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BEING AND EMPTINESS
Wall-eyed ideas guy Jean-Paul Sartre ain’t loved no more:
France celebrated the 100th anniversary of Sartre’s birth Tuesday with a number of activities, including a National Library exhibit featuring letters, photos, interviews and manuscripts that belonged to the famed father of existentialism, who died in 1980.
However, organizers say the exhibit, which runs until Aug. 21, has drawn a disappointing number of visitors.
Sartre might have enjoyed this line, however:
“I have no recollection,” 22-year-old Jean-Francois Vergnoux admitted to the Associated Press. “It’s terrible – it’s total emptiness when I think about him.”
Dave, please carve out an exception for Montesquieu, who has been largely ignored by his own countrymen, but was relied on heavily by America’s founders.
LinkityPosted by Joe Geoghegan on 2005 06 22 at 12:14 PM • permalinkDave S. Don’t forget that boulder pusher Albert Camus.
Joe. I’m sure that many things hae slipped by an aging Yojimbo but what in the heck does Montesquieu have to do with the atheistic side of the existentialism movement? He was a “social contract” guy more aligned with the likes of Locke, Hume and Hobbes than bozos like Satre and Camus. Bye the bye, Hobbes had one of my favorite quotes. Something like-“Man in a state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty ,brutish and short.”
Yojimbo, Dave’s wish was for “all French intellectuals” to wind up in the oubliette. He never limited himself to gloomy cafe ponderers.
Posted by Joe Geoghegan on 2005 06 22 at 12:41 PM • permalinkMontesquieu, of course, based his writings on how he thought an idealized English constitution would work.
Posted by Warmongering Lunatic on 2005 06 22 at 01:01 PM • permalinkcompared the map of the Paris metro with that of the London Underground
Here’s the tube map but where’s the paris map?
Yo-
“Bye the bye, Hobbes had one of my favorite quotes. Something like-“Man in a state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty ,brutish and short.”
My second-favorite quote. Just to nit-pick, it’s “The life of man.” Although I suppose civilization makes us a bit taller.
(My favorite quote - from Yeats “The Second Coming”, I think - is, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Words to warm a free-market skeptical libertarian agnostic’s heart.)
Since we are on the subject of France, I found this satirical article hillarious. Let’s cheer up. Its not that all empty.
France Peugeot Makes Suicide Cars
The article is on June 12, 2005—click on the Archives or on June 12, 2005 in the calendar http://satire.myblogsite.com/blog
Sartre will never die.
He will be remembered by the sandwich created in his honour and available at “les Deux Magots” in St Germain des Pres, which was the rendez vous of the french intellectual elite has now mutated into a centre of touristic conformity.
Next door, the Old cafe des Flores also has a claim to history.
It was the meeting place of French fascists and antisemites at the time of the Dreyfus trial and the probable birthplace of l’action francaise a notorious right wing assassination group funded by the founder of l’Oreal cosmetics.
well worth putting on your “places to visit ” list on your nest Parisian trip“France hated him when he was alive and shuns him in death,” said philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, author of Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century. “He is treated like a pornographer.”
And the problem here is…..?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 06 23 at 03:35 AM • permalinkI have a deep reverence for Sartre’s book.
It holds the corner of my beer fridge steady.Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2005 06 23 at 09:34 AM • permalinkA cheesy Sci-Fi series would never name a race of warriors after a French philosopher.
Posted by Some0Seppo on 2005 06 23 at 11:00 AM • permalink
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Good. Hopefully all French intellectuals will eventually meet the same indifference. How much damage has been done to Western civilization by nihilists like Sartre, Derrida, etc?