also, and, for Sartre, this so-called evidence is "non-persuasive evidence" (68). That is to say, for the person in bad faith, any evidence is sufficient. Evidence is not something the person in bad faith needs; it is a token for the nonbeliever. Consequently, if this piece of evidence does not work, another will be found just as good. Indeed, every racist and person in bad faith believes in their own privileged knowledge about people. Obviously, however, we cannot and should not attempt to question everything under every situation and in every time. This is not the issue. Our goodfaith task is to forge an honest relation between our actions and our ideals. There will always be ambiguity, but, in its proper context, a certain ambiguity is the condition of human life. For example, we may ask, " What is the ideal of justice?" This ideal is difficult to spell out, and thus even the person who has acted justly may question whether his act truly reflects the ideal of justice. Such questioning is a mark of true good faith; it is consequent upon a just act, such as paying back within a week the ten dollars I borrowed from a friend when I must also thereby refuse to loan the money to another friend who badly needs it. Did I do right to honor the promise and refuse the new appeal for help? A difficult question, which, in good faith, I may examine in order to better instruct myself about the nature of justice, and thus about my future actions. But both my action and my reflection have no relation to bad faith, for I committed myself to my best understanding of justice at the time. As a belief about the nature of belief, bad faith is first and foremost a way of relating myself to myself. On the other hand, in the concrete, our relations to ourselves are mediated by our relations to others. This is particularly true of children, and we have noted that Sartre does not examine this relation in Being and Nothingness. Nevertheless, to repeat, we are here introduced to the foundation for all of Sartre's views about our relation to others, namely, the "look." T H E LOOK

We are born into the world twice, once from the womb of our mothers and then again from our relation to others. This second birth of our humanity is what Sartre terms the "look." What is the look? It is nothing less then the fundamental relation of one body with another. The eyes and its look are just a symbol of this original bodily contact with others, usually the parents: "the Other's look is the disappearance of the Other's eyes as objects which manifest

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the look. ... In the phenomenon of the look, the Other is on principle that which can not be an object" (268). Whether it occurs through sight or touch, all of our humanity is at stake in the look. A human raised in the wild, without any human contact, is not human; and a slave, indoctrinated from birth in a belief in his or her own subhumanity, becomes subhuman. We might be inclined to qualify, and to claim that the issue concerns merely the ability to express one's humanity. Such a qualification, however, would imply that we have a human nature and that our freedom is merely something added to this nature. Rather, the look affirms that our adventure with humanity concerns our wonderful and deadly ability to reach deep within the consciousness of another, moving it toward full humanity or stunting it from within: "Alienated spontaneity, directed freedom - this is slave-will" (Family 1: 305). As an introduction - and only as an introduction - Sartre invites us to reflect upon how we become aware of our self, when caught spying on another: Here I am bent over the keyhole; suddenly I hear a footstep. I shudder as a wave of shame sweeps over me. Somebody has seen me. I straighten up. My eyes run over the deserted corridor. It was a false alarm. (277) The corridor was empty, but somebody might have seen me. Previously, I was only prereflectively aware of myself spying; now I am explicitly aware of my embarrassing bodily position. Further, it is interesting to observe that, in this example, hearing and not sight are important - 1 hear a footstep. Suppose, when I hear a footstep, I turn and see a blind person approaching. Am I saved from embarrassment? Yes and no. Yes, I realize that I have not actually been seen, but then again I now also realize my fundamental visibility to others: I can be seen. Also, this blind person might bump into me as I am spying. What shall I say? Whatever I say, I am at that moment not equal to him - that is to say, I become for him a mere object in the world. My freedom is frozen: I am one who spies just as Genet is one who steals. I may choose to explain myself, but even an explanation puts me in an inferior position. Thus vulnerability is also an essential aspect of our primary contact with another. Nevertheless, it is true, that the example of spying does not, of itself, reveal the true nature of the look. Sartre frequently chooses to lead us slowly to his philosophical notions through examples, which are then refined and qualified. Although visibility and vulnerability are the two main aspects of the look, we are frequently able to respond by looking back at the person who looks at us: I might say to one who catches me spying: "And what are you doing here?" But this response implies a self already confirmed in its worth. We have already observed - but it bears repetition - that an infant is most visible and vulnerable of all. An adult faces an infant not as one human facing another, but as a god. The parent is in no way an object for the infant: And what is true of the infant is true of all those who are socially judged to be inferior by nature. Looking at his foster parents, what does Genet see? Two

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people with eyes such as his own so that he can return stare for stare? This is not possible for this young orphan. Those who have caught him are beyond his own reality, beyond his being, beyond the world itself - those eyes are the transcendent stare of a god: "Thus the appearance of the Other's look is not an appearance in the world - neither in 'mine' nor in the 'Other'" (270). Although the look concerns any bodily contact, our reflections on Genet and Flaubert have revealed that actual sight is an important way of interacting with another. Indeed, Sartre seems to favor his original symbol, and thus, retaining Sartre's own emphasis and to take the liberty of repeating: Pinned by a look, a butterfly fixed to a cork, he is naked, everyone can see him and spit on him. The gaze of the adults is a constituent power which has transformed him into a constituted nature. (Genet: 49) Again: If Genet wants to discover the secret being of his consciousness, he must find out in whose eyes this consciousness is secretly an object. (Genet: 240) And, with Flaubert: It was the father's look, sublimated, generalized, that Flaubert would later try to appropriate under the name of a 'clinical eye.' (Family 1: 445) Again, From morning to night, entering at whim, he stares at his son, takes his pulse, casts that 'surgical gaze' upon him that detects all lies. ... But the practitioner's gaze shakes him to the core of his deep commitments, the vow he has made to remain forever afflicted. (Family 4: 119) In both Sartre's studies of Genet and Gustave Flaubert, it is evident that the more fortunate of us are responsible for the gift of humanity to children and the less fortunate of the world. Accidents of birth, such as blindness, will happen; but these could never characterize our world, filled as it is with mass poverty and oppression. This insistence on the dependence of children and the marginalized on the look of others separates Sartre's view of interpersonal relations, not only from Heidegger, but, to my knowledge, from all other philosophers. Sartre thus claims that the look is a contingent event: The contact may never occur - as with a child abandoned in the wild - and even if it occurs, it may not be directed to inducing in the other a true human quality. Sartre writes: "Thus this relation which I call 'being-seen-by-another' ... represents an irreducible fact which can not be deduced either from the essence of the Other-as-object, or from my being-as-a-subject" (BN: 257).6 That is, in the 6

Also, "If the other's existence is a necessity, it is a "contingent-necessity", that is, it is of the same type of factual necessity which is imposed on the cogito" (BN 250). Unlike Hegel, for

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abstract, an infant has no specific or general orientation to other people, even though, in the concrete, the infant needs this contact in order to be human. This claim requires, I believe, some clarification. Both Hegel and Heidegger had claimed that we have an essential relation to others. Indeed, this is Aristotle's own perspective in calling attention to the social character of our humanity.7 The general implication is that we are born with a primary orientation to others and that the actual contact merely awakens this dormant relation. The problem with this view is that it reduces actual experience to a secondary status - what we actually do to another is not crucial, because the other has a primary orientation to the fully human already within its budding consciousness. For Sartre, our power over others is such that those of us in a position of relative power can mold the inner consciousnesses of those who are vulnerable in relation to us. I believe that the ontology of the look is one of Sartre's most important philosophical insights to which he returns throughout his life. One does, however, encounter a series of conversations, which, when written, give the opinion to readers that Sartre was changing his mind about the importance of the look. Sartre frequently tried to "think against himself" in interviews, particularly if the questioner was opposed to his views. He would, thus, tend to go along with the objections, seeing where they would lead. But, when Sartre returned to writing his major works, such as his studies of Genet and Flaubert, he took up the theme of the look once again, deepening and broadening it. It is as if Sartre said to himself, "All right, I let you try to convince me that I was wrong about the look of Being and Nothingness and I tried myself to understand if I was wrong; but, no, I was right." I agree. Neverthless, I also agree that the apparent bond between the look and Sartre's notions of both conflict and our general concrete relations with others (which follows) tends to obscure the importance of the look. These, however, are not logically connected: The look is the wider notion. Thus, the look can lead to conflict and to the types of concrete relations described in Being and Nothingness, but it does not have to do so, and, at times, it does not. Our practical social milieu makes it easy for us to slip into these bad-faith ideal relations - although, as we will see, conflict can, in fact, be a good-faith relation to others. It is appropriate that we now turn to consider both Sartre's notion of conflict and his descriptions of our concrete relations with others.

7

whom human existence is a natural moment in the Absolute Spirit's evolution, our existence is a contingent event - a happening But granting this occurrence, our existence, like the cogito, gives rise to necessary relations both to the world and to others Aristotle also claims that a person living alone is either a god or a brute, and, in this respect he is close to Sartre. But there is always that Aristotelian essence that makes one to be a slave by nature or human by nature

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THE W E A N D THE US

The notion of conflict arises within the context of his denial of a "we-relation" and his affirmation of an "us-relation." In reflecting upon Sartre's notion of the group-in-fusion in the Critique, I have already briefly considered the distinction between the grammatically subjective "we" and the objective "us." We have, however, reached the place where a more formal discussion is appropriate. Hegel and especially Heidegger had affirmed that we are each essentially bonded to each other - a point that Sartre accepts and an insight that he praises. But they also held that we had this bond from birth, as part of our very existence. Sartre is mainly concerned with Heidegger's view, because he accepts it as both more concrete and less optimistic than Hegel's, for whom wars and other disasters do not essentially deviate from the historical progress leading to the World Spirit. Sartre thus formulates his rejection of the "we relation" in his discussion of Heidegger, to which I now turn. The specific context is what Heidegger termed the "mitsein," that is, "being-with." For Heidegger, our primary orientation to the world is to be its "care-taker;" it is through us that concern for the welfare of trees and the earth itself arises in the world. Nevertheless, Heidegger admits that, at this time in our history, we have essentially turned from our true caring path. At present, our fundamental relation to the world is one of a "technological" or "calculating" spirit of which our actual technology is a mere expression. We are thus lost. Nevertheless, the path back to a proper relation to reality is deep within us, and it can be awakened by keeping ourselves poetically open to reality, that is, Being. Sartre finds all of this hard to swallow, and so do I.8 Indeed, he regards it as a form of bad faith, and again I join him. From what possible source could human relations acquire a nurturing bond to others and to the world? If one puts forward God as the source of this nurturing bond, then we must ask, "why doesn't Heidegger simply invoke God." No doubt, the term "God" is too Western a term to signify the Divinity. All of this may be true; but it could be dealt with in good faith - as Martin Buber, in fact, handled the issue - with all the cards face up on the table, affirming an I-Thou relation, where the "Thou" incorporates insight from both Western and Eastern notions of the Deity. Sartre puts all his cards face up on the table - all good and all evil arise only from our own actions. Granting the above to be true, why does Sartre seemingly go to the other extreme, affirming that our relations to others are built upon "conflict?" First, 8

In a symposium "On Heidegger and Sartre" in 2002 at the American Philosophical Association with Joseph P. Fell and Joan Stambaugh, I was surprised to discover that Fell agreed with my critique of Heidegger and had come over to a very Sartrean perspective, although sketching his own unique emphasis on matter. I do not recall Stambaugh's remarks, but, of course, her translations and introductions to many of Heidegger's works are justifiably well-known

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let us examine Sartre's own discussion of Heidegger. In the above reflections, I took some liberties based on the later works of Heidegger, where Sartre is basically reflecting upon Heidegger's Being and Time. Sartre writes: "The empirical image which may best symbolize Heidegger's intuition is not that of a conflict but rather a crew" (BN: 246). What is wrong with the image of a crew as a symbol for our relations with our fellow humans? Simply this, we work together as a crew only when we agree to do so; and, more importantly, a crew can function as such only if the boat is itself made to work in this way - with proper seats and slots for the oars as well as for the rowers. But cannot a similar objection be brought against Sartre's notion of conflict? If we are essentially related to each other in conflict, then wars are the normal course of history. On the other hand, it is clear that this is not Sartre's view of history. Over and over he reminds us that oppression is a human fact; it is something we do to each other and which we do not have to do: "Oppression does not fall from the sky ... oppression is a human fact" (Notebooks: 347). I think that Sartre's notion of conflict brings us back to the look, insofar as we are always vulnerable before the other for our very humanity. Still, I have no hesitation in admitting that Sartre should not have used the term in this context. In fact, unlike so many other crucial terms in Being and Nothingness, which continually reappear, such as the look itself, he never really returns to it in the same way. From the perspective of his later writing, conflict is always something specific, for example, the normal relation between the colonized and the colonizer, even where there is no violence. Thus, apart from this Heidegerian context, Sartre uses the more neutral term "existence" to point to the source of interpersonal relations. In referring to Genet's ability to rework his foster parent's judgement of him as a thief into his own project of being a "saintly" thief, Sartre writes: "We know what this creative consciousness is: it is existence" (Genet: 554). On the other hand, although I personally do not like the term "conflict" in this general usage, I think that a case can be made for it. Conflict - not violence - is frequently healthy, at least, in the relation of a child to an adult and of an oppressed person to his or her oppressor. Indeed, in general, conflict does not have to imply violence, only opposition. In the second volume of the Critique, Sartre notes that subgroups within a group have to work out their differences in a form of healthy conflict. He hints that socialism might have been saved if this healthy conflict had occurred. Although Sartre rejects the ontological we-relation, he affirms that we do have an objective union in the world, which he terms the "us-relation." Sartre gives a simple example. He writes, "I am walking in the street behind this man and see only his back. ... Yet once the Third looks at me, looks at the road, looks at the Other, I am bound to the Other by the solidarity of the 'Us': we are walking one behind the other on la rue Blumet on a July morning" (419). Thus, even if I am not now aware of it, I can be united to others through the mediation of "third parties." For example, for the most part, an African American

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man is viewed as part of the African American community, regardless of where he lives. In this case, the "white" community is the "third," a third that mediates his solidarity with other African Americans wherever they live. The same is true of women as seen by men or homosexuals as seen by heterosexuals. Without such mediations, the unions would not exist; indeed, outside a particular social structure, such labels would not exit. Sartre thus affirms the ontological existence of the "us" and he denies the ontological existence of the "we." The we-relation exists, but only as a personal psychological event. A marriage ceremony may attempt to make the union into a "we-relation"; but marriage works as a union only through daily efforts, and we are brought back to Sartre's distinction between love as an ideal and love as an enterprise, to be examined in some detail as follows. But a final and important qualification is needed before we leave this distinction between the "we" and the "us." As I have already noted in the beginning of the discussion, Sartre, in the Critique, will grant a limited use of the we-relation in the group-in-fusion. When a group becomes a "we," this unity is visible to the world as the power of the group. This power is not a mere psychological experience; rather, it is the lived comprehension that each person mediates the freedom of every other person in order to accomplish a goal beyond the power of any single person. The implied message, however, is that the goal being sought is one of advancing freedom for all oppressed peoples. The group-in-fusion is an historical aspect of our concrete relations with others, whereas, in Being and Nothingness, we are concerned with our more immediate concrete relations, such as love and hate. CONCRETE RELATIONS WITH OTHERS I have always found this chapter, "Concrete Relations with Others," an especially difficult chapter in Being and Nothingness. It should be the simplest; for Sartre is a master of illustrating his thought with concrete examples. Strangely, the chapter seems to me to be very abstract. Sartre does give examples, but they are usually from literature or they are references to the ways we speak. I have no objection to any of this; nevertheless, I would have also expected more personal examples, or, at least, more from everyday life. I sense - perhaps, wrongly - a certain uneasiness, as if Sartre were forcing himself to follow Being and Time, in which Heidegger had attempted to describe some of our "everyday" relations with the world, which, at this time in our history are, for the most part, negative. While Heidegger seems concerned with our "epoch," Sartre is far more concrete and specific, noting oppressions, such as slavery, that would not interest Heidegger. In brief then, we have to agree that, for the most part, Sartre is concerned here with our bad-faith relations with others. Are there no good-faith relations? Indeed, there are, but, as Sartre constantly reminds us, for the most part, we live in a world that encourages us to flee our freedom. Thus, if a bad-faith relation of love were not itself a

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structure existing in the world, neither the feminist nor the civil rights movements would be necessary. Also, one should, perhaps, note that Sartre seldom returns to these divisions - seldom, yes - but yet, he indeed returns to them in the Family Idiot, when he contrasts a bad-faith ideal of love with a good-faith notion of love as a complex of concrete actions toward the beloved: "it will have to be recognized that the love which is lived cannot be named without being reinvented" (Family i: 28). In truth, the tension between living love as an ideal and as ensemble of acts runs throughout the Family Idiot: "Filial love can be sincere, that is, felt. Filial piety, by contrast, is a "show" (Family 2: 23). At this point, however, I should turn to Sartre's descriptions, which, with all my qualifications, you may agree are more true than false. Sartre distinguishes between two general types of attitudes that we can have toward other people: love, language, and masochism, on the one hand, indifference, desire, hate, and sadism on the other. We will see that all these attitudes "fail" insofar as they are ideals. Nevertheless, Sartre makes the important distinction between failure and the love of failure. Failure is simply the impossibility of uniting yourself with your goal. Of itself, it is normal and healthy; for it keeps you moving toward your goal. But, it is possible to turn this failure into an object, and to love it as such. The love of failure is vice. Let us now consider some of the details of Sartre's discussion, beginning with love, which, to a great extent, gives the key to the entire chapter. Sartre is concerned here with love as an ideal, not with love as an enterprise. He writes: This unrealizable ideal which haunts my projects in the presence of the Other is not to be identified with love in so far as love is an enterprise; i.e., an organic ensemble of projects toward my own possibilities. But it is the ideal of love, its motivation and its end, its unique value. (366) If one lives within this ideal, it is difficult to remain true to the enterprise of love - 1 am inclined to believe that, having achieved the ideal, little more is required of me by the beloved. Of course, there are ideals that flow naturally from our actions. Indeed, insofar as every action is a transcendence of a given, an ideal is implied in the action itself. But this is not Sartre's concern at this time. He is, to repeat, a contextual writer and he expects you to keep this in mind - he considers it the natural function of a good reader. Thus, we must turn our attention to the specificity of the bad-faith ideal of love, which is that it aims to make our existence necessary. For the beloved, /, the lover, am the one who must exist. Does the beloved also have this same project toward me? No doubt, and thus, as ideals, love must be a form of conflict: The lover's ideal of love must clash with the beloved's ideal of love. Ownership contracts, more or less formal, will not stabilize these ideals. Proust's hero, Sartre observes, installs his mistress in his house and he can possess her when he wishes, and yet he is "continually gnawed by anxiety" (BN: 366). It is not ownership that

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is desired in the ideal of love; rather, something deeper, namely, a freedom fixed forever on one's own freedom and on one's body in all its details: "How good am I to have eyes, hair, eyebrows and to lavish them away tirelessly in an overflow of generosity. ... This is the basis for the joy of love when there is joy: we feel that our existence is justified" (371). The bad-faith ideal of love is, to repeat, both a specific concrete relation to another embodied in this and that person, and an implicit aspect of our social codes that attempt to direct our behavior. Thus, we must make an effort to escape the trap and to live love as an enterprise, an enterprise in which we create both the union and the ideal as that which envelops and overflows our daily actions. Language, the second attitude in this first group, is a project of seducing another to love you. Clearly, Sartre was aware that language has other functions; he was, after all, a writer, and in a different context, he distinguishes expository writing from both literature and poetry. The context here, however, is one of coping with my contingent existence in the world, by inducing the other to regard me as the necessary and needed pole of the relation. In this context, language is my primary means of becoming an object of fascination. Here, my implicit ideal is to capture the other's freedom by having it focus mainly on me. My beloved, will no doubt have a corresponding project toward me; and to the extent that both parties commit themselves to becoming objects of fascination for the other, this project must fail in pursuit of its bad-faith ideal Although the ideals of love and language "fail," at least they take into consideration another's freedom. In masochism, however, I recognize the other's freedom, but I refuse to deal with it directly. Rather, I surrender myself to another as a guilty object, deserving of punishment. In masochism, we cannot distinguish a bad-faith ideal from a good-faith ensemble of action - masochism is all bad faith, from whatever aspect it is viewed: "Masochism therefore is on principle a failure. This should not surprise us if we realize that masochism is a "vice" and that vice is, on principle, the love of failure" (379). The second group includes indifference, desire, hate, and sadism. On indifference, Sartre writes, "I brush against 'people' as I brush against a wall; I avoid them as I avoid obstacles" (380). I see myself as unique, and this wonderful quality is my inner life. My inner life, however, is hidden from others, and thus /consider myself hidden from others. It is interesting that Sartre very quickly refers to this as bad faith: "This state of blindness can be maintained for a long time, as long as my fundamental bad faith desires" (381). It may be surprising that Sartre relates desire to indifference rather than to love. If I come to admit that the one I brush against in my indifference is not like a wall but a person, I may still attempt to deal with this person as a thing. Sexual desire, which focuses on sexual organs is only a form of desire itself, which attempts to fix the other's freedom as an object. One can relate all desire to sex, if we consider sex an aspect of the whole body. In desire, the other's flesh has a priority, because I use the other's flesh to make my

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own flesh swoon before me, captivating my own freedom. In normal healthy behavior, our flesh is always an aspect of our free projects - for I must use my fleshy body in all my projects. But, in desire, the body is not in the service of a project in the world; rather it becomes its own project and its own outline of a solution to the problem of being. Nevertheless, desire must also fail, because there will always be moments when we cannot avoid paying attention to our desire itself, and hence we will encounter both our freedom and that of the other. True, we can again choose not to heed these invitations to reflection, but they exist and give rise to their own anguish. Then too, if they are heeded, they may not lead to love but to sadism. In relation to sadism, desire now appears as a relatively healthy, and even as a "good-faith" attitude toward others, because there is a limited reciprocity - flesh using flesh. In sadism this does not exit. The sadist uses force to make the other's body into an object; this force, however, uses instruments of violence upon a body. Nevertheless, the sadist cannot avoid the implicit realization that all of this is a free project, one way among many of relating ourselves to another. Moreover, the sadist cannot avoid the "looks" of his victims, which Sartre notes has been described in the final pages of Faulkner's Light in August, and Sartre there gives one of his very few long quotes (406). There is, for Sartre, a connection between masochism and sadism, even though they initially appear in different attitudes: As attitudes they are both a love of failure, and thus on principle always a vice. Hate, caries this vice to the final extreme; hate arises from a global realization that even pain cannot reduce the other to an object. Hate is the human being's final attempt to remove its dependence on others. In hate, the project of freedom outlines its solution of the problem of being in the death of the other. But, again, the world will always be a world in which others existed, and thus even hate must fail.9 9

From an abstract and logical perspective, we would seem to be thrown from one attitude to another, and, in a footnote that some have exploited beyond its context, Sartre refers to the possibility of an ethics of "deliverance and salvation" (BN: 412, note 14). What I find more illuminating, however, is the distinction that Sartre makes within the discussion between failure and the love of failure. Moreover, we now know that Sartre was working on a ethics soon after writing Being and Nothingness - The Notebooks for an Ethics. This posthumously published work does not sketch an ethics of deliverance and salvation, even though it elaborates on the distinction between the bad-faith ideal of love and love as an enterprise. Indeed, this distinction between our bad faith ideals that are part of our social structures and which are therefore easy for us to interiorize and our good-faith ones that are always a series of enterprises requiring daily effort, is, I believe, the proper way to deflate the notion of radical conversion in this note. On the other hand, one might suggest that "radical conversion" refers to our achieving the integral humanity mentioned in the Sartre's Rome and Cornell lectures. But these lectures are more than twenty-five years in the future, whereas we know Sartre was working on The Notebooks. More importantly, the key to understanding integral humanity is to view it as our achieving the historical level in which all the peoples of the Earth have the basic needs to live a fully human life; that is, we have eliminated the scarcity mentioned in the Critique

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A BRIEF CONCLUSION

Sartre begins to conclude this work with a chapter, "Being and Doing: Freedom," in which he makes a case that a slave is as free as the master. His point is that all freedom is situational and that one cannot choose the situation in which one is born. The text is sufficiently important to quote at some length, and I think that it can serve as a suitable conclusion to this first part. Sartre writes: When we declare that the slave in chains is as free as his master, we do not mean to speak of a freedom that would remain undetermined. The slave in chains is free to break them; this means that the very meaning of his chains will appear to him in the light of the end which he will have chosen: to remain a slave or to risk the worst in order to get rid of his slavery. Of course, the slave will not be able to obtain the wealth and the standard of living of his master; but these are not the objects of his projects; he can only dream of the possession of these treasures. The slave's facticity is such that the world appears to him with another countenance and that he has to posit and to resolve different problems; in particular it is necessary fundamentally to choose himself on the ground of slavery and thereby to give a meaning to this obscure constraint. (550) Sartre continues by noting that a comparison between the slave and the master could only be made by a third person, and then we would have to take into consideration the project of this third person. If a slave revolts, a third might say that he has violated property rights and another third might applaud the slave's liberation. The important point that I wish to make is that, with all his later qualifications, Sartre remains true to the insight that freedom is situational. As individuals, we are not always responsible for the situations in which we find ourselves, only how we respond to them. I thus claim that all of Sartre's later reflections are based on the phenomenological ontology of Being and Nothingness. In no area is this more evident that in what Sartre terms the "look." For the ontology of the look is the basis for Sartre's insistence that we have forged a segment of subhumanity within our own humanity. Nevertheless, one would hope that thirty years of philosophical reflection would lead to new and fruitful insights. Such indeed is the case. Neither the philosophy elaborated in Saint Genet nor in the Critique of of Dialectical Reason. When we have achieved this basic level of integral humanity, we may then discover new "needs." This new level of need is touched upon by the rich and the middle-classes, who, for example, "need" culture. But, at this time in history, culture is a "salvation" for some (for me writing and you reading) earned by the blood and sweat of others. And, as such, it is itself an ambiguous need that points to something different that we may not be able to envision at this time in our history Finally, this enticting note may be said to point to Sartre's deathbed conversations with Benny Levy about fraternity. But Sartre would never condone a notion of fraternity that was not produced and sustained by a history of human practices that first eliminated oppression - regardless of the direction Levy was attempting to push Sartre. For a discussion of both the Rome and Cornell lectures and Benny Levy, see Catalano, Good Faith, 42-44, 61-65; McBride, 178-182, 202-208.

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Dialectical Reason nor in The Family Idiot can be reduced to or educed from that of Being and Nothingness. As we have seen, each has novel insights, such as the bond and dependency of a child to a family. On the other hand, a whole philosophy does indeed emerge from Sartre's thought. All of Sartre's thought from Being and Nothingness to The Family Idiot can be summarized in the simple claim that the world is the way it is because we are the way we are. Trees and stars truly exist in the world, but only because we exist fracturing matter into things by our organic differentiating body. Humanity and subhumanity truly exist in the world, but only because we have individually and collectively forged a world in which the sweat of the many benefits the few. The message of Being and Nothingness - indeed of all of Sartre's philosophy - is that it is not a Devil who walks among us doing evil; it is Ourselves laden with misused freedom.

PART TWO

THE WORKS THEMSELVES

5 Being and Nothingness

This second part concerns a more formal and somewhat more chronological reflection on the four works examined previously, and thus we begin here to redo the last chapter of the first part, namely, a study of Being and Nothingness. This work can be effectively viewed as a reply to Martin Heidegger's own first book Being and Time; but if one is not familiar with Heidegger, this is hardly a useful observation. Perhaps, then, it is best to simply note that the book was published in French by Gallimard in 1943, and that it was successfully translated by Hazel Barnes in 1956.1 Sartre's association with Gallimard began with the publication of his earlier novel La Nausee - Nausea - in 1938, and for the most part, Gallimard remained Sartre's publisher throughout Sartre's life, putting into print both his literary and his philosophical works. The major exceptions are three of the four monographs that preceded Being and Nothingness. The first, published in 1936, concerned the imagination; the second, published in a journal dated 1936-1937, concerned the ego, and the third, published in 1939, made the point that the emotions should be considered a free choice. The fourth, which Gallimard did publish in 1940, returned to the imagination, indicating Sartre's continual fascination with the subject. Sartre would remain faithful to his early notion that an image is not a mere inner picture of a thing, but the thing itself as absent.2 1

2

Jean-Paul Sartre, L Etre et le Neat' Essai d'ontologie phenomenologique (Paris: Gaillmard, 1943); translated with an introduction by Hazel Barnes Being and Nothingness: an Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956). U Imagination (Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan, 1936; P. U R, 1949), translated by Forrest Williams as Imagination: A Psychological Critique (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962) and more recently by Jonathan Webber as The Imaginary (Routledge, 2004). La Transcendence de V ego (Paris Recherches Philosophiques, vol. VI, 1936-1937), and then in a volume edited by Sylview Le Bon (Vrin, 1965), translated by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick as The Transcendence of the Ego (New York: Noonday Press, 1957). Esquisse d' une theorie des emotions (Paris, Herman, 1939), translated by Bernard Frechtman as The Emotions Outline of a Theory (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948) and by Philip Manet as Sketch for a Theory of Emotions (London: Methuen, 91

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The full title of Being and Nothingness includes a ponderous but instructive subtitle, "An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology," which indicates Sartre's indebtedness both to Edmund Husserl and to Martin Heidegger. I will briefly sketch this background, and then return to outline the unfolding logic of Being and Nothingness, leading to its central motif: "My ultimate and initial project - for these are but one - is, we will see, always the outline of a solution of the problem of being. But this solution is not first conceived and then realized; we are this solution (463)." B A C K G R O U N D : H U S S E R L A N D HEIDEGGER

One of Edmund HusserPs (1859-1938) central insights is "intentionality." Intentionality is the simple but profound claim that we are first and foremost aware of the object of our consciousness rather than our conscious state itself. For example, when we perceive a red apple in a tree or in a fruit bowl, we are aware of the red apple itself, rather than our conscious state about the red apple. In a subsequent reflection, we might wonder whether the apple is indeed as red and as ripe as it appears to us.3 Indeed, later, we might wonder whether the apple is truly there on the tree, or whether we are viewing only a reflection of it, or whether, in fact, we are asleep and dreaming about the apple. In order to clarify this relation of consciousness to its object, Husserl recommends that we avoid deductions from general principles and use rather a descriptive process. Applied properly, the method can indicate the difference between an imagined red apple and a red apple that appears to exist in the world. Thus, if one follows the phenomenological method, existence itself can be revealed as an objective aspect of things. Sartre agrees with Husserl's general notion of intentionality and the use of a descriptive method. Nevertheless, he strongly objects to the view that existence can be an object and a meaning. Although, our study of the Introduction below will give in some detail Sartre's own use of intentionality, its importance may justify anticipating this discussion in a general way. The notion of existence is subtle and difficult to delineate. Let us begin with Husserl's own perspective. Husserl views existence as a general quality of all things in the world. As a quality, existence can indeed be described. Of course, such a phenomenological description will not capture the empirical quality of a particular existing thing. Husserl is thus aware that his phenomenological method will not reveal to us the existence of this apple as distinct

1962). V Imaginaire: Psychologie pheomenogique de V imaginaation (Paris. Gallimard, 1940), translated by Bernard Frechtman as Psychology of the Imagination (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948). 3 For a more detailed discussion, see Catalano Commentary, BN, 1-15

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from every other apple. But, for Husserl, such a description would belong more to art than to philosophy. It would not clarify what it means for something to exist in the world, as distinct from existing in the mind or in the imagination. To give another example, measles is a real disease with properties that can be generally described so that a physician can distinguish someone who has measles from someone who has smallpox, for example. If, from examining this person with measles, a physician discovers a new characteristic, then that new quality must either be added to the general features of measles or dismissed as something peculiar to this person and not related to the disease. That is to say, the distinctness of this sick person disappears in the quest for objective characteristics. Sartre, however, sees another way of looking upon the empirical existence of things. The person who appears to have measles is a person not only with spots but with these spots. True, the spots can be identified as measles and treated as such, but one person may die and another live from the same medical treatment of these spots. Of course, in an epidemic of measles, the universal characteristics will be treated hastily; but this is itself an historical event that calls for a particular application of the universal. Universality is indeed important; but it must come to philosophy through a secondary reflection that is based upon the existential awareness of the empirically existing thing as such. This movement to the concrete is the basis for Sartre's continual use of examples. Also, it accounts for his interest in Freud and for his adding a section "Existential Psychoanalysis" toward the end of Being and Nothingness.* Then too, his dialectical nominalism arises from his focus on concrete existence, with its back and forth movement from the singular universal to the universal singular. And thus, to repeat: For a man is never an individual; it would be more fitting to call him a universal singular. Summed up and for this reason universalized by his epoch, he in turn resumes it by reproducing himself in it as singularity. Universal by the singular universality of human history, singular by the universalizing singularity of his projects, he requires simultaneous examination from both ends. (Family, i: xi)5 If Husserl's notion of intentionality is the context for the term "phenomenological" in the subtitle of the book, the influence of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is indicated by Sartre's term "ontology." Heidegger, however, would not have approved of its use, for he would see the term as applicable only to an older philosophical tradition. For Sartre, however, the term is still useful, for it now indicates that we are equipped to know what is most basic 4

5

See also Jean-Paul Sartre, The Freud Scenario, edited by J-P Pontalis and translated by Quintin Hoare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) See also, "Kierkegaard: The Singular Universal," contained in Between Existentialism and Marxism, translated by John Mathews (New York* Pantheon Books, Random House, 1974), 141-169.

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in things and in people. In a sense, this claim is also central to Heidegger's though, but the difference between the two thinkers is radical.6 To be brief, the basic insight of Being and Time is directed to showing how clock-time, in which only the now is real, is derivative of a more basic temporal structure rooted in what Heidegger terms "Dasein."7 "Dasein," is not merely a German word; it is a strange German word - literally "there being." But what is Dasein? This is a difficult question to answer. But let us be patient. We must understand that Heidegger is unwilling to refer to "man," the "human reality," or the "human being," for he views those terms as referring to an older philosophical tradition, which he wishes to avoid. In particular, Heidegger is attempting to break from the perspective that human beings are merely added to a world already filled with kinds of things. Thus, Aristotle claimed that there is a natural hierarchy of things. This so-called Great Chain of Being, moves from minerals, to plants, to ordinary animals, and then, here on earth, to thinking animals, whose intelligence almost touches those immaterial beings that guide the movement of the planets. These immaterial beings not only guide the planets, they measure, as it were, their movements. They provide the continuity of the motion, the union of before, now, and after, although all of this takes place in "eternal" time. Our clocks take the place of these eternal beings, and yet, even with our clocks, only the "now," is real - this hand pointing to this number.8 For Heidegger, clock-time is based upon the more primary temporality of Dasein, and this is itself a sort of a "temporal spread." That is to say, all of time is, in a sense, present at once - to be more exact, all of a time, a particular past, present, and future is given as an aspect of Dasein. If one wants an image to help thought - although Heidegger does not give us one - one might view

6

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8

Of course, this rethinking of the tradition as a context of one's own philosophy began with Aristotle and it is also true of Kant and Hegel. In this perspective, Husserl resembles the French Descartes more than his own German tradition. The characteristic of Descartes philosophy is that, rather than attempting to rethink the tradition preceding him, he attempts to step out of the tradition and begin as if it did not exist. Sartre is aware of the pitfalls in this attempt - one frequently rediscovers old errors rather than new truths - and, in Being and Nothingness, he also rethinks the tradition, ending usually with Heidegger. The exact meaning of the term "Dasein" is disputed among Heideggerian experts - which I do not consider myself to be. I will say this, however, that although it is clearly the case that Dasein points to what is most formal in all human reality - pointing perhaps more to Kant than a proper rethinking of Aristotle - I still think we have to identify it with human consciousness. True, whenever one begins to speak in this commonsense way, one confronts the charge of lapsing into an old ontology, in which things are merely added to a world devoid of human existence. On the other hand, I think that this is where we have to begin our philosophical reflections; otherwise we fly too fast above commonsense I do not think this is exactly true for Aristotle; for there is a sense in which his reply to Zeno is that continuity over time is real, that is, time is duration. But this duration is still an ambiguous continuity, somewhat like segment of a line that can always be divided further but never reaches a point. Even so, it is different from the temporality of Heidegger

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temporality, not as point in a line that itself represents time, but as a vector in space. Or, perhaps, Dasein is like a world gesture, from which epochs of time arise. I personally think that we have to view Dasein as us, that is, as human beings, otherwise we invite mysticism. If the exact meaning of Dasein is not easy to grasp, its philosophical effect is clear: Heidegger's vision of temporality restructures our relation to reality. The Aristotelian hierarchy collapses. Dasein - there being - is now that through which all things in the world have their very place, with their own proper continuity over time. If this claim is too anthropocentric to represent Heidegger accurately - 1 know it is too anthropocentric for the Heidegger of Time and Being - it brings us very close to Sartre's own view in Being and Nothingness, and, if it be of any interest to the reader, to my own view.9 Sartre thus agrees with Heidegger that temporality is indeed an important new insight - still it is not primary. Temporality is, for Sartre, an aspect of our free interrogation of reality. Further, temporality is indeed an aspect of our concrete human existence, and as such, our existence brings a world to be: The world is human. We can see the very particular presence of consciousness: being is everywhere, opposite me, around me; it weighs down on me ... there is being and nothing more; that rock, that tree, that landscape - being and nothing else. I want to grasp this being and I no longer find anything but myself. (218) The whole of Being and Nothingness is directed to explicating the relation of the world to human existence. This relation can be expressed in the formula that the world exists independently of our notions about it, but not independently of its relation to our sensuous bodily existence. This insight, however, requires an open, dedicated spirit on the part of the reader. ON READING BEING AND

NOTHINGNESS

The clear divisions within Being and Nothingness can give the impression that the work is merely a collection of essays loosely connected into a book. On the contrary, the parts and chapters are joined by a strict, but nontraditional, logic in the following way: Sartre's written methodology becomes one with his own notion of abstraction. Separating a chapter from the book is like separating a nose from a face and a face from a whole living body. Abstraction, for Sartre, means to examine an aspect of a thing as separate from a whole, even though it cannot exist apart from the whole. This notion of abstraction fits more or less within the tradition. What is unique is the way the written methodology strictly follows this notion of abstraction. Thus, while the whole phenomenon - human reality existing in the world - is always present in the discussion, as both its background and guiding thread, a particular aspect will be examined as if it made sense apart from this whole. 9

See Chapter 3, note 13.

