Sartre

A novel introduction to Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist phenomenology.

• Draws parallels between Sartre's work and the work of Wittgenstein
• Stresses continuities rather than conflict between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, and between Sartre and post-structuralist/post-modernist thinkers, thus corroborating 'new Sartre' readings
• Exhibits the influence of Gestalt psychology in Sartre's descriptions of the life-world
• Forms part of the Blackwell Great Minds series, which outlines the views of the great western thinkers and captures the relevance of these figures to the way we think and live today

Acknowledgements.

Introduction.

Sartre’s Life.

Part I:.

1. Phenomenology.

2. Intellectual Prejudices and Sartrean Therapy.

3. Consciousness.

4. Bad Faith.

Part II:.

5. The Body.

6. Life-space.

7. Others.

8. Freedom.

Postscript: Ethics and Beyond.

Bibliography.

Index

"New works on Sartre call for a justification. For Katherine J. Morris's book there are several, from its limpid and lively style to its sympathetic elaboration of insights that Sartre often left undeveloped. Especially rewarding is her emphasis on Sartre's conception of his philosophical project which, Morris skilfully argues, bears comparison with Wittgenstein's picture of philosophy as 'therapy'."
David Cooper, Northern Michigan University

“Well-written … and skillful … .Its probing and bridging of the analytic- Continental "gap" … [is] perhaps its greatest single contribution to ongoing philosophical discussion.” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Katherine Morris has been a Lecturer in philosophy at Mansfield College, Oxford University since 1986 and a fellow since 1998; she holds an MPhil in medical anthropology as well as a DPhil in philosophy. The author of numerous articles on Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Descartes and Wittgenstein, she is also the co-author of Descartes’ Dualism (1996) with G.P. Baker.

For many, Jean-Paul Sartre is the iconic, urbane French intellectual, whose message emphasizes the meaninglessness of life and the hellishness of other people; spokesperson for post-war radicalism, his thinking may now seem to be irredeemably passé. Yet in this new introduction to his thought, Katherine Morris portrays Sartre as a brilliant and insightful thinker who possessed a clear and philosophically fruitful viewpoint and presents Sartrean phenomenology as a living, evolving enterprise. The book depicts the relationship between Sartre's methodology and the results of his reflections by focusing on the ways the philosopher, as a human being, explores what it is to be human. What Sartre deems as "bad faith" can serve to alienate philosophers from the richly human world of everyday experience. His methodology offers freedom from such philosophical bad faith, ultimately strengthening the connection between philosophy and the real – that is the human, the lived – world.