Ebook: Sartre Alive

This collection of essays on and by Jean-Paul Sartre reflects the conviction that his thought and career remain vitally important today, especially in the realms of politics, philosophy, literary studies, and psychology.

The book contains major pieces of Sartre's corpus unknown by the public at large. They show a sophisticated Sartre who is more sensitive to the close interaction of history and ethics than has usually been thought. One such piece is an account of Sartre's notes for lectures that he planned for Cornell University in 1965 but cancelled to protest the American bombing of North Vietnam. The book also includes the first English translation of an interview with philosopher Pierre Verstraeten that originally appeared in a short-lived Belgian journal.

An international assembly of scholars have contributed essays that demonstrate Sartre's contemporary political relevance on such issues as the nuclear menace, the Israeli-Palestinian hostility, and the dynamics of labor conflicts. Other essays discuss Sartre's relationship to Flaubert, de Beauvoir, Gestalt psychology, and his conceptions of the ego and of evil. The collection concludes with a ringing defense of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's unsentimental appraisal of life in an essay that celebrates de Beauvoir's unsettling account of Sartre's final years.

Sartre Alive aptly substantiates the conclusion that, more than a decade after his death, Jean-Paul Sartre remains one of the freshest, most contemporary thinkers of the twentieth century.

Ronald Aronson, professor of humanities at Wayne State University, obtained his Ph.D. from Brandeis University. He is the author of five books, including After Progress. His essays on contemporary philosophers and on the Holocaust have appeared in a number of scholarly publications, including The Yale Review, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, and Telos.

Adrian van den Hoven is associate professor and head of the French department at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. His doctoral degree is from the Catholic University of Louvain. His essays have been published in the Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies, University of Windsor Review, and Revue des sciences de l' éducation.