Truth and Existence by Jean-Paul Sartre
At long last, Truth and Existence allows us to read Jean-Paul Sartre's analysis of knowing and truth. This brilliant epistemological sequel to Being and Nothingness was found among Sartre's unpublished manuscripts by his adoptive daughter and executor, Arlette Elkaim-Sartre. Posthumously published in France in 1989, the work dates to 1948, shortly after Sartre's controversial call for the writer's political commitment and his celebrated public lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism. Truth and Existence, written in response to Martin Heidegger's The Essence of Truth, is a product of the years when Sartre was reaching full stature as a philosopher, novelist, playwright, essayist, and political activist. This brief, coherent, and engaging text presents Sartre's ontology of truth in terms of his characteristic key moral questions of freedom, action, and bad faith. While stressing the intuitive and personal dimensions of truth, Truth and Existence also explores the argument that ignoring is an intentional act starting, like all knowledge, from the primary ontological condition of ignorance. Thus, at the heart of Sartre's discussion are explanations of ignorance (as resulting from the choice to ignore), phenomenological descriptions (of behavior seeking to avoid the truth), and the reasons why one chooses to avoid the truth. Sartre explores why one Madame T., afflicted with tuberculosis, should choose to ignore the disease that is killing her rather than take responsibility for it. Here is Sartre the existentialist at his most original and most provocative: this work of epistemology, based on ontology, becomes a work of ethics. At the same time, Truth and Existence foreshadows and lays thebasis for some of the most important insights of the Critique of Dialectical Reason. Truth and Existence is introduced by an extended biographical, historical, and analytical essay by Ronald Aronson.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was a hugely influential French philosopher, novelist, playwright, and pamphleteer. In 1964 he declined the Nobel Prize for Literature. Among his most well-known works available in English are Nausea, Being and Nothingness, No Exit, Critique of Dialectical Reason, and The Words. Ronald Aronson is the author of The Dialectics of Disaster, After Marxism, Camus and Sartre and Living Without God. He teaches at Wayne State University. Adrian van den Hoven is Professor Emeritus at the University of Windsor and founding Executive Editor of Sartre Studies International. He has translated Sartre, Camus, and other French writers, and is the author of several books about Sartre. He was twice elected President of the North American Sartre Society.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780226735238 |
| ISBN 10 | 0226735230 |
| Title | Truth and Existence |
| Author | Jean Paul Sartre |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | The University of Chicago Press |
| Year published | 1995-06-01 |
| Number of pages | 143 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |