The Cambridge Companion to Sartre

Description

This is one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date surveys of the philosophy of Sartre, by some of the foremost interpreters in the United States and Europe. The essays are both expository and original, and cover Sartre's writings on ontology, phenomenology, psychology, ethics, and aesthetics, as well as his work on history, commitment, and progress; a final section considers Sartre's relationship to structuralism and deconstruction. Providing a balanced view of Sartre's philosophy and situating it in relation to contemporary trends in Continental philosophy, the volume shows that many of the topics associated with Lacan, Foucault, Levi-Strauss, and Derrida are to be found in the work of Sartre, in some cases as early as 1936. A special feature of the volume is the treatment of the recently published and hitherto little studied posthumous works.

"...if these essays show anything, it is that Sartre's thinking achieves a level of richness and complexity, and of subtlety and attention to nuance, that is not captured in the popular (and quite accessible) caricature of him as a rip-roaring, nihilistic existentialist, who popularized simplistic cliches about absurdity, meaninglessness, anguish, and despair, and who advocated an extreme and utterly unrealistic theory of freedom and responsibility. The authors and editor are to be commended, not only for effectively countering this mistaken impression, and for replacing it with something both more accurate and more interesting, but also for doing so without excessive apologetics." Ethics "It is good...to see within the broad scope of this [book] that Being and Nothingness has been accorded a fresh look and that the enduring fertility and influence of Sartre's ideas have been re-established." Philosophical Books "...for those with some interest in his thought already, the book is well worth dipping into where the essays address topics of interest-- and those with a deeper interest in Sartre will want to read it from cover to cover. It certainly is a volume that belongs in every library collection, both graduate and undergraduate." Canadian Philosophical Review