Initial Thoughts

Abstract

To write a third book on Sartre might at first sight appear rash or at the very least unnecessary. There is nonetheless an underlying logic in such an enterprise. This, my last book on Sartre, is above all else an attempt to capture the defining characteristics of a life and a work that in my opinion set Sartre apart from other twentieth-century French writers and intellectuals. In my two previous books on Sartre, one centred on biography,¹ the other on the media,² I have alluded to this intrinsic differentiation at various points in my argument. The very title of this book, however, ‘Politics and Culture in Postwar France’, is designed to place what I consider to be the interconnected politico-cultural originality of Sartre’s life and work at the centre of attention throughout. Somewhere at the intersection of the political and the cultural lies the enduring value of Sartre’s writings. I have previously made a similar case for Nizan in the context of the 1930s.³ In the context of postwar France Sartre’s work embodies and synthesises a historical period in a manner which calls for special attention.