Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel that Ended It (review)

From his dissertation under Herbert Marcuse in 1968 to its substantially revised publication as Jean-Paul Sartre: Philosophy in the World (London: New Left Books, 1980; hereafter PW), from his exegesis of an unfinished manuscript (Sartre's Second Critique [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987]; hereafter SSC) to a collection of essays (Aronson and Adrian van den Hoven, eds., Sartre Alive [Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991]) and an English-language edition of Truth and Existence (trans. Hoven [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992]), Ronald Aronson has devoted several decades to a dialogue with Jean-Paul Sartre's thought. Stimulating to read, inspiring in its genuine and equitable concern for its subjects, the Wayne State scholar's latest book represents more than a new installment in his Sartrean engagement, however. In fact, this study can be considered the realization of a career-long pursuit, for Camus and Sartre not only provides answers to questions posed by Aronson a quarter-century earlier, it stands as his most convincing performance of a method outlined at that time as well.

In the preface to his first book, Aronson reviewed the concerns that had guided him in the revision of his dissertation. Despite his admiration for Sartre's philosophical project, he remained troubled by a "peculiar individualism" which left the French writer "blind to the social links at the heart of all human life" (PW 16). "My persistent question was," wrote Aronson, "did Sartre move decisively beyond his individualist, dualist and aestheticist starting point?" (PW 11). Similarly, once Sartre embraced the idea of commitment, "Had he successfully made the passage to political action and thought? How had he functioned as a political intellectual?" (PW 11).

To assemble the diverse elements of this inquiry, Aronson would draw on several genres. He was attempting to produce a "study distinct from but . . . integrating philosophy, biography and political history" in order to assess Sartre's interventions in the public sphere (PW 14). This sort of analytic mixture is fraught with referential quagmires when applied to literary works, but is, in theory at least, appropriate for assessing works in pertinent nonfiction categories (insofar as they purport to make truthful statements about reality). Moreover, thinkers like Sartre and Camus helped articulate ethical standards calling for such comparisons, insofar as authenticity can be deemed a personal adequation between idea and act, theory and practice.

In the infamous 1952 spat between Camus and Sartre (after which the two never again met), Aronson has discovered a concrete context that enables him to integrate these different domains into a cohesive study. Not only does the public confrontation provide an opportunity to measure whether their actions are consistent with their principles, but Sartre and Camus are commonly considered to have reversed trajectories with respect to social engagement at precisely this moment (with Camus slipping into regrettable quietism and Sartre belatedly but fully committing himself to activism). The incident thus marks a flashpoint in their careers that arguably amplifies the constituent facets of their behavior as intellectuals: their ethics, tactics, political opinions, capacity to act, maturation, and impact.

Aronson's book divides its discussion into three movements: the first six chapters examine the initial relationship between Camus and Sartre; chapter seven details "the Explosion"; and the final three chapters and epilogue evaluate its fall-out.

The first section demonstrates that the initial ties between the two thinkers were not as superficial as Sartre would later suggest. Aronson's analysis of their mutual book reviews—Camus takes up Nausea in October 1938 and Sartre reviews The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus in the Fall of 1942—establishes that, before they ever met in June 1943, the authors had already earned each other's respect. Aronson is especially effective in showing how the laudatory (though not uncritical) readings served as a kind of mirror or foil to further these writers' own ideas...