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Sartre and Nietzsche

CHRISTINE DAIGLE

ome have characterized the twentieth century as a Nietzschean century, while others, such as Bernard-Henri Lvy, call this Le sicle de Sartre1. Those who are interested in the works of Sartre and Nietzsche wish to know what these two authors, who have left a deep impression on the twentieth century, share in common. Others, myself included, dare to ask: Was Sartre a Nietzschean? Studies on this connection are few and, besides Jean-Franois Louettes book, Sartre contra Nietzsche,2 no major study exists. 3 What is the particular nature of the relations between their thoughts? Is there an inuence of Nietzsche upon Sartre? Is there a philosophical kinship? I will begin by clarifying the question of Sartres interest in Nietzsche. Then, I will demonstrate that they had the same philosophical starting point: nihilism. Finally, I will show that both give a similar answer to the problem opened by nihilism, the question of meaning.

Is Sartre an unaware Nietzschean?


There are many direct references to Nietzsche in Sartres works, whose feelings towards him range from antipathy to sympathy. Before delving into Sartres appreciation of and interest in Nietzsche, we will establish what knowledge Sartre had of his works. Sartre refers to many of his texts,4 but for the most part, these references are not quotations per se, except for those that are drawn from The Will to Power and Human, all too Human in Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr.5 Did Sartre read these texts, or did he nd the references in Daniel Halvys La vie de Frdric Nietzsche or in Charles Andlers Nietzsche, sa vie, son oeuvre, a book he knew well since it is quoted in Saint Genet and he comments on some of Andlers arguments?6 It is also possible that he read the limited selection of fragments published by Jean Bolle7 in 1934 under the title Oeuvres posthumes. Or
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perhaps he studied the more complete 1937-1938 translation of La volont de puissance [The Will to Power] by Genevive Bianquis?8 In his crits de jeunesse, Sartre claims to have read Nietzsche, but he does not specify which texts.9 In a letter to Simone de Beauvoir written at the end of July 1939, he says that he has read Nietzsche but, again, does not indicate which text.10 When questioned about his education in an interview by Rybalka, Pucciani, and Gruenheck, Sartre stated that he acquired his knowledge of philosophy at the lyce and the Sorbonne.11 When asked whether he was inuenced by Nietzsche, he answered I remember giving a seminar paper on him in Brunschwicgs class, in my third year at the cole Normale. He interested me, like many others; but he never stood for anything particular in my eyes.12 In fact, Nietzsche has an ambivalent status in Sartres eyes. On the one hand, he says that Nietzsche was more a poet than a philosopher: Nietzsche. He is a poet who had the misfortune of having been taken for a philosopher [...] he will always have success with those who prefer the form of ideas to their exchange.13 He also loathes Nietzsches vitalism as is revealed by the statement made by Roquentin: There were those idiots who came to tell you about will-power and struggle for life. Hadnt they ever seen a beast or a tree?14 He also rejects any notion of eternal recurrence, as the pages of Saint Genet and other passages that deal with this notion indicate. Further, he interprets the overman as a kind of hero destined to replace man at the term of a certain evolution: [...] the Superman who can appear only at the conclusion of a social evolution [...].15 Here Sartre demonstrates a literal and erroneous understanding of the Nietzschean notion. On the other hand, and more positively, he recognizes in Nietzsche an atheist who draws logically and strongly all the consequences from his atheism.16 Nietzsches thought is purely terrestrial and it is to this and its nihilism that Sartre refers in the opening pages of Being and Nothingness.17 Contats and Rybalkas presentation of unpublished material in the crits de jeunesse casts a clearer light on the Sartre-Nietzsche relationship. Many of those texts refer to Nietzsche, both explicitly and implicitly. Two are explicit: the novel Une dfaite which deals with the Tribschen triangle with Wagner, his wife, and Nietzsche, and the philosophical and literary myth Er lArmnien. The latter is more interesting because it exposes the highly Nietzschean ideas that Sartre will take up again later: the moral innocence of the world and the relativity of the notions of Good and Evil, which are seen as no longer absolute and objective but the fruits of human reason. In Er
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lArmnien, Sartre imputes evil to God, or the gods, and has Prometheus say: When the gods will be vanquished, there will be no more evil on earth.18 Besides these two early novel-projects, Contat and Rybalka note that One of the most mysterious text by Sartre and one that it seems no one has read (it is not found yet and might be lost) is a long study on Nietzsche that he begun in the period of the Notebooks for an Ethics (1947-1948) and which, according to Sartre, was a part of his ethical research.19 Obviously Sartre had a rather large interest in Nietzsches ideas as well as in the person since he read Nietzsches biographies and wrote the novel-project, Une dfaite. However, it is unclear whether he took an interest in his ideas out of a recognized afnity or in opposition to them. Firstly, Sartre admits to no philosophical inuence by Nietzsche on his own thought and rejects certain elements of his philosophy (the overman, the will to power, and eternal recurrence). But yet the fact that he wrote a study of Nietzsches ethics reveals a signicant level of interest, especially since Sartre liked to write about people who had an ambiguous status in his eyes, such as Baudelaire, Jean Genet, Freud, and Flaubert. Perhaps this remark about himself can also be applied to Nietzsche: If I really recognized myself in someone, it would vex me, why begin what I have done all over again?20 Nietzsches influence also seems to be much stronger in the early writings of Sartre than in his Marxist period. Finally, even if we cannot prove that a strong afliation exists between Nietzsche and Sartre, Nietzsche is certainly present in his intellectual universe as is shown by his interest in him. Therefore, it remains more than possible that Nietzsche inuenced Sartres thinking.

