clear that the hereditary enemy of the City, the scientist, is becoming
domesticated and thereby conserves a place in the polis so long as he
leaves politics to others, offering an impotent unity to the masses under
the rubric of “Man” (Er’s mirror again). This concept is sufficiently
abstract to attract the philosophers as well. Though the progression
of the argument in these fragments is more associative than logical, the
upshot of this capitulation is that the philosophers end up adopting
the maxim “delenda est Veritas” (“Truth must be destroyed”).^52 After
all, they all can agree with the scientific community and the citizens that
there is a greater truth than “Truth” (EPS 45 ), namely consensus. Gone
is the natural; long live the artificial.^53
“Legend of the Solitary Man”We encounter here for the first time what may be called the myth of the
“solitary man,” which will remain in Sartre’s writings in one form or
another throughout the 1930 s and even longer. The “solitary man”
(l’homme seul) stands in opposition to the rule of the demos. He is one
who withstands the pressure of the many in order “to live without
Measure” (Legend of the Truth 46 ); that is, by creating his own “truth.”
While this Nietzschean figure receives brief consideration in the pub-
lished version of this tale, it is the third of the recently published
fragments of the story, though titled simply “Legend,” that addresses
this topic at length. This model will be fully realized in two of Sartre’s
literary figures, Roquentin, the leading protagonist ofNausea, and
Orestes, the hero of his first major play,The Flies( 1943 ). By the time
(^52) De Coorebyter, one of the few who have commented on these fragments in detail, reads the
maxim “Delenda est veritas” as a caricature of Ernst Mach and empirio-criticism. (See his
introduction to Jean-Paul Sartre inTE 16 .)
(^53) Though this genetic argument might suggest an incipient Marxist viewpoint and Beauvoir
does refer to the resonance of an ENS “materialism” echoed in Sartre’s opposition to
Nietzsche’s biologism and psychologism (SaP 207 ), de Coorebyter argues that theCritique
de la Raison Dialectique“systematizes and radicalizes the intuition of theLegende(SaP 210 ),
which still retains strong indications of Sartre’s love–hate relation with philosophical
idealism. Still, de Coorebyter admits that “La Legendethus constitutes an exception in the
work of the young Sartre, since it chooses – onthispoint, forthesereasons – idealism against
realism, constructivism rather than the confidant and unfettered acceptance of the real”
(SaP 216 ). “The almost constant position of Sartre is anticonstructivist,” he claims, citing
Sartre’s view on mathematics from theCritiqueas an example (seeSaP 219 – 220 ).
Philosophical reflections in a literary mode 41