This study presents an explanation and critical examination of the theories of Sartre, Heidegger, Husserl and Hegel on the fundamental relationships between persons. It also synthesizes the results into a new conception of one's relation to other people. Sartre's famous discussion of 'the Look' in his early treatise, Being and Nothingness, is the point of departure and central text.
This study, first published in 1984, presents an explanation and critical examination of the theories of Sartre, Heidegger, Husserl and Hegel on the fundamental relationships between persons. It also synthesizes the results into a new conception of one’s relation to other people. Sartre’s famous discussion of ‘the Look’ in his early treatise, Being and Nothingness, is the point of departure and central text. Since Sartre critically responds to his three famous predecessors, these thinkers are given an independent hearing. The book demonstrates various ways in which persons are internally related to one another, shows that one’s access to other people typically does not compare unfavourably with one’s access to oneself, and establishes the importance of a prior comprehension of the status of other people for an adequate treatment of knowing them.
Focusing on the notion of the subject in Sartre's and Adorno's philosophies, David Sherman argues that they offer complementary accounts of the subject that circumvent the excesses of its classical formation, yet are sturdy enough to support a concept of political agency, which is lacking in both poststructuralism and second-generation critical theory. Sherman uses Sartre's first-person, phenomenological standpoint and Adorno's third-person, critical theoretical standpoint, each of which implicitly incorporates and then builds toward the other, to represent the necessary poles of any emancipatory social analysis.
This book challenges the view of the relationship between Kant's and Sartre's practical philosophies arguing that Kant was one of Sartre's most significant predecessors. The book identifies several fundamental theses of Sartre's practical philosophy, and shows Sartre to be closer to Kant in this respect than many contemporary Kantian theories are.
Sartre on Sin: Between Being and Nothingness argues that Jean-Paul Sartre's early, anti-humanist philosophy is indebted to the Christian doctrine of original sin. On the standard reading, Sartre's most fundamental and attractive idea is freedom: he wished to demonstrate the existence of human freedom, and did so by connecting consciousness with nothingness. Focusing on Being and Nothingness, Kate Kirkpatrick demonstrates that Sartre's concept of nothingness (le néant) has a Christian genealogy which has been overlooked in philosophical and theological discussions of his work. Previous scholars have noted the resemblance between Sartre's and Augustine's ontologies: to name but one shared theme, both thinkers describe the human as the being through which nothingness enters the world. However, there has been no previous in-depth examination of this 'resemblance'. Using historical, exegetical, and conceptual methods, Kirkpatrick demonstrates that Sartre's intellectual formation prior to his discovery of phenomenology included theological elements-especially concerning the compatibility of freedom with sin and grace. After outlining the French Augustinianisms by which Sartre's account of the human as 'between being and nothingness' was informed, Kirkpatrick offers a close reading of Being and Nothingness which shows that the psychological, epistemological, and ethical consequences of Sartre's le néant closely resemble the consequences of its theological predecessor; and that his account of freedom can be read as an anti-theodicy. Sartre on Sin illustrates that Sartre' s insights are valuable resources for contemporary hamartiology.
From one of the 20th century’s most profound philosophers and writers, comes a thought provoking essay that seeks to reconcile Marxism with existentialism. Exploring the complicated relationship the two philosophical schools of thought have with one another, Sartre supposes that the two are in fact compatible and complimentary towards one another, with poignant analysis and reasoning. An important work of modern philosophy, Search for a Method has a major influence on the current perceptions of existentialism and Marxism. “This is the most important philosophical work by Sartre to be translated since Being and Nothingness.”—James Collings, America
Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness marked the beginning of the rise of French existentialism in the twentieth century. In this work Sartre offers a complex and profound defense of human freedom. The topics discussed by Sartre range from traditional problems of metaphysics and epistemology to the roots of human motivation and the nature of human relationships. It is a hugely important text in a long and distinguished tradition of philosophical reflection going back to Kant. Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness': A Reader's Guide is an invaluable companion to the study of this influential philosophical text.
