What are the opinions of Jean Paul-Sartre’s philosophy here?

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lirloveshistory
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12 Jun 2024, 11:20 pm

I have only recently gotten into Jean-Paul Sartre, got a copy of Being and Nothingness, and I’m about 40 pages in. So I want to know, what are the thoughts on his philosophy here?



BillyTree
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14 Jun 2024, 3:38 am

I don't know much about Sartre's philosophy. I am more into Albert Camus. I think they had a falling out over politics when Sartre got caught up in the communist movement and ideas about revolution while the left leaning Camus kept his cool and remained more moderate.


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14 Jun 2024, 4:10 am

Sartre's notion of 'Radical Freedom' said that everyone always has a choice, and every act is a free act.  When people say they have 'no choice' but to do something, they are lying to themselves.  He would point out situations such as a group of hikers who encounter a boulder blocking their path, leaving them 'no choice' but to turn back.  Sartre claimed this was wrong, as they also could fling themselves off the mountain, killing themselves.

Sartre spent time in a Nazi war camp in World War II, and said that he was never more free than during that time, and it influenced many of his ideas on freedom in his post-war writings.

Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus had a very public falling out and subsequent feud, largely due to Sartre's continued support of the Soviets and Communism after the discovery of the slave camps and other atrocities committed by Stalin.  Sartre and Camus's feud essentially came from Camus rejecting Sartre's politics after the news came out of the massive Soviet slave camps.  Sartre decided to continue his support of the Soviet Union against the capitalist West, and Camus thought this was an awful thing to do (most of us today would probably side with Camus, considering we have an even more full knowledge of what went on in the USSR).

He should have stuck with boinking Simone de Beauvoir.


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14 Jun 2024, 4:17 am

I'm won't pretend to be that familiar with Satre. I read Nausea and found a lot to identify with there. The sense of isolation. The sense of being just a point of observation. I tried to read The Age of Reason and found it so hard to follow that I actually thought I had a misprinted copy. Then I got another and it was exactly the same so I've not read any more of his stuff.


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14 Jun 2024, 4:20 am

DuckHairback wrote:
I'm won't pretend to be that familiar with Satre.  I read Nausea and found a lot to identify with there. The sense of isolation. The sense of being just a point of observation.  I tried to read The Age of Reason and found it so hard to follow that I actually thought I had a misprinted copy.  Then I got another and it was exactly the same so I've not read any more of his stuff.
There are two ways to write philosophy: The first is to write for ordinary people to understand; the second is to write for other philosophers to be impressed with your understanding of philosophy.

Sartre wrote mostly to impress other philosophers, especially Simone de Beauvoir.


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14 Jun 2024, 1:45 pm

truly it made not a lick of sense to me, i never understood how anybody with two neurons to rub together couldn't see how hard it is to reconcile existentialism/free will with the fact that [according to einstein] everything in this universe is relative. einstein did not believe in free will but curiously believed that he should behave as though there WAS free will.