![]() He is perhaps best known as one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism, an area of philosophy which contends that Man is a self-creating being who is not initially endowed with a character and goals but must choose them by acts of pure decision - existential ‘leaps.’ Sartre was born into a bourgeois Parisian family of comfortable means but would go on to be generally regarded as one of the most important Marxist philosophers of the 20th century. In 1964, Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for his literary work but refused it on the grounds it was a cultural symbol with which he did not wish to be associated. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was a French philosopher, writer, political activist, and literary critic. These notes eventually formed the following essay, which is, as far as I am aware, the first time that an ‘anti-Semite’ has replied to Sartre’s work. ![]() During that time, I examined the text in full, making notes as I progressed. Prompted by a public radio discussion on Sartre (mainly focussing on his childhood and private life), around three months ago I decided to return to the Frenchman’s ideas on anti-Semitism - not because of any value inherent in the ideas themselves, but because of what a thorough critical treatment of them might tell us about Sartre and about philo-Semitic apologetics in general. I returned it to the shelves, and for the next ten years never felt the need to consult Sartre’s contribution to the discussion of anti-Semitism. Materially sparse and logically recondite, the book disappointed all initial hopes. I took Sartre’s slim monograph to a nearby table where I devoted an afternoon to some but not all of its contents. There was something about Anti-Semite and Jew (1946) that suggested a personal approach to the subject that I felt had been hitherto lacking in the works I’d consulted. The name of the author brought about a spark of recognition, but it was the title that made me reach for it. As a result, I found myself haunting college and public libraries, slowly absorbing the topic’s mainstream texts, along with the not so mainstream, until one day I came across a small, unassuming volume just barely visible between two much larger books. Here was history in raw, perpetually political form. As a young developing scholar in the Arts, I felt the Jewish clash with Europeans had it all - economic aspects, religious factors, the opinions of philosophical giants, the dictates of kings and the risings of peasants. Here was a subject at once profound and deeply entwined with European history, and yet also obscure and apparently also half-sunk in a quagmire of shame. The precise chain of events leading to this decision was complex, but the main engine driving it was sheer intellectual curiosity. “That book is a declaration of war against anti-Semites, nothing more.”Ī little over a decade ago I decided to research the Jewish Question in earnest.
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