PHL3430 the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir
-
Handbook entry- a brief description of the subject can be found in the handbook entry. The handbook also provides information about the unit leader, the semester and mode in which the unit is available, the contact hours and the assessment requirements.
-
MUSO/Blackboard site - there is a MUSO/Blackboard site for this unit where assessment tasks, lecture notes and other unit resources will be posted. Once enrolled, students taking this unit are advised to check MUSO/Blackboard regularly.
Who were Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir?
Born in 1905 Jean-Paul Sartre came to be probably the most famous and influential twentieth century French philosopher. His name is closely linked with that of the slightly younger Simone de Beauvoir who was born in 1908. Together they make up a unique philosophical couple who jointly developed a form of existentialism which they later married to Marxism, and which has had a tremendous influence on twentieth century radical thought. While Sartre is most famous for his 1943 text, Being and Nothingness, de Beauvoir is best known for her 1949 The Second Sex, a work which set up the philosophical underpinnings of the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s.
Both Sartre and de Beauvoir believed that philosophers had a duty to be engaged in the political life of their times. For them philosophy was no ivory-tower pursuit but a direct engagement with political and social issues. In order to make an impact they both wrote novels as well as more traditional philosophical works. Of these two are particularly pertinent to their philosophy, Sartre's 1933 novel Nausea spells out his fundamental existentialist claim that existence is contingent and meaningless without the free creation of value by humans, while de Beauvoir's 1943 novel She Came to Stay develops her ideas about the conflict that characterises relations with other people.
Sartre's early philosophy as set out in Being and Nothingness is a philosophy of radical freedom, deeply influenced by his reading of the German phenomenologist philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. According to it we are metaphysically free and responsible agents who tend to fall into bad faith and to flee our freedom. De Beauvoir's The Second Sex is heavily influenced by the philosophy set out in Being and Nothingness and examines the way in which social structures of objectification encourage women choose passivity and to renounce the life of free creative activity that existentialists see as truly human. De Beauvoir, despite her commitment to existentialism, emphasises more than Sartre the extent to which the choice of realising our freedom is constrained by society. In his later works, Sartre too paid much more attention to social conflict and the way in which human freedom is limited by concrete circumstance. This is evident in his Critique of Dialectical Reason in which he attempts to develop a synthesis of existentialism and Marxism.
In the 1960s the existentialism that had been developed by Sartre came to be harshly criticised by structuralist thinkers who argued that the free conscious subject that he had described was a myth, and that he had insufficiently taken into account the way in which our choices are determined by the language which forms us. With the rise of structuralism and post-structuralism in France, the direct influence of Sartre and de Beauvoir began to wane. Nevertheless their philosophy continued to exert considerable influence, particularly among feminists and post-colonial thinkers for whom their analysis of the way in which we are objectified by the other remains central.
What is the value of studying Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir?
The philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir is challenging and extremely relevant for the way we think about ourselves and our relations with others. Their writings raise issues about the nature of freedom, of consciousness, the basis of moral value and the character of our relations with others. Because their thinking is deeply influenced by Husserl, Heidegger and Hegel, by studying them one is also introduced to many important currents of twentieth century continental philosophy. These include phenomenology, existentialism, Marxism, structuralism and feminism. Sartre's Being and Nothingness is not an easy book to read, so this course is not for those who want to get a degree with the minimum mental effort. But for those who want to struggle with the work of a pair of serious influential and politically engaged philosophers, this should be a challenging and relevant subject.
Textbooks:
The prescribed texts for this unit are:
Sartre, J.-P. (tr. H. E. Barnes) Being and Nothingness, Routledge.
Sartre, J.-P. Nausea, Penguin.
de Beauvoir, S. The Second Sex, Penguin.
de Beauvoir, S. She Came to Stay, Flamingo.
In addition, a collection of readings will be available from the Monash Bookshop and on reserve in the Sir Louis Matheson Library.