“revolution” that was taking place virtually outside his window. But
Sartre seems to have remained the detached scholar during his residence
at the institute.^8
A measure of Sartre’s political commitment during the 1930 swashis
relationship to the Spanish Civil War ( 1936 – 1939 ). Though he certainly
sided with the Republicans, as did many of his close friends, and would
publish a powerful short story “The Wall” in 1937 which dramatized that
war experience, he remarked later that it was not “his” war.^9 “When I wrote
‘The Wall,’” he admitted, “I had no real knowledge of Marxist thought,
I was simply in complete opposition to the existence of Spanish fascism.”^10
Yet Sartre was not insensitive to the political implications of his early
work in phenomenology. We noted his reference to the political and
ethical implications of his notion of an egoless consciousness at the
conclusion ofThe Transcendence of the Ego( 1936 ).^11 This conjunction
of the ethical and the political will establish a recurrent theme through-
out his subsequent work.
Vintage existentialism ( 1938 – 1946 )
Sartre returned to Paris after several months of incarceration in a Nazi
stalag after the fall of France, quite intent on playing a part in the
Resistance. He, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir and others gathered a group
of intellectuals under the banner of “Socialism and Freedom [Liberte ́]” in
March of 1941 that recruited about fifty members and lasted scarcely
nine months. It could not compete with other resistance organizations,
especially the PCF, which had abandoned its pacifist direction once the
Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June of that year. But the values of
“socialism” and “freedom” continued to guide Sartre’s public life.
Indeed, in his valedictory interview with Beauvoir, Sartre reflected on
his experience of true community as a prisoner and wished that it could
be conjoined with freedom:
We founded the movement Socialism and Freedom (Liberte ́). The title was my choice
because I had in mind a socialism in which [freedom] existed. I had become a
(^8) His correspondence with Beauvoir during this period seems to have been lost.
(^9) Marius Perrin,Avec Sartre au Stalag XII D(Paris: Delarge, 1980 ), 463 , citedLife 154.
(^10) Contat and Rybalkaii: 50.
(^11) TE 106.
Vintage existentialism (1938–1946) 287