Talking with Sartre. Conversations and Debates Authorized by Sartre to write his biography, Gerassi conducted a long series of interviews between and.
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- ‘Talking with Sartre: Conversations and Debates’ by John Gerassi
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- Talking with Sartre: Conversations and Debates
- ‘Talking with Sartre: Conversations and Debates’ by John Gerassi – Crustaceans and Translations
Excellent read for the Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir enthusiasts.
‘Talking with Sartre: Conversations and Debates’ by John Gerassi
Arrived in good condition, and swift delivery. One person found this helpful. Actually a quote from Fripp, but certainly applicable here. This is an enchanting look into Sartre qua Sartre, not as anything or anyone else and thus does more to de-fetishize him than any other effort I can think of. While Gerassi regards his parents' friend with a genuine affection, and it is an affection that is returned, neither subject nor object pulls any punches. Gerassi is quick to point out that Sartre can be a genuine heel to ones who loved him most, he could also redeem his worst attributes with sincerity and commitment.
Like Petzet, Gerassi presents a portrait of Sartre away from both the adulation and the vilification. This is a man he knew, admired and challenged, and the dialogue, as with the Heidegger book, articulates the humanity, and genuine brilliance, away from the philosophically academic reputation, with clarity, compassion and creativity. You are invited to eavesdrop and consider intimate conversations, often very humourous, and always engaging. If you have an avocation for either of these thinkers, I'd highly recommend the book. Their discussions of US foreign policy, the emergence of China and the decline of the Soviet sphere of influence are nothing short of prophetic.
For those who think philosophical ideas are only for philosophers, this book will change your mind.
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Gerassi has the type of relationship with Sartre that allows true "Conversations" and "Debates" to take place. There is give and take, history and humor. At times you can almost see the two of them facing off over one of those small, round French cafe tables challenging the ideas of the other. If you want to read two great minds passionately engaged in ideas as well as the reflections of two old friend, be sure to get this book.
You won't regret it. He was truly a walking legend, fighting alongside with Che Guevarra. Sir I salute you. Gerassi's conversations with Sartre are witty, insightful, and deeply human. It reveals the complexities of the French philosopher while also disclosing new aspects of his thinking. It's hard to book this book down.
Get it, you won't regret it! What Gerassi, through his perceptive and at times challenging dialogue with Sartre, allows us to see is not only the evolution of Sartre's philosophical ideas, oftentimes in relationship to historical events, but also Sartre's humanity -- his fears, his triumphs, his loves - the whole range of human emotion. Only a true confidante could have garnered such a compelling portrait of a man who has sometimes seemed as obscure as some of his prose. Kudos also for the clarity in which Sartre's ideas are expressed in this book.
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Editorial Reviews
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Conversations and Debates 4. John Gerassi had just this opportunity; as a child, his mother and father were very close friends with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and the couple became for him like surrogate parents. In particular, we see Sartre wrestling with the apparent contradiction between his views on freedom and the influence of social conditions on our choices and actions. With remarkable rigor and intensity, they also provide a clear lens through which to view the major conflagrations of the past century.
Hardcover , pages. Published November 24th by Yale University Press first published To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Talking with Sartre , please sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Feb 17, Jay Green rated it it was amazing. My original review at the Irish Left Review: This can manifest itself in a range of behaviours, such as making excuses for misdemeanours by blaming their genes, their upbringing, their parents, their gender, by finding all sorts of extenuating circums My original review at the Irish Left Review: This can manifest itself in a range of behaviours, such as making excuses for misdemeanours by blaming their genes, their upbringing, their parents, their gender, by finding all sorts of extenuating circumstances that shift the cause for their actions away from themselves.
What these behaviours all have in common is that each constitutes an attempt to turn subject into object, to deny that the source of the action in question lies in the free choice of the individual by making the individual itself nothing more than an object at the mercy of forces outside of its own control. Sartre spends many many pages of his masterpiece Being and Nothingness trying to explain why humans should want to adopt such a position and drawing out the ontological pre-requisites for such an attitude to even be possible. Sartre attempted to derive an ethical theory on the basis of the ontology outlined in his book.
- Understanding Educational Research.
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He argued in a lecture, published in English as Existentialism and Humanism , that to adopt the attitude of Bad Faith was in itself morally wrong since to do so is to deny human freedom, and this is to deny the very essence of what it is to be human. To be human is to be free, and to deny that is to deny our own humanity. In the series of interviews with John Gerassi that make up Talking with Sartre , we see this philosophy in action.
Talking with Sartre: Conversations and Debates
Sartre attempted in his own life to be totally transparent, to hide nothing, to deny nothing, to make no excuses for himself. Before this sounds like a bad plot for a movie starring Ricky Gervais, let me add that transparency does not mean being rude or feeling obliged to express every single thought one has regardless of how they affect others. What it does mean is to be honest with oneself and with others about oneself, so that there is no privacy, nothing hidden, no deceit or attempt to create an impression in the minds of others that is different from who you actually are.
