Sartre Today is a tribute to Jean-Paul Sartre on the centenary of his birth (1905-2005). With twenty-two contributions from leading Sartre scholars in North America and the United Kingdom, this volume will greatly enhance Sartre scholarship in the English-speaking world. The diversity of these chapters reflects the depth and breadth of Sartre's wide-ranging engagement with the political and cultural issues of his time. Yet as these contributions demonstrate, it is clear that Sartre's work still offers an important framework through which to address contemporary issues of a similar magnitude. This applies to Sartre's enduring contribution to philosophy and his conception of violence and terror, as well as analyses of the latest political events in the United States. Other contributions address Sartre's relationship to the contemporary understanding of neuroscience and group therapy as well as his conception of literature, biography, the theater and cinema. This rich volume will be of great use not only to all Sartre scholars but also to anyone who has an interest in modern philosophy, politics, psychology, and literature. Contributors: Thomas R. Flynn, Joseph S. Catalano, Reidar Due, Steve Martinot, Ronald E. Santoni, David Detmer, John Duncan, Hazel E. Barnes, Betty Cannon, Constance L. Mui, Peter Caws, Ann Jefferson, Dennis A. Gilbert, Colin Davis John Gillespie Ian Birchall, Betsy Bowman and Bob Stone, Azzedine Haddour, Ronald Aronson, William L. McBride

Sartre Today is a tribute to Jean-Paul Sartre on the centenary of his birth (1905-2005). With twenty-two contributions from leading Sartre scholars in North America and the United Kingdom, this volume will greatly enhance Sartre scholarship in the English-speaking world. The diversity of these chapters reflects the depth and breadth of Sartre's wide-ranging engagement with the political and cultural issues of his time. Yet as these contributions demonstrate, it is clear that Sartre's work still offers an important framework through which to address contemporary issues of a similar magnitude. This applies to Sartre's enduring contribution to philosophy and his conception of violence and terror, as well as analyses of the latest political events in the United States. Other contributions address Sartre's relationship to the contemporary understanding of neuroscience and group therapy as well as his conception of literature, biography, the theater and cinema. This rich volume will be of great use not only to all Sartre scholars but also to anyone who has an interest in modern philosophy, politics, psychology, and literature. Contributors: Thomas R. Flynn, Joseph S. Catalano, Reidar Due, Steve Martinot, Ronald E. Santoni, David Detmer, John Duncan, Hazel E. Barnes, Betty Cannon, Constance L. Mui, Peter Caws, Ann Jefferson, Dennis A. Gilbert, Colin Davis John Gillespie Ian Birchall, Betsy Bowman and Bob Stone, Azzedine Haddour, Ronald Aronson, William L. McBride

At long last, Truth and Existence allows us to read Jean-Paul Sartre's analysis of knowing and truth. This brilliant epistemological sequel to Being and Nothingness was found among Sartre's unpublished manuscripts by his adoptive daughter and executor, Arlette Elkaim-Sartre. Posthumously published in France in 1989, the work dates to 1948, shortly after Sartre's controversial call for the writer's political commitment and his celebrated public lecture "Existentialism Is a Humanism". Truth and Existence, written in response to Martin Heidegger's The Essence of Truth, is a product of the years when Sartre was reaching full stature as a philosopher, novelist, playwright, essayist, and political activist. This brief, coherent, and engaging text presents Sartre's ontology of truth in terms of his characteristic key moral questions of freedom, action, and bad faith. While stressing the intuitive and personal dimensions of truth, Truth and Existence also explores the argument that ignoring is an intentional act starting, like all knowledge, from the primary ontological condition of ignorance. Thus, at the heart of Sartre's discussion are explanations of ignorance (as resulting from the choice to ignore), phenomenological descriptions (of behavior seeking to avoid the truth), and the reasons why one chooses to avoid the truth. Sartre explores why one Madame T., afflicted with tuberculosis, should choose to ignore the disease that is killing her rather than take responsibility for it. Here is Sartre the existentialist at his most original and most provocative: this work of epistemology, based on ontology, becomes a work of ethics. At the same time, Truth and Existence foreshadows and lays thebasis for some of the most important insights of the Critique of Dialectical Reason. Truth and Existence is introduced by an extended biographical, historical, and analytical essay by Ronald Aronson.