{"id":32958,"date":"2022-07-29T00:02:01","date_gmt":"2022-07-28T21:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/?p=32958&lang=en"},"modified":"2022-07-28T22:18:48","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T19:18:48","slug":"i-persist-in-a-childish-illusion-the-illusion-that-a-man-can-always-better-himself-1917","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lecturesbureau.gr\/1\/i-persist-in-a-childish-illusion-the-illusion-that-a-man-can-always-better-himself-1917\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"I persist in a childish illusion: the illusion that a man can always better himself. (JEAN-PAUL SARTRE)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cHell is other people!\u201d:<\/strong>\u00a0Other people are hell insofar as you are plunged from birth into a situation to which you are obliged to submit. You are born the son of a rich man, or an Algerian, or a doctor, or an American. Then you have a cut-and-dried future mapped out, a future made for you by others. They haven\u2019t created it directly, but they are part of a social order that makes you what you are. All this has been thrust on you by other people. Hell is the proper description for that kind of existence.<\/p>\n

Literature should be the work of clear-eyed men who take into account the totality of mankind. Literature has got to realize that it exists in a world where children die of hunger. Literature has got to realize that it lies within our power, as writers and as human beings, to do something for others. And others can do something for us.<\/p>\n

People think that one fine morning, when he\u2019s pulling on his socks, a man can decide: \u201cHmmm, today I shall invent a moral code.\u201d But a moral code can\u2019t be \u201cinvented.\u201d It must be something that already exists in some way. No true moral system exists today, because the conditions of a moral code worthy of the name are not present. Men are not visible to one another. Too many machines and social structures, as I was saying, block the view. It\u2019s impossible to speak of any true moral system today; only of moral codes applying to certain classes and reflecting specific habits and interests. The basic conditions enabling men to be available for a new social order are lacking. In a society such as ours, it\u2019s inevitable that the mass of social structures \u2014 not to mention the personal compulsions, private destinies \u2014 form barriers to mutual understanding. Thus you trot along with your personal destiny and you meet a Negro, an Arab, a Cuban, each with his own destiny, and any real relationship proves extremely difficult. Or else you must belong to a \u201cmovement\u201d in which you make a total break with everything outside it and associate yourself with, say, the Cuban struggle or the Algerian struggle. Yet even then \u2014 with the best intentions \u2014 you will not achieve complete solidarity. The man whom you contact won\u2019t be completely a man for you; he\u2019ll be a \u201cthing.\u201d\u00a0But to treat a man as a man, as a human being, is a matter of principle, a principle we must never abandon.<\/p>\n

I had cured myself of my youthful illusions, the illusion that a bourgeois writer is bound to be pessimistic, that he is condemned to solitude by the fact of his taking arms against society. In The Words, I describe how I have come to realize that I am a member of society \u2014 a society in motion. And because I have now broken free from the illusions of youth, I believe I\u2019ve become an optimist.<\/p>\n

I have quite large sums of money to spend, as a matter of fact. But I also have many obligations. And the fact is that I hate to possess. It seems to me that we are possessed by the things we possess \u2014 whether it be money or the things it buys. When I like an object, I always want to give it to someone. It isn\u2019t generosity \u2014 it\u2019s only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me. And I get pleasure from the thought that someone will like an object I give him.<\/p>\n

I warn myself that I\u2019ve written some books, but if I feel it my duty to defend the ideas expressed in these books, even if things change, then I am no longer myself. I would become the victim of my own books. I don\u2019t think that one should make a point, as Gide did, of systematically breaking with one\u2019s past; but I want always to be accessible to change. I don\u2019t feel bound by anything I\u2019ve written. Nevertheless, I don\u2019t disown a word of it, either.<\/p>\n

Always the here and now is a condition I regard as temporary and wish to leave behind. I persist in a childish illusion: the illusion that a man can always better himself.<\/p>\n

Question: Why did you reject the Nobel Prize? Jean-Paul Sartre: I\u2019d rather not talk about it. – Why not? – Sartre: Because I don\u2019t think that an academy or a prize has anything to do with me. I consider that the greatest honor I can have is to be read.<\/p>\n

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Existentialism and Humanism<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

Jean-Paul Sartre<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

Source: scrapsfromtheloft<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

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