The Sartre Dictionary (review)

The pitfalls of the introductory guide are well known: it is not easy to avoid being too opaque for those who need introductory material, and quite superfluous for those who have some familiarity with it, and in that sense the dictionary format is helpful in the latitude it affords across a range of entries to develop complex ideas at the necessary length. The Sartre Dictionary offers coverage of Sartre's key philosophical terms, synopses of all his writings, and of historical and contemporary writers and collaborators, from Descartes to Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty and Camus. The implied reader does not read French (there are no references at all to the original French terminology, apart from 'les salauds'), and is interested in the complex workings of the early philosophy; the author is a member of a UK Philosophy department, and the technicalities of 'for-itself ', 'in-itself ' or 'non-being' are explored in great detail. It would have been helpful to reinforce the philosophical use of 'necessary', and also the specific sense of 'existence' to differentiate it sharply from 'being', since Cox's definition of 'existence precedes essence', which includes: 'existence (the world, being-in-itself) is logically prior to essence (being-for-itself, consciousness, ideas, meaning) . . . Being-in-itself is' (p. 69), is going to confuse more than one, as well as arguably missing the point. This entry is tackling the range of nuances within 'existence', but is a clear case of the technical trees masking the philosophical wood. This is not to say the dictionary fails in its project of introduction, for many of the entries are extremely clear, and in fact the student who reads the work initially before using the entries for reference would on the whole gain a good understanding of the dynamic of Sartre's approach to being and consciousness. Where the dictionary is less strong is in its treatment of social and cultural history, and not only because of the errors (Sartre did not help Camus found Combat, and The Rebel is not a novel). The Sartre of Philosophy Departments is not the Sartre of French Studies. It is hard to imagine a dictionary of this kind aimed at students of French lacking, as this one does, entries for historicity, commitment or committed literature, and this has wider consequences for its apprehension of the social dynamic of being. For example, I would have liked greater emphasis on situation and the real world constraints on freedom. There is something rather cerebral about the nature of choice presented here, which can at times make it seem inconsequential. The presentation of the themes of the plays and novels also suffers: in the description of The Condemned of Altona, the subtleties of nation, class, religion, ideology and psychology are erased by a 'German collective guilt' (p. 44) and 'the shame of all mankind' (p. 45). More frivolously, it can only be for the pleasure of having an entry for the letter Z that of all Sartre's (contingent) female relationships and friendships, Lena Zonina, Russian translator and dedicatee of Les Mots, is singled out.