Bringing Sartre and Nietzsche together


Nihilism: the common starting point In this section, I will demonstrate how Sartres interest in Nietzsche, and his presence in Sartres universe, may have resulted in a philosophical inuence. Sartres approach is very similar to that of Nietzsche. The common point of departure is nihilism, but if it is the same in both thinkers, it is not manifested in the same way. Nietzsches militant nihilism becomes a passive nihilism in Sartre: he is the consenting heir of a wave of active nihilism that took place before him. Let us rst examine Nietzsches militant nihilism briey. It is very complex. The nihilism that he diagnoses and the one he advocates are very different. The incomplete nihilism of the meta 197

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physical-religious tradition, born of Platonic Idealism and Christianity, negates the human being and life through the countless restrictions it imposes on the human being and the heavy weight it places on transcendence. It denies all relevance to immanence. It also has a negating impact because it distinguishes between a real world and a world of appearances, between this world and a beyond. Platonic Idealism maintains an illusory division between an intelligible and a sensible world and hence devalues the world in which humans live. As Nietzsche states: If one shifts the centre of gravity of life out of life into the Beyond into nothingness one has deprived life as such of its centre of gravity. The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct, all that is salutary, all that is life-furthering [...].21 The traditional anthropological position is also nihilistic because it values only certain parts of the human being and hence it is detrimental to most aspects of the humans being. The so-called reasonable man, willed by the metaphysical-religious tradition, must repress his instincts, his impulses, his emotions and therefore denies half of his being. The metaphysical-religious tradition is doubly nihilistic in that it rejects the world of phenomena and consequently rejects an important part of what it means to be human. Remarks Nietzsche: Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to vice.22 His critique of Christianity is an integral part of this critique of the metaphysical-religious tradition. Christianity follows this tradition and reaches a climax with the ascetic ideal and its ethics of the impossible virtue: In the New Testament, the canon of virtue, of the fullled law, is set up: but in such a way that it is the canon of impossible virtue [...].23 To remedy this diagnosed nihilism, he proposes a more complex and devastating nihilism: his own complete nihilism which prescribes atheism as a rst step. In the metaphysical-religious tradition, God is the guarantor of the whole system and if one rejects God, the system is left without a foundation. In the Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche says: Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and complete view of things. If one breaks out of it a fundamental idea, the belief in God, one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces: one has nothing of any consequence left in ones hands.24 Hence Nietzsches atheism has profound consequences. As he indicates in The Gay Science, we are responsible for Gods death, we are his murderers.25 However, we are not able to assume full responsibility for the incredible act of his murder. As Kaufmanns analysis indicates: [...] while he [Nietzsche] was keenly aware of the sense in
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which the existence of God might diminish the value of man, he was no less aware of, if not altogether overwhelmed by, the manner in which the nonexistence of God would threaten human life with a complete loss of signicance. Further: To escape nihilism? which seems involved both in asserting the existence of God and thus robbing this world of ultimate signicance, and also in denying God and thus robbing everything of meaning and value? That is Nietzsches greatest and most persistent problem.26 As a solution Nietzsche proffers his own complete nihilism. It nds the metaphysical-religious tradition as the alienating order of things and since his tradition is crumbling, Nietzsches complete nihilism has as its task to bring about its inevitable destruction. Zarathustra declares: What falleth, that shall one also push!27 But since