[Editor’s note: The following is a translation by Ibn Warraq and Robert Kerr of Michel Onfray’s L’Art d’Etre Francais (The Art of Being French, Bouquins, 2021), published here for the first time.]
The words…
Sartre, again and again…
This man is a compass that points south! Sartre, deluded as he was, missed out on the perilous rise (as a professor in Le Havre, he found virtues in Hitler, according to Philippe Dechartre who was his pupil at the time – I have this information from his son Emmanuel…) of the Popular Front (he did not vote and despised the masses marching in the streets…), on the catastrophic defeat in 1940 (Beauvoir found the Germans who took her under their wing very sympathetic…), of the Occupation (in 1944, he found the German officers in the subway very polite and wrote about it….), the Resistance (he later claimed to be in the Resistance, but probably in the same group as Marguerite Duras, who was sleeping with a lout from the Gestapo…), the Liberation (he repeatedly concealed people as compromised as himself, including his publisher, whom he whitewashed and who whitewashed him in return…), he calls de Gaulle all manner of names (“fascist” being the most courteous, but there are also “reactionary pimp”, “pig”, “bloody bastard”, or “shit”, see his Interviews with John Gerassi between 1970 and 1974), he gave the Soviet kiss to all the Marxist-Leninist dictators the World has ever known (Stalin, Mao, Che Guevara, Castro, Kim Il-sung), he supported the Palestinian terrorists who killed Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, he defended the Baader-Meinhof gang, he asked people to vote François Mitterrand… One wonders why, in Le Siècle de Sartre, in the year 2000, Bernard-Henri Lévy undertakes to praise such a man!
Of course, Sartre is also on the side of the Ayatollah Khomeini! Never late for an infamy, Jean-Paul Sartre supported this man exiled in Neauphle-le-Château in the Yvelines where France had granted him hospitality. From October 1978 to February 1979, the Iranian dignitary spent 114 days there; Sartre joined his support committee! It is not surprising that this episode is mostly concealed. In fact, it is not mentioned either in his authorized biographies, nor in the Dictionnaire Sartre, nor in the Album Pléiade, nor in the chronologies which accompany the three volumes of philosophy in this collection, nor in La Cérémonie des adieux that Simone de Beauvoir brought out in 1981, to give an account of the last years of her companion.
Sartre’s political thinking was as superficial as a teenager’s petulance: a bourgeois had stolen his mother, whose affection he had enjoyed alone since her widowhood, the child was then fifteen months old, and this remarriage, when he was twelve years old, had triggered in him an unquenchable hatred of the bourgeois. At least the idea he had of them. From then on, anything and everything that attacked the bourgeoisie acted as an absolute ideal for him. The left was his family, since his mother’s remarriage had robbed him of it. Les Mots describes this neurosis between the lines. The existential psychoanalysis elaborated by the philosopher justifies this genealogical, biographical, and psychological reading of his political commitments.
Like Stalin or Mao, Guevara or Castro, Mao or Kim Il-sung, Khomeini is a kindred spirit of Sartre. Nationalism, imperialism, colonialism – these are the enemies since they embody the law of the father for this cultured man who ingenuously admits he has no subconscious… An Ayatollah who opposes the Shah of Iran – who was portrayed as an agent of American imperialism, also having good relations with Israel – is a new kinsman! It doesn’t matter that the Shah was dropped by the United States, which worked to replace him with the Ayatollah – by no means theleast of the follies of American policy, which was also allied with bin Laden for a time, anticommunism makes for strange bedfellows Sartre was happy to support a man who proposed to do away with the bourgeoisie. There is no point in looking a gift horse in the mouth!
The same neurosis animated Sartre when he belatedly became an ally of the FLN in Algeria: the progenitor in this case was General de Gaulle, the aforementioned “reactionary pimp”. His zeal remained undiminished as the aim was to establish a socialist regime on the other side of the Mediterranean. It doesn’t matter that this change of regime ushered in the return to the traditional patriarchal values promoted by Islam. If the paternal demiurge were killed, the bloodshed would be without consequence, even acting as a catharic ablution.
This period of Sartre’s support for the Ayatollah Khomeini, between the end of 1978 and the beginning of 1979, is recounted by Beauvoir in La Cérémonie des adieux (published in English as Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre in 1981). The philosopher died a few months later, on 15 April 1980. She recounts the end of the life of this man who had smoked and taken drugs more than he should have for decades. Now half-blind, half-deaf, he was no longer himself, drooling, drinking, suffering from memory loss, having a peeled tongue from swallowing amphetamines, he rambled, taking two days to read Le Nouvel Observateur (in 1973), and furthermore he had diabetes, etc. This is this man whom his courtiers cast into the arms of the Ayatollah Khomeini, in the aftermath of which Pierre Victor (alias Benny Lévy; his last personal secretary) obtained from him, in March 1980, interviews for Le Nouvel Observateur in which he, who had justified Palestinian terrorism, converts… to philosemitism! These interviews were published under the title L’Espoir maintenant.
Let’s leave Jean-Paul Sartre there. He wrote nothing about this companionship with the Ayatollah, which is to say that he was no longer himself, having hitherto made a headline out of everything he did. While he gave the impetus to Islamo-leftism, the rest came to pass without him.
