a few Sartre gems

Killing time before my last class of the semester by browsing the library stacks at random, I came upon the Sartre volume in the Open Court Library of Living Philosophers series. Sartre’s failing eyesight apparently made it impossible for him to fulfill the normal duties of the series, which include a lengthy autobiographical essay as well as responses to all of the articles collected about oneself in the volume. So, they replaced all of that with an interview. Here a couple of the funnier passages…

“Q: And Kierkegaard, when did you discover him?

Sartre: Around 1939-1940. Before then I knew he existed, but he was only a name for me and, for some reason, I did not like the name. Because of the double a, I think… That kept me from reading him.”

“Q: In your earlier philosophical writings…. did you have any stylistic ambitions?

Sartre: ….I wanted to write as simply as possible in French, and I did not always do this, as, for example, in the Critique de la raison dialectique (which was due to the amphetamines I was taking).”

“Q: Do you consider that your work is done?

Sartre: Yes. You’ve come at the right time! You have found a dead man who isn’t dead!

Q: That’s going too far…

Sartre: Listen, I can no longer write and there are things that one cannot do at age seventy. But I can do television programs, for example.

Q: By the way, how are those programs working out?

Sartre: I don’t know.”

“Q: Do plants have consciousness?

Sartre: I have absolutely no idea.”

“Q: There is a problem that is very bothersome to the Americans (who have a solid naturalist tradition): namely, ecology. Have you reflected on it?

Sartre: No.”

“Q: In several years we will have no more air to breathe…

Sartre: That is rather likely.”

In fact, I’ve never run across a French author who was a boring interview.