reconstruction is his ultimate goal, Nietzsche must rst wipe out everything that has heretofore existed, because the liberation from the yoke of the transcending order of the metaphysical-religious tradition can only be accomplished when one traverses it to the end of negation. This liberation has serious consequences: humans are abandoned in the world, left without a caregiver. No one takes care of them, looks after them, takes responsibility for their actions, gives meaning to human life, or answers the most crucial and fundamental of questions: what is the meaning of life? Nietzsches complete nihilism is an active one and it may result in man not finding meaning anywhere. Nietzsche declares : Nihilism appears at that point, not that the displeasure at existence has become greater than before but because one has come to mistrust any meaning in suffering, indeed in existence. One interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain.28 The next step is constructive: it is to provide an answer to the question of the meaning of life so that humans can survive their abandonment. Sartres approach is similar. He recognizes the alienating nature of the metaphysical-religious tradition. Asserting his atheism, and the necessity of atheism for all human beings, he proposes nihilism as a remedy. The major difference between Nietzsche and Sartre is in the tone and manner of their complete nihilism. Nietzsche attacks a crumbling tradition, whereas Sartre nds it already in ruins. He does not feel that it needs further critique. Nietzsches militant nihilism is no longer necessary and Sartre, as a willing heir of a very active nihilism, can adopt a more passive attitude. He agrees with Nietzsche in respect to the alienating aspect of the metaphysical-religious
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tradition. In his statement Any ethics that mutilate life is suspect,29 we recognize overtones of Nietzsche. They also agree on atheism. Sartre considers the death of God a genuine liberation for man. This is expressed in plays such as The Flies and The Devil and the Good Lord. In the latter, Goetz declares: Each minute I wondered what I could be in the eyes of God. Now I know the answer: nothing. God does not see me, God does not hear me, God does not know me. You see this emptiness over our heads? That is God.30 And Sartre adds in The Notebooks that [...] if God disappears the things seen disappear along with him [...].31 When Goetz proclaims: God is dead. We have no witness now, I alone can see your hair and your brow. How real you have become since He no longer exists,32 the witness has disappeared as well as the illusion of an after-world: He doesnt exist [...] I have delivered us. No more Heaven, no more Hell; nothing but earth.33 It is a true liberation but it sentences a person to freedom. Since God is no longer responsible for this world and this life, the human person must assume full responsibility for her life. The death of God implies that humans must undertake the divine task of assigning meaning. The fact that God no longer exists has serious consequences, but Sartre agrees with Nietzsche that this is the price one has to pay for a new beginning: a reconstruction. The death of God, which is equivalent to the death of all transcendence, is the opening of the innite,34 the innite of human possibilities. As he puts it in Notebooks for an Ethics, In this way, man nds himself the heir of the mission of the dead God: to draw Being from its perpetual collapse into the absolute indistinctness of night. An innite mission.35 The question of meaning: the problem The fact that God is dead and that the ancient order of things has crumbled means liberation for human beings and the end of their alienation, but it also means assuming an important responsibility: that of assigning meaning to life and to the world. Hence, the rejection of the traditional worldview immediately raises the question of the meaning of life. This question possesses a certain inner logic. When one asks the question, one rst enters a period of doubt and asks: Does life have a meaning at all? If the answer is no, one abandons the inquiry and one falls into a state of despair. But if the answer is yes, the next question arises: Who is the meaning-provider? and only finally one asks: What is the meaning of life?, i.e. what is the particular order of things36 in which a person nds her place and a justication for her life?
