contingency the way the movies enabled us to experience the weight of
our destiny rather than merely conceive of it in an antiseptic manner.
The first part of theCarnet Dupuis, though less organized, is of even
greater philosophical significance. It too deals with issues treated in
both the published and unpublished versions ofThe Legend of Truth.
Of special interest is Sartre’s distinction between two kinds of necessity,
individual and collective, which we discussed in theprevious chapter, as
well as another reference to “comprehension” as a mode of inquiry
proper to the social sciences. The method of comprehension
(Verstehen) was developed by Dilthey and Weber as appropriate means
of studying theGeisteswissenschaften.^9 It was also favored by Karl Jaspers,
whose seminal work,General Psychopathology(Algemeine Psychopatholo-
gie), Sartre and Nizan had proofread in its French translation while at
the E ́cole. Raymond Aron would employ the method when he intro-
duced Weber’sVerstehende Soziologieinto the French intellectual scene
with his short volume of German sociology in 1935 and his larger
dissertation for the state doctorate in 1938.^10 Sartre will use the method
of “comprehension” to access the lived experience of individual agents in
his “existential psychoanalyses” of Baudelaire, Mallarme ́, Genet, and
especially Flaubert, while extending it to historical understanding gen-
erally in both theCritiqueand his Flaubert study,The Family Idiot.
Though it is commonly accepted that Gabriel Marcel was the first to
refer to Sartre’s philosophy as “Existentialism,” we find Sartre speaking
positively of “a philosophy of existence” in theCarnet Dupuis.(ESviii: 20 .)
This appears to be a translation of Jaspers’sExistenzphilosophie, which he
had introduced to characterize his philosophy in 1932.^11 Jaspers is
(^9) The sciences of the spirit (what the French callles sciences humaines) as opposed to the
natural sciences. The former are somewhat broader in scope than what counts as “social
sciences” in English, since they include psychoanalysis and other “psy” sciences.
(^10) Raymond Aron,German Sociologytrans. Mary and Thomas Bottomore (London: William
Heinemann, 1957 ), and Raymond Aron,Introduction to the Philosophy of History, trans. G. J.
Irwin (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1961 ); hereafterIPH. Both volumes were published in France
11 in^1935 and^1938 respectively.
Karl Jaspers,Existenzphilosophie(Berlin: De Gruyter, 1938 ). The year Sartre applied for his
Berlin fellowship ( 1932 ), Jaspers published three major works:Die geistige Situation der Zeit
(Man in the Modern World)(Berlin: De Gruyter),Max Weber(Oldenburg: Stalling) and the
three-volumePhilosophie(Berlin: Springer). By then, “Existenz,” “Existenzphilosophie” and
“Existenzerhellung” (the method of “unpacking”Existenz) were already technical terms in
Jaspers’s philosophy.
A lost treasure 53