By Michel Rybalko, Susana Gruenheck and Oreste Pucciani
© Le Magazine littéraire
Published in THE NATION
By 1972, Paul A. Schilpp, director of the American Library "The Library of Living Philosophers" ("The Library of Living Philosophers"), thought to devote a volume to Sartre. He obtained the promise of an autobiography brief and met some thirty critical essays on all aspects of his philosophy. Later, unable to fulfill his promise to Sartre cause of blindness, they agreed to replace the autobiography of talks.
took place on 12 and 19 May 1975 and lasted about seven hours. Participated in them Oreste Pucciani, professor at the University of California (Los Angeles), Susan Gruenheck, professor of the American College of Paris, and Michel Rybalko, trainer (in collaboration with Michel Contat) of the Ecrits de jeunesse, Sartre, and the publication of his? uvres Romanesques the Pléiade. Sartre did not want to participate a philosopher French university. The text full of these conversations, transcribed and translated by Susan Gruenheck and reviewed by Michel Rybalko, released in October 1981 in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. The passages were chosen by Michel Rybalko, which attempted to draw a philosophical biography of Sartre and omitted the more technical passages.
Michel Ribalka: The initial project was to write, to write literature. How did philosophy?
Jean-Paul Sartre: In philosophy classes, the matter did not interest me at all. My teacher, a certain Chabrier, nicknamed "Cuckoo" Phil ", it gave me the slightest desire to devote myself to it. I [...] I decided in the preparatory, with a new teacher, Colonna d'Istria, a diminutive man, sick and disabled. As told in the class, had been traveling in a taxi accident and people to approach him, he exclaimed: "How awful!". In fact, he was like always.
The first topic of lecture he gave us was "What is last?". He advised us to read Bergson. I read, therefore, his Essay on the immediate data of consciousness. Without doubt, this book awakened me suddenly the desire to study philosophy. There I found the description of what I assumed was my psychological life. He caught me, turned to me a subject of reflection. I said: "I will study philosophy." By then, conceived as merely a methodical description of inner states of man, of his psychological life, the whole should serve as a method and tool for my literary work. I wanted to keep writing novels and, from time to time trials, but thought that teachers in philosophy help me deal with my literary themes. [...]
MR: So, when he entered the Normal School in 1924 and was selected ...
"Yes, the philosophy would be my field of teaching. The conceived as a means, not as a field for a possible personal work. Surely, I thought, it would draw new truths, but I did not serve to communicate with others.
MR: Was that a conversion?
"No, it was something new that led me to study it seriously. I did not think that philosophy, the basis and foundation of my future writings, should be written by herself and for herself. He kept notes, and so on. Even before reading Bergson, my reading and writing interest me "thoughts" that seemed philosophical. Even the scoring in a medical book with alphabetical index, which had met on the subway.
Against
psychology
Oreste Pucciani: In the first reading of Bergson, what sparked his interest in philosophy?
"I was impressed with the immediate data of consciousness. In the first year and had a very good teacher, in a way, I had turned the study of the self. Since then, I was interested in the data of consciousness, consider what happened in the mind, how ideas were formed, how the feelings came and went, and all that. In Bergson, I found reflections about life, consciousness, about what was a state of consciousness, and so on. Indeed, that was very influential. However, I soon turned from Bergson, I left that same year, in preparation for the Normal School.
MR: His first major philosophical work, presented in 1927 to obtain the diploma of higher education, about the image. Why did you choose this subject and not another?
"Because for me, ultimately, philosophy was a synonym of psychology. Later, I desembaracé of that idea. There is a philosophy and, on the other hand, there is psychology. There it is just talk, or, is an attempt to establish what the man from philosophical notions.
MR: What other philosophers interested him, after Bergson?
-Classics: Kant, Plato, long, and, above all, Descartes. I consider myself a philosopher Descartes, at least in Being and Nothingness.
MR: Was there any influence of Nietzsche?
"I remember lectured about their presence in Brunschvicg, third year of Normal School. I was interested, like many others, but never represented anything for me.
MR: That seems a bit contradictory. On the one hand, one senses that you felt a certain attraction for him, as in Empedocles. A defeat, Nietzsche identified with the character of "regrettable Frédéric." However, around the same time, you threw water bombs against their fellow supporters of him, shouting "That pissed Zarathustra!".
"I think the two go hand in hand. In Empedocles wanted to return in a novel and highlight the history of relations between Nietzsche, Wagner and Cosima Wagner. I did not represent the philosophy of Nietzsche but, simply, his life as a man. Being a friend of Wagner, fell in love with Cosima. Frédéric became a pupil of the Normal School and, finally, I identify myself. I had other references to other characters in this short novel that I never finished.
MR: What about Marx?
"I've read, but played no role at that time.
OP: Do you read Hegel?
-No. I knew him for jobs and courses, but I studied much later, around 1945.
MR: Right, we wondered how far stood their discovery of the dialectic.
-Tarde. After Being and Nothingness.
OP: After?
"Yes. He knew what was the dialectic from the Normal, but not used. Certain passages in Being and Nothingness have some of it, but I did not nominally a dialectical way because, in my opinion, there was not. [...]
realism
OP: And Kierkegaard? When did you discover?
"By 1939 or 1940. Before, knew of its existence, but only was a name for myself and I do not know why that name I found unpleasant. I think the double "a" ... That's me away from reading. To continue this philosophical biography, I would say that for me was very important to the realism, ie the idea that the world as I saw it, was and objects collected by me were real. This realism is not found then a valid expression because, to be realistic, you had to have both a sense of the world and a sense of consciousness ... and that was precisely my problem. I thought about a solution, or something, Husserl or, rather, in a small book about his ideas, published in French.
MR: Is Levinas?
"Yes. I read a year before going to Berlin. Around the same time, Raymond Aron, who had returned from Germany, I said it was a realistic philosophy. His definition was far from accurate, but I longed to know and, in 1933, I went to Germany. There I read the ideas of Husserl in its original version and really discovered phenomenology.
Existentialist "?
MR: Some want a Sartre Sartre and existential phenomenologist. Do you think this distinction justified?
"No, I do not see any difference. For Husserl, the "I", the "ego" was an intrinsic fact of consciousness, while in my article "The significance of the ego", written in 1934, I consider it a kind of quasi-object of consciousness and therefore excluded from it. I kept that view to Being and Nothingness. Still keep him, but at this point is no longer for me a subject of reflection.
style
MR: In his early philosophical texts, for example, in the imagination or imaginary thing, did and stylistic ambitions?
"We never had to philosophy. Never. I tried to be clear, that's all. I am told that there were passages well written. Maybe. When you try to write clearly, basically, somewhat well written. [...]
MR: How would you define style?
"I've talked about it elsewhere in other interviews. The style is primarily economic: make sentences where several senses in which words are better taken as allusions, as objects, as concepts. In philosophy, a word must be a single concept. The style is some relationship between words referring to an inexpressible sense by a simple set of words.
MR: Often the question arises of whether there is continuity or break in his thinking.
"There has been an evolution, but I do not have ruptured. The big change in my thinking is war: the years 1939 and 1940, the Occupation, Resistance, Liberation of Paris. All that made me go from a classically philosophical thought others in that philosophy and action, or theory and practice were linked: the thought of Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, the philosopher of those from whom could understand the thinking of the twentieth century.
OP: And at what point Freud intervened?
"I knew in my philosophy class. Then I read several of his books. I remember reading The Psychopathology of everyday life in the first year of the Normal School and finally, before graduating, The Interpretation of Dreams. I was shocked because the examples given in the psychopathology of everyday life are too far from the Cartesian rational thought. [...] Then, in my years of teaching, dig deeper into the doctrine of Freud, but always separated from him by his idea of \u200b\u200bthe unconscious. By 1958, John Huston asked me to make a film about Freud. It wrong: you do not choose someone who does not believe in the unconscious to make a movie in tribute to Freud.
War and the social
MR: Robert Denoon Cumming said that you tend to exaggerate the discontinuity of thought: every five or ten years, announced that it has changed, it will stop doing what did before. If we take the example cited a moment ago-that of this book I had as a student and, in Nausea, turns into the notebook's self-taught, is obviously contradicted in his thoughts.
"But no, it is not. I thought to myself same at this moment and thought opposed to the first result, ie what I would have thought spontaneously. I never said that changed every five years. On the contrary, I have had a continuous evolution from nausea to the Critique of Dialectical Reason. My great discovery during the war was the social, because being a soldier on the front is, indeed, be a victim of a society that keeps us where we do not want to be and gives us laws that do not want. The social aspect is not present on the nausea, but can be glimpsed. MR
And on that plane, "Being and Nothingness was for you the end of an era?
"Absolutely. The bad, very bad, of that work are truly social chapters, which deal with the "we", as opposed to addressing the "you" and others. [...] Susan
Gruenheck.: Returning to the problem of literature and philosophy. Does the literature remains to you a paper?
