Cover: Sartre as Biographer, from Harvard University PressCover: Sartre as Biographer in E-DITION

Sartre as Biographer

Product Details

E-DITION

$65.00 • £54.95 • €60.00

ISBN 9780674430587

Publication Date: 01/01/1980

220 pages

World

Available from De Gruyter »

Media Requests:

Related Subjects

Harvard University Press has partnered with De Gruyter to make available for sale worldwide virtually all in-copyright HUP books that had become unavailable since their original publication. The 2,800 titles in the “e-ditions” program can be purchased individually as PDF eBooks or as hardcover reprint (“print-on-demand”) editions via the “Available from De Gruyter” link above. They are also available to institutions in ten separate subject-area packages that reflect the entire spectrum of the Press’s catalog. More about the E-ditions Program »

Since 1945 Jean-Paul Sartre has devoted more pages to biography than to any other genre or subject. He has published three full-length biographies—including the monumental portrait of Flaubert—as well as shorter studies and an autobiography. In this perceptive and very readable book, Douglas Collins analyzes Sartre’s biographical enterprise, its place in his thought and development, and shows us much about Sartre and about biography in the twentieth century.

“What can one know about a man today?” is the question that Sartre explores in his biographical work. The protagonist of Nausea is a biographer who includes that a sure grasp of his subject is impossible. But in the life of Flaubert, Sartre displays an unrestrained optimism about the possibility of a knowledge of other selves. The author traces this evolution, examines Sartre’s sources, and locates his biographies in the history of ideas. Collins discusses the role of the biographies in Sartre’s theories of alienation and the imagination, and pays particular attention to the relation between ethics and epistemology in his thought. Sartre’s works are studied from various perspectives—psychoanalytical, literary, political—always with an awareness of the evolution of his philosophy.

Recent News

Black lives matter. Black voices matter. A statement from HUP »

From Our Blog

Jacket: Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500, by Peter Wilson, from Harvard University Press

A Lesson in German Military History with Peter Wilson

In his landmark book Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500, acclaimed historian Peter H. Wilson offers a masterful reappraisal of German militarism and warfighting over the last five centuries, leading to the rise of Prussia and the world wars. Below, Wilson answers our questions about this complex history,