(self-deception), as with the “perfect waiter” inBeing and Nothingness.
It obviously plays a major role inSaint Genet: Actor and Martyr,and
it figures in Sartre’s discussion of Baudelaire. Sartre devotes two
portions of the first volume ofThe Family Idiotand several passages
thereafter to Flaubert’s “play-acting.” In fact, references to Genet are
implicit especially in these portions ofL’Idiot, where Sartre is speaking
of Flaubert’s “personalization” as “imaginary child,” starting the spiral
movement to the actor, continuing to the writer and finally issuing in
the author.^60 We observed a somewhat analogous uncoiling in Genet’s
“conversions” from thief to aesthete to writer. Sartre calls these turn-
ings “metamorphoses” rather than “conversions,” but they could more
properly be called “conversions,” a term used inBNfor a change of
life-orienting project but elaborated inNEto denote a change toward
authenticity, “an ethics without oppression; a new ‘authentic’ way of
being oneself and for oneself, which transcends the dialectic of sincerity
and bad faith.”^61 Genet seems to be the most “authentic” individual on
Sartre’s biographical roster, except perhaps for Mallarme ́.
Sartre’s analysis of Flaubert’s illness repays careful reading because
it seeks to support his basic claim that human reality (humans) are
ontologically free/responsible in any situation when the evidence
of practical limits is increasingly obvious. The following passage
distinguishes prereflexive (pre ́re ́flexive) from irreflective (irre ́fle ́chie)
consciousness in an attempt to arrive at a “middle” level (dimension)
between his standard distinction between the prereflective (common
awareness that precedes our reflective knowledge) and reflective
knowledge. This seems to be the level at which Flaubert’s
“understanding” is wider than his (reflective) knowledge. It also
introduces a somatic aspect that waspresent in emotional conscious-
ness (e.g., bodily changes to “magically” resolve a challenging situ-
ation). This psychosomatic awareness was mentioned, equivalently,
in Sartre’s first Gramsci lecture on “Marxism and Subjectivity.”
(^60) “A life develops in spirals it passes again and again by the same points but at different levels
61 of integration and complexity” (SM^106 ; seeFIiii:^341 ).
NE 9 and 474. Referring toBN 377 – 379 and 399 – 406 , Sartre remarks: “Sadism and
masochism are the revelation of the Other. They only make sense–as, by the way, does the
struggle of consciousnesses–before conversion” (NE 20 ;CM 27 ). A recurrent theme in
(what we have of) hisWar Diariesis Sartre’s search for “authenticity” in line with “tran-
scending the dialectic of sincerity and bad faith” (as described inBN).
404 Existential biography: Flaubert and others