Walter Sieruk says
Speaking about Islam- leftism ,not only in the past but during this current year of 2022 .
Just today 1/5/22, no more that about ten minutes after I posted on my Facebook account the truth about the leftist set up against the Trump supporter on January 6th 2021, I received notice that my Facebook account was subtended because my posting was in violation of its ” Community Standards.”
So here is my posting that so terribly offended Facebook that it block my account with it.
“It was the Antifa thugs who had been bused to Washington DC on January 6th who posed in the Patriot rally as “Trump supporters” who created and incited all that mayhem. That scheme that the Antifa Marxists carried out by infuriating the Patriot rally is what is called ‘ A false flag operation.’ “
Doomer says
Satre was worse than I ever imagined! And he was the great teacher and guide of the West from 1945-1975, when existentialism was in vogue. If I were French I would be highly ashamed.
a) There is the story as told by his friend and ex-Maoist, Pierre Victor (A.k.a. Benny Levy),
who spent much of his time with the dying Sartre and interviewed him on several of his views.
b) According to Victor, Sartre had a drastic change of mind about the existence of god and started gravitating toward Messianic Judaism.
c) This is Sartre’s before-death profession, according to Pierre Victor:
“I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured.
In short, a being who only a CREATOR could put here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to GOD.”
d) To the consternation of his followers and his lover, Simone de Beauvoir, in particular.
During Sartre’s funeral, De Beauvoir reportedly behaved like a bereaved widow,
but later became quite critical of Sartre
in her “Cérémonie Des Adieux.”
Later on, she said , “How should one explain this senile act of a TRAITOR? All my friends, all the Sartreans, and the editorial team of Les Temps Modernes supported me in my consternation.”
Wellington says
Be wary of most intellectuals. They tend to lack common sense, are deficient in moral intelligence and often have a loathing for the common man.
gravenimage says
It is tragic that so much intellictualism has been ceded to thugs like Sartre.
Jim says
I remember reading Sartre at the University. The professors seemed to be very impressed by his insights. Likewise, his plays were popular and performed. I think one was No Exit, and perhaps there was another, or at least we read some others in French literature or courses on the humanities. I did not realize that he had this awful side. But Bertrand Russell also collaborated with Sartre in supporting the Viet Cong in Paris at a war crimes trial. Communists never commit war crimes. I remember a pen pal in East Germany who would ask questions like, Why do Americans think they can stop terrorism by killing women and children. Well, perhaps she was anticipating the drones that created collateral damage for some of our presidents. But anyway, for true believers, there is no problem with communists, they never hurt innocent people. They have Eastern democracy, as my friend put it.
gravenimage says
All too common.
Michael says
I flogged my way through La Nausee – so boring that I do not recall a word.
Camus lived through interesting times in WW2 France and pre-1962 Algeria, but you would think he spent his time between the bedroom and the beach.
My first insights into WW2 France came recently from reading Koestler’s ‘Scum of the earth’ and RO Paxton’s Vichy France.
One quote from Gide “If German dominance meant abundance, 90% of the French would accept it, three quarters with a smile.”
Zemmour made a related point (in discussion with Alain Finkielkraut), claiming that the USA subjugated post war France with the abundance of the Marshall Plan.
gravenimage says
There is a lot I admire about Zemmour, but not this. The US (and Britian) *liberated* France from the Nazis–then helped them rebuild. This is not subjugation.
PMK says
Sartre’s philosophy can be reduced to one sentence. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Leftists are generally godless, which would seem to put them at odds with Muslims. But both hate Christians, Jews and other god-fearing people more than they hate each other. This gives them something in common, on which to build an alliance. Eventually, one of them will be consumed by the other.
gravenimage says
Islamo-Leftism (Part 1)
………………….
Good piece from Michael Onfray (thanks to Ibn Warraq and Robert Kerrfor the translation).
Jean-Paul Sartre is an appalling figure–not just his nihilistic philosophy, but his support of Fascism and of Jihad terror. Ugly, ugly stuff–but few know much about this, and he is all too widely respected.
revereridesagain says
Muslimaoism? Isleninism? Sharistalinism?
gravenimage says
All hideous stuff, revereridesagain, whatever it is called.
JHL says
During my college years, I read several books by Sartre and Camus. What I got out of it was that we are our choices, existence is absurd, and that God is dead.
Linde Barrera says
To JHL- Thank you for mentioning the “God is Dead” movement. As we all know from high school biology, anything that is dead had to have been alive at one time. So how exactly did God come to die
in the 20th century, according to these Lamebrain elitists?
gravenimage says
JHL, I’ve always thought that if Sartre is his choices that he is both pathetic and evil.
Kesselman says
The Sartre story reveals what is more and more obvious that affection for Marxist socialism doesn’t exclude sympathy for National Socialism, the German edition of fascism. The socialist utopian ideologies are all united in totalitarianism. That’s the dividing aisle between bourgeois democracy and the different shades of socialism. And the most vulnerable are the academics in need as they are for recognition and value.
The next who ought to be taken at the wings is a socialist high-brow such as the German social-philosopher Habermas who’s ramble is unreadable.