"Yes. I do not see can be something else. Never write or rather, never published anything, whatever, not for another.
The decline of Marxism
MR: In matters of method, you differentiate ideology philosophy. This bothers the critics.
- Because everyone wants to be philosophers! I kept the difference, but the problem is very complex. Ideology is not a philosophy made up, pondered, weighed. Is a set of ideas that underlies acts alienated and at the same time, reflects, that never fully expresses and shapes, but appears in the current ideas in a certain time and society. Ideologies represent power and are active. The philosophies are against ideologies, criticize and overcome, though, to some extent, reflect. Note that ideology still exists today in those who claim that there to finish with ideologies.
OP: The difference bothered me. For me, existentialism Critics ... tried to synthesize Marxism and, in turn, left him behind, as you said it was just an enclave of Marxism.
"Yes, but that was wrong. My idea of \u200b\u200bfreedom prevents it from being an enclave, so ultimately, is a separate philosophy. In short, do not believe at all that this philosophy is Marxist. Marxism can not ignore, is linked to it, just that certain philosophies are linked to others and yet are not contained therein. But now I do not consider at all a Marxist philosophy.
MR: So what you retain elements of Marxism?
-The notion of surplus value, the notion of class, moreover reworked, as Marx and Marxists never defined the working class. While it should be reviewed, remain valid, at least for me, as elements of research.
MR: Have you not considered Marxist?
-No. On the other hand, I think we are witnessing the end of Marxism and, in the next hundred years will no longer be the way you know. MR
: theoretical Marxism or Marxism as applied?
-Marxism as applied, but also applied and theoretical Marxism. From Marx, lived some life and at the same time, he was older. We are now in the period in which aging is heading toward death. That does not mean the disappearance of their main concepts: on the contrary, we return ... But there is too much trouble to preserve Marxism today.
MR: What are those difficulties?
"So, the flight, I would simply say that analysis of national and international capitalism of 1848 has nothing to do with today's capitalism. Can not explain a multinational society in Marxist terms, 1848. We need to introduce a new notion that Marx did not foresee and therefore is not a Marxist in the truest sense of the term.
MR: Who do you sympathize in this appeal of Marxism?
"With what were called the" MacOS "the proletarian leftist militants who went along with La Cause du peuple. At first they were Marxists but, like me, are not longer or much less so. For example, Pierre Victor, who worked in those television programs, and not a Marxist or at least, sees the end of Marxism.
MR: And what would this nascent philosophy of freedom?
-a philosophy that would be in the same plane as Marxism, a plane where they mix the theoretical and practical. A philosophy in which theory serves practice, but whose starting point is that freedom which, in my opinion, lacking in Marxist thought.
Libertarian Socialism
MR: In recent conversations, you spoke of socialism "libertarian."
"is a term anarchist. I keep it because I like to recall the origins, some anarchists, in my mind. Always coincided with the anarchists. They are the ones who devised a full man, formed through social action, whose main characteristic is freedom. Although obviously in politics, the anarchists are a bit naive.
MR: Do you, perhaps, in theory?
"Yes, if only to consider the theory and not very good insights purposely discarded, as they are precisely the freedom and the whole man. Sometimes these intuitions came true: the anarchist community lived in societies that they created, for example, in Corsica, around 1910.
MR: If today I had to choose between two labels, the Marxist and the existentialist, would you prefer?
-La's existentialist. I tell him.
OP: Time for another problem. Professor Frondizi believe that your work has been primarily moral negative, which has ended up falling into a moral indifference.
"I've never had a moral indifference. What makes the moral is not difficult is that only concrete political problems, for example, that must be resolved. As I stated in Saint Genet, I think the current state of our society and our knowledge allows us to reconstruct a moral to the same kind of value that we leave behind. For example, we can not make a Kantian moral plane with the same value as the moral of Kant. Moral categories are essentially dependent on the structures of the society we live in, and these structures do not have, at a time, of simplicity and complexity enough so we can create moral concepts. We are in a period without moral or, if you prefer, there are several moral, but they are outmoded or are private.
MR: Morality is impossible?
"Yes. It has not been nor will ever, but it is today. That said, I think the man needs a moral. The philosophy is everything to me. We live in it. I live as a philosopher: this does not mean leading the life of a good philosopher but my perceptions are philosophical, even when I look at this lamp or look at you. Therefore, it is a way of life.
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