Sartre would draw on Greek mythology to present his philosophical
message.^21 The psychological insights of these works reveal Sartre as a
thinker ripe for the descriptive method of Edmund Husserl, whose work
he was to study intensely when he exchanged places with Raymond Aron
at the French Institute in Berlin for the academic year 1933 – 1934.^22
Commenting on Sartre’s penchant for discussing philosophical concepts
in a narrative manner, Beauvoir observes aproposThe Legend of Truth:
Once again he deployed his ideas through the medium of a story. It was almost
impossible for him to state them directly: since he placed no faith in universals or
generalizations, he denied himself the right even of formulating this repudiation in
generalized terms. He had to replace proposition by demonstration. He admired
those myths to which Plato, for similar reasons, had had recourse, and did not blush
to imitate them...He kept his sympathy for those thaumaturgic characters who,
shut off from the City with its logic and mathematics, wandered alone in the
wilderness and only trusted the evidence of their own eyes as a guide toward
knowledge. Thus it was only to the artist, the writer, or the philosopher – those
whom he termed the “solitaries” (Les hommes seules) – that he granted the privilege of
grasping living reality (“de saisir sur le vif la re ́alite ́”).^23
Beauvoir has underscored several features that are scarcely noticed by any
but specialists in Sartre’s early thought, yet which uncover an important,
if largely unremarked, dimension of his subsequent writing, namely the
“thaumaturgic”solitary menlike artists, writers and philosophers, who are
gifted with an immediate grasp of what he will later call “the lived” (le ve ́cu).^24
A DefeatThis is Sartre’s initial attempt at composing a philosophical novel. On
the pretext of telling the story of the relations between Nietzsche,
(^21) I’m discountingBariona, on a biblical theme, but should mention his adaptation of Euripides’
22 The Trojan Womenin^1965 , which expressed a pacifist message for a contemporary audience.
Aron replaced Sartre at the lyce ́e in Le Havre while Sartre was studying in Berlin
23 (Me ́moires^35 ).
24 Prime^50 ;F^54 (seeCe ́r^184 ).
It is worth noting that after the war, in his posthumously publishedNotebooks for an Ethics
written in 1947 – 1948 , Sartre cites “the writer, the philosopher, the saint, the prophet, the
scholar” as examples of “the true historical agent” who eschews Machiavellian violence in
favor of “treating human beings as himself ” and thereby fosters a unity that makes history
possible.NE 21 – 22 ;CM 27 – 28 ; see alsoSFHRi: 75.
28 An elite education: student, author, soldier, teacher