Reading Sartre

230 Pages·2010·5.77 MB·English

by  Joseph S. Catalano

Reading Sartre
In this volume, Joseph S. Catalano offers an in-depth explora
tion of Jean-Paul Sartre's four major philosophical writings: Being
and Nothingness, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, The Critique of
Dialectical Reason, and The Family Idiot. These works have been
immensely influential, but they are long and difficult and thus chal
lenging for both students and scholars. Catalano here demonstrates
the interrelation of these four works, their internal logic, and how
they provide insights into important but overlooked aspects of
Sartre's thought, such as the body, childhood, and evil. The book
begins with Sartre's final work, The Family Idiot, and systematically
works backward to Being and Nothingness. Catalano then repeats
the study by advancing chronologically, beginning with Being and
Nothingness and ending with The Family Idiot and an afterword
on Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Readers will appreciate
Catalano's subtle readings as well as the new insights that he brings
to Sartre's oeuvre.
Joseph S. Catalano is Professor Emeritus at Kean University of
New Jersey and a former Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the
New School University for Social Research. He is the author of A
Commentary of Jean-Paul Sartre's "Being and Nothingness"; A
Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's "Critique of Dialectical Reason";
Good Faith and Other Essays: Perspectives on a Sartrean Ethics;
and Thinking Matter: Consciousness from Aristotle to Putnam and
Sartre.

Reading Sartre
JOSEPH S. CATALANO
Professor Emertius at Kean University, New Jersey
HI CAMBRIDGE
^0 UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521152273
© Joseph S. Catalano 2010
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2010
Printed in the United States of America
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data
Catalano, Joseph S.
Reading Sartre / Joseph S. Catalano.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-521-76646-3 (hardback)
1. Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1905-1980. I. Title.
B2430.S34C346 2010
i94-dc22 2010014790
ISBN 978-0-521-76646-3 Hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-15227-3 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or
accuracy of URLS for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in
this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
For Marisa
I have tried to do the following: To indicate the limit of psychoana
lytical interpretation and Marxist explanation and to demonstrate
that freedom alone can account for a person in his totality.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr
Contents
Preface page ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Works Frequently Cited xv
PART ONE: A RETROSPECTIVE OVERVIEW
I The Family Idiot 3
2 Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr 21
3 The Critique of Dialectical Reason 43
4 Being and Nothingness 69
PART TWO: THE WORKS THEMSELVES
5 Being and Nothingness 91
6 The Critique of Dialectical Reason 113
7 Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr 137
8 The Family Idiot: Part One - Constitution 162
9 The Family Idiot: Concluded 182
Afterword: Madame Bovary 201
Index 207
Vll

Preface
About forty years ago, I was introduced to Jean-Paul Sartre's thought as a
pure accident of a teaching career in philosophy. For reasons that are too
complicated to mention here, the late Dean Ruben Abel of the New School
for Social Research in Manhattan asked me to teach a series of courses in
Existentialism. Neither my undergraduate nor graduate training in philoso
phy prepared me for the subject matter; but the challenge came at a time in
my life when I was looking for a change. I found it. But I did not know at first
that I would keep returning to the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, particu
larly to the four works I consider here, namely, Being and Nothingness, Saint
Genet: Actor and Martyr, The Critique of Dialectical Reason, and The Family
Idiot. I offer no excuse. These works continue to nourish my own thinking
about the world.
One might nevertheless ask whether my personal interest in Sartre justi
fies another book about his thought. I could answer that these four works
give the substance of Sartre's philosophy as it developed from his first essay
on the imagination published in 1936 until the appearance of the last volume
of The Family Idiot in 1972, and that I do not think many people have had
either the leisure or the commitment to study these long and difficult books.
Perhaps, then, it is sufficient to say that I simply wish to share the fruits of my
labor.
Because I am mainly concerned with presenting my understanding of
Sartre's thought, it is appropriate for me to admit that this text is not a critique
in the usual sense of that word. I seek understanding rather than criticism.
On the other hand, I would not have spent so much of my life reading and
thinking about Sartre's thought if I did not think that it is, for the most part,
true. This truth, however, is not something closed; it is itself an invitation. You
may wish to read more deeply about Sartre yourself, and even in these brief
reflections, you may discover that Sartre can help you, as he has helped me,
understand more fully our place in this strange and wonderful world in which
we live.
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