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Although Sartre works from the abstract to the concrete whole, an astute reader will notice that Sartre's use of examples continually remind us of the existing whole that is itself in the background of the entire discussion. Moreover, Sartre explicitly informs us of his procedure: to write in good faith is to wish to communicate. And to read in good faith is to read what is written in the way it is written, heeding the author's own logic. Agreement or disagreement belong to another level. It is thus remarkable that many so-called scholarly readers of Sartre will simply refuse to read what he has written, even while they write volumes about his works. Thus, Being and Nothingness has engendered a "scandal" among many of his critics - "Sartre," they will inform us, "does discuss the body until Part three and even there only in the second chapter!" The criticism is totally unjustified. Sartre is very clear about what he is doing. Thus he concludes Part Two, with the comment: Perhaps some may be surprised that we have treated the problem of knowing without raising the question of the body and the senses or even once referring to it. It is not my purpose to misunderstand or to ignore the role of the body. But what is important above all else, in ontology as elsewhere, is to observe strict order in discussion. (218) Before commenting upon these words, we must note that we still have to wait until the second chapter at the beginning of Part Three, before we commence the formal discussion of the body. As if aware of our impatience, Sartre again puts his cards on the table: "it is most important to choose the order of our bits of knowledge(303)." And what is this order? Sartre writes, "If we wish to reflect on the nature of the body, it is necessary to establish an order of reflection which conforms to the order of being (305)." Still, we may rightly ask, what is the order of being that Sartre has in mind? It is simply that, in our normal healthy use of our body and its senses, we "pass through" our organic constitution. When I am absorbed in watching a sunset, I am not aware of my eyes nor the position of my body. Of course, without sight and without a correct positioning of my body, I could not be watching this sunset; but, in my engaged action, I "pass through" my organic constitution in my enjoyment of what I am watching. As part of a rather long discussion of the relation of the order of being to the order of knowing, Sartre writes: "In short, consciousness (of) the body is lateral and retrospective; the body is the neglected, the passed by in silence. And yet the body is what this consciousness is; it is not even anything except body. The rest is nothingness and silence. (330)"10 But then, let us not forget, that "nothingness" and "silence" is what distinguishes a living body from a corpse. 10

Thus, in opposition to Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his The Phenomenology of Perception (translated by Colin Smith, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962) introduces us immediately into the perceptual body, thereby confusing some scholars that he takes the body more seriously than Sartre In truth, the issue is one of methodology I discussed this difference at some length in "The Body and the Book Reading Being and

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Indeed, Sartre's written methodology reflects our everyday experiences, and thus in the Critique, he will write: "Immediate experience reveals being at its most concrete, but it takes it at its most superficial level and remains in the realm of abstractions (Critique i: 95)." For example, when we meet a person for the first time, we indeed encounter the whole concrete person, but our knowledge is very abstract: "Who indeed is this person?" Or, when we first encounter a Rodin statue, we will probably not explicitly separate the shape from the matter. In many forms of contemporary art, there is a conscious aim to have us focus on the matter first, for example, the steel, and through the shimmering steel, the form; but this is a reflective effort born from the history of art itself and aimed at educating our sight. Here, in Being and Nothingness, Sartre reminds us, in Part Four, that the relation of an aspect to the whole must be conceived after the manner of examining a gestalt image in which the alteration of one line may reforge the entire image, although, for Sartre, no method can instruct us about which line is crucial and which is not. u We must now attempt to trace Sartre's thought from his early abstract discussion of nothingness in Part One, until the its more concrete forms in Part Four, "Having, Doing, and Being." My goal - here and throughout this second part - is to unveil the logic that underlies the works being considered, while, hopefully, also deepening the understanding of their contents. As we have mentioned, the logic connecting the four parts may not be evident from the titles themselves; nevertheless, it will be best to begin with a quick overview of these. Introduction Part One: The Problem of Nothingness Part Two: Being-For-Itself Part Three: Being-For-Others Part Four: Having, Doing and Being Conclusion With the exception of the Introduction, each of these parts have several chapters. The last two parts account for about two-thirds of this more than six-hundred-page book, a division that reflects the general movement of the book from the abstract to the concrete, and that also requires dedication on the part of the reader. Our study will consider these parts and chapters in large segments, with the understanding that I consider the last two-thirds much more readable then the first third and thus I will give these in more summary form.

Nothingness'' contained in The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, edited by Jon Stewart (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988,154-171.) See Being and Nothingness, Part Four, Chapter One, section 1,469-470.

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The Works Themselves THE INTRODUCTION, PART O N E , A N D PART TWO

The Introduction In the Introduction, Sartre writes: "All consciousness, as Husserl has shown, is consciousness of something" (li). It is as if Sartre would remind us first of his agreement with Husserl - the first movement of our consciousness is to something other than consciousness itself. But what is the "other" to which consciousness is related? For Husserl, it is a structure of some sort, and this is true even when we are concerned with the existence of things. True, a phenomenological study of existence would reveal that a really existing red apple, for example, is infinitely richer in its formal appearance than an imagined red apple. Still, this richness does not reach the apple as there in the world, intruding itself upon me. It is difficult to capture in language the force of the intrusion of things upon our awareness. We may begin by noting that, in its very birth, our "consciousness is born supported by a being which is not itself" (lxi).12 But what is this "not-itself?" Perhaps, it may clarify the issue to reflect that not everything imaginable is not-me, in the sense of defining me by its negative relation to me. The Aristotelian separated substances, or the Christian angles, or a science-fiction notion of a thinking cloud, would each not-be me; but this negation would be so far removed from my being that it would not define me by its negative relation to me. On the other hand, a red apple is not-me, but this not-being is in relation to the specific structure of who I am, namely, a bodily consciousness with sight. And the same is true of sounds and textures; that is, the world is what the human sensing body is not, and the human sensing body is what the world is not. If we grant this intimate relation of things to our body, we must still recognize that each thing has its own secret, which can be known only through specific acts of investigation. If I want to know how this apple tastes, I must bite into it. Thus, if the "phenomenon" of the apple is the apple as it appears to me, the "being" of the apple is the apple with its own secrets. That is to say, the being of the apple is fransphenomenal; the apple is not reducible to the way it appears to any one of my senses or to any conception of it. The transphenomenal aspect of things is not, as Kant would claim, an unknowable quality in the apple; nor is it, as Husserl would insist, a quality that could be "bracketed" - put aside as it were - and thus not become part of our philosophical reflection. Rather, the transphenomenal aspect of things is simply that things have their own existence, even though this existence arises in the world only in relation to me. In short, an aspect of 12

And a little later: "To say that consciousness is consciousness of something is to say that it must produce itself as a revealed-revelation of a being which is not it and which gives itself as already existing when consciousness is aware of it" (BN: lxii).

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the transphenomenal existence of the apple is its taste, revealed to me only when I bite into it.13 We are thus bonded to the world and the world is bonded to us. Nevertheless, we can and do separate ourselves from this bond through reflective thought.14 And thus, as already noted, Sartre distinguishes a prereflective from a reflective consciousness. In prereflective awareness, we are so engrossed in an activity ~ biting into the apple - that doing and self-doing are one and the same. Further, our prereflective consciousness is an implicit self-consciousness that is the underside of our bond to the world - biting into the apple I get to know myself as a taster of apples - perhaps, after all, wine is a better example. All of this is very abstract, as, indeed, is the Introduction itself. In a sense, the Introduction removes a skeptical doubt about the union of consciousness with the world, introduced by Husserl's notion of existence as a quality that can be examined as a quasi-object. I believe that this doubt is more effectively removed by Sartre's concrete elaboration of the whole of Being and Nothingness, to which I now turn. Part One: The Problem of Nothingness15 Chapter One: The Origin of Nothingness As usual, Sartre provides a concrete example to aid our reflections. I turn on the ignition of my automobile, but it does not start. Why? Let us grant that the 13

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Sartre here uses the example of a table in my room, which I now see only from one aspect. But through this aspect, I am aware of the whole table. Nevertheless, I might thereby speculate whether, if I leave the room, the table would still be there in my room? With a table such as an artifact, the answer is clear: We made the table to be what it is and thus it is united to us by something deeper than my present awareness of it, namely, by our collective crafting of the table. But what of the apple? For Sartre the situation is not identical but similar: Without a relation to us, reality would not be distinguished into the specific beings that make our world to be what it is. But, of course, once so differentiated, the in-itself-as-thing intrudes itself as something that we discover in the world. Given the above explanation of Sartre's use of Husserl's phenomenological method, it is still appropriate to make a brief attempt to be clearer about Husserl himself. It is, of course, possible to describe the taste of a particular kind of apple, one, for example, that is supposed to be tart; but, again, we are on the level of types of things and not of the individually existing apple as such- "This Granny Smith apple, which should be tart, is for me, too sweet." Sartre offers this reflection as a "proof" that we are in contact with existing things and not merely with their formal structures. To the extent that such a proof is possible, I believe that it is to be found in the book as a whole. Indeed, I no longer believe that Sartre's very difficult introduction is as important as it seemed to me thirty-odd years ago. Its aim is to remove a skeptical doubt introduced by Husserl's insistence that concrete existence should be "bracketed" in a philosophical discussion; but, if we put this aspect of Husserl's program aside, intentionality works, and the real task is the radicalization of Heidegger's notion of temporality On the other hand, I did devote considerable effort and space to discussing the Introduction in my Commentary, BN. The first part of Being and Nothingness, "The Problem Of Nothingness," is divided into two chapters, with the following subdivisions: Chapter One, "The Origin of Negation,"

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question is in my mind and in the mind of the mechanic who I may have asked for help. Let us also concede that imagination plays its part: I imagine the way my car started yesterday and I realize that it is not starting today. Let us also say that we have checked that there are no "voids," such as a lack of gas or oil. Moreover, these types of emptiness simply demand to be filled; they do not characterize the "failings" of a mechanism. As a "failing," something is but it is not the way it should be: A worn spark plug or weak wire is "worn" and "weak" only because it is not suppose to be that way. Aristotle called these "privations" to distinguish them from mere negations. A stone lacks sight but it is not deprived of sight. A blind person is deprived of sight, and this lack is real. Thus, the question interrogates the concrete lack in the car - something is not working in the car. The logic connecting the first four sections of the first chapter, "The Origin of Negation," is that our ability to question the world means that neither logical nor psychological descriptions reach the true nature of those negations that allow us to question the world: Why is this apple rotten? Why isn't Peter here? If we can question the world, negations must somehow be in the world; but how is this possible? If we reflect upon the notion of privation and other real absences - such as waiting for someone who has gone to answer the phone in another room to reappear - we recognize a two-fold aspect to these real negations within the world. First, they exist regardless of our thinking about them. This is evident in blindness; but it is also true of the person who left my living room to use the telephone in the study. If I became distracted and forgot about my friend, his absence from my living room is still real, and if he disappeared from my apartment, I would begin to doubt my sanity. The second aspect of these negations, or "nothings" is that, although they are "real," they would not exist without human existence. Without sight, there would be no blindness. We begin to recognize that negations are relational they exist only because we exist. But we cannot be satisfied with this view of negation; for it still inclines us to believe in these concrete negations as "something" - a child is not its parents but a relation to its parents, and yet a child is a child. But nothingness both is and is not. Let us try again. "Nothings," are not voids in the world and every attempt to fix their presence reveals them to be "elsewhere." Their character is difficult to describe, but this elusiveness should not surprise us. Where is the silence of the deaf? The deaf do not complain of silence. Still, because we hear, silence exists for the deaf and this silence is everywhere and nowhere - in all the sounds and experiences of hearing throughout the world, and in the bodies of deaf has five sections - The Question, Negations, The Dialectical Concept of Nothingness, The Phenomenological Concept of Nothingness, and The Origin of Nothingness; Chapter Two, "Bad Faith," has three sections - Bad Faith and Falsehood, Patterns of Bad Faith, and The "Faith" of Bad Faith.

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persons. The privation of hearing affects the rhythm of the deaf person's body in relation to us and to the whole world, as does blindness also - perhaps, you have noticed the bodily movements of Ray Charles as he plays the piano. In a similar way, the ability of every human to question the world is spread over all things. The questions, "what is it, why is it, who and what am I" are everywhere in the world, in trees, in stars, in every and each person, touching their color, sex, and class. Indeed, the very existence of things is one with their ability to be questioned by us. The reality and elusiveness of negation is reflected in some of Sartre's strangest terminology: "Nothingness is not, Nothingness is cmade-to-be,' Nothingness does not nihilate itself; Nothingness 'is nihilated.'" (22) l6 This strain on language has two purposes: first, to direct our attention to understanding negation as real but not a void; second, to aid us to see that real negations enter being because we are the archetype of all negation. Thus the first chapter, "The Origin of Negation," sketches Sartre's preliminary answer to the problem of nothingness, namely, negations are real and we are the origin of all the negations in the world. We are also the origin of our own bad-faith attempt to deny that we can question our own existence. Chapter Two: Bad Faith Perhaps the most read chapter of Being and Nothingness is the second chapter of Part One, "Bad Faith."17 As a chapter, it is part of a single unfolding methodology, but this is usually ignored, and the resulting exegesis is usually a farce. Let us recall then that the first chapter ended with the claim that we are the source of those "nothings" that ultimately distinguish one thing from another thing and that themselves reflect and await our ability to question their nature. The second chapter clarifies this claim by showing that we can question reality only because we can question the meaning of our own existence. All question about the world and others arise from our ability to question ourselves, although, at first, we are not aware of this. This recognition of our free relation to our "self" awakens in us the realization that we are responsible for our life. We can aim to face this responsibility or we can attempt to flee it. Sartre gathers such efforts under the heading "bad faith." As an aid in understanding our free relation to ourselves, Sartre uses the model of a lie. A lie is a statement contrary to what one believes is true. When one person successfully lies to another, the lie is easy to understand, because the consciousness of each person is separate from the other. But how can we successfully lie to ourselves? For Sartre, the Freudian notion of the unconscious makes a lie to ourselves easy to understand on a formal level: Our unconscious "knows" the truth of the matter and successfully lies to the conscious self by putting this "truth" 16 17

See Hazel Barnes footnote 14, page 22, and my Commentary on BN, p. 68. To repeat, this is part of a whole; it follows from Chapter 1 and leads into Part Two

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in symbols. But Sartre rejects the notion of an unconscious, for it implies a directive power within us that we did not put there through our own actions. Further, if our unconscious "knows" the truth of our condition, than it is more intelligent then we are, and our personality is split at birth, prior to all actions. On the other hand, Sartre's own views seem embarrassing, because he affirms the "lucidity" of consciousness in opposition to Freud's notion of the unconscious. How can we be in bad faith, if we are aware of what we are doing? A preliminary observation may be useful before attempting to answer this Sartrean dilemma. Although Sartre rejects the notion of the unconscious, he does accepts Freud's general description of a certain commonsense human experience, namely, that we frequently act for motives that we do not seem to be aware off. Sartre has not abandoned his phenomenological perspective appearance is real on its own level. There is no a priori reason to assert that a person who appears not to know the reasons for an action knows the reasons. But may not this present state of ignorance be itself induced in the person by the person? For Sartre, we gradually manufacture the very evidence to believe in our own lies to our self. But how do we do this? In order to understand how we can believe in our own lies, we must recall the distinction between the prereflective and the reflective consciousness. On a prereflective level, we become so engrossed in what we are doing that explicit self-awareness is merely part of the background of our behavior. But suppose our behavior is itself an effort not to allow the "self" that is the background of our daily activities to become in the foreground? Sartre uses the example of a flirt holding hands. The hand may not be offered to be held, but it is not refused. For this woman her hand is simply there, and she will not see herself as a flirt. No doubt, others flirt, and no doubt another might look upon this holding of hands as a flirtation on her part. But they would be wrong, for she alone knows the truth - her hand happens to be held by the other. She is innocent. This interior innocence, this "immanence" becomes for the person in bad faith the "real" situation. The actual situation in the world - her flirtation - becomes for her a "transcendence," something that is true of others and might be true of her also, if she chose to be a flirt. More generally, in bad faith, distractions from self-knowledge become the explicit goal of one's behavior, and thus bad faith can continue as a way of life. One cannot read Being and Nothingness without realizing that Sartre does not approve of bad faith; bad faith is, after all, a flight from freedom, a flight that we frequently but not always engage in. The point becomes especially clear in Part Four where Sartre comments on Adler's notion of the inferiority complex. For Sartre, the person with an inferiority complex has chosen to be superior to the average person, but he is afraid of failure and thus restrains his efforts. Still, he will not let go of his belief in his superior nature. How to hold onto a belief in one's superiority without doing anything superior? One slowly manufactures "defects" of nature - stuttering, for example - that appear to impede the very attempt to create superior works. Such a person may even

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attempt to cure these defects; but, even if cured, other obstacles to real work will reappear on another level - for "his very will is in bad faith, that is, it flees the recognition of the true ends" (BN: 473). Strictly speaking, bad faith is not a moral category. In abnormal conditions, bad faith can be a salvation. Using Sartre's notion of self-deception, R. D. Laing noted that children, who become aware that they are unwanted at home, may survive by gradually forging a fantasy world in which they are loved.18 More relevant to our own discussion, we have seen that Sartre himself develops the notion of bad faith in The Family Idiot. Gustave never allowed his hatred to become the explicit object of his self-awareness, for he was also proud to be a "Flaubert." We are allowed to sympathize with his bad faith, for his parents considered him an idiot. He thus lived "with bad faith and good conscience" (Family, 4:55). Genet, on the other hand, is driven to self-knowledge; he wants to know himself as the thief he is seen to be. The dialectic is thus different. Here, the primary mode of bad faith arises from the foster parents, as they themselves reflect the need of the just to live in a world of thieves. The "saintliness" of Genet is to allow himself to be the personification of this need, and, in this way, he interiorizes his self as one rejected by society. Genet becomes other than his true self might have been; that is, the social force reconstructing him is far more powerful than his own will: "this Other, who has been installed within him by a decree of society, is first a collective representation" (Genet: 145). We can thus question reality because we can bring into question the degree of our own self awareness. Granting this truth, we must still seek to understand the ontology of this self-questioning. What must our relation to our self be like if we can so interrogate our own existence that we may end in a bad-faith view of ourselves? In brief, Sartre's answer, in Part Two, is to reflect upon the unique way we are a presence to ourselves. Then, in Part Three and, especially, Part Four, he will give us a fuller description of how we use the "nothingness" of consciousness to avoid facing our own freedom. That is, we create a situation such that the "elsewhereness" of consciousness, which should be our healthy pursuit after ideals, becomes the very means to make our ideals something achieved by one grand act. In this sense, Sartre attributes the prevalence of the notion of God to be a projection of our pursuit after our ideals, but now achieved in fullness. Part Two: Being-for-Itself An apple is in the world, but an apple is not present to the world. I alone am in the world as & presence to the world. What is the character of my presence 18

R. D. Laing and D G Cooper, Reason and Violence, with a forward by Jean-Paul Sartre (London: Tavistock, 1964). For a discussion of Laing and Sartre, see Gila J Hayim, The Existential Sociology of Jean-Paul Sartre (Amhersl University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), 98-102.

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in the world? Let us recall that, although I am united to the world of things and other people, our abstractive method first keeps this whole in the background. In the three chapters of Part Two, "The Immediate Structures of the For-Itself," "Temporality," and "Transcendence" Sartre now begins to bring this background more explicitly into focus, insofar as it relates to our general presence to the world. Chapter One: Immediate Structures of the For-Itself Unlike ourselves, an apple does not question other apples or itself. Questioning implies a distinct presence to things and to myself, which, in turn, implies a quasi-distance from things and myself. This distance, however, is not the usual spatial separation that might prevent one apple from being in contact with another. What separates me both from things and myself is a nothingness that is never "there." This "elsewhereness" is clearest in the relation of the self to its selfhood, in which there is neither complete union nor separation. As the underside of the self that I am now, my selfhood is a goal that is both me and not me, a goal which can always "slide" into a new selfhood, as happened in Genet's conversions. Conversions introduce new values and new possibilities into a life. Let us, however, remain closer to the text at hand, and give one of Sartre's examples, a phase of the moon. In the abstract, a "phase" of the moon is simply the moon appearing to us curved in a particular way. In this sense, a phase of the moon is its own fullness. In the concrete, however, this curvature is indeed related to the full moon, because the moon's fullness is real for us: To one wishing to walk in bright moonlight, a moon in a mere phase is a real lack. In a similar way, a human act is just what it is - my writing is the words now being written. The true value of an act, however, arises from its relation to a selfhood and its project. For example, / am writing these words to complete a book. We are thus led to reflect upon the relation of an I, in the sense of an "ego," to a personality. Our ego is the conceptualization of the ways we relate to our self, to the world, and to others - needless to say, this alters as we mature. Our "personality" is the lived way we are present to this conceptualization: For example, at first, Genet's ego is basically only his understanding of his need to become the thief he is seen to be; his personality is his daily presence to himself as one attempting to be a saint. Here, Sartre is more abstract, but still to the point: Thus from its first arising, consciousness by the pure nihilating movement of reflection makes itself personal; for what confers personal existence on a being is not the possession of an Ego - which is only the sign of personality - but it is the fact that the being exists for itself as a presence to itself. (103) Our presence to our self is an aspect of what Heidegger calls our temporality.19 For Sartre, Heidegger is wrong about its nature, which is one of J

9 What we might be able to do is conditioned by what we are now. When Van Gogh decided that he wanted to change his life and become a painter, he had to first move himself toward

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freedom and our ability to change the way we are in the presence of our own self. In a conversion, we alter our presence before our ego, and the value of our temporality changes. When Genet began to write for a living, each day opened with a new temporality in which the time to steal became the time to write. Indeed, for Sartre, this conversion required Genet to learn how to be in the presence of people in a totally different way. True, for Genet, an essential aspect of his original project was retained throughout conversions, namely, his vow to remain on the fringe of normal, acceptable life. But then, each person is unique and each conversion will be different, frequently reflecting the historical temporality of a life. Chapter Two: Temporality In the West, we consider ourselves children of Greece or Rome. Egyptians or Jews might consider themselves more properly part of another past. Consider also the continuing debate between the scientific and the so-called strict biblical view of the origin of life. Let us grant that the scientific picture is true; but then again, is it not possible to imagine a world in which science never existed? Moreover, granting the appearance of science, do we have an "obligation" to continue to live according to a scientific perspective?20 We are thus responsible for the individual and the social past that we keep alive. In this sense, Sartre says, "Temporality is not; but the For-itself temporalizes itself by existing" (136). If we wish to deepen our understanding of the different ways we keep the past alive in the present, we are once again led to distinguish the prereflective and reflective aspects of temporality. In particular, we are led to separate "pure temporality" from "impure psychic temporality." In pure temporality, I am implicitly aware of the time I am allotting a project, while I am engaged in completing it. In impure temporality, I stop my work, and question the time span as an object of study. Our personal self is bonded to both aspects of temporality, but differently. In pure temporality, we may glimpse the temporal span of our fundamental project, even as we are working within this temporal framework - this task must be completed in three days and I must keep going now if I am to complete it. In impure psychic temporality, I stop my work: "Can I "afford" to spend three days on this project?" Further, both aspects of temporality can be in good or bad faith; for freedom exists on both levels. It is said that when Eugene O'Neill was working to finish a huge complex project, involving a number of interrelated plays that had consumed him for a number of years, he become aware of his weak and sickly body and, he abandoned the project.

20

that goal, and, further, that movement was itself possible because previous events made it a possible choice for him Suppose he had been successful in his religious career and in his marriage hopes 7 These are my own examples but at other times Sartre give similar examples. I think that I did a decent job in summarizing this difficult chapter in my Commentary, BN.

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Let us consider this decision to have arisen from an awareness of pure temporality in good faith. Apparently, soon after abandoning the former project, O'Neill began to write his revealing Long Days Journey into the Night, which he prohibited from being published and performed - both occurred posthumously. Let us consider this decision to have arises from an awareness of impure temporality in good faith. Sartre also gave up on his "ethics" and on his effort to complete the Critique, turning his attention rather to The Family Idiot, despite the criticism of many of his "friends," who considered the work on Gustave Flaubert a bourgeois effort. Chapter Three: Transcendence Our distinctive presence to the world is also our bond to the world. Thus, we must note that, although our procedure is to move from the abstract to the concrete, there is one abstraction that does not work: The for-itself cannot be abstracted from the in-itself. Consequently, even in this early abstract stage, we must discuss our bond to the in-itself. I have already anticipated this concluding chapter, "Transcendence," by calling attention, for example, to sight as the negation of color and color as the negation of sight. This relation is simultaneously the coming-to-be of color in the world and our comprehension of color. Those of us who can see "know" something about the world that a congenitally blind person will never know; that is to say, we truly comprehend that wonderful reality, color. All future questions about color are based upon this primary comprehension. Then too, it must be kept in mind that, once distinguished and revealed, things have there own surprises, which Sartre terms "abolitions and apparitions," which we get to know in detail through specific studies: a plant arising from a seed, from example. Nevertheless, there is a real sense in which the world is "known," even before we attempt to form concepts about it. To recall, the world is precisely what-we-are-not: the unity of a tree, and the unity of all other things in the world, is not that of the human body - but these real other-than-human-negative-unities define us in a way that would not be true of a being not related to our universe. Whatever mysteries we discover in the world are the result of decoding the relation of the in-itself to human consciousness. Thus, every science-fiction story is an interpretation of human bodily existence, even as it negates it.21 We must now begin to bring into focus the rest of the background of our existence. I have already noted how Sartre, in the conclusion of this second part, reminds us of his reasons for not considering the existence of other people and our own body as well as our concrete conditions of birth until 21

More fundamentally, even in its most abstract form, our mathematics reflects only the workings of our sensuous bodily consciousness. I think that this claim is in the spirit of Sartre's philosophy. See Catalano, Thinking Matter, 25-26; 31; 33;i42-i43,1571115,158 ni6. At times, Sartre does mention animal existence, but it is clear that the world as we know it is our world filled with plants, animals, and things

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Parts Three and Four, to which we now turn. It may, however, be useful to repeat the general reason, namely, that although all of this exists as our background, our primary intentional relation to others, to our own body, and to a task at hand, comes ontologically after we have "passed through" our body as a lived instrument. Before being considered a thief by his foster parents, Genet "passed through" his orphaned state in his innocent enjoyment of play. Thus the phenomenological point of view is of the first two parts of Being and Nothingness and is one of prereflective consciousness, one of being engrossed in a world filled with others prior to conceptualization of this truth. Then too, we must keep contingency in mind - a child abandoned in the wild, with no relation to other people, would not be truly human either in "mind" or in "body." Thus, we must be prepared to recognize the extent to which being born in this particular situation is a general feature of all human existence for which the individual is not responsible. We are responsible, however, for how we react to the contingencies that fill our lives. PARTS T H R E E , FOUR, A N D CONCLUSION

We have the intellectual tools to understand the world. We can grasp the meaning of our own lives, the lives of others, and we have the ability to understand nature. Experts have a legitimate place in society, but as free agents, it will always be up to us to judge the relevancy of their so-called expert opinions. In no area of life is this so evident as in war. It is also clearly true in medicine. And it is true in science. The world is a relation to our body, and to the extent that we each know something about our body, we know something very important about the world. Needless to say, our understanding of the world and our self requires effort, but, in varying degrees, we are capable of this effort. There are mysteries; but they are "in broad daylight'" ( 571). It is the task of these last two parts and the conclusion - two-thirds of the book - to point both to the mysteries and to the daylight. In general, however, the latter part of the book is far more readable than the early part, and thus I return to my primary task of revealing the "logic" connecting the parts of Being and Nothingness into a whole. Part Three: Being-for-Others We have, in fact, already considered much of the ontology expressed in these last two parts in the discussions of Genet and Flaubert. The gist is our absolute dependence upon each other for our humanity. Without Ann Sullivan, would Helen Keller's life have ended in an exhausting collapse, ending in a permanent form of subhumanity or a flight into insanity? A more benign notion of interpersonal relations - one that would not put so much responsibility on each of us for each other - would imply that Miss Sullivan was merely a handy instrument, and that with enough effort Keller could eventually relate herself

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to other people and thus to her own body and to the world. Sartre's entire philosophy of the body and interpersonal relations, however, is rather an affirmation of our total dependence upon others for the degree of our humanity. In this respect, I have, in the previous "overview" already devoted considerable space to the pivotal notion in Part Three of Sartre's, namely, the look. Also, we there considered Sartre's views of our concrete relations with others. I will therefore turn directly to the second chapter, "The Body." Chapter Two: The Body In our engaged activities we pass both through our own body and through the world of other people. I may have a task assigned to me by another. Nevertheless, to the extent that I become absorbed in what I am doing, I am aware only of the task. Even my own body recedes to the background. I may even experience pain as I am working, but I may continue to work in pain. That is, the pain becomes simply an aspect of my relation to my work. The pain may, however, become severe, and I may then turn my attention to the pain which I now explicitly realize is "in" my left eye. If I rest and close my eyes, the pain might disappear. I may now recall that I experienced this pain whenever I try to read at length in poor light. I thus conceptualize the pain as an "illness" that comes and goes; it has its own time and circumstance. Later, if I realize that others also have this illness, I further turn illness into a disease; that is, into something social. Although Sartre devotes a great deal of space to a reflection on pain, I wish to return to my reflection on Helen Keller. When Keller first realized that the touches of Ann on her hand and the flow of water over her hand were united to each other, she entered the world of language. She entered language as one deaf and blind; but did she know herself as such? Surely not. In that moment of realization, Helen was neither deaf nor blind, but simply a human bodily consciousness becoming open to the world. In her eagerness to learn, she initially passed through her privations. Later she would discover that she was different; later she would learn of speech and sight, of sound and colors. True, Helen did have vague memories of her first eighteen months of normal life, but these remained strange haunting images that made her life even more unbearable. Sartre here again recalls for us the distinction between prereflective and reflective understanding, the former is nonthetic (nonconceptual), the later is thetic (conceptual). In her original but awakened state under Ann's guidance, Helen, to use Sartre's expression, "existed" her body with comprehension but without conceptual understanding. Of course, there were hurdles that had to be overcome, and Sartre thus refers to the "coefficient of adversity" in things, but he reminds us that they exist only through our project. When Keller wanted to learn to speak and to write, she had to overcome obstacles that do not exist for most of us. There are some obstacles that exist for every human organism, such as climbing a high mountain; but even that is an obstacle only

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if you should want to do such a thing. For those of us blessed with sight and devoid of the spirit of conquering "things," the mountain can be more easily and more securely conquered by viewing it. Thus, in the first of three sections of this chapter on the body, "The Body as Being-For-Itself: Facticity," Sartre reminds us that we do not choose the conditions of our birth - our "facticity." Our facticity is our sensual body as it is originally connected to others and to the world - do all our senses function normally? As we begin to see ourselves in the light of other people, we get to know more about our senses. Thus, our body becomes known to us as it appears to others, and we are introduced into the second section, "The BodyFor-Others." I am not ugly for myself but only in relation to someone who sees me as ugly. I may be aware that another considers me ugly, and I may attempt to demean the other in a similar or different way. I may succeed; still I do not convert the other into a mere object that I can ignore. Each person is a distinct center of perception of the world, and that person who considers me ugly represents a whole view of the world. I also am a view of the world; nevertheless, strictly speaking, I do not consider my body to be a specific view of the word even in my relations to others. "The body is, in fact, a point of view on which I can take no point of view, the instrument which I can not utilize in the way I utilize any other instrument" (BN: 340). This is particularly true of the ways I use my flesh in relation to another's flesh, as becomes explicit in the Chapter Three of Part Three, "Concrete Relations With Others," which as already been discussed above. Here, Sartre's point is that when one misses someone, this absence is directed to the other as a fleshy presence - a picture will not do. Finally, the third section of this chapter on the body, "The Third Ontological Dimension Of The Body," Sartre begins to unite the two previous abstract dimensions. In the concrete, Keller existed in a world of those who see and hear, and these others defined her as deaf and blind. Further, she now had to "exist" her body in the light of her explicit awareness of her privations. In the concrete, this awareness of her relation to others was not something added to her life; it was one with her project and it was one with her own solution to the problem of being: how to be fully human when deprived of hearing and sight? Part Four: Having, Doing and Being22 Chapter One: Being and Doing: Freedom All our actions spring from freedom. This is also true of our internal activities. Aristotle claimed that, corresponding to our external senses, we had 22

In her translation of Being and Nothingness, Hazel Barnes notes that "faire" is used by Sartre in both the sense of doing and making (BN 431, note 1). The three sections of the first chapter, "Being and Doing: Freedom" are: Freedom. The First Condition of Action; Freedom and Facticity: The Situation; Freedom and Responsibility The three sections

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internal ones, so-called faculties, such as memory, imagination, intellect, and will. Sartre rejects the analogy, particularly when applied to the will. We each freely forge a particular kind of will. This is clear in Sartre's example of the inferiority complex already alluded to above. In an inferiority complex- a disguised superiority complex - the values of efforts are effaced from the world of doing (making), having, and, finally, from being itself. One chooses failure in abortive efforts that are not meant to succeed, that is to say, not meant to be completed as efforts; and this very failure becomes "the best means of attaining being" (472). One thus possess superiority without effort, and without fear of losing it - true effort remains forever on the horizon, knighting the continual abortive ones. Indeed, the so-called external senses are themselves imbued with freedom. A painter looks at the world differently than a musician. I recall a conductor telling me that almost everything she saw she converted into sounds. In some way, this uniqueness is true of all of us, and, in the concrete, our entire body, both in its external and internal states, participate in our project. We can change. But the "price" may be high, and yet, we are responsible for continuing in our chosen project. Chapter Two: Doing and Having A good sign that our actions are on the right road of good faith is the degree to which play is an integral part of our lives. In play, we acknowledge that we are responsible not only for the way we play the game, but for the rules themselves. Play also reveals our true relation to the world; for, in play, we make a world exist in relation to our bodies. To use Sartre's example, snow becomes for the skier both the support of skiing and the revelation of snow as this support. In the concrete, the skier changes snow by skiing on it. If we could imagine an ideal skier touching the surface of snow without altering it, we would have an insight into the truth of knowledge. In our basic awareness of things, we do not alter their basic constitution, but, rather, we reveal their fundamental bond to our organic body. The very differentiation of the world into "things," with their own colors, sounds, odors, bitters and sweets, textures, temporality, and spatiality is the way matter relates itself to my fleshy organism. Of course, given this world making, things then have their own secrets. In the concrete, this relation, will also reflect our general good- and badfaith ways of relating our body to the world. We are each an outline of a solution to the being, and on an individual level, our projects may leave reality untouched. Collectively, however, we may alter the air we breath and the water we drink. Thus, even though Sartre does not formally discuss history of the second chapter, "Doing and Having" are: Existential Psychoanalysis; "Doing" and "Having" Possession; Quality as a Revelation of Being. See Catalano, Commentary BN on these sections.

