Sartre’s desire to intertwine philosophy and imaginative literature, in a
manner not unlike that of Plato himself. As with many of Sartre’s
projects, it promises more than it delivers. Of the seven dialogues
announced at the outset, each treating a specific philosophical issue, only
two actually materialize, namely the dialogue with the Titan on Evil and
another, with Apollo, on Art. But as Contat and Rybalka point out, “the
problematic that runs throughout ‘Er, the Armenian’ is that of freedom
in its nascent complexity” (EJ 291 ).
The hazard with dialogical discourse, as with pseudonymous writing,
is that one cannot be sure which speaker, if any, represents the author’s
view. Its advantage is that the author is thereby free to voice his own
ambiguity on the matter. This is clearly the case with the dialogues,
allegories and pseudonymous writings of the proto-existentialists Søren
Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche and, of course, with the model
of them all, the works of Plato. An additional benefit of these methods
is what Kierkegaard called “indirect”or “oblique” communication. It
urges the reader to suspend his disbelief, as happens with aesthetic
appreciation when we enter the domain of the plot/argument. As
Sartre would later reply to those questioning why he stages his plays
in the “bourgeois” center of the city rather than in the “red belt” on
its outskirts: “No bourgeois can leave a performance of one of my plays
without having harbored thoughts traitorous to his class.”^38 Sartre is not
yet so politicized, but as he once remarked about that early period of his
life: “I was apolitical and reluctant to make any commitment, but my
heart was on the Left, of course, like everyone else’s.”^39
Er, the Armenianis a death and resurrection story; specifically, a tale
from beyond the grave. The man is gifted with repeated rebirth if only
he will share his post-death experiences with other mortals. We are the
audience for the lessons Er has learned in the afterlife. Before hearing
the wisdom of the Titan regarding the nature of evil (that it either is
nothing or it is our own creation), Er offers some reflections of his own.
(^38) See Thomas R. Flynn, “Sartre-Flaubert and the Real/Unreal,” in Hugh J. Silverman and
Frederick A. Elliston (eds.),Jean-Paul Sartre. Contemporary Approaches to his Philosophy
39 (Pittsburgh, PN: Duquesne University Press,^1980 ),^123.
Jean-Paul Sartre, preface to Paul Nizan,Aden Arabie, trans. John Pinkham (Boston, MA:
Beacon, 1970 ), 51 ;Sitiv: 182 ). Allowing for the anachronistic coloring of Sartre’s vision in
Words, one recognizes hints of this distaste in Poulou’s remarks about his grandfather’s
Liberal Socialist leanings.
Philosophical reflections in a literary mode 33