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The meaning-provider is fundamental because without her, the order is left without a foundation. Both Nietzsche and Sartre reject the meaning-provider of the traditional worldview, God. Their rejection of the whole tradition has major consequences. Not only is the question of meaning raised again, but ethics become problematical. The former must nd a new answer and, subsequently, ethics must receive a new basis on which it can be reconstructed. As Kai Nielsen puts it, [...] if God is dead it matters a lot, but we should stand up like men and face this loss and learn to live in the post-Christian era. As Nietzsche so well knew, to do this involves a basic reorientation of ones life and not just an intellectual dissent to a few statements of doctrine.37 Given that the question of meaning is foundational and provides the worldview that is necessary for the elaboration of everything else: ontology, anthropology, and ethics, its solution needs to be carefully studied. This question can be answered pessimistically or optimistically. The answer can be pessimistic in two ways. Either one says that there is no meaning to life, or one says that there is a meaning but it is inaccessible to us because we cannot know what it constitutes. An optimistic answer proposes not only that there is a meaning to life, but also that we can discover it. As we will see in the next section, Nietzsche and Sartre are optimistic since for both life has meaning and man can know what it is since he is the meaning-provider. The answer: a similar approach However, for different reasons Nietzsche and Sartre start by saying that the world is absurd and meaningless. Nietzsche speaks of an Unschuld des Werdens, the innocence of becoming, a term not used by Sartre although the notion is present in his thought. This formula accounts for the world, the universe, and indirectly, the human being as a part of the universe. The world and its becoming are innocent phenomena to which man does not really have access. These inaccessible phenomena are innocent to the extent that they are simply mechanical matter without thought, without judgment, without goals and are therefore irresponsible. However, once the human being becomes aware of this mechanical matter, he begins to think, which results in insight and judgment. The value judgments uttered are such that good and bad come to be attached to the world and its becoming, and it is no longer innocent. But this is all the human beings doing and does not constitute a characteristic of the world. In Sartre the process is similar even if he would not call it that. In Nausea, it is the indifference of the world of matter that is puzzling
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and nauseating. Roquentins discovery of this state of things also provokes anger towards the indifferent absurd world:
[...] the World, the naked World suddenly revealing itself and I choked with rage at this gross, absurd being. You couldnt even wonder where all that sprang from, or how it was that a world came into existence, rather than nothingness. It didnt make sense, the World was everywhere, in front, behind. There had been nothing before it. Nothing. There had never been a moment in which it could not have existed.38

Roquentins reaction is comparable when in Nietzsches The Greatest Weight, a devil tells a person about eternal recurrence and the fact that there are two possibilities open to her. The persons rst reaction is similar: Would you not throw yourself down and gnash at your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or...39 Her despair and Roquentins rage show that the absurdity of the world is much too heavy a weight to bear. In this sense, the notion of the innocence of becoming exists as well in Sartre. However, it should not be understood as causing one to be fully irresponsible.40 The innocence of becoming is allied with the notion of absolute responsibility, and it implies that the human being must become aware that she is the creator of the world, of herself, and of her life. Not only must she be aware of this, she must accept it since she is the meaning-provider. She is responsible for everything, including the existence of the world since it is by her presence and perception that the world gains reality. The world needs the human to exist. Of course, this does not mean that the human is the creator of the brute physical world which has always existed. The human is simply thrown into this absurd world. Since persons are creators of the human world, the meaningful world, one can say that the world needs human beings to exist as meaningful to the human.41 Hence, because both say that a priori the world is meaningless on its own and that we provide meaning to it, in our interpretative grasp, our creative act, we must dene this creative act. Both rst establish meaning through art. In Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy, the answer to the question of meaning transforms itself immediately into an aesthetic justication in the broad sense and he returns to it in his later writings. In Sartre, there are two distinct moments. It starts with a justication through art in Nausea and ends with a justication through creation in a broad sense in the Notebooks. To be more specic, in The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche claims that [...] it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justied?42 Although some passages could lead us to