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in Being and Nothingness, history is nonetheless an essential aspect of our facticity. Indeed, in the concrete, we are the event in matter. The event of our existence within matter is beyond utility, for it is through us all utility enters being. Sartre thus ends the book with the oft-quoted, and, for some, the only read sentence, "Man is a useless passion" (615). Still, it may not be amiss to note that in this concluding remark Sartre the writer almost takes over from Sartre the philosopher. Conclusion The intentionality of consciousness is to something other than consciousness itself, and this other is the world. But one may ask, why and how it all began? One may also ask about the ethical norms, specifically about the danger of taking our own freedom as a goal. In the conclusion, Sartre gives two brief reflections, one metaphysical and the other ethical. I was never able to get a clear picture about the relation of "metaphysics" to ontology when I first read Being and Nothingness - verbally, the distinction appears clear: "Metaphysics is to ontology as history is to sociology" (619). But I could not come up with any concrete examples, and I could do little more than paraphrase Sartre's words in my Commentary. Now, more than thirty-odd years later, I am just as confused. Still, some small aspects of the distinction are clear. Every attempt to ask "why" assumes the existence of consciousness. That having been noted, Sartre still thinks that a metaphysician can inquire about the beginning of human life; but I do not see any significant guidelines, and, indeed, basically he seems to repeat here what he has already noted throughout the book. Thus, Sartre reminds us that of itself, being does not demand a relation to consciousness. If consciousness did not exist, being would be nameless. We could not even claim that the in-itself is a homogeneous whole, for that claim would also imply a relation to us. Still, once consciousness appears within being, it can appear to us as zf Being was attempting to justify its own existence. That is to say, the for-itself may now appear to be the foundation of the in-itself; being itself may appear to exist because we exist. On the other hand, contingency must remain at the heart of the relation of the for-itself to the in-itself. Metaphysics cannot remove this, but it may be able to make the appearance of consciousness seem reasonable, or, it may decide that it is useful to consider both being and consciousness as if they were two separate realms. All too confusing, I think - perhaps, another can do better. The one interesting observation concerns action, which here means our ability to alter the internal structure of things. Sartre seems to think that this is a metaphysical question. I personally think that he has already given an ontological answer, although he seems unaware of it, namely, the body. I think that the problem is that Sartre is so taken up with the view of knowledge as the

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differentiation of things into a world, that he believes an effective notion of action would endanger that perspective: Thus, sensing colors is both a revelation of color in the world and a comprehension of color. Nevertheless, the effective means for action is the body, particularly the hands using instruments. We do change color into a wave or a particle and we do that by using the historical weight in our instruments, the interferometer and the apparatus for the photo-electric effect. I know that Sartre is aware of all of this, but he does not seem to think that it alters the nature of things. He never returns in an attempt to clarify his views in later works, and I have given my own views in a previous work.23 The ethical observations are not much clearer. Sartre notes that ontology does not discuss ethical issues, despite the fact that he has referred to the love of failure as a vice. Perhaps, he thinks this too general. He thus returns to his concern about the spirit of seriousness, and his hope that an existential psychoanalysis will not mislead us. If we face our freedom, will we take freedom for a value and turn it into an object, thereby falling into a new kind of bad faith? He concludes by saying that he will consider these ethical issues in another work. We now know that Sartre did work on an ethics that has been posthumously published as The Notebooks for an Ethics - but, if one actually reads these notes, they have no relation to these very general observations given in the conclusion. It seems to me that Sartre took many of the fruitful observations that he had made in the Notebooks for an Ethics and applied them to such works as his studies of Genet and Flaubert. Nevertheless, these works are not ethics, and to a certain extent, Sartre's so-called Rome and Cornell lectures fill in the outline of the ethics given in the Notebooks. On the other hand, I am not sure that the quest for a complete ethics is either possible or desirable, since it is one of Sartre's principles that we can always remake our self both on the personal and historical level. What we need is a moral perspective on the world and I believe that Sartre provides that for us, both here and throughout his works. His message is clear and insistent: We are collectively responsible not only for our own humanity, but for that of everyone: "One does not make use of the oppressed as a machine, contrary to what is often said, but as a limited freedom" (Notebooks: 328). 23

It is indeed the theme throughout my Thinking Matter, but perhaps it arises most clearly in my discussion on the way the flesh of the body both distinguishes matter into things and alters them by collectively producing instruments that alter their interior nature

6 The Critique of Dialectical Reason

The French publisher Gallimard, who had published the French edition of Being and Nothingness in 1943, published the first volume of the Critique of Dialectical Reason ini96o. Within the seventeen years separating these two books, Sartre produced at least twenty-two works, mostly, but not exclusively, through Gallimard - novels such as The Age of Reason, plays such as No Exit, essays such as What is Literature, and philosophical biographies such as Saint Genet.1 The full title of the English edition of the Critique, which was brilliantly translated by Alan Sheridan-Smith and edited by Jonathan Ree, is Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume 1: Theory of Practical Ensembles.2 This 1

2

See Michel Rybalk&'s Jean-Paul Sartre: A Selected General Bibliography in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp as part of The Library of Living Philosophers (La Salle. Open Court, 1981) 711-729. Michel Rybalka and Michel Contat, in collaboration with Yvan Cloutier, Laura Piccioni, and Daniele Calvot later published a more comprehensive bibliography, Sartre: Bibliography, 1980-1992, (Bowling Green, Ohio: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1993). This work cites also doctoral dissertations on Sartre. Michel Rybalka and Michel Contat have consistently updated the work on Sartre. The original French title is Critique de la Raison dialectique, precede de Questions de methode, Tome 1: Theorie des ensembles pratiques (Gallimard, i960; revised edition, 1985). When the English edition appeared in 1976, it did not include a translation of Questions de Methode because that had been translated earlier in 1963 by Hazel E. Barnes as The Search for a Method (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), and then the same translation was published in England under the title Problem of Method (London: Methuen & Co., 1964). The Questions de Methode was itself first published in the Polish periodical Tworczosc, 1957, no 4:33-79. See Chapter 3, note 2 for publication of English edition of the Critique and for Catalano's Commentary on this work. I think that Sheridan-Smith's translation is fine. True, he translates the major notion of "group-en fusion" as "fused group," but that particular error has been noted by many, including myself. On the other hand, the meaning of the notion is clear. The Critique is a very difficult work and it requires holistic dedicated reading The subdivisions are not clear and in my Commentary I suggested some new ones. In the revised edition edited by Arlette 113

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work was to be followed by a second volume, which was never completed; it was, however, published posthumously by Gallimard in 1985 and lucidly translated in 1991 by Quintin Hoare as Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume 2: (Unfinished) The Intelligibility of History? The relation between the two volumes was to be indicated by the subtitles, but I will later explain why I am dubious about the usefulness of the subtitle of Critique 2. Still, the overall project is clear, namely, Sartre's attempt to show how we have individually and collectively forged our history, and how we are capable of understanding it. The first volume traces the ways our practical involvement with the world alters it into a quasi tool. We do not merely use this forged massive structure; it also uses us. Our world thus carries within it the weight of our past free actions, as these have become embedded in our laws, our customs, our architecture, and indeed our thought patterns. Thus, to recall our earlier remarks in the overview on the Critique in Chapter 3, what Sartre terms the "practico-inert" outlines for us the possible paths on which our humanity may develop. The practico-inert thus limits us, although this very limitation has been brought about by our own past practices and by the ways we now sustain these practices. Specifically, the practico-inert introduces a distinctive inertia, or counterfinality, into the world, one which acts against our best efforts to change the world for the better, for example, by eliminating class differences. The first volume thus ends with a discussion of the relation of class struggle to the dialectic, that is to say, our place in history. The general message here is that we have arrived at a time in our history in which the average person can understand how his or her initial social position has been brought about by past collective actions and is now being sustained by present collective free actions. Of course, an infant does not choose its birth; but the social structure "chooses," to a great extent, the social status of the parents. I interpret the aim of the second volume to repeat the task of the first volume, but now on a deeper level of freedom. In brief, the task in the second volume is to show how we individually and collectively choose struggle as an essential part of our history. The second volume thus introduces us to the notion of conflict, not as something resulting from social differences, but as that which is logically prior to social differences, precisely as these represent opposing "classes." That is, we could be living in a world with diverse economic strata but also one without conflict, in which the basic needs of all were, for the most part, satisfied. Or, at least, we could be truly moving toward such

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Elkaim-Sartre in 1985, she also suggested other subdivisions. I had the opportunity to compare these with my own just prior to the publication of my commentary, and I must confess that I am not sure that either of our efforts add much clarity to the work The original french edition was Critique de la Raison dialectique (inacheve), Tome 2. U Intelligibilite de V Histore (Paris Galllimard, 1985). See Chapter 3, note 4 for the English translation.

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a world. Rather, we choose struggle as a form of conflict because of a hatred and fear of our fellow humans. And, what is more important, we have carved the face of this fear in our laws, customs, and institutions, so that it reflects back to us an image of our neighbor as a dangerous other person, ready to steal the results of our hard earned labor. As we might expect, Sartre is more specific; and, in Volume 2, he uses the example of the sport of boxing - about which Sartre had some amateur experience - to illustrate the present notion of conflict and its consequent struggle. Following this example, struggle is further examined through a long reflection on Stalin, specifically, Stalin's free and personal deviation of the Russian revolution. These examples are clear and to the point, even if the general relation between the two volumes of the Critique is not. In my interpretation of the relation between the two volumes, I am, perhaps giving a clarity to Sartre's efforts that, to some extent, is not warranted by the text. 4 1 will return to a closer examination between the two volumes; but here I would simply note that my own view relies heavily on the progressive-regressive movement that was developed in some detail by Sartre in Search for a Method and which was to guide the entire work of the Critique. Indeed, the Search for a Method was an introductory'part of the original French edition, and thus it is appropriate to examine it once again. THE SEARCH FOR A METHOD: THE PROGRESSIVE-REGRESSIVE METHOD

Sartre here attributes the outline of the progressive-regressive method to Henri Lefebvre: "Lefebvre proposes a very simple method employing auxiliary techniques and comprising several phases." Quoting Lefebvre, Sartre gives these phases as: (a) Descriptive. Observation but with a scrutiny guided by experience and by a general theory ... (b) Analytico-Regressive. Analysis of reality. Attempt to date it precisely. (c) Historical-Genetic. Attempt to rediscover the present, but elucidated, understood, explained." (Method: 52) 5 4

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Arlette Elkaim-Sartre claims that Sartre reread most of the first part of Critique 2 while she admits that several "appendixes" have their place through editorial judgment Nevertheless, I find the discussion of the body of Volume Two to be on a different level than Volume One. In Volume One, Sartre's discussions seem, at times, to be long-winded; but, as a matter of fact they are never verbose - for the most part, everything given is needed. I find the discussion in Volume Two to be uneven - at times, indeed, verbose, as in both the discussions of boxing and Stalin, and, at times, cryptic, as in the discussion of the real extent of the "totalization-of-envelopment." The reference given is Henri Lefebvre, Cahiers de Sociolgie, 1953 Sartre had used both the terms and a general form of the method earlier in his own works, but he probably now sees something in the method that was not previously clear to him. Indeed, to repeat, for Sartre,

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I will again briefly consider each stage separately and then return to them throughout this study. The descriptive aspect Sartre terms "progressive," or at times "lateral," or then again "synchronic." This is the most obvious phenomenological aspect of the method, and one sees it's presence in Sartre's constant use of examples. It is our spontaneous awareness of an action as purposive, as is clear from Sartre's own example: While I am reading, I see my friend suddenly get up from his chair and open a window. Almost immediately, I grasp the meaning of his action: He is letting air into the room. There is no question here of guessing at my friend's inner state of consciousness. His bodily action is itself intelligible, and my natural comprehension of the movements of his body is the initial, lateral, synchronic, or progressive stage of the method. But as I become aware that my friend is letting fresh air into a room, I also realize that the room has been and is now uncomfortably hot. This vertical, diachronic, or regressive movement now leads to a new and deeper progressive movement, in the sense that I now understand my present situation in a new light: I was engrossed in my own reading and I had not noticed that I was and am now sweating. This historical-genetic phase is a new progressive understanding that can now be repeated on different levels. For example, I may now become aware of the specificity of my friend's freedom; that is, he might also have continued to read while sweating. In this later case, Sartre notes that another person, seeing us both engrossed in our reading, might have called us both "library rats," thereby illuminating "us to the depths of our being" (Method: 155).6 In the formal application of the method here in the Critique, the initial progressive movement is, for the most part, taken for granted. It is, however, important that this initial stage be noted, even though it is somewhat complex; it is, after all, not a simple observation, but "observation but with a scrutiny guided by experience and by a general theory." In my understanding of the Critique, this implies that we begin with a commonsense understanding of the hierarchal division within our humanity, with a commonsense understanding that people fight over the necessities of life as well as over luxuries, with a commonsense understanding that wars never seem to end and that we seem

6

a method cannot be separated from its concrete use and certainly the method becomes more expansive in The Family Idiot. See Thomas R. Flynn, Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason. Toward an Existentialist Theory of History (Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 1997), 295 note 33. In general, Sartre summarizes the three stages of this method in the two-fold terminology, "progressive-regressive." Indeed, Chapter 3 in The Search for a Method is titled, "The Progressive-Regressive Method," and he illustrates the method using the example of the life of Gustave Flaubert to which, of course, he will return in great detail in The Family Idiot. More simply, and almost as an afterthought, while explaining the notion of comprehension, he illustrates the method in one of his more typical everyday examples, of reading in a library with a friend.

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to be always surrounded by enemies, and with a commonsense understanding that the day when things will be better for the poor is always put far in the future. Then too, the entire Critique begins with our commonsense recognition of the overpowering presence of the West throughout the world, together with the realization of the degree of oppression and exploitation allied with this presence. True, as Sartre will observe, there are unique deviations from the path to true humanity that are not reducible to worldwide exploitation. These too must be examined. But, when all qualifications are admitted, it is still true that, for the most part, stronger nations use weaker ones for their own profit, and this is a general fact of our history. In brief, the aim of the Critique is to see whether critical reflection can sustain these commonsense perspectives on our history. It is at this point that both the regressive and historical-genetic aspect enters into the discussion. The regressive movement is indicated by Sartre's constant use of historically dated examples; for example, the anarcho-syndicalist humanism. On the other hand, I believe that it would be an error to think that the Critique aims at reaching some remote past, in which we deviated from a condition of true humanism toward a condition of scarcity and seriality, somewhat as Russian communism deviated from its own initial socialism. We are, for the most part, incapable of making such a judgement. Even if we could show that cooperation was the norm in some early segments of humanity, we could also show that it was not true in others. What concerns us, at present, is the way we sustain the weight of scarcity and seriality, whenever it might have first began to characterize our humanity. I have not invented this perspective, it becomes clear if one knows where to look for it. Thus, when Sartre considers the relation between groups and collectives, he insists that it is useless to enquire which came historically first. De facto, in our history, we witness collectives arising out of groups and groups falling back into collectives. Still, some dating is important, in the sense that we can more or less know when we stopped living in a pluralist world to live in One World, when socialism was deviated by Stalin, and when we began living in a "second industrial revolution" (1: 246).7 In brief then, taking into consideration the ambiguous role of actual dating of events, the last two aspects of the method are effectively joined in use - the regressive becoming one with the historical-genetic. On the other hand, when we compare Critique 1 with 2, I think this general situation alters: Critique 2 provides the historical-genetic 7

See for example, Critique 1: 193-196; 242-247; Critique 2: 35-50 I am simplifying Sartre's discussion which, in fact, runs throughout the Critique in his analysis of class-being. His general point is that the fractured unity among skilled and unskilled workers was the best that could have been achieved at the time, and it represented it's own opposition to the owners of the factories. However, it is not exactly clear what Sartre means by this phrase, "second industrial revolution " I think that he is referring to worldwide "corporations " And, if I may add a thought: "Management," in all its pervasive forms, is taking to itself an excessive part of the financial rewards that would normally go to the workers and the stockholders.

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aspect of the progressive-regressive movement of Critique 1.1 will return to this issue. The entire discussion of the progressive-regressive study must be understood within the framework of a dialectic. For example, it is the use of the dialectic that prevents the progressive-regressive movement from becoming a reductionism that would, for example, blame the West for all the evils of the world. As we will see, Sartre claims that Stalin's deviation from socialism was a specific Russian event, an event that probably would not have happened without the constant attempts of the West to destroy communism, but which, nevertheless, is not reducible to this pressure. Stalin himself deviated the revolution and the Russian people let him get away with it. But reductionism is also avoided in the first Critique, for it is there that the dialectic is formally introduced. CRITIQUE I

We have already reflected on the overall argument of Critique i; and, to repeat, my aim in this second part is not so much to give a section by section study of the work as to provide an outline of its logic. The most obvious logic to note is the division into an introduction and two books, with no formal conclusion, which supposedly was to come at the end of the second volume. Let us consider these large-scale segments of the work. The Introduction The Introduction is itself divided into two parts, each with their own titles, namely, "The Dogmatic Dialectic and the Critical Dialectic," and "Critique of Critical Investigation." These translations reflect corresponding titles in both the original and critical French edition. The subdivisions given in the English edition, however, have only numbers in the French text. In general, however, one should not be too concerned to match a text with a division in any of Sartre's major works, and this is particularly true in the hastily written Critique. What is required of the sympathetic reader is not a corresponding haste, but a holistic perspective that aims at comprehending large segments of writing regardless of subdivisions. With this in mind, we can note that the overall movements of the two parts is simply to clarify the meaning of our effort to understand the truth of history. We have already seen that our endeavor is complicated because the dialectic has its own history, particularly in the works of Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Marx. Each of these thinkers have given us an interpretation of the dialectic, and thus the need for a "critique" of the dialectic. Indeed, for Sartre, the critique of the dialectic includes a reflection on the analytic effort of understanding history; the dialectic both situates analysis as an aspect of our contemporary dialectic as well as placing analysis as the proper intellectual enterprise of the early nineteenth century.

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The Dogmatic Dialectic and the Critical Dialectic "It is impossible to get away from the problem of Truth," Sartre writes in the first Critique (1: 29). In its most general formulation the quest for truth presents two challenges, both of which we have to meet if the dialectic is to succeed. The first challenge: If we grant that the search for truth is legitimate, we are then tempted to root this very search in some transhuman perspective on reality, whether materialistic or spiritualistic. In the history of Western thought, Plato first formulated this view, claiming that human knowledge can reach truth only by rooting it in a World beyond this world, a world that sustains the Archetypes of all truth, such as true Justice. About six hundred years later, Saint Augustine gave new life to Plato's World of Ideas proclaiming them aspects of the Mind of God. In the nineteenth century, Hegel's notion of the Absolute Spirit can be understood as an attempt to bring Plato's World of Ideas into history, in the sense that through us the Absolute Spirit discovers the truth of the oneness of history and nature. Indeed, even the classical Marxist notion can be considered a return to Plato, namely, that we are guided in history by economic laws that are not of our own making and that seem to direct history of themselves. Sartre, however, insists that we heed our temporal nature, in which all history is a throughly human adventure. On the other hand, we then encounter another challenge to knowing truth: We are urged to be satisfied with a limited truth that aims only at knowing isolated aspects of our human condition, as if they were not related to each other in some whole. That is, we are urged to forget the dialectic and use analytic reason. We can thus summarize this dilemma of our pursuit for truth as follows: if it is universally valid, we cannot do it by ourselves, and if we can do it by ourselves, it is not universally valid. The traditional problem of truth invites us, therefore, to respect the modesty of human efforts. Sartre agrees that all we have are human efforts; but he insists that these efforts have given our world to us and that we can understand our own handiwork - all of it. This then is Sartre's general answer to the problem of truth: truth is a relation - a relation between human existence and all of reality. Here the original phenomenological insight described in Being and Nothingness becomes relevant. Truth itself is neither subjective nor relative, because truth arises from a relation of the being of human reality to the being of things. For example, the ontological truth of color is that color truly exists in the world but only because there are organisms with sight in the world. Color is matter fractured by sight. All issues of subjectivity and relativity of color fall within this relational truth, a truth that escapes the congenitally blind. On the other hand, because we are here concerned with historical facts, this relational aspect of truth seems obvious - clearly historical facts are related to our existence. Nevertheless, the dilemma reappears in a new guise. Our choice seems to be either to discover historical truths as isolated events, which we then register as accurately as possible, as if we were some sort of

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neutral spirit surveying the world; or, to heed our own temporal existence, as this seems to make interpretations relative to a particular person. Again, we need to "critique" rather than disregard both views. In the first attitude, we seem to approach history without preconceived notions, using the analytic method. Indeed, in specific concrete cases, this ideal is precisely what is required of us. For example, the early attempts to decipher the "Maya Code" were colored by the belief that the Mayans could not have developed a true form of writing. On the other hand, the new "unprejudiced "approach was itself a distinct free adventure. For example, the script had to be carefully examined and copied by a skilled hand, and, in the process, dirt was brushed from artifacts - dirt that was itself laden with history.8 Thus, this analytic approach is valid in particular instances, but it is still under the direction of a dialectic of human value. Still, if we press the notion that freedom gives value to historical facts, we seem to be caught in the relativist trap. Nevertheless, with all the danger, this is just the path that Sartre insists that we take: We must insert our whole self within our historical investigations and we must attempt to describe the necessary relations that are then evident. This issue deserves further reflection, even at the risk of repetition. There are different ways of inserting ourselves within history. For Hegel, we can know history, because a great historical epoch is over and we are its culmination. Although this idealistic approach was rejected by Marx, it was, for Sartre, continued, albeit more materialistically, by Marxists. Of Marx himself, Sartre writes: Marx's originality lies in the fact that, in opposition to Hegel, he demonstrated that History is in development, that being is irreducible to Knowledge, and, also, that he preserved the dialectical movement both in Being and in Knowledge. He was correctly, practically. But having failed to rethink the dialectic, Marxists have played the Positivist game, (i: 23) The import of Sartre's claim that Marx was right practically is that he did what could be done for his time. The dialectic is thus an intellectual effort that must be repeated for each epoch. Here we can note that the specific result of this rethinking is, for Sartre, the recognition of scarcity, seriality, and group praxis as these all appear in our post-Stalin era - that is, in the era of a substantive deviation of practical communism. In this present context and indeed throughout our discussion, we must keep in mind Sartre's unique use of words, that is, his distinctive nominalism. "The dialectic, if it exists," Sartre writes, "can only be the totalisation of concrete totalisations effected by a multiplicity of totalising individualities. I 8

See Michael D. Coe, Breaking the Maya Code (New York Thames and Hudson, 1992.1 have discussed this book in "The Script Rose," contained in Philosophy and Literature, 1995,19, 85-93, and then in the same journal at more length in "Crafting Marks Into Meanings," 20, 47-60. See Sartre's own brief reference to Mayan history in Critique 2. 363. Sartre's main interest here is how a society can be isolated from a continuing history both by exploitation - the brutality of the Spaniards - and by the vastness of the continent

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shall refer to this as a dialectical nominalism" (i: 37). This is simply another way of affirming the claim that Marx did the correct nominalistic effort for his time, and that he attained thereby attained truth for his time. Sartre's nominalism is pervasive, and, I regard it as one of the most powerful intellectual tools guiding his reflections. For example, the term "consciousness" does not refer to any one thing; it is rather a reflective construction - a quasi intellectual building, as is indeed the will and intellect itself - that arises from noting the similarity among our actions: The perception of a red rose is consciousness perceiving; acts of speech and gestures are consciousness communicating; interior reflections are consciousness turning on itself. We reflect upon all these specific acts and we form the general notions of "consciousness," "intellect," "will," and "senses."9 The dialectic is itself a form of consciousness understanding itself in relation to the world and history. If we attempt to understand the dialectic formally, we must recognize that this effort, while legitimate in its proper place as a conceptual reflection, is consequent upon our dialectical actions. Critique of Critical Investigation The dialectic is thus a specific type of intellectual effort. It is a rethinking, born of Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Marx. What, in general, is the path of this rethinking? It is the recognition that we stand in that unique time in history such that we can, for the most part, foresee the historical consequences of actions and comprehend the historical making of our humanity. Sartre writes: Thus when we claim anyone can carry out the critical investigation, this does not mean it could happen at any period. It means anyone today. What then does 'anyone' mean? We us this term to indicate that, if the historical totalisation is to be able to exist, then any human life is the direct and indirect expression of (the totalizing movement) and of all lives precisely to the extent that it is opposed to everything and to everyone. (1: 50) Another way of putting this general claim is that there will be a meaning and a truth to history if we can each understand our inclusion within a web of ever widening open-ended totalisations that ultimately give us "One World/' even as we are thereby distinguished as this or that person. Both volumes of the Critique aim at elaborating this truth, and it begins to emerge from the first two books of Critique 1. BOOKS ONE A N D TWO

After the Introduction, Critique 1 is divided into two books, with titles in French and English, namely, "From Individual Praxis to the Practico-Inert," 9

"The will in fact is posited as a reflective decision in relation to certain ends." (BN: 443, namely, Part Four, Chapter One, section 1.) See Sartre's entire discussion, in this section particularly beginning from the last paragraph of page 442 to the middle of 452

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and "From Group Praxis to History." These titles do indicate the thrust of Sartre's argument, which can be summarized as follows: While all human action involves the mediation of tools, the distinctness of historical action, which Sartre terms "praxis," is that it works through the mediation of an entire social environment - the "practico-inert." The practico-inert gives us the outline of our humanity, for it embodies all our beliefs, laws, institutions, and codes of behavior. As a vast organized complex, the practico-inert awaits human action, but, when it is given this action, it then has an almost irresistible momentum to continue in its own direction. Nevertheless, the practicoinert arises from us. Book One: From Individual Praxis to the Practico-inert The first book has four "chapters," or "parts" with titles given in both the original and later critical French editions, namely, (i) "Individual Praxis as Totalization," (2) "Human Relations as a Mediation between Different Sectors of Materiality," (3) "Matter as Totalized Totality: A First Encounter with Necessity," and (4) "Collectives." Subdivisions, however, have been added both by the editors of the French and English editions, and I provided a few of my own in my commentary on Critique 1. I will not discuss these chapters individually. In general, they aim to reveal the ways our needs have led us to create inertial systems (the practico-inert) that we then use to satisfy these same needs. The message here is again one of meditation; indeed, mediation is underneath every praxis. We relate ourselves to the world through tools and, on an historical level, through a system of tools. Tools allow us to have control over the world, and yet this same control introduces a certain necessity in our relation to the world; for example, the existence of hammers implies that we have some need to drive nails or pegs into some relatively dense material such as wood. We are thus related to things insofar as things are related to us. In this respect, Sartre invites us to consider four questions which relate freedom, mediation, and necessity.10 On the other hand, he never answers these question systematically, and yet he neatly summarizes their intent when he writes, "It should be recalled that the crucial discovery of dialectical investigation is that man is 'meditated' by things to the same extent as things are 'meditated' by man" (1: 79). And later in the text, he notes even more explicitly, "Social facts are things insofar as all things are, directly or indirectly, social facts" (1: 179). If our greed for money despoils forests, it is because forests have become for us a tool like a hammer with no planetary purpose. The philosophical basis for this view is again the relational notion of truth sketched in Being and Nothingness, namely, trees, planets, stars, and such, arise only from matter's relation to the human body. The Critique adds the insight that, as we 10

See Critique 1.79.

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imbue our humanity into things, these things return to structure our humanity: "In any moment of History things are human precisely to the extent that men are things" (1: 180). Thus, we are reminded that our historical adventure is thoroughly human. If our planet were destroyed by a collision with meteor, that would not be a historical happening such as a nuclear war or our present mass poverty. Sartre writes, "Any philosophy which subordinates the human to what is Other than man, whether it be an existentialist or Marxist idealism, has hatred of man as both its basis its consequence" (1: 181). Of course, all human action reveals something "other" than the action itself, and this "other" can be investigated: I write with a computer or pen, and in each case I can examine these for their individual qualities, their "mysteries," if you will. But these hidden qualities appear only within my act of writing, and thus, more generally, all mysteries are rooted in human praxis. Furthermore, all praxis is rooted in individual freedom; and thus it is appropriate to note again that, even as Sartre is about to introduce us to the group praxis of Book 2, he writes, "The only practical dialectical reality, the motive force of everything, is individual action" (1: 322). Still, Sartre's continual insistence on the importance of individual freedom initiates a tension in this historical study that we should reflect upon. Let us begin by recalling that to refer to an individual is not necessarily to mean "isolated individual." Isolation, cooperation, or conflict are each specific modes of social relations. At times, the historical conditions may outline one mode of social relation more clearly than another, and thus Sartre observes that working conditions may almost force an individual to live a life of practical isolation. Even with this important qualification in mind, we may rightly ask, "what happens to individual freedom when it confronts an outline of humanity awaiting it in the practico-inert?" "History," Sartre writes, "determines the content of human relations in its totality, and all these relations, even the briefest and most private, refer to the whole. But history itself does not cause there to be human relations in general" (1: 96). We must be clear about our interpretation of this text, for it's import runs throughout the Critique; indeed, its correct elucidation distinguishes, I believe, Sartre's position from that of every other thinker. Thus, we may recall, that, while the general form of every thought and deed of Genet or Flaubert was possible only because they were each products of their history, their specific human content was an individual adventure - demanding, for Sartre, six hundred odd pages to reflect upon Genet and 2,500 odd pages to reflect upon Flaubert. An historical reductionism might have accomplished both tasks in few pages. Indeed, the point of both of these studies is that in the concrete the alteration of one's destiny can be more original than the destiny imposed. Thus, although the general outlines of possible human behavior are established by group praxis and the practico-inert, which is the proper study of Book Two, we must still keep in mind the importance of the individual

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project: "At its most immediate level, dialectical investigation has emerged as praxis elucidating itself to control its own development" (i: 220). Book Two: From Group Praxis to History If it is fairly clear that Book One is divided into four dialectical moments, it is not clear how to divide Book Two. The English edition gives eight analytical chapters; this seems, at times, to breaks up the argument, but it is understandable as an effort to provide clarity in a difficult discussion. The critical French gives only two divisions - parts, rather than chapters - which, I think, capture the overall dialectical movement better, namely, Part One, The Group-The Equivalence of Freedom As Necessity And Necessity As Freedom - The Scope And Limit Of Any Realist Dialectic; and Part Two, Dialectical Investigation As Totalization: The Level Of The Concrete, The Place Of History.11 No matter how we divide this last part, it is, in the entire Sartrean corpus of writings, the most difficult to comprehend. Perhaps, a preliminary attempt to outline the argument is appropriate, even though the basic dialectical movement has already been noted in Chapter 3 and merely needs to be rephrased. The most general theme is that we cannot relate ourselves directly to the world or to other people. Mediation is not a choice; it is itself a necessary aspect of human freedom. The most private conversation uses words or signs, and the most intimate love is meditated by touches or looks that have themselves been historically "refined." Indeed, we discover the basic outlines of who we are and what we may become reflected to us in the practico-inert as, for example, the literature of the times beckoned to Flaubert. Of course, that literature was vast and it had many voices, and Flaubert the artist become Flaubert the writer, because he trained himself to listen to one set of voices rather than another. Still, that which mediates human praxis is itself something laden with human freedom. No individual or random collection of individuals could have forged the world so that it reflects back to us a human nature divided by class-struggle, and yet it is our handiwork. We have imbued hatred of the other in matter, that is, in our institutions, and this hatred merely needs to be awakened by this or that individual to become active. But who is this "we"? This "we" is a new manifestation of freedom, a sharing of individual freedom so that the power that is yours in your place is also mine in my place. Unfortunately, at present, this power is, for the most part, in the hands of the II

In my introductory paragraphs to this second book in my Commentary, I followed the critical French edition, while also giving the analytical chapters of the English as subdivisions. I also outlined the argument section by section and I will not repeat that effort here. What I did not notice at that time was the degree to which I was accepting an unnecessary logical tension between the two books, which my present discussion hopefully removes

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few who are determined to sustain a fractured and hierarchal humanity. On the other hand, we are fortunate that we have arrived at a time of our history in which we can understand our plight, and understanding is the beginning of control. This much is fairly obvious in the text; but we need to attempt to be more specific. Part One: The Group A group-in-fusion does not occur naturally. There is no a priori reason why a gathering should ever unite into a group with a single praxis. We could be living in a world in which our involvement with others and the world were directed by collective decisions enforced, for example, by vote. Indeed, our Western democracies attempt to give the impression that we forge our historical life through vote and not through pressure groups. Our Western democracies appear in a pluralist guise, when, in fact, the true moving force is monistic. This monism is not that of the obvious dictatorship; but the effect of pressure groups, both on citizens and on other nations, is quasidictatorial, sustaining class distinctions and producing enemies to distract the average person from their political impotence. (Still, at times, a move of hope can spread among voters and join them so that their individual acts of voting approach a groups-praxis.) It would, however, be a mistake to believe that group praxis is only negative. On the contrary, groups that act against bettering the human condition are a degeneration of true groups-in-fusion, which aim at advancing individual human praxis for the greater good. We must thus attempt, with Sartre, to understand both the formation of groups from individuals as well as the consequent devolution of the group-in-fusion into pledged groups, institutions, organizations, and, finally into collectives. "We must show," Sartre says, "in what way every praxis is a free individual development and in what way it could only be what it is as the praxis of the totalized multiplicity" (1:393). Let us reflect upon these words. The very purpose of a group-in-fusion is to perform a deed that no single person could do on their own, and yet we must also keep in mind that this union is freely constituted by each member of the group. We must also keep in mind that this melding of the individual with a common purpose is made possible by the ways the social order brings together tensions which cannot be sustained for very long. The individual acting as part of a group is thus differently situated than when having dinner with a friend or family. Of course, a "situation" will always be present - in the type of food and environment, and these will reflect one's historical situation. But, as in a meeting with a friend, these are usually in the background, and one passes through them in a conversation that may express true equality. To repeat, we have termed this "action," following Sartre's own implicit use. In praxis, however, one is working consciously in the historical milieu as such, and here the "equality" is a sharing with every member of the group united to work for this common goal.

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Because groups-in-fusion are united in the heat of some battle - a union strike, a group of fire fighters - it is to be expected that it cannot be sustained for long. Thus, the turning of a group-in-fusion into the pledged group, into the organized group, and then, finally, into the institution. We are not, however, to conceive of these stages as necessary steps leading to institutions. The general logic of the possible stages leading to institutions is, nevertheless, clear. Thus, we can note that once the heat of action is over, the group can remain united only by freely binding themselves through some type of pledge. Again, the pledged group will soon discover the need to divide different tasks among its members, and thus the organized group comes into existence. It may be surprising to note that Sartre insists that organization is essentially positive and that it is a quasi-natural fulfillment of the group-in-fusion. Organization is needed to fight the negative inertia of the practico-inert, and frequently, within the organized group, individual freedom has the opportunity to exhibit its uniqueness. Sartre gives two examples, the first of a football team, in which a particular halfback both fulfills the role of halfback and yet this very act exhibits his irreducible distinctness. On the other hand, this individuality must still work toward the common goal, namely, winning the game. Again, an airplane pilot may have to make a personal decision that may affect the lives of all the passengers, and in such a case, Sartre writes, "Here we encounter the organic individual as an isolated agent in the first moment of his concrete truth" (i: 453). Isolation is normally a defective mode of living our social condition, but there are times when, united toward a goal greater than our individual project, the specificity of our freedom both points to us and to the common good. It is conceivable, Sartre notes, that a society may have stopped at the level of organization; de facto, however, organization for us leads to institutions. Still, in the abstract there is no reason why institutions could not, for the most part, have continued to foster both individual and common freedom. This did not occur. We thus encounter one of the radical contingencies of our history, namely, the frequent deviation of institutions from the goal of integrating individual and common freedom. Our institutions have followed a path toward effacing individual effort for the sake of the institution itself. The continued existence of the institution as such becomes the goal, and the institutional person limits, indeed, fuses, his life project into that of the institution. It becomes natural for him to move you in the same direction as his own life - if he attempts to make you into shopping-machine, it is because he himself buys all new products. Sartre refers to this type of existence as an "other-directed life" - a life that naturally lives goals of the practico-inert as if they were personally chosen. The other-directed life seems the safe choice; but it is governed by "terror" - the other-directed person knows that he is replaceable and he preaches the terror of not being an accepted commodity to the world.

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Let us reflect further on how the institution practically deviates the original common and organized freedom that works toward a common goal. We must recall our ontological beginnings, which are simply that only individuals exist and that thus true sovereignty is based in you and in me. That is, there is no abstract reason why I should obey you or you me. We may both yield some of our sovereignty to another, but we should always retain an essential sovereignty over the personal development of our own lives. In the abstract, Western democracies claim that political rule leaves the individual free and in charge of their own convictions. In practice, however, freedom is for the few, and the main purpose of our institutions is to foster the privileged status of the few. We mystify ourselves and others that Western democracies aim at the advancement of the common person; but beneath the veil of this mystification we destroy the infrastructure of weaker nations, murder their citizens, send a token few to Harvard, usually women - to show just how enlightened we are who are then encouraged to proclaim the superiority of American culture over their own culture. Our degenerate institutions have prepared us for the quasidictatorial rule of a Sovereign leader. Still, our basic social structure, our "society," is not reducible to a collection of groups or institutions. Rather society, and the state itself in general, is distinguished by a pervasive sovereignty and by the effective ways it binds its citizens to obey those in power of the state. Bureaucracy and the cult of personality are two ways the state controls its citizens, and, Sartre notes, that both of these were more visible in the Soviet Union than in Western democracies. As we conclude our discussion of Critique 1, we must recall that the basic movement has been regressive, moving back from our present to that past which our present keeps alive. We are not attempting to work up to our present historical condition from possible abstract beginnings. Rather, we begin where we are, namely, with a humanity that keeps large segments of humanity in repressed subhuman conditions and that fractures us into serial ties that keep us politically impotent. Our goal is to understand that it is we who keep this past alive. To recall Sartre's analysis of an inferiority complex as a bad-faith superiority complex: This person keeps alive a continuity of obstacles to any real work - his present is keeping alive that past by inventing new stumbling blocks to any real efforts. In a similar way, we keep inventing new ways to retain political impotence, even as we have the means of extending it. We now have invented the perfect means for keeping us politically tame forever, namely, the unending threat of terrorists, a fear encouraged by pressure groups for their own ends. "Our species has set out upon the road of no return toward self-domestication" (Family, I: 98). For Sartre, the state has an ambiguous relation to all pressure groups, for it is suspicious of any union of peoples for whatever purpose. On the other hand, these groups do work in tandem with the state's hidden agenda to foster a feeling of superiority of the few by creating pockets of subhumanity. Thus,

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Sartre notes that the French colonization of Algeria was only partly initiated for capitalistic gains; more important than cheap labor, was the need to forge the Muslims into the subhuman, dangerous other that needed to be tamed and governed, for their own good. This political agenda was paralleled by a similar one in France itself, namely, to make the French worker believe that he alone was responsible for his low status in French society. We thus encounter the reality of class differences as the substance of the dialectic. This class difference shows itself in the ever present and every changing efforts of the few to use the majority as "limited freedoms" that can be used as tools. This then is our history - a history that the West now controls. Two questions remain. First, how pervasive is this control? The Indian untouchable suffers scarcity in a way that cannot be reducible to Western exploitation. On the other hand, can the practical conditions of the distinctive oppressions of the peoples of the World be abstracted from a long history of colonization? This first question can be rephrased: Do we live in a world of one history? Even if we were to answer, "Yes, our planet is today practically one," a second, deeper question, remains. That question is the possibility of tracing the history of our practices, so that we become aware of our present history as a choice that we now retain in existence. We have, of course, already partially faced this question; for example, in citing the many ways scarcity results from the collective choice of those in power. Still, we are faced with the task of understanding scarcity itself as a conflict rather than as an opportunity to cooperate. Regardless of what those in power do, others could share a scrap of food rather than fight over it. We are not concerned here with a particular choice that you or I may make about the goods of the world. Rather, we must attempt to understand why struggle, fear of the other, the need for a hierarchy of human worth - more powerful than the need for wealth - is embedded in our social structure. And, to repeat, we must attempt to understand all of this as a collective choice. Here again, we must move carefully. In this extremely complex Critique i, I think it useful to recall, once again, Sartre's simple example of reading in a library with a friend who opens a window to let fresh air into the room. In a sense we can say that Critique i stops, as it were, with the twofold realization of an early stage of the progressiveregressive movement. First, I am aware that my friend's action is meaningful and free - he is not dancing about the floor in a way that exhibits no purpose. Second, I now also realize that his opening of the window does indeed reveal to me that the room is stuffy. But why did /not notice the uncomfortable situation? Why was I so engrossed in my reading that I did not notice the heat? The attempt to answer these questions would lead me to a deeper understanding of my project as a "reader," and, it would eventually lead me to reflect on the existence of libraries that serve readers, with windows that can be opened. We would then, I believe, be at the beginning of Critique 2. I thus understand Critique 2 to aim at helping us understand why we now sustain our deviated history, when the dialectic allows us to understand our

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situation and to see the beginnings of a new choice. We have noted that the group-in-fusion can change history for a while, and we have seen that there have been revolutions. Change is possible; but why do we not continually move in that direction? It should not surprise us that we have already in Critique 1 given the general answer to this question, for the answer has been before us as part of our regressive study, namely, seriality. Then too, we have already noted that those in power are not serially connected but work in pressure groups to prevent real change. Still, why do we take it? Why do we not march on Washington and every capital of nations oppressing their people, even at the risk of the death of millions of our lives? In a rather dated but still readable science fiction novel by A. E. van Vogt, The world of a [NULL A], an enemy force has invaded the peaceful society of Venus, which practices null A logic - non-Aristotelian, no less - and the enemy is surprised when the peaceful inhabitants refuse to submit, but choose to die by the tens of thousands until they overwhelm their enemy.121 do not recommend this course of action; I merely point to our mass slumber in a world of conflict that we ourselves have collectively forged. CRITIQUE 2

The "second" critique is a collection of "notes," of which the first two-thirds almost four hundred pages - are more or less organized, together with a hundred pages or so of appendixes. The entire work is presented as Book Three of the Critique, with the subtitle, "The Intelligibility Of History." I agree with Arlette Elkaim-Sartre's explanation in her preface that Critique 2 gives the progressive movement of Critique 1. Nevertheless, this claim does not seem to me to be consistent with presenting Critique 2 as Book Three of the entire Critique, considered as a whole, since it aims at providing the synthetic-progressive movement of Books One and Two of the first Critique. Aside from this rather minor point, I have graver reservations about the subtitle and the major divisions which follow. I think that the issue of the intelligibility of history has already been settled in Critique 1, for otherwise the dialectic of history could not have begun. I hope to become clearer about this point as I proceed.13 12 13

A E. van Vogt, The World of a (New York* Simon Schuster, 1948), 197-202. With this in mind, I suggest the following explanatory titles and divisions. Critique of Dialectical Reason (Understanding Ourselves Understanding History) Volume 1 Theory of Practical Ensembles (That We Sustain The Local Histories We Have) Book 1 From Individual Praxis to the Practico-Inert (That We Each Sustain The Social Image Of Our Humanity)

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If however, we look at the text as it is given to us, we can note that the main body of the work is divided into three parts, "Is Struggle Intelligible?," "Totalization-Of-Envelopment In a Directorial Society: Relations Between The Dialectic And The Anti-Dialectic," and "Singularity Of Praxis: Disintegration Of The Organic Cycle And The Advent Of History." Given the tentative status of text itself, my discussion here will be relatively brief and more in the spirit of continuing the overview given above in Part One. And, perhaps, it may not be a surprise to my reader, if I again and again invite us to reflect upon the method guiding this work: The Progressive-Regressive Movement - Once Again In this terribly complex work, it is good to return to the clarity of simple examples: I am reading in a library with a friend and I see him rise from his table to open a window. His action is immediately intelligible to me: he is letting air into the room. Opening the window, however, is not an isolated act; rather it is an act integrated in the totality that we call a library. Moreover, this act - of opening a window to allow fresh air to enter - is an aspect of the library precisely as it is an open-ended totality. The building itself, with its walls, rooms, and stairs, for example, is a completed totality; but the union of the library with its administrators and readers form an open-ended totality, because their behavior within the library is not totally predictable. For example, suppose that there were a rule, well known by the readers, that only librarians are supposed to open or close windows; my friend's action would then have a new dimension, and the librarian's permissiveness a further dimension. Granting this slight modification of Sartre's original example, my friend's opening of the window is simultaneously comprehensible on all these levels, Book 2 From Groups to History {That We Unite To Sustain And Challenge The Social Image Of Our Humanity) Volume 2 Towards a Theory of History {How We Make History) Book i From Struggle to the Totalisation of Envelopment {How Struggle And Scarcity Became Essential To The Image of Our Humanity) Book 2 From Incarnation to the Advent of History {How The Social Image Of Our Humanity Gives Birth To History) I take these as only tentative, and, indeed, I am not quite sure that I am happy with them. The point, however, is that the effort to divide the work properly is one with the effort to understand it properly. I take both to be a collective task, and I think that this was Sartre's view of his effort m the Critique.

