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Notes on contributors

This collection of twenty-one articles by thirteen American, six British, and two Canadian scholars is divided into four sections: Sartre and Philosophy; Sartre and Psychology; Sartre: (Auto)biography, Theater, and Cinema; and, finally, Sartre and Politics. The great diversity of approaches and commentaries is a tribute to the stature of Sartre, whose writings continue to have an impact on the English-speaking world and farther afield.

We are celebrating the centennial year of the birth of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). His death and the huge funeral cortege that spontaneously gathered on that occasion marked the passing of the last of the philosophical "personalities" of our era. Contrast, for example, his departure, which I did not witness, with that of Michel Foucault, which I did. The latter was acknowledged in a modest ceremony at the door of the Salpêtrière Hospital; his private funeral in the province was even more stark. The two passings exhibit the distinction graphically. Foucault, the most likely candidate to become Sartre's successor as reigning intellectual on the Left Bank, exited the institution that had figured in several of his books attended by a small crowd of a couple hundred, admittedly assembled without public notification, on a damp morning to hear Gilles Deleuze read a brief passage from the preface to The Uses of Pleasure. Describing philosophy as "the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself," the message had an ironically haunting Sartrean ring.

Notes on contributors

Some years ago, at a meeting of the Groupe d’études sartriennes in Paris, one of the editors made the claim that to understand Sartre one had to view him as a person who constantly measured himself against the leading lights of the past, of his age, and that at the same time, he foreshadowed the coming age. The contributions in this issue reveal the extent to which recent Sartre scholarship illustrates this point since they emphasize to what enormous degree Sartre remains pivotal to the understanding of ethical questions, postmodernism and such thinkers as Marcuse, Foucault and Fanon, but also such stellar figures from the past as Goethe and Nietzsche.

The Notice Board seeks to publicize all matters relating to Sartre scholarship, but more specifically, higher degrees (in progress or completed), seminars, and conference papers. We are also pleased to publish conference reports and news from Sartre societies. Another important feature of the Notice Board is its record of publications.