It’s amazing to me that the allure of Jean-Paul Sartre, despite some of his brilliant literary innovations, might be given any credence today. And yet Bernard-Henri Levy, the liberal French thinker, appears to find in Sartre a model of sorts. In a diverting essay, Brian Anderson asks why. (The short answer: both Levy and Sartre are French.) I tried to read Sartre long ago, in order to grapple with existentialism, but as soon as I discovered Camus, he seemed completely flat in comparison. Camus was a phenomenal mind and a far richer writer than Sartre, and he remained human. He was a thinker, rather than an intellectual, let alone an “absolute” one. The difference, perhaps, is in an appreciation of what we don’t know, a love of what we can actually cherish – love, friendship, political freedom – and a refusal to apply ideas to reality as if there were no need for compromise or restraint. I liked this part of Anderson’s essay:
It is significant, I think, that Sartre never married or committed himself exclusively to Beauvoir, disliked children and sired none of his own, regularly broke off friendships, and in general spent most of his time worshiping at his own altar. He was – to use his own language – a bit of a ‘bastard.’
I struggle myself with this over marriage rights. Am I foisting an abstract concept onto concrete reality? Or am I noting real human needs, actual relationships, and trying to make them civil? I believe the latter. And it is progress from the nightmares of the twentieth century that today’s reformers are not trying to destroy society or demean it – but to enlarge its embrace and understand its limits.
THE ONION ON MARRIAGE: Time for some light relief.
The Dish 