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although each level would have to be revealed separately. Still, we could consider this total effort to be progressive and then turn to the regressive aspect, which would also have levels, e.g., the librarian was talking to a friend, and, furthermore, was known not to take the rule about opening windows seriously. At this stage, however, a new and deeper progressive movement could begin: For example, I can become aware that opening a window without asking permission is typical of my friend, who never asks permission from anyone. On the other hand, my friend is also revealed as not being reckless; he tempers his freedom with prudence - he didn't throw a chair through the window to let air in. His act, in fact, sustains the open-ended totality that is the library, and, simultaneously, it singularizes a wider open-ended totality a totalizing-of-envelopment - that is the life of every researcher not only in a library, but in a community. It is now possible to repeat the progressive-regressive-progressive stages as Sartre does explicitly in The Family Idiot, with far more complexity than here. Returning to our example, we might note that the social order of the library allows slight deviations from its rules, except when there is a felt need to show where power truly lies. If this should happen, tension might result between the readers and the administration, as the former ask for whom the library exists. On a broader, more significant level, Sartre notes that the attempt of the French to make the workers feel responsible for their low wages awakened in them the comprehension of their true oppression. I thus understand Critique 2 to initiate us into a deep progressive movement (historical-genetic) aimed at understanding why violence and hatred characterize our present world. That is, the aim is to reveal the degree to which we sustain and further scarcity as the unconditional meaning of our lives - there is not enough for all, and those who have deserve what they have and those who do not have deserve their lack. Indeed, these poor are lazy, they are dangerous, and they are a threat to the social order - they are the embodiment of Evil in our Manichean ethical view. Thus, Critique 2 aims at revealing the ways we sustain and move forward the diachronic dimension of scarcity both in "directional societies," such as Russia, since Stalin, and in "non-directional societies," such as France in the last three or four hundred years or so. Critique 2 does give us a detailed discussion of Stalin, but we do lack a corresponding discussion of nondirectional societies. Nevertheless, I do not think that it has been sufficiently noted that most of the first Critique had reflected upon scarcity and seriality as these exist both in France and in the United States of America. Further, the long examination of boxing in Critique 2 is most appropriately true of the United States. Still, of course, we do lack a reflection on the different relations of sovereignty in various nations. In the following, I will retain the subdivisions given in the English translation, noting again my doubt about their appropriateness.

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I do not think that the main issue here is simply whether struggle is intelligible, but, rather, that its intelligibility is the result of our collective free praxis. That is to say, we are concerned with struggle, precisely as it does not have to exist as part of our history, precisely as it is a collective choice. Struggle could be intelligible as a necessary aspect of what it means to be human. Thus, for Hegel, the master who has power but little knowledge and the slave who has knowledge but little power become the new person who has both power and knowledge. For Hegel, struggle and replacement evolve naturally. For Marx - or, at least, traditional Marxists - the capitalists who owns the means of production and the worker who does the work meld into the future socialist who is a working member of a collective ownership. Both the Hegelian and the Marxist dialectic expand into higher unities, uniting Nature and History into Spirit or into Dialectical Matter. In both these traditional dialectics, the clash of opposites have a priority to the unfolding unity. We are supposed to believe that somehow struggle leads to unity. But, Sartre notes, of itself struggle remains struggle, on whatever level it may occur; there is no a priori reason why struggle should lead to a higher unity. We must, then, reverse our thinking. Unity and totalization come first. We have seen earlier that we naturally totalize as we act. Struggle, opposition, contradiction happen as we attempt to develop our initial totalizing praxis. Nevertheless, our task is not to attempt to understand the relation of struggle to history by the proper arrangement of concepts. We are thus not suggesting that struggle or scarcity are necessary to all histories. Rather, we begin with our own history, which is characterized by wars and persistent poverty as these take place within the strange unity we have created, namely, a hierarchal humanity. Struggle, to repeat, is now revealed to be an aspect qf the need of some to use the subhumanity of others. But we are moving too fast. Let us place ourselves within our history and reflect upon two main questions, directed to understanding the place of struggle in our history. First, let us attempt to reveal the way contradiction is not an a priori moment leading to unity, but rather the way unity can invite contradiction and conflict among its subgroups. Secondly, we must attempt to show how the struggles of subgroups ultimately not only involve the entire group but other groups and collectives. The task - a task never fully completed by Sartre - is to reveal how all particular struggles within a group participate in what is happening throughout the world. We must attempt to show how the web of totalizingof-envelopments is worldwide, not because some dialectic of nature or spirit makes it so, but because of the ways we have practically made the world to be one. To this end, Sartre reflects at length on two examples, the practical sport of boxing as it exists in our Western societies and Stalin's deviation of the Russian Revolution.

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Boxing The fighter's punch reverberates on every level of society - it is the knock-out punch that every employer can give to every worker - you're fired! On the other hand, this terror is one with the hope for advancement. We are supposed to believe that the boxer who becomes a champion is like the capitalist who also had to fight his way to the top. The boxing match does not merely symbolize our society; it singularizes the struggles that are latent within every level of our social existence, or better, it incarnates for the here and the now the struggle that is pervasive throughout our societies. Sartre writes: Everything is given in that last punch: from the history of the one who delivers it to the material and collective circumstances of that history; from the general indictment of capitalist society to the singular determination of that indictment by the boxing promoters; from the fundamental violence of the oppressed to the singular and alienating objectification of that violence in and through each participant. And if everything were not present and transcended, the singular invention - the unique concrete reality that is this punch, delivered on this day, in this hall, in front of this audience - would not even be possible. (2: 48) An analytic or pluralistic view would grant that boxing has interconnections with some aspects of our society; but, for the most part, it would claim that the event is an independent phenomena, with its own distinctive history. Sartre would grant both the uniqueness of the event and the distinctiveness of its history - in another country, bullfighting or even cockfighting would take the place of boxing. Furthermore, each fight is a distinctive adventure for each of the fighters. Sartre's point, however, is that the pervasiveness of these violent events and the way they are accepted in our societies means that any actualization of conflict - insofar as it is more than a sport but a national and, indeed, international performance crowned with rewards - singularizes for the here and now the large-scale latent violence that we have embedded in the practico-inert. On the other hand, the individual professional boxer is not to blame. He is usually poor and boxing is his only way out of oppression. Indeed, he reflects the struggle that is pervasive in society, the driving force of need, not merely his need for the necessities of life, but the need of the rich to own and to exhibit the boxing champion as a precious jewel. But it must be understood that the original force here is need. Need is the primary drive. It feeds ambition. Why? Not because there is a need for the rich man. But underpinning his being as a rich man there is his need which can be satisfied only because he is among the scarce people who have rare products m their possession. Because they live in abundance of scarcity. In other words, in order to have sufficiency they already have to be scarce. A system of constraints and myths is already needed, to deter the majority (the non-scarce) from demanding sufficiency: in short, exploitation, oppression and mystification are needed In a word, violence. (2: 423) The main point of Critique 2 is that an event like boxing does not merely illustrate, exemplify, or even point to scarcity. On the contrary, this boxing

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match simultaneously reaches back to the diachronic history of the organized sport of boxing as a praxis-process born of poverty and struggle, reincarnates this past, singularizes it as this event in this stadium, and also gives new life to the entire web that connects all struggle born of scarcity throughout the world. To repeat again, this vital interconnection occurs not through some mental projection, but through material structures created and sustained to perform just such functions, for example, stadiums, laws, judges, and prisons. Still, we must not lose sight of the individual, and thus Sartre invites us to reflect on the relation between this totalizing-of-envelopment and the singularity of praxis of this or that person. We must not lapse into idealism. There is a relatively healthy form of struggle, which is simply that we must work to mediate our differences, if we are to live together in peace and fulfillment of our lives. Unfortunately, for the most part, we have chosen not to mediate. But we need to reflect upon a concrete historical example to show that the lack of the willingness to mediate can, and has, characterized an entire history. Because this is such a vast enterprise, Sartre limits his discussion to one history, Russian socialism. Totalization-of-Envelopment and Singularity of Praxis Towards the end of a long discussion with digressions, that continues for more than three hundred pages on Stalin's deviation of the Russian revolution, we should not by now be surprised to read, "This reality is entirely a human realization of man" (2: 281). True, but how? All conflict, for Sartre, arises from a relation to a chosen unity. Contradictions do not lead to unity; rather, they are the practical ways the multiple aspects of a goal are worked out. In the abstract, this is basically a question of mediations; that is, of the practical ways subgroups within a pledged group work out their differences. On this level, "conflict" is merely the healthy sign that the members of the subgroups desire to keep the general goal of the group and are willing to work out their differences. On the other hand, "Nothing proves," Sartre writes, "that mediation must always take place. Quite the contrary, it presents itself as a particular case of praxis" (2: 70). If mediations occur, the group will continue working toward its common goal, but now with the modifications represented by the subgroups. If the Russian Revolution had developed in this way, mediating the outlooks of the major subgroups represented by Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, the Russian Revolution might have succeeded. The hidden contradiction represented by Trotsky and Stalin arose from hope of a worldwide revolution. This unity masked a tension in its actual working out. The revolution was supposed to be led by industrial nations such as Germany, but it actually occurred within the peasant infrastructure of Russia. Sartre notes that both Trotsky and Stalin understood this tension. They both understood the importance of preserving the revolution, where it de facto occurred, in Russia, and also of keeping true to the goal of a worldwide

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revolution. Trotsky, however, regarded the event in Russia as merely a step toward worldwide revolution, whereas Stalin was more focused on the immediate needs of Russia itself.14 Mediation never occurred, and no doubt Stalin was mainly to blame. But Stalin's real "sin" was not in aiming to protect the revolution within Russia, but in attempting to force an empire-like form of revolution on other nations. This deviation of the revolution, as expressed in the formula, "socialism in one country," sapped the energy from the people and the nation. Thus, with all the outside pressures and the internal demands, Russian socialism's failure, for Sartre, was basically an internal affair that could and should have been avoided. "The deterioration comes from the inside" (2: 238). The discussion of the failure of the Russian Revolution is one of the more readable texts in the Sartrean corpus. One must, however, keep his goal constantly in mind, namely, to understand how we have made struggle to be essential to our history. Reflection on the way Stalin deviated the revolution shows both the importance of individual praxis and the weight of the totalizing-of-envelopment - scarcity and seriality were still the norm. The real hatred of communism was that the norm was in danger of being replaced. That is, there was implicit recognition that change could occur, and, in fact, real changes did occur in Russia. Thus, for Sartre, history had an "opening": "In fact, it really was a socialist order that was established in the USSR" (2: 115). The factories were owned by the workers, and, as Sartre notes, "the oppression that cause people to work for the benefit of bosses is one thing, while that which causes fathers to work for the benefit of their sons ... is another thing" (2:162). Also, the ownership was unique and did not fit any preconceived notion: "We find ourselves in the presence of a new historical fact: the radical separation of appropriation and rule" (2: 124). The workers were told what to produce, and while tractors were needed, guns and atom bombs were also made. Perhaps, these were needed to protect the country from the West, but - and, here I speak for myself - I have always thought that it was foolish for the Russians to compete in the "arms race," and equally foolish to develop rocket travel to the moon, while the infrastructure of the country was still undeveloped. Still, for Sartre, a great deal was done, and more might have been accomplished, if Stalin had not taken for himself all the sovereignty that lies in the common man. Therein lies another aspect of his sin. He became a dictator and substituted fixation, threats, torture, and prisons for the gamble that is every real adventure of history. Aside from the actual discussion of Russia, several motifs run throughout the text. There is, for example, the constant refrain that knowledge is invention and yet this is balanced by the recognition that our praxis frequently has a 14

See Critique 2: 202

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machine-like aspect.15 Of course, once an inventive act has been accomplished, it can be broken down into successive machinelike parts. But another perspective seems to confirm the analysis: Every invention implies a step-by-step use of tools so that an observer, adopting a purely analytic view, can indeed see the whole as just a progression with no invention. This attitude can be extended to all of history, and we would thus loose sight of the original creative "advents" that occurred. Thus, all unity is a making; that is to say, a praxis-process, that may fail, but which, nevertheless, must be aimed at as a goal: It must be noted that these different structures - which all relate to the dialectical development of praxis in the social and historical field - refer us to a unification in progress and never to the accomplished unification, (except in certain relations to past-being that we shall find in problems of diachronic totalizations. (2: 349) I have elsewhere made a case that this is true even in the natural order, where trees and stars are constantly "recreated" for us by our scientific theories. Sartre's specific point here, toward the end of his historical reflections, is that the model of the socialist revolution should have been accepted as something that had to be reinvented for different peoples and nations. True, this would have implied risk; but a world without risk is but another form of our present hell. What then can one say about Sartre's ambitious project? It was a risk born of freedom and in recognition of freedom. Sartre himself refers to it as an "effort" directed to understanding our present historical condition to which other efforts are needed. Certainly, we do not have a discussion of the concrete relation of individual freedom to the specific sovereignty of the rulers of Western democracies. Nor do we have a discussion of the specific oppression in areas such as China, India, or Africa. Thus, the task of seeing the truth of the dialectic as a means of grasping our entire history is left as a conditional enterprise, one that will be true when and if we create the specific intellectual tools to do the job. On the other hand, with all these qualifications, I believe that Sartre's Critique is on the road to the truth of our history. The conditional supposition that we are living in one world controlled by the West is, in general, true. An ever-expanding totalizing-of-envelopment continues to arise in new places throughout the world. Each person more and more finds the truth of their historical existence to be elsewhere than in their own nations or regions, increasingly being used for purposes other than their own betterment, not in the old forms of Empire, but controlled, nevertheless, as a limited freedoms, that is, as a tool for the advancement of the few - "the precious ones," whose collective vow is to keep humanity fractured into pockets of poverty and subhumanity. 15

See Critique 2,347-365.1 see no reason to separate sections 2 and 3 in the text.

7 Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr

The chronological order of the French editions of the four major works we are examining - all published by Gallimard - places them about ten years apart: the work on ontology in 1943, the study of Genet in 1952, the Critique in i960, and the long - even for Sartre - work on Flaubert between 1971 and 1972. If I were adhering to this ordering, I should have thus examined Sartre's work on Genet after his work on ontology and before Sartre's study of history, but, to repeat, I thought it appropriate to consider the two philosophical biographies close together. What was Sartre writing in the years intervening these four major works? Taking as our guide Michel Rybalka's "selected" bibliography and keeping to the French editions, we can note seven works published prior to Being and Nothingness, eighteen prior to Genet, only four prior to the Critique 1, and, finally, seven prior to The Family Idiot.1 Together with the four we are studying, we have forty published works of philosophy and literature in a little more than thirty-five years - 1936-1972 - and several more essays followed until Sartre became almost completely blind and stopped writing a few years before his death in 1980. On the other hand, the posthumously published works make it evident that Sartre was writing continuously: We have already mentioned the second volume of the Critique as well as the Notebooks for an Ethics, and we could add The Freud Scenario published in French 1984 and in English in 1986.2 1 2

See Chapter 6, note 1 When Sartre could no longer write, he taped conversations with Benny Levi - attempting, to the last, I believe, to argue against himself. Some of these have been published Although, it is true that Sartre reviewed parts of the taped conversations, I still think we must approach these reflections in their proper context as primarily spoken words. Sartre was found of remarking that he thought with his pen, an apt expression that breaks with the brain-body dualism that has become so popular in contemporary American and British philosophy. Indeed, we know from the past, that regardless of what Sartre said about his works, that, when it came to his major writing, he returned to the basic insights of Being and 137

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The French title, Saint Genet: Comedien et Martyr, published by Gallimard in 1952, was translated by Frechtman in 1963, and I have already mentioned that I accept his reasons for translating the title as Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr^ What is appropriate to remark here is that this work has a concrete history in Sartre's own life. He had known Genet for some time, and, as Andrew Dobson notes, Sartre had been instrumental in obtaining recognition for Genet's works, and he joined Cocteau, Picasso, and others, in securing Genet's release from a life-time sentence for thefts.4 Sartre must thus have been pleased to accept Gallimard's invitation to write an introductory volume to a projected "complete" works of Genet. The six-hundred pages that emerged were no doubt startling to Genet, but now that we have access to the posthumously published six-hundred pages of the Notebooks for an Ethics, Sartre's work is more understandable. It is clear that Sartre had been concerned for a long time with some of the ethical issues that appear in his study of Genet. While he was not able to forge his earlier written reflections into a satisfactory book, one that he thought fit to publish - his attitude seemed to be that they were incomplete and not wrong - 1 believe the opportunity to reflect on the life of someone who challenged the social order enabled him to express his ethical views more concretely than would have been provided by a general book on ethics. If Sartre thus "used" Genet, I do not think the use inappropriate or in bad faith because, as the saint of evil, Genet's life and works are only comprehensible as a challenge to the established moral order. SAINT GENET

If one glances at the table of contents, which I will for the most part mention as I proceed, and which I give in their entirety as a note, it seem to me clear that Sartre is enjoying himself.5 Frequently the subdivisions are culled

3 4

5

Nothingness, moving them forward to new dimensions, true, but always within the context of the primary relational notion of truth* the world is the way it is because we are the way we are. See Chapter 2, note 2 Andrew Dobson, Jean-Paul Sartre and the Politics of Reason: A Theory of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 138. Book 1. The Metamorphosis The Melodious Child Dead in Me Long Before the Ax Chops Off My Head A Dissying Word Book II. First Conversion: Evil I Will Be the Thief I Decided to Be What Crime Made of Me The Eternal Couple of the Criminal and the Saint . I Is Another A Daily Labor, Long and Disappointing. . "To Succeed in Being All, Strive to Be Nothing in Anything .. " Cain Book III- Second Metamorphosis The Aesthete

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from Genet's own writings, and Sartre can allow himself the license to be somewhat literary himself, including following the older seventeenth and eighteenth form of putting certain nouns in capitals. Further, he has read all of Genet's works until 1952, the date of Sartre's work, and he obviously enjoys intertwining quotes and allusions with his discussion. Nevertheless, I should warn the reader that my discussion will, for the most part, not follow Sartre in his specific reflections on Genet's writings. I am more interested in the philosophical, that is to say, the ontological, framework of his reflections; specifically, I again aim at unveiling the logic of the book, which unlike Being and Nothingness, uses a dialectic. I grant that this use is here only implicit. I understand it to appear within the radical shifts of freedom that lead Genet to being an author. Also, I believe it useful to see the beginnings of a latent progressive-regressive understanding of Genet's life, as Sartre understands it to proceed through stages of conversion, from evil as evil, to evil as beauty, and then to evil as the written word. Let us now attempt to follow Sartre's dialectical comprehension of Genet's life and writings. BOOK I! THE METAMORPHOSIS

This first "book," pages 1-48, is the shortest of the four. It is termed a "Metamorphosis," although the true dialectic that is to govern Genet's life has not yet begun. Thus, this metamorphosis is not a proper conversion. A conversion presupposes a fundamental life style, a mixture of nonreflective and reflective states that is clearly allied to a maturely developed freedom and thus not fully realized by an infant or even a young child. It is, of course, true that, in Being and Nothingness, Sartre characterizes our fundamental project as "initial," and then "ultimate:" "My ultimate and initial project - for these are but one - is, we will see, always the outline of a solution to the problem of being. But this solution is not first conceived and then realized; we are this solution" (BN: 463). Nevertheless, it is clear that Sartre is referring to an adult's general outlook on life, formed over a considerable period of time and capable of being changed only with great effort: "I could have done otherwise but at what price?" (BN: 464). Strange Hell of Beauty.... I Went to Theft as to a Liberation, as to the Light Book IV. Third Metamorphosis: The Writer A Mechanism Having the Exact Rigor of Verse And I, Gentler than a Wicked Angel, Lead Her by the Hand On the Fine Arts Considered as Murder My Victory is Verbal and I Owe It to the Sumptuousness of the Terms Please Use Genet Properly Appendixes 1 Self-Portrait of the Good Citizen 2. The Tzedek Test 3. The Maids

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These opening pages then aim to help us understand the early beginning of Genet's project to embrace evil. Prior to acquiring a project, every child is innocent, absorbing life and responding to it. At first, Genet also lives his life with his foster parents, innocent of the psychological weight of having been an orphan. He is an orphan in the same sense that another child might limp and still play happily with friends. Still, let us not misunderstand the nature of childhood innocence; it does not eliminate a condition, merely the judgement about it. A child who limps truly limps, and the orphan Genet is an orphan. The point is that, at first, there is a certain openness to these childhood conditions; their true significance for the child is yet to be determined. At times, however, this openness to the future is denied the child. A child who limps is not lame until another says "Cripple!" And Genet was not a true orphan until his foster parents cried "Thief!" The two subdivisions, uThe Melodious Child Dead in Me Long Before the Ax Chops Off My Head" and "A Dissying Word," - the titles are a taste of Genet's own words about himself - refer to the death of his innocence long before that real death terminating a normal lifespan, which would provide a child the opportunity to mature and respond to adults more or less as an equal. Genet is denied the possibility of absorbing his orphaned state in a fruitful life project, for he is called a "thief" by those he most respects - his new adopted parents, his good parents, his parents who own property and who live amidst other property owners: "Our future burglar starts by learning absolute respect for property" (6). For those who own property and who define themselves by this ownership, the theft of their property is almost the murder of their bodies and souls. Even if Genet were not fully aware of all this, we might ask how he could steal from those he most respected. We must answer that he could not and did not steal from them. Let us recall Genet's first "thefts." The child takes small things and puts them in his pocket, but what he takes belong to "his" home. If he had been accepted by his foster parents, these innocent games would, at most, had occasioned some remarks about learning to respect another's property or perhaps only a smile: A daughter tries on a mother's dress or shoes; the mother enters the room, does she cry, "thief!"? Does she give the child a lecture about private property, or does she enjoy it all? True, Genet took things that he could put in his pocket. But the parents might have suspected the motive, or given him the benefit of the doubt: "He takes in order to convince himself that he has the right to take" (13). As destructive as was the label "thief," its true force arose from the way it cut into the union of these games of pilfering with Genet's desire to be a saint. What was the origin of Genet's desire to be a saint? One might be tempted to "derive" this desire for saintliness from his lack of knowing his true parents, and such a perspective would not be completely wrong. On the other hand, a child that is loved by his parents might desire to be a saint and we would then say that the desire arises from being cherished by the parents.

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Retrospectively, one can always find roots for the appearance of freedom, for freedom is born of a circumstance but not reducible to it. There is no abstract reason why Genet should wish to be a saint. Its substantive significance, however, is that this very desire slowly turns all his childhood acts into quasi poetic acts, acts that later Sartre will refer to as "gestures." The characteristic of these acts is that they have more meaning in them then first meets the eye. This is no doubt true of all childhood acts; but the consistency of a desire that is never revealed to the parents can raise a child's behavior into a particularly complex level. This was also the case with Gustave Flaubert: Flaubert's daydreams were not what they appeared to be, and if his parents were too refined to label him an "idiot" in front of him, the unspoken judgement was clear to the child. Genet, on the other hand, meets his judgement head on, and the name "thief" thus cut through both the pilfering and the desire to be a saint. Genet's stability is completely destroyed; he is not even an adopted child. In a remarkable passage that again reminds us of the force of the "look," Sartre writes: But when children are subjected from their earliest days, to a great social pressure, when their Being-for-Others is the subject of a collective image accompanied by value judgements and social prohibitions, the alienation is sometimes total and definitive. (34) What is the specific character of this early and total alienation? Simply, that for the child, other people are portrayed as more important by nature than the child can ever be, no matter what its efforts. Moreover, the truth of this claim is known only by these others. The others, the just, have the secret to the meaning of the child's life, and the child must learn that meaning from them. Of course, in the abstract, every child depends upon adults, but in a normal healthy situation, the "secret meaning" of the child's life is that it is cherished and that it will mature to be the adult's equal or superior. The situation, however, is here different. As Sartre observes in the Notebooks for an Ethics, a child born into slavery, particularly in the second generation, learns the meaning of slavery both from its parents and from the masters, but what is taught from both sources is a lesson in its essential subhumanity: "By alienation, we mean a certain type of relations that man has with himself, with others, and with the world, where he posits the ontological priority of the Other. The Other is not some specific person but a category or, if you will, a dimension, an element" (Notebooks: 382). That is, the cultural situation is made to appear as if the natural order of things required slavery and that the master merely embodied an aspect of the natural order of the world. In a similar way, Genet learns about his own subhumanity first from his foster parents and then from the just of the world. What separates Genet from most others whom society slowly recreates as subhumans is that he accepts this judgement about himself and devotes his life to learning its true meaning: "Genet does not want to change anything at all... He loves French society as the Negroes

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love America, with a love that is full of hatred and, at the same time, desperate" (55). We must not pass too quickly over the strangeness of this alienation. No devil could devise a more complete dehumanization of a potential human than we have done. We have made slavery work. And we make a society work through its absolute need for outcasts such as criminals. The strangeness of Genet's life is that he aims to accept it all, to be conscious of it all, without, however, overcoming his essential subhumanity. The conversion to writing does "redeem" him to some extent, but he remains, at least until the time of Sartre's writing, the outcast, accepting and hating his role as the evil that defines the justice of the just. Thus, very early in life, Genet aims to be the very thief he is seen to be. He must discover the meaning of his destiny and yet he implicitly knows already that he will keep one precious quality for himself - saintliness. Saintliness will become the basis for an optimism that sustains Genet amidst terrible sufferings and humiliations. Sartre refers to this optimism as "the very orientation of his freedom" (47). Still, to repeat, at this initial stage, roughly from seven to ten years of age, Genet is yet to learn about the substance of his strange desire to be the evil the just need to remain just. BOOK IK FIRST CONVERSION: EVIL

Innocence has been lost but no tears are being shed. A strong saintly will begins to emerge, and it will be present, in altered forms, in the two subsequent conversions to evil as beauty and to evil as the written word. The two following conversions depend upon understanding Genet's slow formation of his fundamental project to evil. Strictly speaking, this is not a conversion, but the gradual reflective understanding of the direction his life is taking, and the acceptance of his path. How does one grow into a desire for pure evil? This long section, almost half the book - pages 49-353 - reflects Sartre's effort to unveil this strange dialectic between evil and saintliness that covers Genet's life from about ten to twenty years of age. It is dangerous to impose a logic onto the seven subdivisions of the text - 1 will repeat their titles shortly - and, I give myself the same warning I give others about letting Sartre's work unfold according to its own logic. But then I have read the work many times, and with this in mind, I tend to see an implicit progressive-regressive movement in these seven sections. Thus, I am inclined to interpret the first four sections, within this book, as an initial progressive attempt to grasp Genet's project as it slowly matures in his life, witnessing it, as it were, from without. Sections five and six can now be regarded as a regressive stage, not in the sense of dating the project - that has already been done but in the sense of attempting to get within Genet's psyche to understand what the desire to be a saint could possible mean for the child and then the adult We may simply note at this introductory stage that, for Sartre, saintliness is not

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itself a specific deed, but a quality of a deed that, in a dialectical relationship with a consciousness, keeps the inner self aloof from others. Finally, in the last single section, "Cain," Sartre attempts to bring both studies together in a new progressive movement that now aims at understanding the strange but free adventure which is Genet's desire to be the saint of evil Thus at the end of the sixth section, as he is introducing this last seventh subdivision, Sartre writes: "I have just made a chemical analysis of this divided soul: it must now be recomposed. I shall undertake to draw a portrait of Genet the adolescent" (249). Let us make a brief effort to follow Sartre, using Sartre's own subdivisions and my own interpretation of their logical role in the book. A) First Progressive Unveiling of Genet's Project - pages 49-149: Sartre's own subdivisions : (1) / Will Be the Thief; (2) I Decided to Be What Crime Made of Me; (3) The Eternal Couple of the Criminal and the Saint...; (4) I Is Another Whatever judgement one might make at the end of a sympathetic study and we have seen in our earlier discussion and will repeat here that Sartre will make a judgement of sorts about Genet's project - we must allow ourselves to be open to the possibility of this strange project, if we are to comprehend Genet's life and writings: "If we want to understand what he is today and what he writes, we must go back to this original choice and try to give a phenomenological description of it" (51). Every progressive movement begins by revealing the intelligibility of the situation in which a specific act arises. Once again, let us return to the firm footing that is given by Sartre's example in The Search for a Method: I am reading in a library and I see a friend opening a window. The action is intelligible to me; my friend wishes to let air into the room. Then, I understand (regressive aspect) that the library is indeed hot, although I myself had not experienced the heat. Finally, the new progressive stage that aims at revealing the difference between my freedom that kept me at my reading and my friend's who became aware of the stuffy condition before I did. Let us now attempt to trace the basic steps in this progressive study that covers the first hundred pages or so of this long three hundred page study of Genet's first conversion to evil. I will take my start from some passages toward the end of the previous section, with Sartre's observation that, "Genet is a child who has been convinced that he is, in his very depth, Another than self (35). If we glance ahead at the fourth section of this study and note the title, "I Is Another" (138-149), we see the basic thrust of Sartre's attempt to grasp the intelligibility of Genet's life project of being the evil the world needs to be good. That is to say, the judgement "thief" imposed upon this innocent child has restructured his life both from without and then from within. We must thus recall, once again, some of the features of human reflection as it takes place privately, while, nevertheless, being conditioned by others. Once again we must return to the early insight of Transcendence of the Ego, namely, that we know ourselves more intimately than others but not

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necessarily more truly. Thus, we must resist the temptation to believe that reflection could have led Genet to discover that he is of equal worth to every other person and that he is oppressed only by bad-faith social conditions. Such a view is contrary to Sartre's entire philosophy, for it imposes on us an essential nature. The truth is more harrowing. We can, and we do, induce subhumanity in others. Genet is condemned to an impossible human existence, namely to be an imitation human, a "homunculus" a quasi robot that seeks to know its creator: "Thus, Genet seeks his Being. He looks for it first within himself; he spies on his inner life. But nothing comes of it, for the spy and what he spies on are one and the same" (73). To be a subhuman is to be a human of sorts, and as such, one has an ethics; but it is an ethics created by the fully human, namely an ethics of being as opposed to an ethics of doing. The characteristics of this ethics of being pages 86-98 or, indeed, until page 149 in Sartre's text - are not easy to unravel. Sartre's work here is long; but, in this case, I believe that he is attempting to cover too much ground too quickly, to sketch the ethics he was not able to complete in the then unpublished The Notebooks for an Ethics. I thus see him here as attempting to condense many of the insights of that work, as well as a work on Nietzche that has been lost, and who knows what else? This much is clear, that is to say dialectically clear: A proper ethics of doing is both necessary and impossible; for on the one hand those in good faith must attempt to live it and yet its formulation is, at present, always haunted by an ethics of being. Let us consider this ethics of being. Sartre refers to the three ideals of an ethics and notes that Genet retains only two: "The sage does not interest him at all" (87). And thus to be a sage somehow represents one ideal of the ethics of being as opposed to an ethics of doing. We must gleam the other two ideals from the text; but let us begin with the sage. In an ethics of being, someone in the society knows the true ethical order, whether it be Plato's philosopher king, a political leader, or a religious leader. The supporting structures for these truths do not exist here within our commonsense understanding of life on our Earth, but in another realm accessible to the sage - Plato's World of Ideas, Augustine's Mind of God, insights of world leaders, market insights that only economists have, or whatever tends to make our commonsense understanding of the world insignificant. It is not surprising that Genet will have none of this, for his saintliness reveals to him the secret "truth" of his life, which, in effect, is that the just know his true self better than he knows it, and that his only role is to be their Evil. The other two ideals of an ethics of being apply more directly to the individual who attempts to practice such an ethics, and they would seem to be, first, a priority of the universal over the particular, and second, an elusive sense of election. The first is simply an ethical requirement that a specific act be just if and only if it fits within a universal code of behavior. In the concrete, however, this requirement concerns a fundamental respect for private property. The universal laws that directly or indirectly support private property

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apply both to the just and to the criminal, to the former as a particular representative of the good citizen and to the latter as a representative of the outcast who continually threatens the possessions of the good citizen. The third ideal of election is subtle. In substance, it is the belief of the just that they deserve to be on the right side of the law and that the criminal deserves to be an outcast. Needless to say, the ideal of election is subdued in a sophisticated city life, with notions of good deeds, good luck, and good upbringing; but none of these effectively diminish either the advantages of the rich or our vast prison-industrial complex that aims at protecting these advantages. In passing we should note again Sartre's ambivalent stance toward this ethics. In his description of a Christian ethics, he repeats that he does not condemn, for he is convinced that ethics is impossible but necessary. To aid in understanding Sartre's perspective, I again return to my analogy, given in Chapter 2, of imagining that Germany won the Second World War and that we are living under the general moral imperatives of the Third Reich. In this situation a true ethics would be impossible and yet certain behavior would still be wrong, for example, lying, stealing, and killing. These actions would be wrong and yet we would have to take into account those unjustly oppressed by the overall immoral imperatives of the society: Would one be lying in not revealing the hiding place of a Jew? In a Kantian ethics, we would have to reply that we are not permitted to do evil in order that good may follow. But, effectively, this may support the status quo. I believe that Sartre's answer would be that in this case, the individual who wishes to protect the Jew must create his or her own morality, depending upon the conditions. In a sense, this creation would, nevertheless, be a universal token to all others who are in similar circumstances; but here and now it stands as a creation of a singular universal. On the other hand, granting the nobility of this ethics of doing, it still refers to us, the more or less privileged, for even the Jew one protects is not starving as those in India or Africa, for example. If we turn our attention to the dire poor, to those suffering under wars sponsored by the powerful nations of the world, what shall we say about their responsibility? We wish them to stay within the law, but the law does not benefit them; it benefits us. A universal ethics would have to take into consideration the fundamental injustice that is the condition of the marginalized peoples of the world; that is to say, it would first and foremost pertain to our obligations toward them. These obligations are clear; and when we hear them, we then might turn our thought to their obligations to us. I take the impetus of Sartre's moral reflections to be that, for the most part, we - the relatively well-to-do - are a long way from healing the wounds of our historical exploitation of others. However, our present task is to bring ourselves closer to Genet, in order to understand the inner dialectic that governs his unique ethics of being. We have noted much of this in our overview. To repeat and to be brief: We must go back to the original formation of his project and recall that Genet is a thief

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who aimed to change his motives for stealing. He must steal to live, but that is a good and Genet wants to steal to be evil. He thus attempts to will pure evil and to forge his actions so that they represent this pure evil. That is, he desires his actions to be gestures which embody pure evil. But this project fails; good always finds a way into the project. Still, he believes himself to be one of the elect - "His election comes from the society of decent people" (142). But how will he live this election? "By a stroke of genius he inverts his project radically" (144). Genet wills his failure to will pure evil and, in this way, saintliness enters into his life - for the saint succeeds in this world by not succeeding. Again, the project fails; for, unlike the traditional saint, there is no external God to set things right. Genet is his own god, and this god also fails. Thus, Genet will always be defeated, but he knows this and accepts it. This lived defeat is the subject of the section, "The Eternal Couple Of The Criminal And The Saint" - from The Maids. This lived defeat is a contradiction that can only be sustained by the constant and continuing effort to make it exist. Each concrete effort fails, but there will be others. Pure evil cannot be and the effort to make it be cannot be, but the effort to will this impossibility can be; that is, pure evil can exist as an effort to make it exist. This effort, Sartre writes, "is expressed in two sentences from Our Lady of Flowers: T h e Eternal passed by in the form of a Pimp,' and 'God was hollow'" (135). Genet's saintliness also affects his homosexuality, which usually implies reciprocity - it is a way of going out to another. Genet, however, appears to be a homosexual; but, as fake queen, his homosexuality is all a play of mirrors. Genet is a fake-queen making love to fake-pimps, who are, for him, merely representatives, playing roles of being great thieves and great murderers. He does not require nor does he wish that his pimps have actually committed murder - for then they would have created their own destinies. Their only function is to allow Genet to weave his own great destinies for them. And, if they should try to get close to him, he has a last resort to keep them at a distance, namely, the constant threat of betraying them. For Genet has chosen betrayal as the sign of his saintliness, which we must now attempt to understand more fully. B) A Regressive Understanding of Genet's Project - pages 150-249: Sartre's own subdivisions: (5) A Daily Labor, Long and Disappointing ...; (6) To Succeed in Being All, Strive to Be Nothing in Anything ... Sartre is very explicit that he cannot go along with Genet's desire to be a saint. Still, Sartre's overall sympathy remains; his task is not to approve but to understand. We can thus note that Genet does not invent the Manichean opposition between good and evil; he merely reflects it back to us, particularly as it is related to our prison-industrial complex. Still, we can press further: "Why, indeed, the desire to be the saint of evil?" In truth, there is no answer; we have here reached the bedrock of Genet's freedom. Our task, then, in these sections is concrete; that is, we aim to understand the specific

