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What do Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir Have to Say to Us Today?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

François Noudelmann*
Affiliation:
University of Paris-VIII
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Abstract

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Sartre's thought and practice cannot be separated from the experience of the Second World War. Emerging from the war, Sartre formed the idea that the human comes forth out of the subhuman. This paper analyses aspects of Sartre's humanism from the point of view of his political commitment, and presents Sartre's work as an antidote to contemporary economic and scientific determinism. Sartre credit was always given to the growth of freedom in action out of the most unexpected subjectivization. He firmly supported the founding idea of democracy – the power of everyman – and projected the intellectual's mission into each of us once we try to rethink critically our actions in the light of human purposes.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © UNESCO 2007

References

Note

1. Lecture given on 24 November 2005 at Unesco on the occasion of the conference ‘What do Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir have to say to us today?', organized in the context of the programme ‘Pathways of Thought'. We are grateful to Unesco for allowing us to reproduce it.