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believe that Nietzsche is talking of artistic creation in a strict sense, he is in fact talking of creation in a broader sense. Should we consider an aesthetic phenomenon in a strict sense as artwork, a piece of nature transformed by an artistic act, a manipulation that manifests a certain intention? There is certainly something to that. But Nietzsche also says: To experience is to invent43 and There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective knowing.44 Man interprets his world as soon as he is in contact with it and thereby creates it. Consequently, the world is always the result of a certain creative act. Must this creation be artistic? Not necessarily. The creation of the world, the product of the original contact between man and the world, is a creation but not simply an artistic one. It is a transformation of the world, from the brute physical world to the meaningful human world. However, this transformation is not of the same kind as that which we nd in a work of art. Further, Nietzsche does not say that life and the world are justified as Kunstwerke, works of art, but as aesthetisches Phnomen, aesthetic phenomena. Nietzsches choice of words is deliberate and makes me incline towards the broader notion of creation. In Thus spoke Zarathustra, the person as will to power, i.e. the person who overcomes herself continually, the one who re-creates herself constantly, has a meaningful existence which is justied by its movement of creation. Life has meaning if it seeks to attain overmanliness, if it is dynamic and creative of itself. Man must become an overman for himself. He must transform himself in order to become a overman, he must create himself as overman. The human as aesthetic phenomenon is justied and, accordingly, the man who creates himself as an overman is justied. The key to the question of meaning in Nietzsche is the notion of creation: of oneself, of life, of the world, and of the meaning of all of this. This is every persons task.45 A person must become in one and the same person the artist (the creator), the saint (the lover) and the philosopher (knower)!46 She must create and recognize herself as a creator and in the process love her abilities to be such. She must become an over-person, the incarnation of the creative and afrmative will to power. In Nausea it seems as if Sartre justifies life through art only. Roquentin discovers the absurdity of the world and his own absolute contingency. Neither his presence nor his existence is necessary, significant or justified; he is, like every other being, merely there. Everything is gratuitous, including himself, the others, the world. This is the world of contingency. What is one to do in such a world? Let oneself be carried away? Initially, Roquentin is tempted by this solution: he says that he will
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simply let himself exist. Since the world is this gross, absurd being, the only way to accept and afrm this is to comply with this reality and letting himself be carried away by existence. But the answer in Nausea is more optimistic than this blind compliance. When Roquentin listens to the song Some of These Days, the Nausea disappears. When the voice was heard in the silence, I felt my body harden and the Nausea vanished.47 The world is justied by art, though there is no question of nding a justication in art: To think that there are idiots who get consolation from the ne arts.48 The experience of art as a beholder does not justify existence or the world. We must nd justication through art. One must be an artist, a creator. And this is the answer that Nausea provides to the question of meaning. The world and existence are absurd in themselves, we are contingent and everything is gratuitous but through art, through artistic creation, we can justify our existence: She sings. So two of them are saved: the Jew [the author of the song] and the Negress. [...] The Negress sings. Can you justify your existence then? 49 Sartres answer to this question is a tentative and hesitant yes. But what is it that justies existence? Is it the creative act or the results of this creation? Roquentin says that he would like to write A book. A novel. And there would be people who would read this book and say: Antoine Roquentin wrote it, a red-headed man who hung around cafs, and they would think about my life as I think about the Negresss: as something precious and almost legendary.50 However, we face an ambiguity in Sartres thinking since Sartre/ Roquentin has stated earlier, that an existant can never justify the existence of another existant. Consequently, artistic creation in itself is the source of the justication and not the perception of the work or the artists life. It is mans creative act itself that justies his existence, not the appreciation of following generations. In Sartres Notebooks, the justification through art takes on a larger scope and becomes a justication through creation in a broad sense, similar to that of Nietzsche. However, Sartre speaks of man as project rather than as overman. In the Notebooks, Sartre elaborates on the explanations of Being and Nothingness with regards to the relationship between man and the world. As soon as he is in contact with the world, the human being begins to organize and this act is creative and is the human. Creating meaning, making the world is a fundamental movement in human beings. In the Notebooks, Sartre repeats the description he offered in Being and Nothingness of the there is. Being is and man, who nds himself in it, says: there is being. This is how man confers existence and meaning on being and
