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Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Sarah Richmond (London: Routledge, 2018), lxvii +848 pp., ISBN: 978-0-415-52911-2 (hardback)

Jonathan Webber, Rethinking Existentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 256 pp., ISBN: 978-0-198-73590-8 (hardcover)

William L. Remley, Jean-Paul Sartre's Anarchist Philosophy (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), vii +277 pp., ISBN 978-1-350-04824-9 (hardback)

William Rowlandson, Sartre in Cuba – Cuba in Sartre (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), vi +132 pp., ISBN 978-3-319-61695-7

Abstract

This study explores the BRICS platform, composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. It discusses its vision and principles, as well as its objectives. I also present a selection of particularly significant and emblematic programs of activities. A core question is how its members will realize their main objective, to contribute to the quality of global development. And how do they relate their objective to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations? Aspects of the current framework of the social quality approach (SQA) will be applied in order to deepen this exploration. In the context of this study, it is relevant to cite the decisions by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to assist the elaboration and dissemination of the SQA.

Abstract

In the Critique of Dialectical Reason and in many interviews, Sartre upheld the proletariat's attempts at emancipation in Western societies and their revolts in the developing world. In these texts, counter-violence is considered the only way to exercise concrete engagement, and a classless society is presented as the only possibility of reducing social inequalities. However, this radical point of view was not the only perspective he tried to develop. He also sought to elaborate an existentialist ethics, which does not correspond to the Marxist theory. This article aims to show that Sartre evoked Notebooks’ ideas in his last interview, Hope Now, in which he envisaged a different typology of democracy and society. This article will examine this new and last direction of Sartre's political thought.

Abstract

In 1927, Sartre submitted a dissertation to the Ecole normale supérieure about the Image, that has been published recently. Already in this work he outlines one of the central theses of L'Imagination and L'Imaginaire, namely that a mental image is neither an internal image, nor the reproduction of previously known sensations, but is a pure act of creation. In his dissertation, Sartre sets down in writing the image in the life of the body and the mind, in a hesitant yet very inventive manner. It helps us to understand his subsequent books concerning image without detracting from their originality.

Abstract

In his biography of Jean Genet, Sartre says his aim is ‘to demonstrate that freedom alone can account for a person in his totality’. Building on my reading of Being and Nothingness in Sartre on Sin, I examine the compatibility of Sartrean freedom and love in Saint Genet. Sartre's account of Genet's person is largely a loveless one in which there is no reciprocity, others are ‘empty shells’ and love is ‘only the lofty name which [Genet] gives to onanism’. I use Saint Genet to suggest Genet's lovelessness is the direct result of locating the totality of personhood in freedom. This location results in a lonely experience of subjectivity as ‘master, slave and merciless struggle’ – never lover or beloved, whether on the divine plane or the human.

Abstract

This study employs the social quality approach to analyze public evaluation of society in China based on the data of the 2017 Chinese Social Survey. It includes both objective and subjective survey indicators of the conditional factors of social quality, namely, socioeconomic security, social cohesion, social inclusion, and social empowerment, as independent variables. Regression results reveal most of these indicators are significantly related to the overall evaluation of society though with different explanatory power. This study not only helps understand how Chinese people evaluate their society but also calls attention to further improve social quality indicator system.

Abstract

Nearly 30 years of transformation of the sociopolitical and legal, socioeconomical and financial, sociocultural and welfare, and socioenvironmental dimensions in both Central and Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, has led to a change of the social quality of daily circumstances. On the one hand, the interconnection and reciprocity of these four relevant dimensions of societal life is the underlying cause of such changes, and on the other, the state as main actor of the sociopolitical and legal dimension is the initiator of those changes. Applying the social quality approach, I will reflect in this article on the consequences of these changes, especially in Ukraine. In comparison, the dominant Western interpretation of the “welfare state” will also be discussed.

Abstract

This study investigates the difference between the maps of social quality and perceived social quality. Using survey data collected from Peshawar, a prominent city in Pakistan, we compare the general and the perceived maps of social quality drawn from survey respondents based on their stands of income, education, age, and gender. With this comparison, the study conducts the regression analysis about the data to reveal the relations between these factors and draw some policy implications. The analysis contrasting objective and subjective visions of the social quality map may support a constructionist view on social quality and, more essentially, bring our view into the diversity of the perceived maps of social quality in reference to the interests of different social groups in society.