scarcely prevented Sartre from producing a systematic existentialist
ontology as we observed inBeing and Nothingness.^2 That creative tension
between the conceptual and the imaginary, the philosophical and the
literary which had characterized Sartre’s early thought is now gathered
under the rubric of “existentialism.”
Sartre as media person (l’homme me ́diatique)
Sartre’s entry into journalistic media began with the pieces written for
Combat,Le FigaroandLes Lettres Franc ̧aisesafter the liberation. Hence-
forth, a flood of ad hoc articles, prefaces to others’ books, numerous
interviews, film scenarios, nine sessions of a radio series (“Tribune des
Temps modernes”), an intended television series as well as the founding
or support of journals and newspapers will mark his public persona.
Michael Scriven points out that Sartre was raised in a culture that
favored print media.^3 Having just lived through the era of fascist and
Nazi propaganda and discovered the power of the media to reach the
larger public, he accepted Albert Camus’ invitation to write a series of
seven reflections on Paris in the days immediately before and after its
liberation for his newspaper,Combat. Another such reflection, for the
first legal issue ofLes Lettres Franc ̧aises, “The Republic of Silence,”
began with the memorable, if paradoxical line: “Never were we freer
than under the German occupation.”^4
Sartre proceeded to offer a lesson in existential ethics by way of
explanation: “The choice that each of us made of his life and being
was authentic because it was made in the presence of death...For the
secret of a human being is not his Oedipus complex or his inferiority
complex. It is the very limit of his freedom, his ability to resist torture
and death.” Then, in a rehearsal of his argument in the humanism
(^2) For a quasi-existentialist critique of philosophical systems, perhaps likeBeing and Nothingness
3 and even his own,Phenomenology of Perception, seeAD^9.
Michael Scriven,Sartre and the Media(London: St. Martin’s Press, 1993 ), 5. But after the
war the emerging power of film, radio and television to reach “the masses” opened him to
those forms of communication. One can imagine that Sartre would have adapted to the
Internet and even have produced his own blog, had the state of technology and his health
4 permitted it.
“The Republic of Silence,” in Jean-Paul Sartre,The Aftermath of War, trans. Chris Turner
(Oxford: Seagull, 2008 ), 3 ;Sitiii: 11.
Sartre as media person (l’homme me ́diatique) 231