Hope Now: The 1980 Interviews [Hardcover]

Jean-Paul Sartre (Author), Benny Levy (Author), Adrian van den Hoven (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226476308 | ISBN-13: 978-0226476308 | Publication Date: May 15, 1996 | Edition: 1

In March of 1980, just a month before Sartre's death, Le Nouvel Observateur published a series of interviews, the last ever given, between the blind and debilitated philosopher and his young assistant, Benny Levy. Readers were scandalized and denounced the interviews as distorted, inauthentic, even fraudulent. They seemed to portray a Sartre who had abandoned his leftist convictions and rejected his most intimate friends, including Simone de Beauvoir. This man had cast aside his own fundamental beliefs in the primacy of individual consciousness, the inevitability of violence, and Marxism, embracing instead a messianic Judaism. No, Sartre's supporters argued, it was his interlocutor, the ex-radical, the orthodox, ultra-right-wing activist who had twisted the words and thought of an ailing Sartre to his own ends. Or had he?

Shortly before his death, Sartre confirmed the authenticity of the interviews and their puzzling content. Over the past fifteen years, it has become the task of Sartre scholars to unravel and understand them. Presented in this fresh, meticulous translation, the interviews are framed by two provocative essays from Benny Levy himself, accompanied by a comprehensive introduction from noted Sartre authority Ronald Aronson. Placing the interviews in proper biographical and philosophical perspective, Aronson demonstrates that the thought of both Sartre and Levy reveals multiple intentions that taken together nevertheless confirm and add to Sartre's overall philosophy. This absorbing volume at last contextualizes and elucidates the final thoughts of a brilliant and influential mind.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1906-1980) was offered, but declined, the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. His many works of fiction, drama, and philosophy include the monumental study of Flaubert, The Family Idiot, and The Freud Scenario, both published in translation by the University of Chicago Press.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Sartreans, including Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre's longtime companion, were furious when these interviews between Sartre and his secretary, Levy, appeared in Le Nouvel Observateur a few months before Sartre's death in 1980, interviews whose authenticity Sartre confirmed. The critics claimed that Levy, a Maoist convert to orthodox Judaism, exploited Sartre's failing health, forcing him to abandon his leftist principles and to adopt a messianic Judaism. But in his introduction here, Sartre authority Ronald Aronson interprets the interviews as only another evolution in Sartre's philosophy. Just as Sartre had at first preached existentialism, then Marxism, here Sartre expresses belief in a political hope, replacing Marxism with ethics. Written in 1990, the commentary by Levy that precedes the interviews clarifies Sartre's philosophical evolution, and his concluding remarks further elucidate Sartre's and his views on freedom and death. A fascinating work that gives further insight into a great thinker; highly recommended.?Robert T. Ivey, Univ. of Memphis, Bartlett, Tenn.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Just as Sartre had first preached existentialism, then Marxism, here Sartre expresses belief in a political hope, replacing Marxism with ethics.... A fascinating work that gives further insight into a great thinker; highly recommended." - Library Journal" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 142 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (May 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226476308
• ISBN-13: 978-0226476308
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,019,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Novelist, playwright, and biographer Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) is widely considered one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. His major works include "No Exit," "Nausea," "The Wall," "The Age of Reason," "Critique of Dialectical Reason," "Being and Nothingness," and "Roads to Freedom," an allegory of man's search for commitment, and not, as the man at the off-licence says, an everyday story of French country folk.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Alternative compendium of "the 60s", May 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Hope Now: The 1980 Interviews (Hardcover)

Sartre scholar Ronald Aronson errs immediately in his intro to Hope Now: The 1980 Interviews by writing that questions about these interviews can be "posed dispassionately" now, meaning, of course, that they can be posed objectively & thereby synopsizes all that has made American liberal education the grand failure that it is. Moreover, Sartre might have disapproved. What did he write about "committed literature?"

In the weeks before his death, Sartre and long-time personal secy Benny Levy recorded a series of discussions, in the form of interviews, some of which were published in a Paris weekly newspaper. Levy, a former Maoist student leader (for the contemporary American student, Maoist student leader is probably as archaic or unknown a term as internal combustion engine) & ardent student of Sartre, fairly attacked the blind & aging writer/philosopher, at times engaging him, at times bullying him.

Thruout the interviews (which take up, really, just one-fourth of the entire book [hence 3 stars]; the rest is all intro commentary & postscripts), Sartre seemed to hold his own, citing the errors of Marxism, existentialism, & the left-wing political movements of the 60s & early 70s. I think the interviews offer the reader a good feel for that period (fondly known in the USA as "the 60s"), when Levy was known as Pierre Victor, Sartre was backing all kinds of radical & left-wing endeavors, & the 1968 student rebellions thruout Europe but especially in Paris threatened to topple the whole knowledge-is-power façade.

In the end, the students failed, but the student uprisings in the USA, then & after, were a mere burlesque of those in Europe: certainly, the knowledge-is-power concept was never questioned (US students just wanted more power with their knowledge), & the smugness that allows Mr. Aronson to pose questions dispassionately has enveloped every succeeding academic iteration.

The famous quote from Sartre's one-act play, "No Exit," was "Hell is other people." Sartre was almost 75 when these interviews took place, and then he said, "It's other people that are my old age...Old age is a reality that is mine but that others feel..." The topics that disturbed so many after the interviews were published were Judaism and Jewishness.

Levy generalizes that Jews fear the revolutionary mob because it may become the pogrom mob; Sartre counters that "there were a considerable number of Jews in the Communist Party in 1917 [in Russia]." Personally, I am at a loss to explain why Levy was reviled by Sartre scholars: Sartre states that he was profoundly influenced by the "Jewish reality" that confronted him after the war, when he met Jews that he saw as having a destiny "beyond the ravages [of] anti-Semitism."

Hope Now seems to me to be more of a coda to the 1972 documentary, "Sartre: By Himself," where he chatted amiably with the editorial staff of Le Temps Moderne and Simone de Beauvoir. That film depicted a leisurely afternoon with friends. Sartre with Levy seems more like colleagues at work. Unlike the current crop of celebrity academics, Sartre always appeared, to appropriate Harry Stack Sullivan's comment about schizophrenics, "simply human."