Political activities of Jean-Paul Sartre

After World War II, Sartre took an active interest in French political movements, and his leanings to the left became more pronounced. He became an outspoken admirer of the Soviet Union, although he did not join the French Communist Party (PCF). In 1954 he visited the Soviet Union, Scandinavia, Africa, the United States, and Cuba. Upon the entry of Soviet tanks into Budapest in 1956 (see Hungarian Revolution), however, Sartre’s hopes for communism were sadly crushed. He wrote in Les Temps Modernes a long article, “Le Fantôme de Staline,” that condemned both the Soviet intervention and the submission of the PCF to the dictates of Moscow. Over the years this critical attitude opened the way to a form of “Sartrian socialism” that would find its expression in a major work, Critique de la raison dialectique , Tome 1: Théorie des ensembles pratiques(1960; Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume 1: Theory of Practical Ensembles). Sartre set out to examine critically the Marxist dialectic and discovered that it was not livable in the Soviet form. Although he still believed that Marxism was the only philosophy for the current times, he conceded that it had become ossified and that, instead of adapting itself to particular situations, it compelled the particular to fit a predetermined universal. Whatever its fundamental, general principles, Marxism must learn to recognize the existential concrete circumstances that differ from one collectivity to another and to respect individual freedom. The Critique, somewhat marred by poor construction, is in fact an impressive and beautiful book. A projected second volume, though unfinished, was eventually published as L’intelligibilité de l’histoire (1985; The Intelligibility of History.

Last years

From 1960 until 1971 most of Sartre’s attention went into the writing of L’Idiot de la famille (The Family Idiot), a massive—and ultimately unfinished—study of the 19th-century French novelist Gustave Flaubert. Two volumes of the work appeared in the spring of 1971. This huge enterprise aimed at presenting the reader with a “total biography” through the use of a double tool: on the one hand, Karl Marx’s concepts of history and class and, on the other, Sigmund Freud’s illuminations of the dark recesses of the human mind through explorations into Flaubert’s childhood and family relations. Although at times Sartre’s genius comes through and his fecundity is truly unbelievable, the work’s great length and minutely detailed analysis of even the slightest Flaubertian dictum made it difficult to read. As if he himself were saturated by the prodigal abundance of his writings, Sartre moved away from his desk during 1971 and did very little writing. Under the motto that “commitment is an act, not a word,” Sartre often went into the streets to participate in rioting, in the sale of left-wing literature, and in other activities that in his opinion were the way to promote “the revolution.” In 1972 he published a third volume of the work on Flaubert, L’Idiot de la famille.

The enormous fecundity of Sartre came herewith to a close. His mind, still alert and active, came through in interviews and in the writing of scripts for motion pictures. He also worked on a book of ethics. However, his was no longer the power of a genius in full productivity. Sartre became blind and his health deteriorated. In April 1980 he died of pulmonary edema. His very impressive funeral, attended by some 25,000 people, was reminiscent of the burial of Victor Hugo, though it lacked the official recognition that his illustrious predecessor had received. Those who attended were ordinary people whose rights Sartre’s pen had always defended.