Sartre and Despair
Sartre and Despair When I was at school, my earliest encounters with Existentialism came from reading Pascal, Camus and Kierkegaard, not Sartre. For me the big themes were the Absurd, meaninglessness, despair and how to live meaningfully in the world with these as our ultimate environment. ... 23 – quietism of despair – I was expecting a very full treatment of this. But there was barely half a page on despair – and the main point was lifted from Descartes, that we should act without hope. I felt a bit cheated – yet another weakness in Sartre’s infamous but influential lecture ! He claimed after all to be far more radical in his atheism than his predecessors, rejecting their residual moral values; I find myself wondering why he seems to fight shy of despair. ... Possible reasons for the brevity of Sartre’s account of such a crucial theme 2. ... · It fits a humanist agenda better than some key existentialist ideas, so Sartre needs to take full advantage of it in his project (Existentialism is a [form of] Humanism) – a literal version of the almost untranslatable French title of the lecture. But hang it all – abandonment has got a negative side and one that can lead people to suicidal despair, as Camus knew only too well ! ... Are his Cartesian roots responsible for such a determined focus on the conscious and the rational in Sartre’s account of the human being ? ... Maybe his treatment of despair is relevant here. By clearing away any possible sources of hope that are not consciously located in the” human kingdom” or definable as a “reliance upon that which is within our wills” Sartre is blowing out as many of the other candles as he can, to make his favoured insight – the human creative will and its infinite possibilities – seem to burn more brightly.