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dialectic between evil and saintliness that was to a great degree the substance of Genet's life. The very words of the subdivisions reveal the tension of this strange dialectic to be the saint of evil: "A Daily Labor, Long and Disappointing" and "To Succeed in Being All, Strive to Be Nothing in Anything" - Saint John of the Cross. Specifically, the dialectic of these two long, complex sections is an examination of the staggering impossibility of willing pure evil, and of Genet's attempt to accept and live this impossibility. Sartre brings out the uniqueness of Genet's joining of evil with saintliness through a comparison with such traditional saints as Saint Theresa, with Jouhandeau - a Christian and a homosexual, with Nietzsche, and with Gide. I have already given some of the general themes of these comparisons in Chapter 2 and my main task here is to show how they fit into the overall logic of Sartre's work on Genet. Because, in a sense, Sartre's uses this work to give us a long reflection on the general relations of good and evil, and because this relation is the central theme of these sections, it will be useful to begin here once again by noting the impossibility of willing evil as such. A pure will to evil cannot exist; good will always intrude. For example, given Genet's desire to do evil, he must also act, if this desire is to be more than an exercise in self-deception. Genet thus steals and he lives by his stealing. And life is good; it is at least better than death. Here we should note that, while Genet steals, he does not murder or aim to murder; but we must not attempt to forge this into a sign of tenderness, or to a movement to the good. Rather, the absence of a concrete move to commit murder is a sign of his attempt to will pure evil. A murder implies that one take another's life as somehow important for one's own life, and no one is that important to Genet. Then too, for a theft to approach pure evil, it must not obviously lead to good results. For example, to murder to escape is not to will the murder itself but the escape. Even in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood an essential aspect of the murders was the fear of being caught, even though the fear was stupid and not at all warranted by the circumstances. "Evil," Sartre notes, "is the action that we have no reason to perform and every reason to avoid" (153). But how does one commit such an action? It is impossible. The action will fail to be simply evil. But Genet knows this; he is lucid. He, Genet, cannot embody pure evil, but he can aim at embracing the failure to be pure evil. He steals money and buys food and lodgings, but he knows that the prison-industrial complex will finally capture him. He does not will the capture - for this would imply that the thefts were not real or properly performed. No, he wills not the capture, but its ever present possibility; that is, he wills the ultimate success of the just of the world over him. He wills his failure to be integrated in society. But to will failure is just as difficult as to will evil - good begins to creep in once again. How does one keep good out of evil? Not by one grand effort, but by "A Daily Labor, Long and Disappointing." Is this not the labor of all saints? The traditional saint, and variations upon it, aims to challenge the

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wickedness of the world by their personal sacrifices. As much as possible they will try to forgo the pleasures of the world, but they thereby aim "7b Succeed in Being All." God is to be their reward, and, even amidst their sacrifices, "God was the net" (232). But Genet has no net, except the just and they will as soon kill him as look upon him. Genet knows he will fail both in his attempts to do pure evil and also in his attempts to will his own failure. Where is he to turn? Let'us backtrack and note that the desire to embrace the failure to do evil can appear to be a mere subjective twist on evil. There must be deeds; deeds that are not evil like thefts but failures of evil. Can there be such deeds? Only one, betrayal. Betrayal is not like a theft, for it yields no good; it is hateful to one's companions and, most importantly, to oneself. The good pays in term of good; and evil must pay in terms of evil - it must be hateful to do. Although one cannot will failure as failure one can will a concrete embodiment, namely, a pimp who will be betrayed. One then does not will the pimp or a homosexual companion, or any of the pleasures connected with these, but the saintly hallow of immanent betrayal which surrounds each. Every gesture of Genet will now aim at betrayal. What will be the cost? No one else knows this but Genet himself. He seems to betray not out of spite or some other understandable motive, but to make evil pure? We now have a first grasp of the effort to be the saint of evil; but we must return with Sartre to reexamine Genet's total project once again. C) A Deeper Progressive Approach to Genet's Project - pages 250-353: Sartre's own single final subdivision: (7) Cain. "I wish to describe him from within, as he appeared to himself at about the age of eighteen" (250). We may ask again, how does Sartre think that he can get inside someone's head to discover what they were thinking at a certain age? It is the consistent view of Sartre that our consciousness, which is always one with our freedom, is first an action and only secondarily something residing within us. We know Genet's actions and the circumstances. We have his writings and Sartre had access to conversations - we shall see in Chapters 8 and 9 that Sartre will repeat this procedure of moving from a circumstance to an inner project and then from the project back to the circumstance in The Family Idiot. We thus begin at the same place at which the study opened, namely, the early games, the pilfering and the games of saintliness. At first, Genet did not understand these in full conceptual awareness. Certainly, the pilfering was not understood by the child as stealing - he was innocent. Later it would become his project as he wills himself to be the thief he was seen to be. Also, saintliness was simply a mode of behavior, vaguely imbued from his Christian environment but propably not a conscious choice: "It did not occur to Genet all at once to become a saint or to give the name of Saintliness to his longing to do harm" (194).

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But we now situate ourselves later in his life, and we look back in order to understand the hardened criminal he has become. Criminal, yes; but he survives, although he does not seem to have any concern for his body. He suffers in prisons and receives little consolation from his homosexuality. Sartre asks, "What does he love?" He answers, "Life itself." But not the actions themselves that are the substance of his life. These he does but he does not put his self into them: "What he prizes above all is the self-awareness of consciousness" (250). This is not surprising. Genet was called a thief when innocent and thus thrust back to himself to discover the meaning of his foster-parent's judgement of him. What does he find in his reflections? He discovers a self already judged. Can their judgement of him be wrong? Later, of course, he will understand more fully the criminal system; but, nevertheless, he will be continually haunted by this original judgement of him by his just, property-owning foster parents. As with Gustave Flaubert, Sartre here notes, "He does not want his childhood desires to be fulfilled. He retains them as wounds" (253). Still, Genet, like all of us, perceives the world. But it appears differently to him. The "meanings" are the same as ours: A ten dollar bill is a ten dollar bill. But all the "significations" are different. You and I have earned this ten dollar bill as one of the just, and by work or luck we may acquire more. But all money, all possessions, all reality signifies for Genet that which belongs to the just and which can never be his by right. In the previous section, Sartre had noted that the traditional saint gives up what he possesses and thereby mystifies the poor to believe that they should give up what they do not possess. Thus mystified, the poor become subhuman in this life believing that God will make them equal - if not superior - to the rich in the next life. Genet also does not have anything he can honestly call his own, but he is too self-conscious to believe that this is a mere accident. The church, Sartre notes, aims to have the poor believe in the merit of their poverty, and society wants Genet to believe in the merit of his being condemned as a thief. But Genet will not go along. He, alone, will determine the moral worth of his being an outcast. So much for the general theme of the text, but it is appropriate in this second part of our study to be more attentive to the book itself, and thus I should note that Sartre gives this last section of Book II, "Cain," five subdivisions: (1) The Emotional Climate; (2) The External World; (3) Language; (4) The Rejection of History; (5) The Whirligigs. The aim of these subdivisions is to glimpse the inner tensions of Genet's life, between fifteen and twenty-five, prior to his conversions to evil as beauty and to evil as the written word. Perhaps, the introductory paragraph to the last subdivision, "The Whirligigs," imparts some of the flavor and content of these sections. Sartre writes about reading one of Genet's sentences, "'Jean Genet, the weakest of all and the strongest,'" and he adds, "The kind of sentence that one reads casually and that the hasty reader imagines he has understood" (329). Sartre thus rejects the more obvious meaning that Genet is the weakest in one respect but the strongest in another respect, as unworthy both of Genet's lucidity about himself and of his

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desire to impart easily digestible truths for the stomachs of the just. Indeed, as the saint of evil, Genet shuns truth and reality, except insofar as their use may point to the disappearance of reality into appearance and the true into the false. Thus, we must attempt to understand the claim in its fullest, unqualified and contradictory sense, namely, that from all respects Genet is simultaneously the weakest and the strongest. This contradiction points to the impossible goal of being the saint of evil, an impossibility that nevertheless is the sustained inner tension that governs Genet's life: "He refers to two opposing systems of values and refuses to choose one or the other" (330). As usual, Sartre gives us an example. In the one system of values, the pimp represents the strength of evil and Genet is a mere nothing, a slave whose womanly appearance fails even on the level of appearance; that is, he cannot be the woman the pimp really needs to make his living. Genet is thus the failure of his own evil. In the other system of values, however, Genet is lucidity and the pimp is density; and lucidity leads density as a child leads a dog, but to destruction through betrayals. The dialectic of that inner tension seeks to be the saint of evil "whirls" between these two systems of values, while aiming at sustaining both in every action. Exhausted by the effort to keep both systems of values moving together, Genet "gets panicky and tries to wake up" (342). But then he loves life enough to take "breaks," which consist in lucidly allowing himself to lie to himself about his condition, lies that allow him, now and then, to enjoy a moment of pleasure. If we were to catch him in his lies to himself, he would no doubt remind us that all criminals lie about themselves, and he has made himself into a true criminal. I listed Sartre's five subdivisions of this section "Cain," and I have discussed only the last one, and, if the truth be known, I have hardly skimmed the surface of that complex last subdivision. I have no excuse, except that I do not wish to write another long book about Sartre's own big books. Then too, this is an invitation; the text here is long and complex, but fairly straight forward in numerous subdivisions within the sections. Still, I should and will back up, at least briefly, to those four sections that I have skipped. We have already touched upon the first, "The Emotional Climate," which aims to give us the specific quality of Genet's lucidity, his self-awareness of his outcast state. Once again, we must not confuse this with ordinary self-awareness; for example, the kind that you and I have about ourselves. I assume that we were more or less loved as children and we were thus incorporated within the human fold - ambiguous and hierarchal as that may be. Through our give and take with others we have learned to appreciate ourselves, to be of worth in our own eyes, and, in the eyes of others, at least some others. But the selfconsciousness of an true outcast is totally different; reflection reveals to the outcast that it is by nature outside the fold of a true humanity. The outcast sees himself as essentially subhuman in relation to our humanity. Now Genet is an

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outcast and his lucidity is that of an outcast. What separates him from most outcasts is that he understands something of the mechanism that brought him forth as subhuman; but it would be a total mistake to think that this lucidity raises him above his subhuman condition. At least until his conversion to writing, he remains subhuman; but he strangely attempts to embrace his subhumanity by willing it for himself as it has been willed on him by others. This is his saintliness. All of the above has been noted earlier, but what this section aims to add to this understanding is some appreciation of the distinct dialectic of this saintliness; that is, the "flavor" he has of himself - his amazement of himself and of the world that produced him. Unlike Camus, Genet does not think that the world is absurd. On the contrary, the world is filled with the meaning given it by the just, and his sufferings arise within the complex of those meanings. Thus, for Genet, the world is as it should be, otherwise his sufferings have no meaning. For example, everything in the world speaks to the normal person as something to be understood and used. Tools are ours to use. Genet has tools also, but as a thief. Tools do not socialize him. Therein lies the temptation to quietism: should he act as little as possible and scorn the world? But Genet is a genuine thief and thus tools as well as nature itself speak to him in a very special way. True, he must use tools and nature itself to steal and to live. But they are foreign to him; he is a visitor from another planet. He holds the hammer and the apple with a lucid strangeness, in which he is aware that his gestures do not fit into the natural course of things. He uses a hammer to break a window to steal money and he sits down to eat an apple. It is all a miracle, all completely outside the natural order of things - he enters a house, takes money, eats an apple without having done a day's "honest" labor. How is this lucid thief to speak about these miracles? Not through ordinary language, which, Sartre notes, has itself "been in a state of crisis since the First World War" (276). Many words are too old for us, but we adjust to them in our daily life. Genet, however, sees the entire linguistic system as belonging to the just, even the ordinary lie: "When one tells a lie, language is isolated, stands out, imbibes its significations and constitutes an order apart: the order of the trap and the sham" (282). But, as an outcast, Genet sees the lie as his proper domain. He sometimes tells the truth in order to better his plan for a theft, but he is acting; the truth is here appearance. When he does speak to other prisoners, it is in argot, which, Sartre notes, is a poetic language in which an infant is a "crapper." However, even here, Genet's aim to be the saint of evil puts him on the other side of argot, for he speaks it in order to betray his fellow criminals. On the reverse side of tools, on the reverse side of nature, on the reverse side of language, Genet, like Cain, becomes a pure object, hateful to the just and to his fellow criminals. He thus stands out in the world as devoid of "history," and thus we have arrived at Sartre's fourth section, "The Rejection of History." A "rejection," because it is Genet himself who has chosen the degree

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of his isolation, particularly through his betrayals; and, further, Genet's saintliness gives a certain unchangeable quality to his life: Love does not affect him; he is above it all because he has been denied it all. Genet is in the world and out of the world, his gestures reveal the "abjection of the tramp" and the "spiritual exercise" of the saint. In concluding this discussion of Sartre's description of Genet's first conversion to evil, we must not forget that this examination begins within the light of our progressive awareness that Genet is to become a writer. Sartre's aim is not to rob the final conversion to writing of its genuineness, but only to reveal the conditions for its possibility. Genet, however, has one more leap to make before reaching the possibility of his conversion to the written word. BOOK III! SECOND METAMORPHOSIS: T H E AESTHETE

This relatively short third book (355-425) describing Genet's conversion to evil as beauty is divided into two sections, "Strange Hell Of Beauty" and "/ Went To Theft As To A Liberation, As To The Light" I have already discussed some of the dialectic concerned in these sections in Chapter 2. My main purpose here is to give my reader a taste of the actual textual development of this dialectic between evil and beauty as it prepares us for Sartre's interpretation of Genet's last conversion to writing. The two main texts that Sartre examines are The Miracle of the Rose and The Thief s Journal Beginning with Genet's writings, Sartre reminds us again that, even in our reflections about Genet's early life and its conversions to evil as evil and then to evil as beauty, we are working backward through his own written words about himself. With this in mind, it is appropriate to note that Sartre does not always accept the literal explanations that Genet gives about his own "conversions." After all, he has also told us that all thieves lie; but for a lie to be effective it must be believable and thus at least have the appearance of truth. Sartre sees his task as concerned not so much with separating the appearance from the truth as revealing again their specific dialectical relation. What is the general form of this dialectical relation? We have seen it again and again; it never disappears but always emerges in a new form, namely the lucid choice to live to the full the impossibility of living: "Suicide or jail?" "Jail!, but my jail." In the first conversion to evil - more or less completed when he was fifteen - actual prison, as well as the ever possibility of going to prison, was accepted by him both as the punishment due the saint of evil and as redirected back to the just as the evil defining their good. For the next ten years he wanders, steals, goes in and out of prison, practices homosexuality, and is the girl queen who prefers to sell her body to pimps, whom she/he also robs and betrays. But then, when he is twenty six, Genet meets a professional thief who induces in him a "revelation" and a "liberation."

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To repeat, Sartre does not always take Genet's words on their face value. He agrees that there is a genuine conversion, but not a liberation from evil. Rather, Genet's own future actions point to the altering of the pursuit of evil as evil into the pursuit of evil as beauty. We are again concerned with the specificity of Genet's lucidity, that is, his particular consciousness of himself and the world. Sartre reminds us that we have his own texts, and thus "perhaps Genet will let us catch a glimpse of the particular structure of his beauty, that is, the law of his imagination" (385). Although the details of the argument in the two sections that make up this "book" are extremely difficult to unravel, the general logic is, more or less, clear - a certain patience is required of the reader, even in this summary. I will begin briefly with the second section, for it illumines the first: Genet has been stealing but not as a "professional." The meeting with the professional thief, Guy, converts him from a life as a passive girl-queen to an active professional thief, engrossed in the world of theft just as an engineer can be engrossed in altering the world through constructions. Genet turns from being a girlqueen to a male homosexual. Sartre accepts that a conversion has happened, but not the one recounted by Genet; further, the conversion occurred earlier and more gradually than Genet would have us believe: "[H]e thinks he is still living beneath the sun of Satan when a new sun arises: Beauty" (355). Now we can turn our attention to the first section, which is divided into three subsections, "The Image," The Gesture," and "The Word," and we should understand that we are concerned with Sartre's own interpretation of the significance of Genet's meeting with Guy. What, then, is the gist of these three subsections? Simply, that Genet has not, in fact, abandoned the primacy of evil in his life. Nevertheless, the pursuit of evil shifts its focus, namely, toward a reconstruction of beauty. The just of the world are defined by a certain orientation to the good - albeit it is all in bad faith, for it is the prostitution of the good by the sole goal of owning property. Genet, however, does not object to this - it is the way of the world, and it is the good that defines his evil. But the just also have an orientation to beauty; if nothing more than their contemplation of their properties. Should the saint of evil not also steal this beauty? The question, at first, remained an abstract possibility, and the conversion is the metamorphosis of the abstract into the real. Let us attempt to understand Genet's goal of stealing from the just not only their property but the beauty of their property. The vision of beauty alters Genet. But how? Sartre gives an example of a king who goes to war and takes a portrait of his beloved with him. He falls in love with the beauty of the portrait, and when he returns home, he beholds his beloved and her beauty falling short of the beauty in the portrait. The king still loves his beloved, but now only insofar as she resembles the portrait. Right-thinking people will say that the king is mad. Sartre answers, "No, he was not mad, he had become evil" (356). Genet will become this king. Moving from the image to the gesture to the word, Sartre sees Genet, particularly

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in Our Lady of the Flowers, altering the real into the imaginary and then reinstating the imaginary in the real, while still aiming to retain its character as the imaginary. Let us reflect: We may save to buy a house or a car or to take a vacation, and in each case we aim to posses the real house, car, or vacation. True, when owned, each may fall short of our dreams. That is life, we will say, and we accept the reality for what it is. On the other hand, let us grant that we attempt to hold onto both our dream and the reality which falls short of it. We then, as it were, pass through the reality to the dream, which returns to make the reality appear to us more beautiful than it is. Our house is not our dream house, true, but our dream of our dream house imparts a glow to our real house. We thus choose the imaginary over the real, and, for Sartre, we begin to understand Genet's aesthetic conversion. All of the above is somewhat abstract, and we should move forward with Sartre, to a more concrete understanding. Prior to this conversion, the fake girl-queen and fake strong man were preferred to their real counterparts, because they each reflected the evil that is hidden in a real queenly woman or a true strong man. That is to say, the femininity and the strength of the just is rotten to the core, because it is defined through the femininity and the strength of the outcasts of society. This second conversion to evil as beauty aims to exhibit a deeper dependence of the just on the outcast. Let us grant that the male queen is usually ugly when compared to a real queenly looking woman, and, further, the pimp usually looks like a strong sissy compared to a real hero of a man. In the first conversion to evil, Genet, as it were, passes through all of this to focus upon the degree to which they, nevertheless, still define their counterparts. In this second conversion, however, the ugliness and the weakness are now explicitly brought forth and gloried in. Thus, in this second conversion, the imaginary beauty and strength rebound to the male queen and to the pimp, making their beauty more real than that of their true counterparts. Can this inversion work and still keep beauty beautiful? No, we cannot go that far; in reality, a true womanly beauty outshines the male-queen. A deeper alteration of beauty itself is needed, namely, the very eminence of beauty must be shown to be cherished only as an appearance, precisely as this appearance is more real than either real beauty or real ugliness. Sartre quotes Our Lady of the Flowers, in which the sentence, "I'm dropping a pearl," means that one has emitted a slow warm fart that envelops and isolates one more perfectly than if one were decked out in real pearls (388). We are not concerned here with the preference of fake pearls for real pearls. Cultured pearls are a human product made to imitate real pearls. The imagination here merely aims at resemblance, and it embodies itself in the resemblance. A fart that is a pearl destroys the beauty of both the real and the imitation pearl. You will say, "yes," but who sees a fart as a pearl? Why Genet, of course. Real pearls are real, because both the just and God see them as real; and a warm fart is a pearl, because Genet, the true and the only saint of evil, sees it as such.

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Genet makes the fart into a pearl; but what has this to do with the world? Genet lives in the real world, which for him is prison or the constant possibility of prison; he acts, he steals like a professional - carefully - and is seldom caught in the act. He would like to lead all the just into his derealization of the real into the imaginary-that-is-more-real-than-the-real. Anticipating the development in The Family Idiot, Sartre writes, "It is in the Objective Mind ... in Culture that he wants to make holes and contrive dizzying falls" (420). As yet, however, Genet does not have the means to reach others. At present, his saintliness again saves him: his world is private, true, but that is the lot of the saint and the outcast. For Sartre, the liberation referred to by Genet is, nevertheless, genuine; but not in the way recounted by Genet. Thefts cannot liberate, and if a thief makes a profession of stealing, then he is merely taking a cynical and amoral path to life. The professional thief is a normalized individual, who has no particular interest in evil as such or in the power of the imaginary. The professional thief merely seeks an easy way of becoming rich. If Genet had taken this course, "he would not even be able to understand that there are people who fling themselves into the mad enterprise of writing" (406). But Genet did enter the mad enterprise of writing, and, again, the preconditions had to be present, and they had to be present in such a way that, when Genet wrote, one could retrospectively find, not the reality of writing itself, but, as Kant would say, the conditions for its possibility. BOOK IV: THIRD METAMORPHOSIS: THE WRITER

I will postpone for a few paragraphs a discussion of the overall argument of the five sections that compose Book IV, in order to reflect, in a very general way, upon the conditions that made Genet the writer possible. If Genet had died before writing, no one but himself would have been aware of his incredibly consistent and "saintly" intention to seek first evil as evil and then evil as beauty. Genet does write, but let us try and prepare ourselves for his strange written words. There are many reason why people write about themselves, and let us grant that frequently these writings do not truly reflect their lives. The best and the most honest of efforts will fall short. But, for the most part, these writings, as, indeed, others, arise from speaking and the normal writings that occupy our lives, such as letters, filling out forms, applications for jobs, etc. I do not intend to pass over the distinct efforts that make a writer a writer. Does not Sartre regard it as a "mad" profession, and does not his interest in Flaubert arise to a great extent from his quest to answer for himself the meaning of this strange dedication to writing that is the life an author? Still, as we approach Genet writings, we must be prepared for something different. Genet always lied. If he told the truth it was only as a means to steal or betray. He loved his own consciousness of evil, his choice of it as the evil defining the good of the just. The struggle to be consistent in this impossible desire

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led him deeper and deeper into himself - real communication was impossible. What saved him from madness was that he combined this impossible inner tension with a somewhat sober outlook on the world, one that required actions - he would steal, be captured, escape, act the girl-queen, become a male lover of males, then become professional, apparently never, or seldom, being caught in his role as a thief - that is, he survived, living a strange, full life. Then Genet starts writing. How and why? What strange communication are we to encounter? Let us momentarily backup: Every adult life is filled with numerous events that become part of the background of our behavior. Now and then, we may highlight a certain past event or series of events and make them the vector points from which we slowly redirect our lives to a new project, a new life goal. Freedom needs something to work upon. Now Genet's gestures and words already meant more than they seemed to mean; the "saintly" motivation was hidden from all but Genet. Genet spoke, but only to hear himself speaking, to feel resounding within him the sonorous quality of his sounds and to be moved by them to his goal of loving evil. Genet also wrote a bit before he became a writer. Sartre notes that when he was sixteen, he was instructed by a well-known song writer and had written some songs himself. But, he was meeting many people, and at this stage of his life, writing was just one game among many. Nevertheless, he had become familiar with prosody. Then one day, while awaiting trial, a prisoner recited poems that he wrote for his sister, and Genet, who thought they were silly, accepted the challenge to do better and wrote, The Condemned Man, which the prisoners in turn thought silly. Later Genet finished the poem, and dated his own conversion to the written word from this time. Again, as with the second conversion, Sartre both accepts the conversion and is suspicious of Genet's own interpretation of it. Indeed, there is a conversion; but this conversion to the written word retains Genet's previous projects, the pursuit of pure evil and of beauty as evil. Perhaps, it could have been different. We might recall that, in our discussion of Flaubert, Sartre had noted that there are men who mercilessly crush the child within them. This crushed childhood remains, and it defines their effort to get beyond it. Gustave Flaubert and Jean Genet, however, choose to hold fast to their childhood wounds, and this wound reappears in all their subsequent conversions. Thus, for Sartre, Genet's conversion to the written word as a formal enterprise in communicating, in having readers, is genuine; but it is also true that all his writing aims now - as did his gestures and his speech previously - to evil, and to the impossible dream of being the saint of evil. We may want Genet to come back to us. But that would mean that he would have to condemn his former life, which he never does. Genet, to repeat, never writes to us about thieves and homosexuals, about the outcasts of society; rather he always writes as one of them. Perhaps, there will be another conversion. Sartre's work is an introduction to Genet's "Complete Works," and Genet considers them very bad.

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But, for Sartre, this judgement could be only a new form of his saintly hatred of himself. Still, insofar as Genet is lucid, and is now more explicitly aware of his past as an object, "Anything can come out his present state of indecision: a Trappist monk or a completely new writer" (575). The editor of the English translation notes here that Sartre's work was written before Genet published The Balcony, The Blacks, and The Screens. Our task here, however, is not formally to understand Genet the author, but Sartre's work on Genet. Let me admit that I do not feel qualified to judge Sartre's interpretation of Genet's works; I am only interested in understanding his interpretation and presenting it to my reader. And thus, while continually reminding myself that I do not wish to produce another long book about Sartre's own long books, I return to Sartre, and invite the reader to see, or feel, or even taste the flavor of the subdivisions that comprise this last book: (1) A Mechanism Having The Exact Rigor Of Verse; (2) And, I, Gentler Than A Wicked Angel, Lead Her By The Hand; (3) On the Fine Arts Considered As Murder; (4) My Victory Is Verbal And I Owe It To The Sumptuousness Of The Terms; (5) Please Use Genet Properly. What, then, is the logic connecting these five concluding sections? Simply, we here encounter Sartre's attempt to elicit the true character of Genet's prose disguised frequently as poetry. In "A Mechanism Having The Exact Rigor Of Verse," Sartre mistrusts Genet's poetry: Mysterious, seemingly secretive words, are substituted for simply direct ones, even though these later could do the linguistic task.6 He thus finds that Genet's writing are a false prose written in a poetic medium and a false poetry written as a disguised prose. But this is to be expected; Genet wishes to have readers, but he does not wish to communicate himself to the just. He writes, but remains an outcast, the saint of outcasts. And yet the written work exists in the world. We are back to the impossible tension between the pursuit of evil and the good. Let us consider again the dialectic. The traditional saint does things for God, but he does not rejoice in his own creations. Efforts, yes, the traditional saint will acknowledge these, but the goodness within the efforts comes from God. But Genet is his own god, and the goodness of his works - their success, their communicability - is returned to him so that, as the saint of evil, he may deny this goodness. That is, Genet aims not only to deceive us but himself. Thus, the momentum of Genet's writings are to communicate the truth only then to lie. To lie to whom? To us, his readers, and to himself. Once written, Genet can face his own words as if from another. Genet, however, knows his own tricks. Can he write not-to-write - as he attempted to will his inability to will pure evil? The question is too abstract. The impossible tension that made Genet into the saint of thieves was the everyday dialectic of his life. Should we not expect the impossible tension to write in order not to communicate to be other than a specific existential effort? Sartre writes: "Before Our Lady, 6

See Chapter 2 of this work for a more detailed discussion of Sartre's view of poetry

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Genet was an aesthete; after it, an artist. But at no moment was a decision made to achieve this conversion. The decision is Our Lady" (449). But we have to move slowly. In Our Lady of the Flowers, Genet writes for himself - not to understand himself, nor to shock us or himself by his detailed descriptions of his successful and unsuccessful acts of masturbation; but to hear himself speaking the words he has written, "to draw the scene into the cell, onto Genet's body, to make it contemporary with the caresses he lavishes on himself" (457). Still, the words are written, and they have the character not of caresses but of words. These words can do things that his own caresses cannot do, and still they will be like caresses in that what they do on paper will be for his own pleasure and to follow his own strict rules: "He reconstructs the real on every page of his books in such a way as to produce for himself proof of the existence of God, that is, of his own existence" (469). Sartre adds that the rule that governs Genet's imagination is not existential but essential, insofar as he seeks to retrospectively justify his life by writing about it as if he were the god laying out his own destiny. He leads himself "gentler than a wicked angel" to see himself the chosen evil of our good. He is, however, becoming successful, and apparently enjoying himself in his writings. But stealing still attracts him, and it is not clear that he regards writing successful works oi art as better than stealing. In fact, works of art can be worse than stealing, for stealing fits into the order of things more comfortably than evil embodied in art: "As a thief, Genet served the established order; as a poet, he destroys it" (493). That is, Genet aims to leads you to hate good and love evil, through himself as he is reflected in his writings. But the issue is complex, and once again we encounter the impossible dialectic of good and evil - the need to use good to do evil and to have the evil cancel out the good as a means to evil. On the level of writing, however, a quasi synthesis does occur. Every thing must be written down, and thus it tends to become an object that can be contemplated by the reader. In this way, we can be misled to focus on the beauty of the language and excuse the immersion in evil as a misjudgement on Genet's part; that is, we can take him for a true but misguided saint. In the section, "On the Fine Arts Considered As Murder" Sartre warns us that to read Genet with an open spirit is to allow ourselves to be temporarily seduced by evil as evil. What is involved in this reading and why should we do it? The latter point is easier to answer than the first. Everyone agrees that the language is beautiful, and so we can read Genet to experience the sumptuousness of the written words. For example, Genet writes glowingly about love, and we can read those words and say to ourselves that he, Genet, must be good and has only been misled into evil. According to Sartre, if we read with this judgement in the background, we would miss the uniqueness of Genet's writings. We would read nothing. Neither in his life nor in his writings has Genet been concerned with the generality of evil as evil, if indeed there can be such a thing. After all, the Devil is a fallen person, fallen from above and

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messing about with our lives. Genet is our evil - the saint of our evil, outcast by us but accepting his fate, deepening it, making it more purely the evil that defines our good. He thus writes not as someone judging the theft of property, the theft of sexuality by queens and pimps, the theft of honor by betrayal, the theft of the beauty of the body by approaching death, nor judging the shit hidden beneath the skin of the beloved - he writes not outside all of this but within it. What we read when we read Genet is the secret discourse of evil. Why should we then read this discourse? First, we have no choice. He has won in his own way. The books are there; the plays are preformed, and he is praised as a great writer. And yet, we can learn from him. He speaks glowing of love, and, if we merely focus on the beauty of the words, letting the false poetry seduce us, we will miss the true message that one must love the whole person, shit and all, and that "true love is the salvation and safeguarding of all man in the person of one man by a human creature" (532). True, Genet can teach us this truth; but, it is even more true that we must be on our guard: For what Genet really means by love is that the lover devours the beloved and thereby devours humanity itself. More specifically, Genet's love is evil and we must be open to see it as evil. Evil is the love of the imaginary over the real. For Sartre, Genet never truly loved his "beloved" living Jean, but the dead Jean now becomes more real to him than he ever was when he was alive. Language can now give a seeming permanence to this imaginary notion. Language can make appearance real and thereby alter the ethical norms. Sartre seems to generalize this "ethical" move as follows: The mechanism of the ethical experience is thus as follows: one carries a real experience to the point of changing it into an appearance; one dissolves the appearance in the might-be; one makes of the contingent accident a pure movement and of the latter an idea of movement, that is, a word. The moral experience is, at bottom, only a verbal experience. (566) Here again we encounter another example of Sartre's contextual writing. He does not qualify that his remarks refer to Genet's ethics, but the context should make that clear to us. Sartre thus continues in this passage to inform us that Genet uses language so that he may have contact with himself in his books, thereby in a sense healing himself of his outcast nature. That is, Genet can now regard all his efforts of being the saint of evil as an object, and, insofar as his own outcast nature can be made into an object, he can begin to use his freedom to get beyond it. Thus, in the section, "My Victory Is Verbal" Sartre both acknowledges that Genet has finally found a way out of his impossible family and social situation; for his success as a writer allows him to move about within accepted society. Genet's writings are therapeutic for him. What are they for us? For us, they reveal how we make hell on earth, and, in the concluding section, "Please Use Genet Properly" Sartre recommends that we allow ourselves to be open to

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our own involvement in evil. We must allow ourselves to participate in the outcast as outcast, to hear the subhuman subjectivity in all its subhumantiy. This means that we become open to experience the incommunicable as universal, and this can be done most effectively through the written word. What precisely is this experience of the incommunicable? It is "that of solitude" (589). But this solitude is not that of the Romantics, inviting us to get close to ourselves by country walks or by reading poetry. Rather, "solitude is the social relationship itself when it is lived in despair; it is the negative relationship of each individual to all" (596) This solitude is the underside of Genet's writings. Our real loves, our real actions, are reflected in their ever possibility of failing in the attempt to do good. True love is an effort about which there are no guarantees. As an outcast, we have made Genet embody the possible failure of our efforts so that we ourselves do not have to face them. But are we being too intellectual in our interpretation? Genet is flesh and blood and his books are his flesh and blood: "Genet is our solitude carried to the point of Passion" (599). APPENDIXES

There are three appendices, "Self-Portrait of the Good Citizen," "The Tzedek Test'' and "The Maids." The first is a discussion of a speech on the death sentence delivered in the Chambers of Deputies, which attempts to justify it as means of protecting the poor and the social health of the country. This is followed by a discussion of a journalist, who supported the speech and who affirmed that the Christian order affirms the hierarchal order of the natural world. The second, The Tzedek, test attempts to examine the moral judgement by questioning a thirty-four-year-old delinquent. Unlike Genet, the delinquent refuses to play the role of the scapegoat, but this is because his childhood background is different from Genet's. Finally, in The Maids, Sartre elaborates on the whirligig "of being and appearance, of the imagination and the real" (611). We have already examined some of the ways Genet alters the real into an appearance and then imaginatively attempts to recreate the appearance as more real than the real. The concern here, however, is with the specific dialectic in the play. Sartre writes, "Illusion, betrayal, failure; all the major categories that govern Genet's dreams are here present" (612). More specifically, we have queens that are men and men who are pimps. But "we are still at only the first degree of derealization" (615). For all of this is the background for an individual drama between Solange and Claire, a drama that is itself faked, for it presents the maids as relative beings, which like all outcasts and like Genet himself, they indeed are. But again, it is all aimed at the just: When he presents them before the floodlights, Genet merely mirrors the fantasies of the right-minded women in the audience. Every evening five hundred Madames can sing out, 'Yes, that's what maids are like,' without realizing that they have created them, the way Southerners create Negroes. (617)

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The whirligig between the two maids represents, for Sartre, the two sides of Genet, the chosen outcast and the self-chosen saint, while each derealizes the former into the latter and the later into the former. In the end, the imagination does not serve action nor does it become a realm unto itself; this would be honest illusion and honest madness. The imaginary keeps whirling and "the ultimate appearance derealizes all the others" (624-625). We are back to the impossible drama; the life of a saint of evil. Still, we should, with Sartre, close with a more positive reflection that Genet has not invented anything. We are afraid of our freedom and we have indeed forged for ourselves a Manichean social order in which the good is essentially the capture and destruction of our enemies. Genet shows us this world and we flee from the vision only in bad faith. And thus, in the section we have here skipped but considered in some detail in Chapter 2, Please Use Genet Properly, Sartre writes: " If every man is all of men, this black sheep must be only a pebble or must be me" (587).