These are not interviews in which Gerassi comes to his subject with a sense of awe or deference. Interviewer and interviewee thus know each other very well and have established a high degree of trust between them, which was undoubtedly one of the reasons why Sartre authorized Gerassi to write his biography, Jean-Paul Sartre: Hated Conscience of His Century.
It also helps explain why Sartre does not bridle at the sometimes aggressive tone of the questioning.
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- ISAVASYA UPANISHAD!
- The Bush Orphanage.
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Sartre, while not on the defensive, is frequently taken to task by Gerassi for not having done enough or gone far enough for a particular cause. You can read his story here. Sartre struggles to explain his position on this occasion, and on many others throughout the interviews, but very rarely does he make excuses for himself or try to shift the blame onto circumstances. The language sometimes seems somewhat stilted even though conversational.
Sartre admits that he did not become political or develop any sense of society until the end of the war, having experienced life as a P.
A typical exchange might go something like Gerassi: You caught me coming back from the tobacco kiosk. Did you get a chance to talk to the Masses? I spoke to them about the need for the Black Panthers to develop a revolutionary strategy that reflected the decomposition of the proletariat. Did they seem receptive? The Masses said they had to go home because their cystitis was playing up.
The death of a million is just a statistic. Sartre freely admits his failure to either reconcile existentialism, his philosophy of the individual par excellence, with Marxism, or to complete his promised Ethics. The first of these he intended to achieve with his massive Critique of Dialectical Reason , a work that attempts to situate the individual within history, as understood by Marxism. Sartre regarded this as an attempt to save the individual, to demonstrate that there is a small margin of freedom, a glint of light, beneath the overwhelming economic forces that carry societies, states, classes, and history along.
It remained incomplete, as Sartre was overtaken by the force of history himself. His use of speed for 40 years of his life on a routine basis had destroyed his health and ruined his eyesight, making completion of the work impossible. Unable to bring himself to completely align himself with anarchism while nevertheless cherishing the anarchist implications of his philosophy, he went from being a fellow traveller of the Communists to a defender of Maoism, the form of Marxism that, as he understood it, came closest to a nonhierarchical Marxist organization; the cultural revolution, as he understood it, was a radical casting into doubt of the right of the Communist Party bureaucracy to legislate for the people.
Putting lawyers, writers, ballet dancers, and assorted bureaucrats to work in the fields and factories could not but help them gain some empathy for the struggles of the peasants and workers.
‘Talking with Sartre: Conversations and Debates’ by John Gerassi – Crustaceans and Translations
Rather than espousing a kind of modified Kantian categorical imperative, he increasingly returned to the specificity of each individual event, situation, occasion. Sadly, however, that detour also meant that Sartre did not live long enough to see his project through. We can only speculate as to what his third masterpiece might have looked like.
Talking with Sartre offers a warts-and-all profile of Sartre. He is candid about his many love affairs, sometimes, perhaps often, to his detriment. Some readers might reflect that it is easier for some people to be candid than others. In the preface, Gerassi recounts how he turns up for lunch with Sartre and Beauvoir on one occasion after breaking up with a girl and clearly upset: Sartre looked hard at my face through his walleyes, then said: I have never cried for a woman in my life.
Sartre sensed it, so he quickly tried to explain. But I now realize. Obviously, she had often shed a tear for her lover, Sartre or another, and obviously was hurt that he had not. Even in the most transparent of relationships, some compromises are more painful than others. The video itself is out there on VHS with English subtitles, I believe, and a special 30th-anniversary 2-disc edition came out on DVD in , if your French is up to it I had to follow the conversation with English text in hand.
And a fascinating read, to boot. View all 9 comments. Oct 06, Robert rated it it was amazing. I just finished the most enjoyable book I've read in some time. Political scientist John Gerassi's father, Fernando, was one of Jean-Paul Sartre's closest friends, and Gerassi grew up as a member of what Simone de Beauvoir referred to as "the family. It's a wonderful reflection on the intellectual, cultural, and historical issues that were central to the I just finished the most enjoyable book I've read in some time. It's a wonderful reflection on the intellectual, cultural, and historical issues that were central to the 20th century.
Or should I say that were to the left of the center of the 20th century? In this wide-ranging sequence, Sartre is completely honest in his self-criticism, criticisms of others, and of history itself. Gerassi, who taught at Queens College in New York, displays a range and subtlety of understanding that to me, at least, makes me think he must have held back most of what he knew from his students. He was exceptionally informed and engaged. It's hard to imagine the average undergraduate being able to follow him.
Sartre by now is more or less a name. In his heyday, he was the most famous intellectual in France, Europe and the world. He wrote serious plays, novels, and philosophy. He commented on all the major issues of the day. He wasn't a communist, but he appreciated communism.