8 The Family Idiot Part One - Constitution

The almost three thousand pages of The Family Idiot defies adequate summary or paraphrase. I suspect that any such attempt would leave out more of what is important than what it contained. Thus, Hazel Barnes in her comprehensive study, Sartre and Flaubert, has not attempted that task, although she has accomplished a great deal.1 Still, each book should be a separate enterprise, and I must here attempt to fulfill my own promise of providing a study of the entire work. What shall this be like? The most that I plan to offer my reader is a "taste," as it were, of the overall structure of Sartre's massive work, whose aim is simply to understand the man Gustave Flaubert and his writings. T H E PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Let us begin simply with the physical appearance of work. It was published by the French publisher Gallimard as L Idiot de la Famille: Gustave Flaubert 1

See Hazel E Barnes Sartre and Flaubert, cited chapter I, note i. Barnes concludes her study with a nuanced study of this projected fourth volume, and I will also have few words - very few - to say about this last volume The reader might be interested to note that Sartre had first described this work as a "novel" and then later seemingly retracted his comment; Barnes has a balanced study of the issue. Personally, I do not get very excited about Sartre's remarks concerning his own works. He frequently changes his view of them and he also seems to enjoy putting them down, particularly if that is what the questioner seems to want. Perhaps, we can apply Sartre's own distinction between prereflective and reflective consciousness in regard to his own understanding of his works. Sartre had enough of a reputation that he could simply write without being concerned whether his writings would be published because they did not fit into a publisher's nook. He thus simply wrote a study of Flaubert, one that would explain the man and his works, and surely in his engaged writing he was simply aware of the effort itself Later, when asked what he had written, he was somewhat in the same position in regard to his work as the reader. In this state of impure reflection, he now examines his work and comes upon this or that view of it. Thus, I simply read his works, without his or others views in mind If I have to label this work, I would call it a philosophical biography, and I let the ambiguity of that term point to the fruitful effort itself. 162

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de 1821 a 1857, appearing in three large volumes, the first two in 1971 and the third in 1972 - revised editions followed in 1988).2 A projected fourth volume was never completed, and Sartre's notes on this volume - which were to discuss Madame Bovary - appear to be mere suggestions and not at all as complete as Critique 2. In her excellent translation into English, Carol Cosman divided the three volumes into five - volume 1 is the same as the first Gallimard volume; volumes 2,3, and 4 give her translation of the original second Galllimard volume, and volume 5 is her translation of the third Gallimard volume. In what follows I retain her divisions. As Hazel E. Barnes notes, the dates in the title are somewhat misleading. While 1857 is the publication date of Madame Bovary, Sartre does consider Flaubert's life and works after 1857. Thus, volume 2 in French and volume 4 in English conclude with a study of Saint Julian the Hospitaler, and volume 3 in French and 5 in English examine at length Flaubert's life in the Second Empire. But, for Sartre, the "chips were down," after 1857; that is, Flaubert had already fixed the course of his life and works, and thus Sartre writes about Saint Julian," we are sure that the story, had he written it in 1845, would have been the same" (4: 339). These then are the volumes - three in French and five in English. Let us enter within. In the table of contents, we encounter two other main divisions of the work, namely, "part" and "book," the former being more extensive than the latter. The divisions into parts and books do not appear to be consistent; and I am not sure whether the fault is editorial or reflects the written text Sartre always wrote with pen or pencil, and here particularly hastily under the shadow of approaching blindness. Although I believe that analytic divisions are useful, I am not about to make the attempt to redivide the work as I did in the Critique; to be honest, I feel daunted by the task and I doubt the effort would substantially alter the reading of the text.3 Apart from the division into volumes, parts, and books, there are also chapters, numbered consecutively, one through twenty-two, except that chapter twenty-two is about three hundred pages long and it leads directly into book two of the last volume, which has no divisions into chapters. I believe that the consecutive numbering of the chapters is the biggest mistake in the analytic division of the work. Nevertheless, here as elsewhere, the clue to grasping the written methodology of Sartre's major works is to read carefully the opening and concluding paragraphs of each major section. However long the digressions, Sartre always 2

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot' Gustave Flaubert 1827-185-/, Volumes 1-5 all translated by Carol Cosman (Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 1981,1987,1989,1991,1993). 3 Thus, retaining the subdivisions, I take it that all of volume 1 both in French and English is part one of the study; volume 2 in French and volumes 2, 3, and 4 in English, give us parts two and three, with their appropriate "books." On the other hand, volume 3 in French and 5 in English seem to drop the use of "part" and present us directly with a division into two books. Is this a continuation of part three or a new part four 7 I think the last volume gives us a new part four.

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brings the reader - and himself - back to his overall written project. Let us, then, now try to sketch Sartre's aim in writing this study of Flaubert; that is to say, let us enter within the work with an eye to its overall "logic."

HOW T H E PHYSICAL APPEARANCE OF T H E WORK REFLECTS ITS " L O G I C "

I ask the reader's indulgence in my attempt to sketch a superficial view of Sartre's methodology as reflected in the basic divisions of The Family Idiot. In the concrete, of course, this methodology is the substance of the work itself; but my intention here is merely to indicate an entrance into Sartre's "book," if one may use that term for these massive volumes. I thus note that the title "Problem" is given both to chapter one, the first chapter of volume one, and to chapter twenty, the first chapter of the last volume. To be more exact, chapter one reads "A Problem," and chapter twenty, "The Problem." Let us reflect upon the relation between these two problems, temporarily keeping the rest of the work in the background. The gist of the first problem, already alluded to in our initial overview, is to awaken in us the wonder about a child, genuinely in a fog and backward in learning the alphabet, who soon becomes a master of written language: "We must try to understand this scandalous occurrence: an idiot who becomes a genius" (1:41). The chapter concludes with Sartre's announcement that he is to attempt a "first progressive synthesis" that aims to understand both Gustave's initial backwardness and his remarkable entrance into the totality of language, spoken and written. Thus, the overriding perspective of the next six hundred odd pages is devoted to unveiling the family environment, which both induced the linguistic backwardness and that occasioned Gustave's remarkable childhood adventure with language - "at the age of nine Gustave decided to write because at seven he didn't know how to read" (1:29). Within this most general progressive approach, to which I will return, we then encounter secondary progressiveregressive studies concerning each of the parents. As these continue, however, a deeper regressive study about Gustave himself is also happening in the text. Thus, about one third through the first volume, Sartre writes: Yet if we are attempting a truly regressive analysis, it will not do merely to observe rigorously chronological order; his life will have to be followed in reverse. In every investigation concerning interiority, it is a methodological principle to begin the inquire at the ultimate stage of the experience being studied, namely, when it is present to the subject himself in the fullness of its development - whatever may happen subsequently ... But it must be added that this retrospective method imposes itself where Gustave is concerned more than in other cases. Because of that peculiar quality which belongs to him and which I shall call prophetic anteriority, in each of these first works one keeps finding the same symbols and the same themes - ennui, sorrow, resentment, misanthropy, old age, and death. (1: 174-175)

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Sartre then enumerates some of the qualities of the internal stress that sustained the neurosis, and that gave it the specific quality of a prophetic repetition of what is to come. There is nothing mystical in this "prophetic anteriority"; it is an aspect of Gustave's vow to remain true to his neurotic condition - of which, needless to say, Gustave is not explicitly aware of. On the other hand, he must be dimly aware of a certain family tension: He is not a favored son, but yet he has his obvious needs met. Gustave focuses on this thin relation, keeping his hate-need relation on the edge of consciousness, allowing it to surface only in his writings. Thus, as Gustave matures, as he relates to friends, to mistresses, and to the numerous accidents of life, his subjectivity is imbued with what Sartre terms "stress," which is itself the neurosis as effort, the effort to keep reflective consciousness focused on everyday tasks, tasks that mask his ambivalent status within the family. Another way of looking at Gustave's neurosis is to understand it as arising from an early "wound." This wound is lived, rather than conceptualized; it is the continual stress to resist the family plan for him and to have his own way, while remaining within the family. That is to say, the wound is, as it were, Gustave's lived recognition that he would never have the strength to actively oppose his parents. If one were tempted to claim that Sartre is here acknowledging an unconscious, Sartre would - correctly, I believe - claim rather that he is describing the way one's freedom gradually emerges first as nonreflective, then as reflective. An infant and a young child certainly do reflect; and a second child may experience a loss of the parent's complete attention. Normally, however, this is handled in many different ways, but such that both children learn to see that they are loved for themselves. With the Flaubert family, however, the children are being molded by the stronger freedoms of the parents, toward their own project. Nevertheless, it takes time for Gustave to suspect that he is being prepared for a destiny he does not wish for - time, yes, but remarkably a short time. He soon allows himself to pass over this suspicion; indeed, he trains himself to do so leading to an induced passivity, the residue, as it were, of his efforts to keep reflective consciousness away from his need-hatred relation to his parents. Thus, as we follow Gustave within the family, at school, and then at work, we are introduced to a deeper progressive stage, that occupies the middle of the work - volume 2 in French and volumes 2,3,4 in English, to which I will return. If, however, we continue to keep middle part of this work in the background, and turn our attention to the "problem" which introduces the concluding volume - 3, in French, 5 in English - we can note that it's opening paragraph helps us to situate the entire logic of The Family Idiot, Chapter twenty begins: "Thus far we have tried to understand Flaubert's neurosis from within" (5: 3). This quote appears after more than two thousand pages of study, leaving only about six hundred pages of the last volume for a study of Gustave's objective neurosis, and the reader may wonder about Sartre's

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procedure. This physical division of the work - its pivoting, as it were, about chapter twenty - invites us to reflect upon its "logic"; specifically it invites us to attempt to make clear the meaning of subjectivity and objectivity that guide Sartre's reflections in this work. For Sartre, subjectivity, in its most general form, is the way we bring within us that which is outside of us. External situations always have the ontological priority over one's interior states. What is always given first is the mother's breast, hands, smiles, as well as the cultural beliefs that will gradually become part of the infant's "natural" situation; and, to this objective complex, we can add one's friends as well as the numerous contingencies that contribute to the meaning of one's life - all of this is ontologically prior to our subjective responses to them. And, indeed, the description of these objective conditions constitute the major portion of the first twenty-four-hundred pages of this work. Why then does Sartre claim that he has been examining Gustave's neurosis from within? The answer has already been given and needs merely to be pointed out, namely, although the family situation was specific, what counted more for Flaubert's personality was his distinctive response. Gustave had an unusually firm determination to decode his environment along the lines of an unspoken and unacknowledged hate-need relation to his family. But, if we grant that the objective situation that engendered Gustave's neurosis was being examined throughout the preceding two volumes in French and four in English, we may then ask, "What is the significance of the objective aspect of the neurosis introduced by chapter twenty, "The Problem?" The significance is given by seeking the answer to the following question: Granting the neurosis and all the objective conditions that helped induce it, what is its value to Gustave Flaubert the writer? Would he have been a greater writer without his neurosis, or is the opposite true, namely, is the neurosis the substance of his writings? Indeed, this question concerning the objective situation has two distinct aspects, which constitute the two books of the last volume. The first pertains to the objective literary norms that influenced an "apprentice author," and the second refers to the social conditions, namely, the Second Empire. Thus, the problem that introduces the remarkable last volume elaborates the claim that, in the particular case of Gustave Flaubert, all his writings reflect his neurosis, and this is particularly true of Madame Bovary. Still, we must move carefully if we are to understand the meaning of this claim - its truth is another question. Sartre will constantly allude to this truth throughout the work, but it was to be the subject of the last volume. We can anticipate a somewhat fuller discussion by giving here Sartre's observation in this last volume that Madame Bovary, "incontestably the work of a neurotic, is in no way in itself a neurotic work" (5: 21). That is, all of Flaubert's works embody a purity of language that makes them stand on their own; they do not "unravel before our eyes" as is true of typical neurotically written works. Indeed, the

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neurosis is present, but carefully hidden and disguised by the purity of the language and by the "solidity" of the work. And briefly what is this neurosis? It is a hatred of the common man disguised as a "realistic" description of an ordinary life. Let us grant that the meaning of the quest for an understanding of Flaubert's objective neurosis is to see it as a disguised hatred of humanity. Another question arises, which is allied to seeking the truth of the claim: Is it not true that Flaubert knows what he is doing consciously and directly!; that is, is it not true that Flaubert the writer is forging the denotation of hatred, disguised by the beauty of the direct language he is using? Indeed, this is so! Gustave is fully aware that he is writing a book that appears to be a simple narrative of a life but that hides the hatred of all humanity. To repeat, this is true - but, what Gustave is not directly aware of, is that this misanthropy merely hides his hatred for his father. Let us grant all of the above; that is let us grant that Sartre is truly describing the linguistic enterprise that is Madame Bovary. If we do, we then face a difficult question: "Why should this personal condition, this neurosis, survive in literature, and not degenerate into one of many private deviations, soon forgotten by history?" The new and deeper mystery - the problem - introduced by chapter twenty, is the great success of Madame Bovary. Why is it that a story, whose denotation is man's hatred for himself, becomes recognized as a "realistic work?" The task in the six hundred odd pages that follow chapter twenty and conclude Sartre's study is that of a new progressive-regressive movement, which aims to reveal how both the literary and the social milieu forged an "Objective Spirit" - a web of literary and social norms that was itself neurotic - that meshed with Gustave Flaubert's private neurosis. Thus, the concluding volume aims at revealing how the neurotic age of the Second Empire required its greatest writers, its "Knights of Nothingness," to represent a beauty that was supposedly beyond the human realm but actually below it - a beauty seemingly "for its own sake," but, in reality, a beauty empty of all meaning and devoid of any possible relation to truth. But more of this later; we must now return to the middle of the work, which seems to be, as it were, suspended between the two problems of chapter one and chapter twenty. Permit a brief review: Volume 1 guided our reflections on Gustave from his birth until he is about fifteen. He is writing and meeting friends at school. He wants to be a writer, but he sees no way of presenting this plan to his parents. Indeed, he is not quite able to see himself as a writer, because no one in his family can regard writing as a suitable profession for a Flaubert son. Still, he will manage it all, but neurotically. Thus, the beginning of the last stage of the neurosis is itself the beginning of Gustave's formal entrance into the life of a writer, accomplished by a total collapse into the arms of his doctor-brother. Sartre writes, "in January, 1846, the unloved son of Doctor Flaubert began

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his solitary strike against his father, entering neurosis the way one enters a convent" (3: 60, note 48). The collapse is a way out of an impossible situation. He, Gustave, would remain within the family and write because he is fit to do nothing better with his life. Needless to say, this aim had to be hidden both from himself and from his family, otherwise Gustave would have to face his hatred of his father, who would never - and never did - accept that the task of being a writer was fit for a real man. The neurosis worked. The final collapse was misdiagnosed as a form of epilepsy, allowing Gustave to avoid the demands of struggling to be lawyer - a giant step below the father's and brother's achievement of being doctors, but still an accepted profession - and permitting him freedom to write. He genuinely suffered, but, as Sartre notes, this was small payment for the freedom to write. The death of his father freed him of his bedridden state, and allowed him to enter the world as a "writer." But, for Sartre, Flaubert - and Gustave Flaubert is the Flaubert and Sartre frequently writes as such - Flaubert carried his neurosis, that is, the weight, of his family's rejection, throughout his life. Thus the concluding section of this middle volume is entitled, "The Real Meaning of 'Loser-Wins.'" As already noted the phrase "loser-wins is a form of bad faith, an attempt to flee freedom. But Sartre here notes that, when a family situation is impossible, a child may be forced to flee the impossible choice of either hating one's parents or dying, and find another way out. For Gustave, this was daydreams and the choice of the primacy of the imagination. There is always a price to pay. My main point here, however, is that if we return and insert this reflection on the development of Flaubert's personality between the two "problems" of volumes 1 and 5, the overall logic of this massive effort becomes evident. With all the "editorial" issues of divisions into parts and into books, the length of more than two-thirds of the book as a study of Flaubert's neurosis from within fits within the "logic" of the work.4 That is to say, the concern in this middle section is with the numerous ways the adolescent and then the adult remained firm to his original neurosis. We are concerned then, in these middle volumes, with a progressive movement, more advanced than that given in the first volume, namely, one aimed at revealing the workings of Gustave's more mature freedom, his concrete choices, such as choosing to join only elite groups at school. Perhaps, if we now put this whole "logic" before us, we are prepared somewhat for turning the pages.

4 We are given two "parts" termed parts two and three and a subdivision into "books." Part Two is headed "Personalization," and this comprises volumes 2 and 3 in Cosman's translation. Part Three is called "Elbehnon," or the Last Spiral, with a publisher's note about the spelling and meaning of the term (see Family, 4: 21). Be that as it may, the term "last spiral" is adequate enough to guide the reader.

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THE FAMILY IDIOT

In dividing my discussion of this work, I take as my guide the "problems" given in Chapter 1, volume 1 and in Chapter 20, volume 5, with this caveat: Because I have already examined the first problem in the "overview" in Part One of this work, I will focus more on the last problem that introduces volume 5 (3 in French). Let us then begin our brief sketch of this massive effort to understand the life and works of Gustave Flaubert. Volume I: Part One - Constitution First, a few general observations about the seven chapters of the first volume. We might want to question why the first chapter discusses the father and not the mother and why the chapter on the mother is relatively short. One would misread the entire volume, indeed, the entire work, if one looked for antifeminist motives. Indeed, the very opposite is true. Toward the end of the first chapter, "The Problem," Sartre is very explicit about the importance of the primal relation of a mother with a child, "the inquiry leads us to the persona of the mother" (1:50) The entire five chapters then, chapters two through six, revolve about the mother. But, we are here concerned with a particular history, and, in this case, Caroline accepted her husband as the guiding light in forming the family, and her acceptance - as well as something in herself- governed her earliest relations with Gustave. Thus, what is important to Gustave, the infant, is how his mother saw her place in the family. If she had stood up against her husband and encouraged each child to seek a personal destiny, her second son would not have been neurotic. Also, the daughter Caroline does not have a special chapter, because as three years younger she was not a constitutive factor in Gustave's early wound. She is nevertheless mentioned throughout the first volume and she is given a special section in the second volume in which Sartre examines Gustave's "personality." A somewhat more difficult issue is the length and the placement of the last chapter, "Two Ideologies." What does this discussion have to do with the family situation? It seems at first glance to belong to the next volume. Actually, it is properly placed; it is part of the family situation. That is, as Gustave matures, he encounters not only personal relations, but the social beliefs of the times, specifically, the clash between science on the one hand, as represented by his father, and a waning Catholic religion, or more generally, whatever was not science on the other hand. Unfortunately, in the Flaubert household, the mother was not a strong representative of this nonscientific spirit. Finally, we may note that these seven chapters consider Gustave's life from birth until he is about sixteen. Still, one must not expect an exact chronological study. Sartre will frequently jump ahead to show how Gustave's hatred for his father is revealed in his adolescent writings or to show how a response to

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this situation is continued or altered later in life. We must keep in mind that we have the whole of Gustave's life before us, all the letters and all his works. The progressive-regressive approach to a human life does not aim to deduce future behavior from one's initial conditioning; rather, the aim is to understand how a life freely unfolds from its early beginnings to a certain given point. But now we must attempt a deeper reflection on the methodology of this first volume. Of course, foi Sartre, all methodology is one with the content of the work itself; still, once this is given, it may be possible to separate it to some extent, in order to forge a short entrance into this massive work. With this goal in mind, I will attempt this task in two uneven sections, with much more emphasis on the Preface and Problem. The Preface and the Problem It is impossible to overemphasize Sartre's preface and the consequent "problem," of chapter one. When the task is to consider the life of a writer and his works and when it is a well-documented life, one must have a perspective. Even if one pretends to approach such a study with what Sartre in the last volume of this work terms a "panoramic consciousness" - one that pretends to view facts from some neutral perspective - one should, nevertheless, be aware of the hidden presuppositions of this attitude, namely, the ways it assumes that we can rise above ourselves and view the world as if we were angels.5 On the other hand, having a perspective is not the same as being skeptical. There is meaning and there is truth. We cannot escape history but we are not made by our history: " For man is never an individual; it would be more fitting to call him a universal singular. Summed up and for this reason universalized by his epoch, he in turn resumes it by reproducing himself in it as singularity" (i: ix). To comprehend a life is thus to be willing to make the grand effort to understand both how history forged the life and how the life reforged itself within the determinations of this history. This pursuit requires that one make a special effort to be honest about the perspective adopted, and that is the task of both the preface and the first chapter. Specifically, this honesty is translated into a description of an initial "problem" with which Sartre approaches the life of Gustave Flaubert. This problem is that of describing and discovering the meaning and the truth of the "hidden wound" that Gustave frequently complains about in his letters, "the old nature that no one knows, the deep always hidden wound" (i: x).6 5

6

"... for the second half of the nineteenth century the enlightened elite practices panoramic consciousness and refuses to conceive of its own historicity; it discloses that vices and virtues and, similarly, works of art are historical products, but not for a moment does it wonder if pure theory - or what is proffered as such - isn't itself a product" (5: 241) Family, 1: x, with the reference in footnote 1, "Croisset, 6 October 1864."

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Thus Sartre introduces chapter one, "The Problem," with the recommendation that we try to understand this wound. If it is hidden, does Flaubert know what it is? It seems that he must understand it, for he frequently mentions it; for example, he complains about always feeling "old." But does Flaubert know the true significance of his wound? Or does he keep himself distracted so that, while aware of its presence, he does not have to face its true meaning. For Sartre, the meaning and truth of this wound is his hatred of his father, a hatred that is both expressed and hidden in his early works; for example, in Quidquid Volueris, written when Gustave was fifteen and which Sartre examines at some length. What is clear to Sartre is that Flaubert has to struggle to express himself, much more than one would expect to be true of such a great writer. Too much of his life was interior. To recall our observations from the overview, Gustave seemed always in a fog and he was particularly slow in learning to read, whereas, with the same help from his mother, his brother was alert and a fast learner. Sartre thinks that some of Gustave's backwardness is exaggerated in the letters, and that itself makes one wonder. Indeed, he goes at great length to show that the family seemed to go out of its way to judge the child far more credulous than he could possibly have been. Moreover they retained this judgement throughout Gustave's life. Sartre sums up their attitude with the words, "the novelist who claims to see into the hearts of others is but a fool, a ninny, who has preserved in maturity the exceptional credulity of his childhood" (1: 9). These types of observations about the family occur throughout Sartre's work. They reveal to Sartre an almost family "vow" to see the doctor-father and doctor-brother as the Flauberts, and Gustave as an utter failure regardless of his worldly successes. Indeed, for the Flaubert family, if Gustave achieved any success it was due to his association with his brilliant family - something had to rub off on this "idiot." Gustave was aware of all of this; but he refused to conceptualize and bring the awareness into focus. Can we bring ourselves alongside this strange consciousness, as it is first born within the family structure and follow it as it matures? This is Sartre's goal and its accomplishment brings us back to the progressive-regressive method: We shall attempt, through description followed by a regressive analysis, to establish what was lacking. And if we succeed, we shall try, through a progressive synthesis, to establish the why of this absence. ... Since the stubborn naivete of the future writer is the expression of a poor initial relationship with language, our description will at first aim only to articulate that relationship precisely. (1: 10) Before we attempt to clarify the relation of the "what" and the "why" in this quote, let us once again reflect upon this method. We are here specifically concerned with grasping the significance of the transitions from "description" to "regressive analysis" and then to "progressive synthesis." It is important to be clear: One always begins with a progressive approach to understanding human actions, even if it is not mentioned as such. This initial progressive

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beginning is said to be descriptive, for it merely outlines the obvious intentional structures as they appear in the world. To return once again to the example cited in Search for a Method, I observe my friend rising from his seat, walking towards a window in a library and then opening the window. I do indeed synthesize into a single intelligible whole his rising from his chair, his steps, the movements of his arms in opening the window. But this recognition is superficial and abstract. I know what my friend is doing but I may not immediately understand why he is doing it. In my earlier reflections upon this example, I said that it is immediately obvious that he is letting air into the library, but my perspective was on a later stage of his behavior - he opens the window and then turns away, for example. But, as he is opening the window, I am not sure whether he wishes to let air into a stuffy room or merely wishes to look out and perhaps greet a friend. Thus, Sartre writes in Critique i, "Immediate experience reveals being at its most concrete, but it takes it at its most superficial level and remains in the realm of abstraction" (Critique i: 96). But in the given example, my friend opens the window and perhaps takes a deep breath as he returns to his seat. I then, by a simple regressive movement, become aware of the overly heated condition of the library and of my own sweating. At this stage a deeper synthetic progressive movement may begin; for example, I may question why my friend became aware of the heated condition in the library while I remained engrossed in my reading. As we attempt to apply this method to Gustave, we begin with his own reference to his wound. He does not refer to a physical accident, but to something psychic. However, in the abstract, Gustave could be wrong about his own condition. Thus, we must show that Gustave's "wound" does indeed have a purposive, that is to say, an intentional structure that in some way reflects freedom; otherwise, the progressive-regressive method cannot begin. This would be the case if the wound is merely biological. Does Gustave have low blood pressure? Sartre notes that medical observations were not capable of such determinations; but he adds that even if biological conditions exist, the task still remains to determine wether they are primary for a life. Indeed, the opposite seems to be true for Gustave Flaubert; whatever his biological clock, his passivity seems related to his continuing effort to keep the hatred of his family from rising before his reflective consciousness. The evidence of both his own early stories and of the family attitude toward him points in the direction of a drama of freedom, a drama in which the wound is induced by the family project and retained throughout life by Gustave's own project. Thus, throughout this chapter, Sartre shows how the early stories both hide and reveal Gustave's strange hate-need relation to his family. In Quidquid Volueris, the ape-man, Djalioh, is Gustave in disguise, and Sartre summarizes Gustave's intent: "Ape-man - why not? Be animals if you can, strictly subhuman, anything rather than human beings" (1: 20). The others are truly human, particularly his eminent doctor-father and his brother and even his

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sister. Gustave is an "idiot," an ape-man. All of this can be seen as the initial, but crucial, progressive method that aims at revealing that the "wound" is intentional, and from this initial abstract progressive stage we can now begin a formal regressive one that reveals the wound as a lack. That is, to repeat once again, the initial progressive stage brings us to the wound as an intentional structure, induced by the parents and, at first, merely accepted by the infant and then the child as its fate. As we bring ourselves alongside of this induced wound, we see that it robs the child of the ability to have normal interpersonal relations with the family and therefore normal linguistic competence. Thus the "what" referred to in the above quote has been answered. The answer to the "why" initiates a synthetic progressive movement; but on several levels, the first of which touches the initial progressive stage - the father's family project - and, then continues deeper in this study. In short, the almost fifty pages of the first chapter, The Problem, give us both the initial, but carefully delineated, descriptive-progressive understanding of Gustave's wound, and it also sketches the more fully regressive-progressive study that is to follow. I would thus prefer to consider it apart from the following six chapters, serving more as an introduction to the first two volumes in French and to the four in English. But this observation does not illumine the chapter itself. This task is both easy to indicate and difficult to expound; for, in this first chapter, Sartre sketches an entire philosophy of language which he alludes to throughout the work but never fully develops. I prefer to keep much of this in the background, referring to it as needed. How then does Sartre advise us to proceed in this difficult attempt to grasp the inner workings of another consciousness, particularly, its early beginnings in childhood? Again, we are back to our beginnings - in this long work it is necessary to remind ourselves where the firm ground lies, namely, in the numerous written observations by the family and in Gustave's own early works. With this in mind, Sartre continually insists that we begin with what is most obvious, namely, both the difficulty with language that lasted almost until Gustave was seven years of age and the entrance into language that was more remarkable than the backwardness. We must attempt to take this movement as a unitary whole, allowing the infant-becoming-childbecoming-adolescent time to develop and respond to his family situation. We are thus brought back once again to the project described in Being and Nothingness, except that we here encounter its very early forms: "Indeed, no human animal - I will say no mammal - whether it speaks or not, can live without entering into the dialectical movement of the signifier with the signified. For the simple reason that meaning is born of the project" (1: 18). But how is meaning born of Gustave's project? Sartre infers that the infant, Gustave, responded to his mother's dutiful love with a corresponding reserve. Let us grant that we cannot know this for sure; but the consequent behavior of the mother and the child seem to confirm that something like this must have been true. Granting that Gustave did

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not seem able to learn how to read, why not lavish more love rather than less on this poor child? We meet the unspoken but lived resolve of the Flaubert family not to pamper weakness. On the other hand, Gustave enjoys listening to stories. The family judges that he is being consciously stubborn. Or is he really an idiot? If we look at this early backwardness with language in light of future events - what Sartre terms "the achieved future" - it is only necessary to recognize that this second son simply does not want to fit within the family structure. For Gustave to learn to read would be to perform before his parents like his brother, which, as he will hint at later in his stories, is to be a robot, a duplicate of his father. He stays within his fog, coming out to listen to stories, but returning when they want him to perform or to do something. They notice - and exaggerate - his credulity; he obeys spoken directions even when there is no sense to what is being said. The child does not seem to catch onto the most obvious relation of words to things; he seems to focus on words as if they were things themselves. Sartre writes, "If Gustave, aged six, confuses sign and meaning to the extent that the material presence of the sign is the evidence that guarantees the truth of the meaning, he must have had a poor initial relationship with the Other" (i: 14). Language is born within a family or group, and the child receives language either as a gift or as loan. In the first case the child is whole; subjectivity and objectivity mutually support each other. The child receives words - each of which is implicitly part of a sentence - questions their meanings, responds to adults, and then, as the words spark an almost infinite possibility of other similar or dissimilar words, the child enters language: "Intellection - or comprehension - when complete, defines a virtually unlimited series of verbal expressions and creates an a priori rule for choosing among those expressions the one most appropriate in each situation and for each speaker" (1: 12). I call attention to the word "create," in the phrase, "creates an a priori rule." Constant usage forges a priori rules. All of this is what should happen to a child in a healthy family environment; one in which the child feels that it has its own adventure with life before it. But when, as it were, a child feels itself locked within a family destiny to which it is opposed, language is given as a loan for the simple reason that its origin and end is predetermined by the family project. For Gustave, who did not feel himself a loved and respected part of the family structure, the mere effort to speak had to heal a prior fractured unity of subjectivity and objectivity induced by his family and in some way borne by him as his destiny: "The abrupt split in Flaubert between of the subjective life and language ... must be viewed ... as the singular adventure of a child" (1:30). Granting that Sartre is merely providing us with an initial description of Flaubert's wound and that the later regressive and synthetic progressive stages are to follow, we must still turn our attention to the other facet of the wound; namely, the break into language about seven years of age and the remarkable

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fluency with written language that soon appears. We have already noted that Sartre regards this as a genuine "adventure" with language. No doubt Gustave would have eventually learned to speak and then to write. He might have become a lawyer of sorts, content with being not only a second born son - which he could not help being - but content with being a second-class Flaubert, as, indeed, his older brother, to a great extent, accepted himself as a second-class doctor compared to his father. But something happened to this child, Gustave Flaubert. Plunged into himself to such an extent that even spoken language seemed strange to him, he remarkably begins to witness all of language as part of the furniture of the world, recognizing that this furniture is both itself and something else the word "chair," spoken or written, its sounds and letters on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the chair that one sits on. That is, the child makes the connection, not as part of normal childhood usage, but consciously. He emerges from his fog, with the totality of language at his command. A guess on Sartre's part? Perhaps, but then, very soon after being in a fog, Gustave not only speaks well but writes brilliantly. Still, for Sartre, the wound remains. How does the wound affect Gustave's new control over language? In his private fog, Gustave encountered words as objects floating by themselves; in a sense, the form of the word - its sound, its letters - will always be at least as important as what it signifies: He will read, he will write, but language will always remain in his eyes a double, suspect creature that talks to itself all alone inside him, filling him with incommunicable impressions, a creature that makes itself speak requiring that Gustave communicate with others when he has literally nothing to communicate. (1: 39) Chapters Two through Seven In the initial overview, we have already discussed much of the content of these six chapters. To repeat briefly, Sartre discusses the father's position as a distinguished doctor, his strange project of establishing a family line which resembled an older aristocracy with its emphasis on the privileged place of the first born son, the mother's full approval and acceptance of the family project, the fortuitous way the first born son fit within these plans, and the consequent lower status of the second born son, which could have been endured in many ways but which was lived by the child as a need-hate relation. There was also the younger sister's companionship, but, she too seemed to fit within the family better than the second son. Finally, we should note that the family project both arose from and went counter to the general beliefs of the times. The father was a self-made man and thus he could see himself and was seen as opposed in his person to the older nobles. Then too, his profession as a doctor and his further status as a medical researcher placed him squarely on the side of science rather than religion and art. His first born son will be more "refined"; but the father is a pure man of science. On the other hand,

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his quasi-aristocratic attitude toward his family placed him at odds with the rising class; but this tension was a family concern. These are then the "facts" in their most general description. Let us grant that the more than five hundred pages of the first volume give these "facts" flesh and substance; the main question that I would like to answer is what precisely is the aim of the regressive analysis and the consequent synthetic progressive study of the family structure? Let us make an attempt to tease the outlines of this regressive-(synthetic)-progressive movement, together with its accompanying dialectic. In order to clarify what we are searching for, it may be useful to repeat that freedom appears in both the beginning and at the end of Sartre's methodology; that is, only in the early descriptive-progressive stage and in the latter synthetic-progressive stage. Freedom never appears in the regressive stage of the methodology; for the function of the regressive movement is to reveal the relatively fixed situation within which we then freely work out our destiny. We must not expect Sartre to constantly remind us when he has turned to a regressive approach. Unfortunately, this has led some readers to claim that Sartre has abandoned the notion of freedom in The Family Idiot, this is nonsense. After a while one learns to spot the switches from regressive to progressive perspective by the phrasing. In order to illustrate this, I will turn to a comment in the second chapter, "The Father." Sartre writes, "We shall understand nothing about Gustave if we do not first grasp the fundamental character of his 'being in class': this semipatriarchal community - with all the contradictions that corrode it - is at once his original truth and the perpetual determination of his fate" (1: 71). From a regressive perspective, this is true; Gustave did not choose his parents. On the other hand, this regressive claim is itself the result of a previous progressive study that revealed the very situation itself to be imbued with freedom: First, the father chose to establish a family along lines that did not completely fit into the rising bourgeois class, and then, as the infant Gustave matured into childhood, adolescence, and finally into an adult, he also chose to remain within the family that continually regarded him as a second-rate Flaubert. And thus, to the above quote, Sartre adds on the same page, "Flaubert lived within the domestic group and never left it ... From one end of his life to the other, the younger son regarded himself as an inessential accident; the essential thing for him would always be the family" (1: 71). Thus, even as we attempt to tease out the main regressive aspect of these seven chapters included within "Part One: Constitution," we must also remind ourselves that they point to the future volumes in which Gustave's own response to his "constitution" will be examined in a detailed syntheticprogressive study. To return, then to our effort to trace the regressive aspect of these chapters, we begin simply with the repeated observation that the evidence points to Gustave's passivity and his linguistic backwardness being induced by The

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Flaubert House. That is, the child, Gustave, is a victim. Still, to continue with the empathy with which we began our study, we could then note that there were contradictory forces at work forging the father's own consciousness. Achille-Cleophas was attracted both to the peasant class and to the noble class while belonging to neither: "Equally a traitor to both, he rejected the ideology of the landowners but certainly not their ways. ... The child of a patriarchal family and separated from it by his functions, by his new honors, a displaced person, he founds a new family on the model of his original one" (1:59). His hopes are founded on his intelligence, which, Sartre notes, allowed him to have a real adventure with life and to become part of history. AchilleCleophas thus sees himself as both capable and deserving the privilege of forming a new quasi-dynasty. If we now wish to understand the mother who was to complement the family situation, Sartre sets the tone in the first sentence, "Caroline Flaubert, daughter of Dr. Fleuriot and Anne-Charlotte-Justine, nee Cambremer de Croiximare, had the saddest of childhoods" (1: 73). Her own mother died in childbirth and her father soon died of grief, and Caroline herself lost "the joy of living." Nevertheless, she met and fell in love with Achille-Cleophas and was married to the eminent doctor in February 1812, living in 8, rue du Petit-Salut for about seven years. Sartre attaches particular importance to her granddaughter's written comment that, when her mother used to pass by the house, she would say, "Look, there I spent the best years of my life" (1: 76). And Sartre adds, "seven years of happiness?" One would think that this mother now aware of the glory achieved by her son, Gustave, would attach some joy to her later years. But no, we are back to the family structure; in these early years the first born son appeared, and he was given the father's first name, Achille. He was to be a reflection of his father, and Sartre claims, "The mother was informed of that predilection and shared it; she loved in her child the tender, vulnerable childhood of her husband, a childhood long thought dead, at last revived" (1: 77). What makes her claim - thirty years after the event - of the happiness of these early seven years even stranger is that only one of three children survived birth in those years while only one of three children died in the following years. For Sartre, there is only one answer, the mother loved her husband first and foremost and her children only as related to her husband. And some pages later, Sartre remarks, "Pushing virtue to extreme, namely to the point of vice, she never interceded for her children" (1: 84). Achille Flaubert, the first born son was nine years older than Gustave; but what was more important than a difference in age was that he fit into his father's plans to establish a prominent family line: "Achille knows his destiny very early - he will be, as son, a link in the immortal chain that is called Achille-Cleophas" (1: 103) Here the constitution becomes a form of "identification." That is, Achille is born a prince of science. Like every prince, his only option at first is to discover for himself what it means to be a prince.

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Sartre thus attributes his initial "talent" in science - he was indeed talented to his identification with his father. In Sartre's picture of Achille, it seems almost impossible for this man not to follow his father's image; let us say that he allowed his father's freedom to direct his own freedom from within him: "After the death of the chief surgeon, the elder son completed his identification with his father. The same town, the same position.... When he climbed into his buggy in a nearby village, the older people thought they were seeing the old Dr. Flaubert risen from the dead" (i: 116). Still, if we look for them, we can see Achille's distinctive qualities. He is more refined than his father; he doesn't attempt original research, but he keeps abreast of things, including art. Achille did not have sons; and thus, with all the father's effort, we witness "the fall of the House of Flaubert" (i: 121). But if there were a son as well as a daughter, would the House have continued to flourish? Sartre remarks about these possible children, "They would truly have lived; for Achille - this is his only quality but it is rather significant - was not admirable enough, he would not have discomfited his children" (1:121). We have already commented above and in Chapter One on the general motif of the more than three hundred pages of the following two chapters, "The Birth of a Younger Son" and "Father and Son"; namely, Gustave was strangely unloved. Two sons had died before Gustave's birth and a year later another son would die. The mother, Caroline, was afraid that she would only have sons and not a daughter for herself. Three years later a daughter would be born, but Gustave had, already, as it were, taken her place by being born first. She took care of him, but not with the passionate love of a mother for a child; rather, as we have seen, for the sake of duty. Where is the "proof" that this was the case? There is no analytical proof; but, again, we do have before us the "achieved future," namely, her impatience with Gustave's linguistic backwardness and her abnormal fear that he was indeed an idiot. Thus, a major portion of the chapter gives Sartre's views on the importance of the early bodily relation of infant to child: "I have spoken of maternal love; that is what fixes for the newborn the objective category of otherness" (1: 132). And Sartre continues, a child must have "a mandate to live, the parents are the authorities who issue the mandate" (1:133). Does Gustave have a mandate to live? Gustave does not die but neither does he respond to the world. A halfgiven mandate; he lives passively, accepting but not responding. He is constituted "passive" and although, like every child, he will act, it will be a passive activity, and not a direct active emotion: "The essential thing is this: active emotion is public from the beginning ... it is a threat, a plea" (1: 131-132). Gustave could never threaten nor could he bring himself to plea. We are back to the induced wound and its relation to language: "The question then bears on everything, and this is the stupor: why do names exist?" (1: 154). Again, this might be considered to be pure speculation on Sartre's part, except for the linguistic breakthrough that is to come. But

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what the regressive analysis reveals is the degree to which his father stamped him as inferior, fixing, as it were, the wound that the mother induced. Thus, we bring ourselves sympathetically alongside Gustave as he experiences himself being fixed as a lesser being - a minor Flaubert, ill suited for the real world - and we sympathetically enter within his consciousness, experiencing to some degree his imaginary world in which words float as if disembodied things. Indeed, at times the language that Sartre uses to describe Gustave's relation to his own consciousness is identical to what he had said about Genet. Sartre writes: "For Gustave, on the contrary, the ego comes to him through others; he doesn't dream of ratifying it but only of playing it in the sense it is proposed to him" (1:168, continuation of note 7). The same was true of Genet, and yet, in a sense everything is now different because Genet was active and not neuroticthe preconditions for neurosis were present but broken through. Genet was called a thief by his foster parents and he accepted that view of himself in the sense that he decided to do the actions appropriate to a thief. Still, let us remind ourselves that we remain basically on the regressive phase and we do not yet witness Gustave freely giving himself to his pre-neurotic conditions. Indeed, here Sartre himself reminds us that we are mainly on the regressive stage when he writes, "this regressive study, which is a systematic interpretation of the present in the light of the achieved future, will permit us to discover in Flaubert the subjective evolution of experience, that is, the perception he has of his own life in its dialectical movement of summation" (1:174). Later, in the same chapter, Sartre hints at the progressive movement of freedom that is to come: We shall take the child when he leaves the hands of Caroline Flaubert and we shall try, through reports, through the correspondence, the same works taken this time as unquestioned testimony, to recompose his life as it was lived from day to day. In this progressive synthesis we shall allow the experience to develop itself before our eyes as stress, which is the inseparable unit of aggression and defense; in a word, we shall try to effect a comprehensive restoration of this existence considered as a totalization in progress. (1:320) The synthetic-progressive stage attempts to see the present in the light of the achieved future as a choice, that is, one option among many, with this important qualification, namely, we already know the choices that are to be made. Gustave's father chose to establish a "Flaubert House," as one choice among many and, when he was older, Gustave could have truly left the Flaubert House. Indeed, this "achieved future" was always present to us; but, in the regressive stage, we did not experience it as a "choice": that is to say, as a nondeliberative but free giving of oneself to a situation. The rest of the family, the mother, the first born son, the daughter do not experience "stress" induced by the father's family project. They are each one with the Family project. Still, one might ask, "Why this father who had a true adventure with

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life would not wish the same for his children?" We understand some of the "reasons" such as his desire to establish a family line, but why did he actually follow these reasons rather than others? The answer to this question is nothing more than the strange freedom of Achille-Cleophas. The more challenging question, for our study, concerns Gustave's own freedom. And thus we are formally introduced toward the end of this volume to the synthetic-progressive stage, which continues through volumes 2 in French and 2, 3, and 4 in English. In this first volume, we notice the childbecoming-adolescent living neurosis only as its precondition, and thus Sartre notes, "Worst of all, he condemns himself in advance - he judges himself according to the norms the Flauberts have adopted" (1: 337). In volume 2 in French and 2,3 and 4 in English we will enter with Gustave into the web of his choices that led to neurosis. This first volume then examines Gustave's early family background. As such it gives us the initial progressive stage as well as a formal regressive one together with the following synthetic-progressive stage up until Gustave is about fifteen and begins to enter school. To be more exact, the last part of the volume returns to the regressive examination of Gustave's constitution, for this remains the context within which this young child must learn how to see himself. Thus, in the final chapter, "Two Ideologies," Sartre notes that the youth had no practical choice in the debate between science and religion: "The paterfamilias, in effect was not only the black lord ... He was also a great man" (1: 439).7 I think that Sartre's point is that, if Gustave's father had been obviously evil, the situation would have been tragic but relatively easy to understand. But the eminent doctor Achille-Cleophas was respected by all; he was not only a surgeon, a researcher, but a doctor who went out to visit his patients in their homes. We may thus ask, "For whom is this man a black lord?" For Gustave, yes, and also, perhaps for the whole family, who do not mind having a black lord for a father as long as he was a kind black lord: "Out of conjugal courtesy he did not directly attack the private religion of his wife" (1: 493). A smile, or mere word properly placed, destroyed all possibility of belief for the child, who, may have hated him for it, but who was not given a chance to 7

The almost two-hundred pages of Chapter Seven are first divided into a regressive-synthetic progressive study of the scientific ideology represented by the father and then (487) Sartre reflects on "The Other Ideology," which has its own subdivisions. I am not sure any of these divisions help the reader Sartre is indeed alternating between a descriptive-progressive approach and then a deep regressive one with the synthetic-progressive to follow Whether it is possible to pinpoint the turns is another issue, and, to repeat, I am not at all convinced that the effort to note these would be that rewarding. I am not, however, implying that Sartre is vague in his use of the progressive-regressive method. Rather, during a general progressive approach, an issue may arise that calls for a regressive study, which when completed, leads Sartre to return to his initial progressive approach that now proceeds on a deeper level because of the regressive analysis

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choose between science or religion, or a mixture of both. Later, as we will see, he chooses neither science nor religion, but, rather, pure art. He thus sets upon the road of becoming the supreme knight of nothingness, living gloriously for a while within the structure of the Second Empire, which was itself a reality made more real than it was by the imaginary reflection onto it of the First Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte.

9 The Family Idiot Concluded

As I look over the almost twenty-four hundred pages that comprise the rest of The Family Idiot, I am, once again, almost paralyzed by the choice that must require me to leave out so much. The three other works that we have considered, as difficult as they are in places, are relatively contained. Fortunately, however, my aim is merely to elaborate the logic that connects the whole. In this respect, I must note that, for the most part, I am not happy with the basic divisions of this massive work. On the other hand, it is not really necessary to keep them in mind, as I will be examining only very large segments. Still, I will give the English versions of the basic divisions of volumes 2-5 in a footnote, and I should also inform my reader, that, from now to the conclusion of this study, I will be concerned only with the English translation into five volumes of the original three in French.1 VOLUMES 2 - 4 : PERSONALIZATION TO LAST SPIRAL

Volume 2: Personalization: "What Is Beauty If Not the Impossible?" We can begin with the happy observation that - in the first fifteen pages or so of volume 2 - Sartre gives a clear description of the task he plans to accomplish in these three volumes: "Thus while our previous descriptions attempted 1

Here are the basic divisions of the remaining part of the work: Volumes 2-3- Part Two: Personalization: Book One: "What Is Beauty If Not the Impossible'?" Book Two: School Years Volume 4: Part Three: The Last Spiral Book One- The Fall Book Two. "Loser Wins" Volume: 5: (No Part Division) Book One: Objective Neurosis Book Two: The Second Empire 182

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to leave nothing obscure, we never arrived at little Gustave's personalization, an effort made through passive activity to unify the internalized family structures" (2: 7). Two related issues are implied by this claim. First, we are now concerned with Gustave's adolescence and adult life; for, no matter how tragic a child's life may be, no child is neurotic. He or she is too young for that strange global response to the world which tames reflective consciousness, slowly giving it a determined preference for the imaginary over the real. Second, the focus of the progressive-regressive method thus alters; for, while the preceding discussion was mainly regressive, this one is to be mainly synthetic-progressive. In brief, this progressive movement is nothing less than the effort of bringing ourselves alongside Gustave, as he copes with his induced passivity and lack of love, and deepens both, because he is unwilling to face his hatred of his family. Consequently, we witness his life developing through stress, that is, the ever present effort to prevent his reflective awareness of his hatred of his family from arising. But our goal is not to achieve a mere objective understanding of Flaubert's condition; rather, we attempt to experience his stress and to enter with him on the road to neurosis. It is important to be clear about this neurosis. Every child lives somewhat in the imaginary, and we all imagine goals that we do not quite accomplish. This is normal. In this neurosis, however, the imaginary gives a global value to the real, a value which remains primary, even in actions. The task of the elucidation of this neurosis is the goal of the first one hundred pages of so of chapter eight, "The Imaginary Child." Thus, in a long section that recalls the "look" described in Being and Nothingness - (Chapter 4 of this text) - we see the child and then the adolescent continually preferring the way he appears to others over the way he appears to himself. This is a particular application of the look. In general, the look signifies that our first awareness of ourselves arises from others, normally our parents. Then, as we mature, we learn to assert our individuality; our "I" becomes important for us and we try to make it important for others. In a budding neurosis, however, we do not attempt to integrate the way we appear to others with the way we appear to ourselves. We rather give primacy to the other, and thus Sartre writes, "the result for Gustave is an absolute priority of the 'He' over the T ; his unrealizable reality necessarily comes to him as other than his life" (2:109). As we enter with him into his neurosis, we experience Gustave's continual efforts to please his family, while, nevertheless, resisting their efforts to make of him a copy of his father. We notice that he doesn't play at being a doctor nor does he begin childhood studies that even remotely aim in this direction. Rather, he writes and performs his own plays with his sister's help. The young Gustave has so much passion for these imaginary roles that they might alarm his audience - if they took him seriously. But, we observe that he is placed so ambiguously within his family that even their acceptance of him seems to him to be imaginary. All family life seems a stage for this child, and thus earlier in

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the chapter Sartre had remarked: Filial love can be sincere, that is,/e/t. Filial piety, by contrast, is a 'show.' The child lends himself to it willingly, he says what the parents expect of him ... But when the parents respond to this 'show' with another 'show' and cover the little ham with kisses, the role tends to disappear - everything takes place in the context of the inter subjective truth of familial experiences. For the truth of my love is the love the other bears me. (2: 23) The "truth" of the family's love for Gustave, however, is suspicion: "Have we given birth to an idiot?" Gustave responds by hiding within himself, attempting to find true family love in his imagination. Perhaps, without knowing, he attempts to act out love in an effort to please the family; but the family sees it all as just another form of childhood dreaming. Thus, we can experience Gustave deepening his constituted passivity, about which he had no choice, deepening his resentment that he could not help experiencing as the "family idiot," and deepening his misanthropy, which arises both from his father's suspicion that he would never make the grade as a "Flaubert" and from his mother's failure to take Gustave's side against his father. Sartre writes, "the unreality grows: the object seen is his image, it is not him; the reflection serves as analogue to his visible body, which eludes him" (2: 28). That is, Gustave tries to interiorize the way he is seen in the family, and when he does this, he finds his true status as a second son revealed in the suspicion that he is not right in the head, something that the play acting itself seems to prove. Before proceeding further, we should perhaps once again clarify the notion of "choice" implicit throughout this discussion of neurosis. We are not concerned with the type of choice that one might call a deliberation. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre had explicitly observed that deliberation occurs only within a specified project, when one's goals are set. Rather, we are here concerned with the slow emergence of the project itself, and, in this sense "choice" implies that our actions are de facto putting us on a particular path, a path that we may then follow for life. For Gustave, his situation was such that his actions could only be preneurotic, while, nevertheless, leaving the door open to a nonneurotic path. Later in his life, Gustave could have confronted his family's rejection and lived his life accordingly. If this possibility had not been present - if his life were completely locked within the family structure Gustave's life would be tragic but not neurotic. On the other hand, the growing neurosis does not imply that Gustave explicitly confronts two views of the world, one neurotic and the other nonneurotic, and that he chooses the former. The neurosis would not "work," and his life would have been neither neurotic nor tragic, but merely cynical. Thus, to repeat, the reality of his path to neurosis is his continual effort at preventing reflection on his condition from arising, and, rather, plunging himself deeper into his daily activities, which, as it were, absorb and feed the neurosis.

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Thus, as we trace the steps leading to full neurosis, we must keep in mind that we are not attempting to prove that Gustave Flaubert had to be neurotic. Rather, we make a genuine effort to experience his life, through his letters, through his early plays and stories, and we observe his slow preference for the imaginary over the real. Our sympathy is aroused, because his family life does not help him to find a way out of neurosis. No one helps, including his younger sister, Caroline, whom Sartre examines more closely for the first time in chapter nine, "From Imaginary Child to Actor." Could not the younger Caroline move Gustave away from the imaginary by providing him with real companionship? Caroline does help Gustave act out his own plays, which he is writing when he is only about ten years of age. But the constant theme throughout this chapter is that Caroline is a true daughter of her mother, fitting within the family project, respecting her father, her mother, and the first born son, the wonderful Achille. Gustave is merely an added luxury, the plays merely a passing entertainment that never bring her close to him. Gustave, on the other hand, needs her love and, and to draw her to him, he throws himself into his plays, building complete sets for almost thirty plays: "If Gustave threw himself body and soul into this venture, it was because it gave him something he was looking for, though without knowing it" (2:120). That is, he discovers that acting is a normal place for the imaginary. But his childhood zeal is excessive; Gustave does not wish to return from his roles. Gustave wants his co-worker and his audience - his parents, brother and sister - to take his plays seriously, while all the time being dimly aware that no Flaubert son could be allowed to act or write plays for a living: "As always in Gustave there is a withheld consciousness, which he prevents from developing" (2: 132). The preference for acting and for the kind of spoken words that are characteristic of acting continues, even as he transforms himself into a writer, that is, even as he slowly acknowledges that writing is to be his life. As we will see, it is only after the "fall" that he allows the consciousness of himself as a writer to begin to emerge explicitly into his reflective life. Thus, in Chapter Ten, "From Actor to Author," Sartre will claim that at thirteen he writes well, but more in the sense that he writes down the spoken word, and he himself is not sure whether he is an actor or a writer. When, however, he finally accepts himself as writer, Sartre claims that the primacy of the spoken word remains, not in the sense that Madame Bovary has to be read out loud to be properly appreciated; but rather, in the sense that, in all his great works, the written words remain condensed spoken words, aiming to be sounded in the reader's imagination mind rather than unveiling themselves before the reader's eyes - "the voice remains to the end the completion of writing" (2: 226). Sartre claims that he will take this up in greater detail later, and some of this explanation does appear, although, I suspect, he is also referring to the never completed volume on Madame Bovary. One wonders what Sartre would say about how the congenitally deaf read Madame Bovary.

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We might want to ask how Gustave could fail to be aware of himself as a writer, if, in fact, he was spending a good part of his life writing. The question has to do with writing as an honorable profession for a Flaubert. To be a writer and to be a Flaubert is the question that is always present and yet always only on the fringe of Gustave's consciousness. Why only on the edge of consciousness? Simply because the milieu of the Flaubert House is that plays are pastimes. The young Gustave may be allowed to spend time on them; but will the family allow him to write plays or anything else as a living? Gustave knows the answer: "It will not be allowed!" But then, as Sartre continually reminds us, "Genius is a way out of an impossible situation," and always before us, as we try to grasp Gustave's formal entrance into neurosis, is that stroke of genius, "the fall." For the present we are merely approaching this event, and thus Sartre concludes this chapter and introduces the next, Chapter Eleven, "Scripta Manent," with the observation that he must now attempt to explain Gustave's conversion from acting to writing. Sartre places this conversion at fourteen years of age when Gustave writes: To write, oh to write is to seize the world, its prejudices, its virtues, and to sum them up in a book; it is to feel your thought being born, growing, living, standing on a pedestal, and remaining there for ever. (2: 245, note 21) This claim signifies a conversion to writing, not only because of the passion in the words, but, more properly, because of the emphasis on the writer's ability to bring the world together in a book. Although Sartre provides us here and elsewhere in this work with long discussions about writing in general, we are more concerned with Gustave Flaubert for whom the sound and shape of words were always important. Sartre claims that Gustave almost spontaneously joined words together, whose physical and sonorous qualities were as important as the meanings of the words. This might have developed into poetry, but Gustave used it as prose. Still, this observation only approaches the true conversion to writing. For Sartre, the actual conversion - implied by words quoted - happens when Gustave slowly but surely uses words not only to signify things in the world but mostly for their internal relations among themselves. Of course, all good writing and fiction writing in particular is sensitive to the way words fit together. But we are here concerned with something more specific; namely, the way this preference for the linguistic structure is allied to the goal of art for art's sake. In its final form, when writing meshes with the impossible imaginary dream of art for art's sake, we are supposed to be lulled into believing that writing writes itself, the writer being a mere mediator at best - I anticipate Sartre's slow development. He claims that Gustave is not explicitly aware that this is happening to him, but that his later writings and his own claims, show this to be the truth. Thus, when Gustave is referring to seizing the world and putting it in a book, what he means is the world of language. It is language itself, speaking to

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itself that is to be totalized and captured in a book. If this language also seems to apply to the world, that is secondary. "When words symbolize as much as they signify, they refer only to words" (2: 299). All of this is somewhat general; but what makes this quest for a writing that writes itself unique to Gustave Flaubert is the way it unites with his personal neurosis. True, Gustave is not reflectively aware that he is neurotic; he is aware of the tensions in his life, but not the ways they reflect his subdued hatred of his family. In short, the union of art for art's sake and writing reflect the whole person - Gustave Flaubert and, particularly in his writing of Madame Bovary, Flaubert is tangentially aware of his strange identity with language: What struck him above all in April 1835, when he had reread the story of poor Marguerite, was that he had captured the world and human society in his vignette, and that at the same time he had gained his own person: the book-becoming of the world could not be accomplished, in effect, without the world-becoming of his thought - which must be taken here in the largest sense (sensibility, affections, imagination, understanding). (2:301) Madame Bovary is thus about everything and this everything is the union of Language-World-Flaubert. But the Word thereby spoken is "Defeat." Defeat, not by some powerful enemy, but by man himself - whose dreams, hopes, passions, and understanding are doomed in advance, not because they cannot be fully realized in the world, but because they have already been perfectly realized in an imaginary world. Or, perhaps, we should say, that this imaginary narrative, which is the world writing itself, does indeed touch the world, but only to inject into it a hopelessness of the value of redemptive effort. - Although the adolescent of thirteen or fourteen was not explicitly aware of this integration of writing with his imaginative recreation of himself, he was, by his actions and his other writings, taking the steps that would make this possible. Thus, in Chapter Eleven, "From Poet To Artist," Sartre claims that we can now go back to Gustave's earlier works, for example, Saint Anthony, and recognize that the real temptation of the artist does not arise from the luxuries of the world, but from the deep chasm of the void: "Art is a nothing that depicts nothings" (2:405). This "nothing" proclaimed by art for art's sake is not that of Being and Nothingness, which points to freedom - the way selfhood is always elsewhere from the self seeking it, allowing us to change our orientation to the world and to others. Rather, this "nothing" is a diabolically ideal conceptualization of freedom - a Demonic Platonic World of Ideas that casts its shadow over the earth, revealing the fruitlessness of all human life. Still, Gustave has to wed the false idealization of art for art's sake to writing by concrete tasks. In effect, this requires him to forge a prose out of a language more suited to poetry, which is the first realm of art for art's sake: "When he [Gustave] writes, 'What is Beauty if not the impossible?' his words have a double meaning: Beauty is what one cannot make, but it is also what one cannot have" (2: 416). At this poetic level, Gustave Flaubert would never have

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been able to write Madame Bovary, and thus, as with Genet, Sartre traces Gustave's interior dispositions as he moves first from poet to artist and then from artist to writer. As a poet in the very early "prose" works, the written words are the embodiment of the pure passion of the spoken word. Consequently, for Sartre, this implies that, although the hatred of his family is hidden from the writer, it is nevertheless evident in the words themselves. As an artist - in the middle works up to Madame Bovary - he chisels away at the words, creating an interior dialogue within the narrative, a dialogue which, if read properly, reveals his hatred of all humanity, even himself, the writer. What remains hidden from him, however, is his hatred and need for his father; for even as an astute reader of his own work, he cannot unveil this message. But, as the writer of Madame Bovary, the misanthropy is completely hidden from the surface meanings of the narrative; it appears only on the level of denotation. All of this happens slowly, sparked first by Gustave's leaving home, attending school, and then finally by his "fall" - his complete collapse before his doctor-brother, a collapse that effectively allowed him to become a writer and to remain within the family. Volume 3: Personalization (continued); "School Years" About a third way through the third volume in English, Sartre explicitly recalls to mind the process of personalization that has been engaging his attention, since the second volume: Gustave at this time is in the midst of a long and violent crisis that will lead him from pre-neurosis to the attack at Point-l'Eveque and to neurosis properly speaking: the poet is effaced to the advantage of the artist in the course of a painful mutation whose steps we shall retrace in a subsequent chapter. (3: 213) The above quote is from Chapter Fourteen and it has the same title as Chapter Twelve of volume 2, "From Poet To Artist." The long-intervening Chapter Thirteen, "From Legend To Role," prepares us to redo once again our study of Gustave's subjective dispositions as he move toward full neurosis. It will be useful, I believe, to outline these steps. The last pages of volume two prepare us for this deeper grasp of Gustave the artist, precisely as he is not yet aware that he will become a writer. The last two pages are particularly perceptive. Much of the preceding discussion had been about an older friend by five years, Alfred, who, for Gustave, had died twice, once when he was married and the second time when he actually did die. Sartre writes about Flaubert, "We shall soon see him reinstate in himself as principal virtues his dead friend's emptiness and boredom" (2: 434). In the following pages, Sartre more fully summarizes the way he sees Gustave integrating Alfred within his life: Gustave's dominant personalization therefore integrates Alfred in three distinct dimensions, of which two are imaginary: the dead youth is the source of Great

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Desire - of infinite privation; he is instituted by his friend and within him as the being of the artist - that is, as his inert and noble gratuitousness of the art object. The third dimension, real or at least in the process of realization, is determined the gratuitousness of the work to be done. Deprived of every thing, superfluous by birth, and disdainful of the necessary, Gustave is nothing else, in truth, but a worker of the imaginary, that is, the means of an inhuman end. (2: 435) The following six hundred pages, which constitute volume 3 in English, backtrack to fill in the details of Gustave's own life, as it both melded to and separated himself from Alfred, thereby paving the course for Gustave to become his own kind of writer. In particular, Gustave is pre-neurotic and Alfred is not. Thus, granting all the "normal" tensions that would occur in attempting to hold true to the impossible dream of a pure art for art's sake, none of the other artists were impelled to write because of a hate-need relation to their families. Indeed, everything mentioned in Chapter Twelve, "From Poet To Artist" is reexamined in Chapter Fourteen, "From Poet To Artist," from a synthetic-progressive perspective of Gustave's preneurosis as a choice leading him to full neurosis and to a life of writing. Thus, toward the last third of volume 3 in English, Sartre develops this new stage of his progressive study into Gustave's personalization, stressing this time both his hate-relation to his father and the ways Alfred led him to reflect upon life. Gustave can almost begin to see his true relation to his father, and "yet the moment he is about to open himself and see in depth the father's curse, he snaps shut" (3: 432). Here we encounter Gustave's freedom, for, in truth, the friendship with Alfred provided Gustave with a door out of neurosis - but he would not take it, preferring to "be ignorant of himself" (3: 433). Toward the end of Part Two, "Personalization," Sartre completes the synthetic-progressive and dialectical understanding of Gustave Flaubert's preneurosis that is itself one with his life, his work, and his relations with his friends. That is, we begin to see that, with all the family conditions that made his life miserable, much of this misery was his own doing. Induced with a passive relation to the world from his parents, he deepens it, molding it into a world view: Passive Flaubert continually produces an ethic of passivity ... In this framework and from this perspective, he acts without even being aware of it: he washes and shaves, he dresses, eats and drinks, studies at the college, does his baccalaureate, chooses the itinerary of his strolls during his 'dear journey,' enters into a liaison with Eulalie Foucault. To give himself short-term objectives, he needs to feel that the long-term objective escapes him; the feeling of constraint is the necessary basis for his spontaneous choices. (3: 577) Sartre is here describing a neurotic relation to one's project. Normally, while our everyday actions do not explicitly recall to us our life project - this would be exhausting - they also do not continually serve to hide our project from our reflective consciousness. Sartre sees this self-deception continually revealed in

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Gustave's letters. And yet, the neurosis is not fixed for life. There is freedom; the possibility always remains that he will allow himself to face his desire to be a writer despite what his family might think of such a career for a Flaubert male. To make this abstract possibility into a real conversion would necessitate a break from his family. But, it is not merely fear that holds Gustave back; for with all his disguised hatred of his family, he remains proud of being a Flaubert throughout his school years, and, indeed, throughout his life. Volume 4: From Last Spiral to Loser Wins Flaubert has prepared himself to escape the family trap, and he succeeds in his neurotic efforts. Chapter Fifteen, "The Event," reexamines again Gustave's collapse before his brother, but now within a progressive-synthetic perspective that highlights the free neurotic way he managed to find a way out of an impossible situation. We encounter here Gustave's second great adventure with freedom, the first being his linguistic breakthrough as a child. Let us then recall, from our previous overview, this second advent of freedom - albeit neurotic. Gustave is driving in the vicinity of Pont-PEveque with his brother and suddenly, "Gustave dropped the reins and fell at his brother's feet as if struck by lightening" (4: 3). The long preneurotic preparation to remain within the House of Flaubert and yet be allowed to write has been completed. One must see this collapse as genuine; it is not play acting. Nor is it, on the other hand, an "unconscious" response to the lived tension of wishing to write and remain a Flaubert. Gustave had prepared himself for this, or for a similar event, by his dizzying surrenders to his own passivity, and by the sustained way he kept his need-hatred of his family on the edge of his reflective consciousness. Thus, in Chapter Sixteen, "Gustave's Diagnosis," Sartre reflects on the Gustave's own analysis of his "illness," and Sartre also considers the length of his illness and whether it was preceded by similar events. Perhaps, it is sufficient for our purposes to note with Sartre that Gustave truly suffers from acute nervousness and yet seems content: "The least we can say is that for the first time in his life he takes things with simplicity" (4: 25). It is as if Gustave knows that he is going to have his way; he is going to be allowed to write and remain within the family because he is not fit for anything more dignified. He remains bedridden until his father dies, and then, according to Sartre, he cures himself without admitting that there is any relation between his father's death and his cure. Gustave thus misunderstands his neurosis - as indeed he must. He has had a lifetime of practice in avoiding understanding himself. Thus, in the much longer Chapter Seventeen, "Neurosis As Response," Sartre begins his own diagnosis, the main outlines of which we have already mentioned in some detail, namely, the neurosis as the result of Gustave's free forging of the path leading to it. I will give one rather long quote because in it Sartre mentions his "nominalism," which, for me, is one of the keys to understanding his thought

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and which, in its simplest form is a movement from the singular to the universal rather than from the universal to the singular. To briefly put the quote in context, Sartre, while noting that Gustave had previously allowed himself to be lost in the imaginary world of misanthropy, observes, "it was because he was sure of a return" (4: 87). Sartre then continues: For this reason, the accident at Pont-1'Eveque encourages nominalism. In itself it seems atypical: if we start with the universal, we shall understand nothing about it. By contrast, to anyone who has followed Gustave from early childhood, it is clear that the attack somehow reproduces a singular experience, repeated a hundred times now sudden and suffered, now play acted, now imagined and attributed to a fictional character. ... The sole difference - but this is crucial - is that the January fall bears in it a deliberate intention of irreversibility. (4: 87) The intention that guided the fall is irreversible in the sense that Gustave vows to see himself as essentially passive from now on. He cannot, of course, admit to himself that the fall had anything to do with his aim of allowing his father to let him write; rather, he sees himself the way he wants his family to see him, too weak to work in the real world. On the other hand, Sartre reminds us that with all his constituted passivity, he remains proud. No one understands his true genius, not his family and thus no ordinary humans. This privilege is reserved for the Knights of Nothingness. Thus Gustave Flaubert enters the last spiral of his life, which Sartre again considers first from Gustave's own perspective about himself and then from Sartre's own view. The first occurs in Chapter Eighteen, "'Loser Wins' Rationalized," and the second in Chapter Nineteen, "The Real Meaning Of Loser Wins." The phrase "loser wins," to paraphrase my earlier explanation, signifies that, when we are afraid to face big tasks that may fail, we allow small obstacles to doing the task to appear - obstacles that we can and do, indeed, overcome, but which then reappear in a new guise. Draining the energy from our efforts, we thus never have to face the uncertainty of the success of the larger task. On the other hand, we must recall Sartre's dialectical nominalism. Loser wins is not a universal category; but a heuristic sketch of human behavior and its substantive nature as distinct in Gustave Flaubert. Thus, Gustave truly writes! The "loser-wins" schema that is found in him is atypical. The loser-wins structure is the writing itself, precisely as this writing aims to show that both language and the world have their value only from the imaginary. Gustave understands this; but he comprehends it as the way all great writing should be. All of which is to say that his writing - that strange union of sound and letters composed before the god of the imaginary - is the substance of his unique giving up on the world, even as he hopes to win glory from the world. Sartre writes: Neither world nor language are real, both are imaginary; the image of things is rendered through word-images. .. Imagining a vocable is the opposite of observing

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it: one is fascinated by it. ... This is asking the rich word 'Constantinople' somehow to make present to us the old Turkish city it designates. (4: 225) In brief, Gustave "loses" because he is not the author of any real thing in the world; his work may appear to have the form of traditional "books," but they point to evil, to the primacy of the imaginary over the real. This defeat, however, is also his "victory;" for his writings aim to displace the entire real world of effort, thereby justifying his own passivity. But, until the last, Gustave misunderstands the roots of his misanthropy; it is not the value of the world he wishes to do away with but that of his eminent father, and thus he misses the true meaning of his own unique "loser wins," which is itself nothing but a call for love. Still, Gustave survives in the real world, and we may note that he doesn't quite believe in art for art's sake, at least, not all the time. Indeed, he is afraid of fate - the devil, or whatever, will not allow him to write. He, like the rest of his family needs his "black lord;" he, Gustave, needs his father to come to him and say, "Yes, write and be a great writer," Thus, in Chapter Nineteen, "The Real Meaning Of "Loser Wins," Sartre writes, "We have discovered, on the tactical level, that the original attack involved an intention of love: the unloved boy tried to find paternal tenderness in it once again. ... Such is the meaning of the 'Loser Wins' of Point-l'Eveque: 'Father I am sick, take me in your arms and comfort me'" (4:307). Volume 5: Objective Neurosis and the Second Empire It is the general consensus that this last volume is among the finest of Sartre's writings and perhaps the most important. I concur; but I would note that without the earlier volumes the totalization between Gustave Flaubert and the historical "Spirit" in which he lived would seem somewhat fortuitous. The previous twenty-four-hundred-odd pages have been devoted to showing how this meshing of Gustave Flaubert with the Second Empire was the culmination of Gustave's life project. Hopefully, with the overview given in the first chapter and with what has been written here, we are ready to trace the logic of the six hundred pages of this last volume. To begin simply and analytically, the volume is composed of two books, book one with three chapters and book two with no chapter divisions. Although, in the overview, I have already noted the key function of Chapter Twenty, which opens book one of this last volume, I believe it fruitful to return briefly to it. Book One: Objective Neurosis Chapter Twenty: The Problem Just as Chapter One sketched the task of the remaining nineteen chapters of volume one - and, in a sense, of the entire work - so too Chapter Twenty

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sketches the task of this last volume - and, in a way, summarizes the entire effort of this massive work. Specifically, the goal is to account for the success of Madame Bovary. I can be brief, for much of the material has already been examined. Generally, neurosis dilutes a work of art. Strangely, for Gustave it allowed his works to be more compact, "to appear to treat one subject but in fact to be treating another, quite different in quality and scope, or not to treat it at all, by which he does not mean writing to say nothing, but writing to say Nothing" (5:13). Sartre does not invite us to view Madame Bovary as a fable or allegory, in which a narrative about animal or human behavior points to another realm of human behavior. On the contrary, there is here only one narrative and this is the surface story itself. The nihilistic message is not another story, but the way every event, every behavior, every thought and feeling, every word that is the language of the book points only to the narrative, and yet the whole narrative itself slips into the void of the utter uselessness of all desires and all human deeds. Thus, the "poison" with which Gustave wishes to infect the common reader is the false sympathy that Madame Bovary is a tragic figure - which she is - and that the tragedy of her life delivers to us a classical catharsis aimed at allowing us to deal more effectively with the tragic aspects of our own lives. For Sartre, nothing could be further from Gustave's intention. Tragedy is present; but it is part of the deception. Tragedy implies true love gone amiss. But there is no spark of true love in the realm of Satan. Again, we meet the same question, but now more concretely: If there is no spark of love in Madame Bovary, how could the reading public be enticed by the work? Sartre writes: Hence this paradox: Gustave's neurosis could produce, strictly speaking, only neurotic works that would have repelled the public of 1850. Yet because of it, between the ages of thirty and forty he wrote a book that is dense and full ... that imposes itself on the public and, for the writers of his time, initiates a future cycle, though the norms of the new art are still unclear. (5: 27) Still, we can press the question, "Why, then, although throughly neurotic, was Madame Bovary a success?" The remaining chapters of book one are devoted to answering this question. But as usual Sartre introduces us to the "logic" of what is to come, specifically his appropriation of the Hegelian notion of "objective spirit." Sartre's aim is to call attention to the ways each generation invents literary possibilities for its own times, which inventions nevertheless arise from the ways the past is kept alive in the present. For Sartre, neither Gustave Flaubert nor Madame Bovary are thinkable within the objective spirit of the seventeenth or eighteen centuries. This is true, not merely because historical events and style of writing are impossible to imagine during those times, but because a neurosis could not have fit within the objective spirit of the times as it did in the Second Empire. According to Sartre, writers such as Rousseau or Pascal were probably neurotic; but, as respectable men, they wrote against their illness. Today, Sartre notes, partly

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because of Flaubert, neurosis may be the royal road to creating a literary masterpiece; nevertheless, this general observation would have to be examined in each case. Our concern, however, is with Flaubert. Chapter Twenty One: Objective Spirit The notion of objective spirit introduced in Chapter Twenty is here developed in Chapter Twenty One. In each culture certain books are regarded as classics or as respectable or as very important. An illiterate person approaches such books as sacred objects, and an initiate author reads such a book as if the notions were already approved thought. True, each reader is free, and each one interprets the written words within their own project. Still, insofar as the book is an "accepted work," each reader is a "surpassing toward the idea in us only if it is outside, as worked matter" (5: 42). That is, the book appears to embody "guaranteed" knowledge. Again, we are back to the Critique, to the notion of seriality: Each person reads in the light of the judgment of the times about "classical" or "important" works, and one must make a special effort to attain a true personal opinion. On the other hand, the web of acceptable works is in a state of flux, and this particularly affects the reader whose main interest in reading is to write. Sartre's point is that, within all the changing norms, an implicit demand for reading what was neurotic, was, nevertheless, allied to the Objective Spirit that formed Gustave's reading habits. Thus, the spirit of the times was itself neurotic; and its neurosis was similar to Gustave's personal neurosis. Still, this claim demands further reflection, which is provided by Sartre in the next chapter. Chapter Twenty Two: "The Literary Situation of the Postromantic Apprentice Author" Sartre invites us to imagine ourselves apprentice authors, reading in a library or in a home filled with books, in France from about 1830 to 1850. Our task is to describe the "objective spirit" embedded in those words that will be awakened by us through our reading. Needless to say, the books will extend over a few generations, and from pages 57 until 410, Sartre surveys the scene, with special attention, of course, to Gustave Flaubert. What we may note here is first the discovery of the supreme and continual effort of literature to free itself from external social or religious constraints and to establish its own norms, thereby gradually attaining the goal that good writing justifies any content. Thus, the objective literary spirit embodied in the books of Flaubert's time pointed to literature as the highest expression of human freedom. For Sartre, however, this quasi-literary imperative hides a contradiction. The writers are bourgeois and as such they are the new self-made persons defined against the inherited landowners - yet they firmly believe in private property. They are men of property who think they speak for all men. Also, the imperative to pure style is "a commandment: to seek glory" (5: 70). An elitism arises,

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different from and yet related to the elitism of the nobles, which itself supposedly arose from their pure blood. Moreover, the young author will wish to write something that is not cherished by his parents; he will wish to write a new literature. On the other hand, even as the bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century is reading, the social reality of the practico-inert is altering. Thus, by 1830, the bourgeoisie are in power and can now explicitly require a literature reflecting their own beliefs, namely, a radical individualism based on private property and the right to make money, with no rules or hindrances. Referring to Gramsci's notion that the bourgeoisie aim to establish hegemony over all society, Sartre notes that the aim is such "that the exploited classes, having internalized the ideology of the ruling class, will invent reasons to accept the exploitation and become its accomplices" (5:77). The effect of this complex but unified objective spirit on the apprentice author will also move in contradictory directions. On the one hand, our author is also encouraged to make money by writing - "for the first time in human history, the class in power demands of its writers a literature of consumption" (5: 78). On the other hand, our budding author sees this literature of consumption to be against the demand of the writer's autonomy. He is caught: Neurosis surfaces when the Kantian, "You must, therefore, you can" is not respected. If rebirth is obligatory and impossible, if the writer must and cannot detach himself from his class of origin, and if a violent need to write exacerbates this contradiction, a solution will certainly be found, but it will not be realistic or even rational. (5: 80) This neurosis separates the dedicated writer from his reading public. The goal of autonomy keeps him from any desire to write for the bourgeoisie - but there is no other reading public: "For the first time in history those young souls harbor a brutal separation between writing and communication" (5:86). The implicit decision, arising from the need to write and the divorce from a reading public, is to see writing as not necessarily related to communication. Indeed, it now appears, to the best of these emerging authors, that true autonomy requires that writing be only for itself, the pure product of the author with no relation to a reader. That is, the words are now seen to have a unique interrelation so that, once written, they feedback, as it were, upon themselves, "present all at once in a multiplicity of interpretation; and the writer needs no duality to make the word render up all its flavor and good sense" (5: 87). If the human species were destroyed and books could not be read, their beauty and their significance would remain between the covers. In the same way, for these Knights of Nothingness, a flower would supposedly emit its perfume, even if there is no sense of smell in the world. But now a deeper division occurs between the book and its reader. If the well-written book - that is to say, the one which embodies the perfect autonomy of the written word - does not need readers, it may also not need its

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author. Or, more accurately, the author becomes a mere mediation through which language writes the book. The indirect but important consequence of this literature is that it cannot be a profession, because it does not aim at being supported by a reading public, namely, the bourgeoisie. We have been very abstract. The above description is too "logical"; it would have been seen for what it was, namely, a contradiction that a budding writer could recognize and then ignore. Complications made this later surpassing by the initiate writer almost impossible, and these same contradictions gave social and individual force to the literary contradiction. Very briefly, just as Gustave hated his family and was nevertheless proud of having Flaubert blood, so too the budding writer was beckoned to reject the nobles and join the ranks of the bourgeoisie while, nevertheless, strangely convincing himself that, in fact, he had something like aristocratic blood: "Many of Flaubert's contemporaries could claim as their own that sentence he wrote in a letter to Louise: " 'We are the Good Lord's aristocracy.' In a bizarre fashion, this sums it all up" (5: 99). This literary aristocracy, like all aristocracies, views humanity from above; thus, these writers see themselves as the truly privileged ones of society, and they have little regard for humanity as a whole. Sartre notes that, if they had followed the path of Socrates, and were willing to put forth real effort to break from their contradictory relation to their public, "a long movement could have begun, leading to acquired truth ... That movement did not occur" (5:214). Rather, called by the bourgeoisie to defend and represent them - hating and yet needing them - they escaped into the imaginary. To all of the above contradictory forces, we must again return to the clash between science and art. The bourgeoisie embraced science and used it to defend their position. They justified their social position by such "delicious" notions as the survival of the fittest, which placed them on top, and all those who did not wish to grasp after money on the bottom. On the other hand, these bourgeois were themselves victims of the notion art for art's sake, a notion which relegated them and science to the status of "apes." Still, all of this might have been overcome - except that rising class murdered members of the working class. If the writers had to choose - which they did - they too considered the murders the natural "cost" of progress. Further, when needed, they could find similarities between themselves and science. The doctrine of art for art's sake preached by the Knights of Nothingness paralleled the reductionism of science. Science reduces man to a series of external relations, with no inner core, and art reduces man to the spectator of an inhuman beauty, or better, removes man as a spectator of anything. All of this hatred of the common man became part of the background of lived art experience, which "required neurotic determinations of the objective spirit... that the truth of the world was madness, that being was putrefied by an ontological psychosis" (5:375).

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We must finally return again to Madame Bovary. Could not the astute reader grasp and thus reject this nihilism in disguise? Indeed, it should have been able to do so, in the abstract. But then, the bourgeois reader was in bad faith, a killer of workers, a seeker after money wishing to discover beauty in reading. There was thus a deep tie uniting the writer of Flaubert to his readers: "It is clear that author and reader are working hand in glove; for their chief concern is identical: each wants to forget a history and have it forgotten by destroying the historicity of human societies" (5: 396). The bourgeoisie want to believe that they are completely self-made, owing nothing to anyone. The workers exist, true; but they are not truly part of the new history. What can be killed, oppressed, and used as a tool so easily, is not truly human. Book Two: The Second Empire As usual, the theme of this last book is announced in the concluding pages of the former, and it again concerns Flaubert's neurosis. Now, however, we are concerned with two specific aspects of that neurosis, namely, the way it programed his life and the way it made his life "oracular." This latter aspect is the more difficult to grasp. Let us, however, begin with the first, which is announced in introductory sentence: "If Flaubert's life is programmed, it could only be as a result of his neurosis." This claim bring us back to Sartre's nominalism: Only someone imbued with the specific neurosis characteristic of Gustave Flaubert could have represented so perfectly the neurotic objective spirit of the times. The literary period needed what only Gustave had - a deep personal hatred that could mesh with that illusionary glory of a game of mirrors that hid real moments of revolution and murder. The agenda, never reflected upon or allowed to surface, was both the hatred of the common man and an escape from guilt. And Flaubert had it all: "Never guilty, because he was made guilty to the marrow by the paternal curse," Sartre recalls just a few pages before concluding his study (5: 599). Thus, the Knights of Nothingness did not feel guilty about the massacres of workers, because they had already killed humanity through their demand for art for art's sake. Madame Bovary was the perfect book both for the Knights of Nothingness and for the new bourgeoisie. It presented a life filled with misunderstandings, with tragedy, all of which elicited enlightened bourgeois sympathy, allowing the liberal to forgive himself and to see himself as one of the enlightened, who were above the stupid who condemned the work for indecency. Then too, they can see themselves as mere mortals and not as children of Satan. They must survive in the world, and if their own petty life of money slips also into the nothingness - a nothingness hinted at but veiled by science - well, that is the way of the world. In short, without Flaubert, the period would have lapsed into history without its literary masterpiece. The literary task to be performed was so strange that only someone like Flaubert could be "programmed" to be its literary representative. In the abstract, one might make this judgement about any great

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writer; but what is here unique and will probably never be repeated is that the meshing was, in a sense, necessary. This "necessity of contingency" brings us to the most difficult aspect of these concluding pages, the oracular nature of Flaubert's life and writings. The real bind between Gustave Flaubert and his times arises from an anticipatory meshing of Gustave's early life with the objective spirit, prior to the actual coming-to-be of the Second Empire. Thus, Gustave's life become "oracular," concerning the general events that are to come. Can we make any sense of this claim? Perhaps, but only if we hold fast to the way radical contingency can give rise to universality and necessity. Let us first consider Sartre's words: ... through his oracular neurosis, Gustave determined his natural milieu in advance: this survivor of '44 defined at Pont-PEveque the optimum regime that would assure the reproduction of his survival; prophesying the Second Empire, he surpassed himself toward the establishment and flowering of imperial society, but as a result he is forbidden to survive alive. (5: 452) My conviction of the utter realism of Sartre's philosophy and its eschewing of all mysticism inclines me, at first, to pass over his announcement of the prophetic aspect of Flaubert's neurosis, as a time when the Sartrean pen moved on as he himself was asleep. It is, however, the motif of the concluding seventy pages, and I cannot accuse Sartre of nodding that long. Let empathy be our guide. There is, of course, the easy, cheap way out. After all, the entire study is filled with "regressive" moments, in which we look back and see a life unfold to the moment we have picked as our end point. Here, the end point is Madame Bovary, and thus retrospectively, we can now understand Gustave's life to have predicted his union with the absolute spirit of the times. One doesn't need seventy pages to make that obvious point, a point, which, in fact, has already been made numerous times and that would not be worthy of repetition. Let us try again, and this time, we will jump ahead to quote from the concluding few pages of text, and then work back to the quote given previously. It is clear that m 1844 Gustave was struck down by an attack whose motives were subjective, and whose objective meaning - coming from the conflict of two bourgeois generations and the requirements of the objective spirit grasped from this perspective - was a prophetic summoning of the society of the Second Empire, the only society in which Jules the Hermit could live. (5: 620-621) Everything would more or less fall neatly into place, except for the force of the expression, "prophetic summoning." How can a personal neurosis summon future events? It cannot, and Sartre's writing cannot make it so! If the notion of "prophetic summoning" is to have any sense at all, it must point to a genuine moment of freedom - a movement within the unfolding of Flaubert's life. What can this be? We must not expect the answer to be a new and startling

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revelation about Gustave Flaubert, because the entire study has examined and reexamined Gustave's life from every perspective. We are back then to the overall phenomenological perspective of all Sartre's philosophy, namely, the task to see the obvious in a new light. Gustave's fall before his brother was his personal way out of an impossible situation, namely, the task of being allowed to write and still remain a Flaubert. This "way out" was neurotic, because it was accomplished under the constant stress of keeping his hatred of his father on the edge of consciousness, never allowing it to enter into reflective awareness. It is now, however, possible to look upon the neurosis as an indirect plea to be allowed to remain within the family and "to live in it under the authority of the black lord" (5: 620). What about Gustave's hatred of his father, "yes," that was there in full force, but the hatred was combined with a need of the family, including a need for the father's absolute authority. It was, after, all the paterfamilias, Achille-Cleophas, who gave distinction to the family, belonging to bourgeoisie by the twin but contradictory ties of owning property and being a self-made man - the eminent doctor. In itself, the ownership of property belonged more to the earlier noble class; the owner received money from the land but did not work the land. That is, the bourgeoisie were beginning to be involved in a contradictory desire to give themselves a quasi purity of blood, based upon work but also upon taking the place of the former property owners. In order to succeed, this contradiction had to be masked, and it was art for art's sake that would later be called upon to cover the deception. Gustave Flaubert anticipates this masking: In short, at Pont-1'Eveque, by the realization of the objective neurosis through a subjective attack, Gustave demands an objective cover for his being-as-propertyowner four years before the bourgeoisie sought one. (5: 620)2 Later, through the cover of art for art's sake, the Knights of Nothingness would effectively mask this social contradiction, allying themselves, as it were, with that part of social contradiction which looked back to the pure blood of the nobles. They saw themselves elected, not by the bourgeoisie whom they despised for demanding a literature for consumption - but by the reach of an imaginary arm that was none other than pure art. For a time, the strange balancing act seemed to work; it took its real power from the imaginary aspect of the liberal period of the Second Empire (1861-1870). That 2

Although, in the later years of Gustave's life, the objective spirit of the times passed him by as he repeated his life, its former oracular spirit continues to haunt our present life Sartre writes, "Gustave appears to have had a presentment, nearly a hundred years before the events, of men like Eichmann and other Nazi war criminals" (5: 588). For Sartre, the truly upsetting thing about the trials was that we seemed to be faced with people who claimed that they were only obeying orders, with people who had indeed done the worst atrocities imaginable, and yet, with the evil and guilt always elsewhere; that is to say, with people therefore who were like our neighbors. Horror was being reduced to a shadow of mediocrity, and Gustave's anticipation consisted in his hatred not so much of evil of the times but of the decency of its evil.

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is, the Second Empire existed; it was an historical period with real people and palaces, although its truth was its reflection of the early Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte. But Flaubert's life was a play of mirrors, and given the contradictions of the times, it could unfold historically only under a "real" play of mirrors. And, within this play of mirrors, Flaubert was happy for a time, and he felt himself indeed "knighted." Also, Flaubert seemed for a while to belong to a part of humanity, namely, the Knights of Nothingness. Baudelaire and in lesser degree the Goncourts and the others whom Sartre mentions in detail read each other's works and saw themselves as above all normal humanity. For a time all superior persons basked in the sun of the imaginary empire. Then, as the bourgeoisie no longer needed a cover - because they were truly in power - the strange wedding of beauty as evil with the social contradictions of the time passed. Gustave, in particular, lived the remaining part of his life as a lost soul, losing his original project of capturing his hatred of humanity in a book and yet repeating his life, unable to liberate himself from his family. Two pages from the end of this long work Sartre writes: "So we must see that Gustave's profound intention in 1844 [the fall] is not to liberate himself from his father but, quite the contrary, to become re-integrated with his family and live in it under the authority of the black lord" (5: 620). The need-hate relation is now revealed as a unitary force, with the "need" swallowing the hate. For Gustave, that hate is both the life of his family and the truth of the world. Still, for Sartre, Gustave Flaubert captured this hatred of humanity in a remarkable book, whose only narrative is the petty tragedies of everyday life, but whose connotation is pure nihilism. The question then is why do we still view Madame Bovary as the "realist novel." The answer to this question was to be given in a fourth volume and I am not about to attempt to provide this missing volume. Neither by competence nor desire do I wish to do so. Still, I am not happy with my own attempts to explain, not so much the book, Madame Bovary, as Sartre's view of it. Indeed, I am not very happy with my own attempt to explain Flauber's oracular nature. Can I do better? I am not sure; but, after all, I have begun a task and a few general comments by way of an "Afterword" may not be amiss.

Afterword Madame Bovary

I am not about to attempt to gloss the actual text of Madame Bovary in order to see if I can understand how the obvious story points to nihilism. In truth, when I first read the book, I did not see anything particularly remarkable in it. It did not affect me as did Herman Melville's Moby Dick. One's first mature reading is what counts, and, I think that we must grant that Sartre's first reading revealed the book to him as preaching a false, nihilistic realism. It will prove nothing to go back and read the book, with Sartre's interpretation in mind; this sort of thing can always be done. My aim, rather, is to acquire a firmer and clearer grasp on the exact meaning of Sartre's interpretation, regardless of its truth, which I must leave to others to decide. The preceding discussion has presented us with enough references to allow us to at least glimpse the direction in which Sartre was heading. I here merely wish to put a particular focus on what has already been mentioned. Let us begin with a few obvious remarks. All of Sartre's works aim at bringing to light our responsibility for making our world and our humanity. This commitment to "making the human" separates Sartre from Flaubert, and it was the initial reason for Sartre's antipathy to him, followed by the need to acquire empathy, if he was going to understand Flaubert. Indeed, we are again concerned with the purpose of writing. For Sartre, a committed writer invites the reader to become engaged in changing the world toward a more human condition, without, however, preaching this message. This is totally opposed to Flaubert's notion of art for arts's sake. On the other hand, Sartre's concern is with Gustave Flaubert, and here we have to note again that Gustave's appeal to pure art is not born from meditating on art, but, as we have seen, it arises as a disguised hatred of his family: Gustave, as we have seen, wants to escape his familial alienations and screams this out by subjecting himself to art, that is, by presenting it as a nonhuman end, as an inhuman and ultimately antihuman imperative; he cannot conceive of humanity establishing its task as the dissolution of the Other in the bosom of the Same. Ruled

201

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Reading Sartre

and cursed by the Other, Gustave can admit man only insofar as his essence is outside him, in a cruel Other who scorns and devours him. (5:425) As we turn to Madame Bovary, Sartre sees all this hatred of humanity simultaneously embodied and hidden in the work on at least three levels, of which Gustave is aware of only two. First, there is the conscious crafting that disguises the deep and general misanthropy in a concrete tragedy of a socially condemned love that cannot be realized in this world. Reading this narrative, we say to ourselves, "If only this or that circumstance had been different - if only Emma or Leon had been honest, or Charles a little more astute in the ways of women's love and if only the social climate more open - Madame Bovary might have had lovers and a devoted husband and would have been moderately happy. Indeed, it is tempting to offer a standard exegesis based on Sartre's understanding of the relation of the novel to Flaubert. After all, we meet again the theme of the doctor. But, according to Sartre, Flaubert is aware that he has fashioned a false realistic novel, and, indeed, that was his purpose in writing it. The second level of Flaubert's awareness concerns the real message of the book, which we can put simply as: "Why are you concerned with the little misdeeds of Madame Bovary, when the best of life is doomed in advance to utter meaninglessness? Don't you know that the bourgeoisie surrounds itself with petty decent evils, which it then recognizes and rejects - while all the while a deepest of all evils, art for art's sake, has already judged and condemned the entire bourgeoisie class for its "apelike" existence. It is, I think, clear that Sartre believes Gustave is aware of these two levels of reading Madame Bovary. The third level - written by him but not known explicitly - is that this message of misanthropy is itself a disguised hatred of his father. May I take us back to Genet, to that simply story of a king who makes a picture of his beloved to bring with him to war. When he returns the king prefers to contemplate the picture that had captured his beloved beauty rather than the beloved herself. "People will say that the king is mad," Sartre says, and he replies, "No, the king is not mad he has become evil." Let us alter the story. A king, fully aware that the beauty of his beloved will fade, has it captured in a picture, which he then takes to war. He returns from war, preferring to contemplate the picture, rather than the person of his beloved. In my version, the king was always evil; from the start, he hated the temporality of the human condition, fixing his attention on the portrait the moment it was completed. I suggest that Sartre read Madame Bovary in this way - evil is already present in the first line of text and runs throughout the narrative. Even if my remark is true, it is very general. Let us begin anew. For the sake of argument, I am willing to grant that Sartre could properly gloss the text, revealing all three levels of discourse, surface narrative, general misanthropy, and hatred of family. I do not know exactly how Sartre would

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203

go about it; I prefer to merely make a few observations that interest me. Let us then grant that the realm of evil in Madame Bovary is thus not in the narrative proper, but in the way the words meld and hold together, revealing, as it were, their underside. Still, these words are "being"; that is, they are marks on a page delivering their message to the reader. But, as in every work of fiction, these marks point to appearance. Thus, returning to the terms of Being and Nothingness, while adopting them to a new context, Sartre writes, "The being ofnonbeing is the raw material itself of the work as fiction" (5:15). The written words are themselves the fictional narrative, in the sense that reading these words we dematerialize them into meanings that deliver to us the narrative. Simply, the physical marks of the sentence I am writing, becomes when read the meaning of the sentence. If the sentence concerns characters in a story, the physical marks are dematerialized into the story itself, otherwise we could never become engrossed in our reading. While this brief explanation is not meant to unveil the mystery of reading fiction, it can be said to point to the normal process of what happens in writing and reading fiction. But now the door is open to a different use of the way the written words allow the appearance of characters and events to be delivered to us on the pages of a book. The appearances, that play within and on the pages of our book and which we give ourselves to for a temporary respite from the cares of the real world, can be forged so that their aim is to make the real world a respite from that pure world of art. We thus carry this imaginary ideal with us throughout the day. Our real actions tend to fade into the imaginary world of fiction. Indeed, the meaning of our actions appear to take their substance and unity from the imaginary perfection of the written work, a perfection hidden by the sturdiness of the letters and spaces on the printed page.1 Still, even granting all of the above, I think that this would be only a small part of the task to be accomplished in the projected volume on Madame Bovary. In the concluding paragraph of the actual work, Sartre hints that a proper reading of the text will reveal that the spirit of art for art's sake prompted Flaubert to write the specific works that he in fact did write. Now 1

Have I interpreted Sartre correctly? It may be best to give the reader more of Sartre's own words: The being ofnonbeing is the raw material itself of the work as fiction, it is appearance, which is diabolical because the being of nothing, always borrowed, relative to being, suddenly show us the disturbing, vampirizing power of what is not. . The extraordinary purpose of art, in Gustave's view, is to manifest the ineluctable slippage of being toward Nothingness through the imaginary totalization of the work; at the same time its purpose is to preserve indefinitely by that regulated illusion which is the work, a sense of endlessness in this slippage, fixing it through the restraining power of words. The work is born of an interference in which two movements annul each other: being slips into nonbeing, and this very nonbeing saves it by vamporizing it. Flaubert's sadism is thus unleashed ... he compels it [being] to take the little substance and permanence he concedes it from the imaginary. (5:15-16)

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Reading Sartre

either this is a repetition of what Sartre has already said, or he is pointing to something new. We already know in great detail how Flaubert's neurosis meshed with the inhuman notion of pure art to cloak both his general misanthropy and that of his father. What then, is this further quest? I suspect that Sartre's aim is to show how the objective spirit of the times demanded the kind of neurosis that was characteristic of Flaubert and which he embodied in his works, specifically, Madame Bovary. What can this possibly mean? Of itself, the objective spirit of a times must be activated by real people, for it gives only the conditions for actions. Existing individuals may act against the spirit of the times, regardless of the success of their actions; or, they may incorporate this spirit, moving it deeper into itself. This seems to be Sartre's view of Gustave Flaubert. With this in mind, can we reveal an aspect of the objective spirit of Flaubert's time to be such that it, the objective spirt, also masked its misanthropy by a hatred of the father? Which Father? The male bourgeois, guardian of those lesser beings, women; the white male property owner, whose intelligence and hard work justified slavery and colonizing for profit; the father, the man of rights, who begrudgingly bequeathed some of these rights to his lesser subjects - could this pervading aspect of the objective spirit of the times be said to demand a work that screamed the hatred of the paterfamilias? Even if we grant all of the above, it would still be necessary to distinguish progressive from regressive aspects of our reflection. The initial progressive movement would require a deeper look at the phenomenon of the acceptance of a work that proclaimed the hatred of humanity as a "realist" work as well as a new look at Flaubert's status in our contemporary literature. The regressive stage, would, I believe, have at least two levels; the first has already been noted, namely, the way the objective spirit of the liberal part of the Second Empire demanded neurotic works, that others approximated but that only Flaubert provided, because his neurosis arose from his sustaining hatred of his father. The second regressive stage would have to bring us to the present and explain more fully why Flaubert is still regarded as the father of realism. Sartre does some of this in the work we have examined. Each regressive stage would then have to be followed by a syntheticprogressive movement that would reveal the moments of freedom that sustained the dialectical tension between hatred and need. That is, we would have to take a closer look on how and why the Knights of Nothingness sustained the milieu of the primacy of the imaginary, allowing Flaubert to enter within and, at least, for a time, be its king. Of course, all of this has already, to a great extent, been accomplished. This new reflection would begin and end from a detailed reading of Madame Bovary. That is to say, the dialectical tension between the singularity of Flaubert and universality of the times would concern not only the man and his times but the specificity of this particular work, Madame Bovary. It would almost seem as if the objective spirit had indeed written Madame Bovary, with Flaubert as the mediator.

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Thus, that strange claim of art for art's sake would now appear to be more than an abstract error, born of the impossible dream of a pure art that can exist apart from humanity. On the contrary, the bad-faith ideal, art for art's sake, would now be manifest as a concrete historical event, the Second Empire, in which the man Gustave Flaubert and the work Madame Bovary mesh so perfectly that each demands the other.

Index

Abraham, 29-30 Abstraction, 95-96 Action, 10,73-74,111-112; as distinct from praxis, 43,49-51 Active-passivity, 12,178,189-190; see also Passivity Age of Reason (Sartre), 113 Alienation, 23-27,32-33,141-142 Analytic reason, 133 Anarcho-syndicalism, 59,117 Anderson, Thomas, 54n.i5 Anguish, 71 Antagonism; see Conflict Anthropocentrism, 5311.13, 70-72, 98-99,101,106-107,119; see also World making Aristotle, 80, 94-95,98 Aronson, Ronald, 46n.4,5on.8,123n.8 Art (art for art's sake), 18-20,36-37, 186-187, 201-205 Artifact; see Practico-inert Audience (for Being and Nothingness), 70-71 Augustine, 189, 234

Being and Nothingness (Sartre), 69-88 (overview); 91-112 (the book itself); and Being and Time, 81-83,91,94-95, 119; and Critique of Dialectical Reason, 7on.2,83,97; and Notebooks for an Ethics, 70-71,82,86,112; and Family Idiot, 75,79,84,86n.9, 88,93; and Saint Genet, 71,79,82, 103-105; action, 111-112; anguish, 71; audience for, n 2-113; bad faith (and good faith), 71,75-77,86n.9,101-103; being-for-itself, being-in-itself, and nothingness, 70,72,99-101,103-104, 106-107, passim; body, 70,95-97, 106-109; coefficient of adversity, 108; conflict, 108; consciousness, prereflective, reflective, personality, 73-75,passim; concrete relations with others, 83-87; ethics, 112; existence, 88, passim; 82; freedom, 72-75,104-105; one with the notion of nothingness, French title, 9in.i; God, 103; Husserl and phenomenology, 92-94,98-99; having, doing, being, 109-111; homosexuality, 76; knowledge, including senses and constitution of things, 70,72-75; 98-99; look, 77-80; 108-109; metaphysics, 111; methodology, xi-xii, 95-97; oppression, 82; play, I I O - I I I ; project, 72-73; realism, 70, 95,106; questioning (theme of whole work), 69-70; title of work, 92; time

Bad faith (and good faith), 16,38-39, 58-59.7*, 75-7% 86n.9,101-103 Balcony, The (Genet), 157 Barnes, Hazel E., xi, 311.1, 44ml, 6511.23,69n.i, i62n.i, 163; see also Sartre & Flaubert Baudelaire, Charles, 19 Beauty, 34-41,152-155,197-205 207

208

Index

Being and Nothingness (Sartre), {cont) and temporality, 94-95,105-106; transcendence, 106-107; universality (and existence), 93-94; we and us, 81-83 Being-for-itself; see Being and Nothingness', also Look Being and Time (Heidegger), 81-83,9J> 94-95,119 Belief; see bad faith Betrayal, 31,148 Beauvoir, Simone de, xi Blacks (Genet), 157 Bourgeoisie, 195-197 Body, 70,77-80,95-97,106-109 Bowman, Elizabeth A., 54n.i5 Boxing, as reflecting and synthesizing the social order, 133-134 Breaking the Maya Code (Coe), I20n.8 Buber, Martin, xii, 81 Byzantium debate over sex of angles, 50-51 Calvot, Daniele, H3n.i Camus, Albert, 151 Capote, Truman, 147 Catalano, Joseph S., x, 5311.13,63^22, 74n.3, io6n.2i, 11.2n.23 Causes (of action), 10,72-73 Childhood; see Infant Choice; see Deliberation; Neurosis; Project Class, 59-60,114,176 Cloutier, Yvan, H3n Coe, Michael, D., i2on.8 Coefficient of adversity, 108 Cogito, 79n.6 Collective, 49, defined, 55; see also Seriality Cosman, Carol, 3n.i, i63n.2 Concrete relations with others, 83-87 Conflict, 81-82 Consciousness, reflection, personality, 23-25,73-75,82, i62n.i; (panoramic) 170; see also Bad Faith; Conversions; Look; Subhumanity

Condemned Man (Genet), 156 Conversions, 17,33-34,39-41,72-73, 139 Contat, Michel, 113ml Cooper, D. G., 10311.18 Cosman, Carol, 3n.i, i68n.4 Criminal system, 27-28 Critique of Dialectical Reason, 1 and 2 (Sartre), (overview) 43-68; (the book itself) 113-136; and Being and Nothingness, 43, 62-63,66-67, 121-122; and Family Idiot, 43,60,62, 122,127; and Saint Genet, 43, 60,123; and Search for a Method, 43-44,47, 65, 67,11311.2,115-118; aims of the two books 47-48,113-115,129-130; alienation, 107-108; analytic reason, 133; anarcho-syndicalism, 59; boxing, 133-134; collective, 49,55 (defined); dialectic, 64-68; 118-122; ethics, 44-46,52,133-134; fear, 57-59; freedom (and history), 51,60-62; group-m-fusion and movement to institutions, 62-64,124-129; Hegel, 46, 64-65; history as adventure, 119, ideology, 64; individuals, 60-62,123,125; Manichaeism, 44-45; Marx, 65-68,120-122; meditations, 62-64,122-123; need, 133-134; nominalism,120-121; one world, 64-65,117,121; optimism and pessimism, 50-51; practicomert, 43,47-49,114-115,122-124; praxis and anti-praxis, 43,49-51; reductionism, 43-44,118; regressiveprogressive, i.e., progressiveregressive-progressive, 115-118, 127-134; scarcity, 44~45,52-54; seriality, 54-62; socialism, 50,67; subhumanity, 53; Stalin, 118,134-136; struggle, 132-136; Taylorism, 59-60; terror, 126; totality and totalization, 48-52,132-136; truth, 67,119-121; world as human, 53,119 Dasein, xii, 94-95 Debate Between Sartre and MerleauPonty (ed. Stewart), 96m 10

Index Deliberation and freedom, 6,75, 184-185 Descartes, Rene, 11,94n.6 Desire; see Concrete Relations with others Dialectic, 30-32,64-68,118-122,139, 144-146 Dobson, Andrew, 138 Doing, having, being, 109-111 Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich, 76 Ego, 12-13, 25,73-75,102-105, 179,183; see also Consciousness; Personalization Elkaim-Sartre, Arlette, 46n.4,11311.2, 11511.4 Ethics, 29-30,34-37,44"46,52,86-87, 133-134,145-146,189-190 Evil, 28-42,147-160; I99n.3; see also Manichaeism Existence, 88,92-94, 98-99; see also Being and Nothingness Existential Sociology of Jean-Paul Sartre, The (Hayim) I03n.i8 Faith. See Belief, Bad faith Family Idiot, The (Sartre), 3-20 (overview); 162-205 (book itself); and Being and Nothingness, 6-7, 16-17,19,173,184,187; and Critique of Dialectical Reason, 10,20,172; and Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaler, 163; and Notebooks for an Ethics, 7; and Quidquid Volueris [Whatever Your Wish], 171-173; and Saint Genet, 10,179; and Temptation of Saint Anthony, 187; and Transcendence of the Ego, 12; and Un Parfum a sentir [A Perfume to Sense], 15; English title, French edition, its divisions, defended against critics, 7,9, 23,162-163, 266; dialectic, 15-18; division of work "problem" that guides it, and projected fourth volume, 162-175, 193-194; love, distinguished, 4, 9,178,184; Madame Bovary and "Afterword," 201-205; nominalism,

209

use of, 191; placement of discussion of mother and daughter, 169; (progressive)-regressive-progressive method use of, 13-15,164-172, 176-180,183-184; see also Flaubert and Sartre & Flaubert (Barnes) Faulkner, William, 86 Fear, 57-59 Fell, Joseph P., 8in.8 Feminism, xi-xii Flaubert, Achille (brother of Gustave), 3,5-6,177-178 Flaubert, Achille-Cleophas (father of Gustave), 3,5-8,15-20,179-170, 200 Flaubert, Caroline Fieuriot (mother of Gustave), 3-9,169-173,177-178 Flaubert, Caroline (sister of Gustave), 185 Flaubert, Gustave, 3-20; 162-205 {see also Family Idiot)', a young writer and author of Madame Bovary, 8, 11,15-20,166,194,205; Alfred Le Poittevin, 189-190; backwardness (wound), life in the imaginary, neurosis as chosen, 16,18-20,32, 179,183-184; genius and linguistic adventure, 10-15,164-165,167-168, 178-179; "fall" (question of epilepsy), 17,168; ego and understanding of self, 12-13,179,183; family, bond to, 8-9, 17,20,174-175,178-179,184,190, passim; knight of nothingness and objective mind, 18-20,167,181,197205; look (gaze) 16-18; loser-wins, 16-17,191-192; misanthropy, 18-20, 197-205; prophetic anteriority, 20, 198-199,201-205; Sartre's knowledge of, 15; spiral existence, 15-18,182-192; stress, 17,165; universal singular as, 8-10,170; valorization as child, 9, 13-14,32,296,303-305; weakness of will, 3,8,172-174; writer of poetry as prose and of prose as prose, 188 Flynn, Thomas, R, H5n.5 For-itself and in-itself, x, 53m 13, 70,72,99-101,103-104,106-107; see also Being and Nothingness Fraternity-Terror. See Terror

210

Index

Frechtman, Bernard, 96n.4 Freedom, throughout all works, but some special mention, 9-13,15-20, 23-25,51,60-62,72,87-88,176-177, 180; see also progressive stage of regressive-progressive method, 176 Freud Scenario (Sartre), 93n.4 Freud, Sigmund, 93,197 Fromm, Eric, 65^23 Frost, Robert, 40 Fundamental project; see Project Gallimard, 28,91,113,137-138 Gaze; see Look Genet, Jean; see Saint Genet Genius, quality of, 10-15,146 Gesture, 37-39 Gide, Andre, 41 God, 81,103,146 Good faith; see Bad Faith Group -in-fusion and movement to institutions, 62-64,124-129 Hayim, Gila J., I03n.i8 Having, doing, being, 109-111 Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich, x, 46,64-65,79n.6 Heidegger, Martin, 79,81-83,103-104 Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy (Lash), 4n.2 Hillerman, Tony, 22 History, 43,47-51,60-65, H4-H5> n 7 , 121-129

Hope, 35 Hoare, Quintin, 46n.4,93n.4 Homosexuality, 32,76 Husserl, Edmund, 92-94 Ideology, 64 Industrial revolution, 117.11.7 Imagination (to imagine), 3-10,33-34, 39-41,183-184 In Cold Blood (Capote), 147 Indifference, 85 Individuals, 66,125,134-136; isolated, 46n.3,56

Infant-child-adult relation, 3-13, 21-26, and throughout The Family Idiot, and Saint Genet Inferiority, 26 In-itself; see For-itself Innocence, 21-22,140-143 Intentionality, 92-95 Introspection, 74-75 Jaspers, Karl, xii Jouhandeaus, Marcel, 29 Kant, Immanuel, 30,145,195 Keats, John, 40m 13 Keller, Helen, 4,511.2,11,107-108 Kierkegaard, Soren, 29-30,65 Kirkpatrick, Robert, 9111.2 Knights of Nothingness, 20,167, 197-205 Knowledge, including senses and constitution of things, 70,72-75, 98-99; see also Totality Laing, R. D., 103 Language, 151,174-175,191-192 Lash, Joseph P., 5n.2 Le Bon, Sylview, 9in.2 Lefebvre, Henri, 115 Light in August (Faulkner), 86 Le Poittevin, Alfred, 189-190 Levi, Benny, 86n.9,137n.2 Lie, 101,102

Long Days Journey into Night (O'Neill), 106 Look (gaze: le regard), 16,18, 22-27, 62-63,77-80 Love, 4,9,84-85,159,178,184 Loser-wins, 16,168,190-192 Macy, Anne Sullivan, 4,511.2,107-108 Madame Bovary (Flaubert), 15-20, 166-167,187-205 Maids (Genet) 146,160-161 Making the human, 54n.i5 Mallarme, Stephen, 40 Manichaeism, 27-28,44-45 Mariet, Philip, 9m.2 Marsh, James L., xiii

Index Marx, Karl, 46,64-68,120-121 Masochism, 86 Materialism; see Marx, Reductionism Mathews, John, 93n.5 McBride, William L., 26,5on.8 and n.9, 53^13,67^26,87 Mediations, 62-64,122-123 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 96n.io Metaphysics, i n Method (methodology), xi-xii, 34m 10, 95-97, i62n.i Miracle of the Rose (Genet), 152-155 Misanthropy, 18-20,197-205 Napoleon III, 18-20,166,181,197-205 Nausea (Sartre), 91 Need, 133-134 Neurosis, as chosen and objective, 3-19, 165-168,183-184 Nietzche, Friedrich, 28 No Exist (Sartre), 113 Nominalism (dialectical), 93,191, 120-123

Notebooks for an Ethics (Sartre), 7, 70-71,82-83,86,112,138,141 Nothingness, 99-101

211

Play, I I O - I I I

Pontalis, J-P, 93n.4 Poetry (and prose), 40-41,188 Practico-inert; see Critique of Dialectical Reason Praxis as distinct from action, 43; see also Critique of Dialectical Reason Presence, 103-104 Privacy; see Seriality Project, in general, 72-73; relating to Genet, 30-34,39-41,139, passim; relating to the Flauberts, 3-10,15-20, 178-179, passim (Progressive)-regressive-progressive method, 13-15,3211.9,115-118, 127-134,142-146,164-172,176-180, 183-184 Prophetic anteriority, 198-199, 201-205 Prose; see Poetry Questioning (theme of Being and Nothingness), 72-73 Quidquid Volueris [Whatever You Wish] (Flaubert), 172-173 Reason and Violence (Laing & Cooper), I03n.i8

Objective mmd (spirit), 20,155, 192-205 O'Neill, Eugene, 106 One world, 64-66,117,121 Oppression; see Look, Subhumanity Optimism and pessimism, 50-51 Our Lady of the Flowers (Genet), 146, 154,157-158

Ree, Jonathan, 44n.2 Realism, 66-67,7°> 95> I Q 6 Reductionism, 118 Reflection, 73-75; see Consciousness Regressive-progressive; see Progressive-regressive Rybalka, Michel, 113ml, 137

Pain, illness, and disease, 108-109 Passivity, 7-8,12,178-179,189-190 Past, and freedom, 156 Pellauer, David, 7n.9 Personality, 104-105,168,182-186,189; see also Consciousness; Stalin Phenomenology, 92-94,98-99; see also Regressive-progressive Phenomenology of Perception (Merle au-Ponty), 9 6n. 10 Piccioni, Laura, H3n.i Plato, 119,187

Sadism, 86 Saint Teresa, 28-29 Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr (Sartre), 21-42 (overview); 137-161 (book itself); and Balcony, 157; and Being and Nothingness, 21-22,25-27,139; and Blacks, 157; and Condemned Man, 156; and Family Idiot, 28; and Maids, 146,160-161; and Miracle of the Rose, 152-155; and Notebooks for an Ethics, 24,138,141; and Our Lady of the Flowers, 146,154,157-158;

212

Index

Saint Genet, (cont.) and Ouidquid Volueris [Whatever You Wish], 172-173; and Search for a Method, 143; and Screens, 157; and Thief's Journal, 152-155; and Transcendence of the Ego, 25,143144; division of book, 138-139,139n.5, and translation of title, 2in.2; use of dialectic, 30-32,139,144-146; use of (progressive)-regressive-progressive method, 32n.9,142-143,146,148; see also "Saint" Genet "Saint" Genet, Jean, 21-42; 137-161; and beauty, 34-41, and betrayal, 31, 148; consciousness of self, alienation, conversions, 23-25,33-34,39-41, 139; ethics of doing versus ethics of being, 29-30,159-160; ego, 25; evil (relation to), 21-42,147, passim; freedom and genius, 24-25, passim; the orphan Genet and foster parents, 21-25,140-142; homosexuality, 32; gesture, 33"34,153-155; history (relation to), 151-152; innocence, 21-22; look, 22-27; Manichaeism, 27-28; saint and thief (Genet), 25-41,140-142,146-161; Sartre's evaluation of Genet, 41-42; Solitude, 160; subhumanity, 141,144,150-151; wound, 21-25; writer, 33,39-41, 155-160 Saint Antoine (Flaubert), 187 Saint John of the Cross, 147 Saint Julian The Hospitaler (Flaubert), 163 Saint Teresa of Avila (Saint Teresa of Jesus), 28-29 Sartre, Jean-Paul, his method of writing philosophy, xi-xii, 95-97, i62n.i, 164-170 Sartre & Flaubert (Barnes), defending The Family Idiot, i62n.i Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason: Toward an Existential Theory of History (Flynn), H5n.5 Sartre's Two Ethics, (Anderson), 54n.i5

Scarcity, 44~45,5^-54,66 Satan (Devil), 193 Search for a Method (Sartre). See Critique of Dialectical Reason Screens (Genet), 157 Scarcity, 44"45> 52-54 Script Manent, 186 Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir (Hillerman), 22n.3 Self-other relation; see Body; Consciousness Senses, 70,98-99,106-109 Seriality, 54-62 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 40m 13 Sheridan-Smith, Allan, 44m.2, ii3n.2 Singular universal; see Universal singular Slavery, 7-8,87; see also Subhumanity Smith, Colin, 96n.ro Social, distinguished from historical, 49-51 Socialism, 50-51,67 Solitude, 160 Speech (verbal act), 11 Spiral of freedom (Flaubert), 15-20, 190-192 Stalin, Joseph, and the cult of personality, 50-51,118,134-136 Stewart, Jon, 96n.io Story of my Life, (Keller), 4n.2 Stress, 7,165 Struggle, 132-136 Stone, Robert V., 54n.i5 Subhumanity 7,87,54n.i4,141,144, 150-151; see also Look Subjectivity, 166,174; see also Consciousness; Reflection Sullivan, Ann, 4,107 Temporality, 94-95 Taylorism, 59-60 Terror, 126 Thief's Journal (Genet), 152-155 Things; see World making Time (and temporality), 105-106 Totality and totalization, 48-52, 132-136

Index Tradition, rethinking, 94 Transcendence, 35-36,84-85, 106-107 Transcendence of the Ego (Sartre), 12-13, 25,143-144 Truth, 39,67,119-121; see also Realism, Critique of Dialectical Reason Things; see World making Unconscious, 102,165; see also Bad faith Unity and contradiction, 132 Universal Singular (universality and existence), 8-10,93-94,170 Un Parfum a sentir [A Perfume to Sense] (Flaubert), 15

213

Us; see We-relation Values; see Ethics; Art for art's sake vanVogt, A. E. 129 Vice, 85 We-relation, 62-64,81-83 What is Literature (Sartre), 113 Will, I2in.9 Williams, Forest, I2n.6,9in.2 World as human, 84-85,150 World of (Van Vogt), 129 World making, 53,72-73,94~95> n o n i , 119; see also Anthropocentrism Wound; see Flaubert, "Saint" Genet Writer, the, xi-xii, 39-41,95-97, i62n.i, 155-160,164-170,185-186