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it becomes meaningful for man. But, it is not in contemplation that Being will be unveiled as having a meaning: it is in effort so that man has a meaning, that is, in action [...] To act is to posit that Being has a meaning.51 This is mans task, his duty. Sartre insists that Man is the being who has to be to give a meaning to Being.52 Thus, Man nds himself the heir of the mission of the dead God: to draw Being from its perpetual collapse into the absolute indistinctness of night.53 So, the human being must give meaning to being through action, through creation: In creating, man creates himself. Yet this in no way means that he imprints on the dimension of Being an already existing Me; on the contrary, it is from what he creates that he learns who he is.54 He does this through signication: an idea realized in being. An idea (or project, or action) is by itself a surpassing of being toward a future.55 In other words, consciousness does not imprint itself on the world but modies the world for itself by using being for its project. This modified world, in return, teaches consciousness what it is. Since the world-for-consciousness modies itself continually under the actions of consciousness, this perpetual creation corresponds to a perpetual creation of consciousness, and of the human being. To summarize, by its action in the world, consciousness creates the world and itself; gives meaning to Being and accomplishes its duty, its mission of replacing the dead God as meaning-provider. In creating the world through action, consciousness gives meaning to being and saves it from absurdity and being nonsensical. The justication of being results from the fact that it lends its being to the project of consciousness. By creating the world, consciousness creates itself. By giving a meaning to being, it gives itself by the same token a meaning. However, it is still not justied. Sartre calls on the other to provide a certain justication. He says:
The Other, through his active recognition of the instrumentality of the world (that is, in making use of it), breaks the cycle of immanence. I am necessary as the foundation of the instrumentality of the world that is necessary to the Other. And more exactly I become the instrumentality of the world. I am a foundation in my being in the world insofar as the Other grasps it as being-for-him.56

My presence becomes necessary because the Other makes use of the world in which I am. I am thus justied. However, it is not accurate to say that we are justied only by the Other. He says: It is me, which nothing justifies, who justifies myself inwardly. Subjective absolute as justication, pure contingency viewed from the outside. I can never persuade Others of my objective necessity, and suddenly it will no longer have any place whatsoever.57 In the end, for Sartre, I
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am the meaning-provider at every level. The Other adds his interpretation though this is not necessary for the justification of myself. Sartre explains: An absolute contingency has only itself to justify itself, but with this it confers absolute justication on itself within its contingency. [...] The for-itself is God in that if it decides that Being has a meaning, Being will have a meaning for the for-itself.58 The Notebooks expands on the conclusion of Nausea: the human being is the only meaning-provider since a priori nothing has meaning except the for-itself who creates his world and himself and for whom everything has meaning. Through his action, which is creation, the human justies his existence. The notion of creation evolves from Nausea to the Notebooks: creation is no longer purely artistic but it is action in general, the human project, the relationship between the human and the world. This broadening of the notion of creation still presents creation as the key to the answer to the question of meaning.

Notes
1. Lvy, B.-H., Le sicle de Sartre, Paris, Grasset, 2000. 2. Louette, J.-F., Sartre contra Nietzsche (Les Mouches, Huis Clos, Les Mots), Grenoble, Presses Universitaires de Grenoble,1996. 3. Except for my study, Le nihilisme est-il un humanisme? tude sur Nietzsche et Sartre (forthcoming). 4. For example: Daybreak (crits de jeunesse, 486); Ecce Homo (Situationl,134; Saint-Genet, 386, 387);The Will to Power (Situation I, 134, 217; Saint-Genet, 388); Thus spoke Zarathoustra (Situation I, 158; Saint-Genet, 386); Human, all too Human (Saint-Genet, 115, 184); The Birth of Tragedy (Situation VI, 113); Twiligth of the Idols (crits de jeunesse, 329). 5. These last two may have been taken from a study on Nietzsche since Sartre does not give the full reference, whereas he gives it in other cases (for example the references to Ecce homo in Saint-Genet). 6. Contat and Rybalka conrm that Sartre had most certainly read volume 2 of the biography written by Andler if not all of it. The reference Sartre gives in SaintGenet is to volume 4. They suspect he read Halvy, a suspicion confirmed by Louette in his Sartre contra Nietzsche. Further, they give as doubtful possibilities of readings by Sartre: lie Faure, Les constructeurs (1921) and Jules de Gaultier, Nietzsche. Cf. crits de jeunesse, 192-3. 7. Nietzsche, F., Oeuvres posthumes, trad. J. Bolle, Paris, Mercure de France, 1934. 8. Text established by F. Wurzbach, trans. G. Bianquis, Paris, NRF Gallimard, 2 volumes. 9. Sartre, J.-P., crits de jeunesse, dition tablie par Michel Contat et Michel Rybalka, Paris, Gallimard, 1990, 471. 10. Sartre, J.-P., Lettres au Castor et quelques autres, dition tablie, prsente et annote par Simone de Beauvoir, volume 1 :1926-1939, Paris, Gallimard, 1983, 240. Again in a letter from April 14, 1940 to Simone de Beauvoir he says: Le lieutenant Z. est venu memprunter un livre et me demander des renseignements sur Nietzsche (Lettres, vol. 2 (1940-1963), 161). 11. Rybalka, Pucciani, Gruenheck, An Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre? on May 12 and 19, 1975, in Schilpp, P.A. (ed.), The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, LaSalle (Illinois), Open Court, The Library of Living Philosophers vol. XVI, 1981, 5-51. 12. ibid, 9. 13. My translation of: Cest un pote qui a eu la mauvaise fortune dtre pris pour un philosophe. [...] Il aura toujours un succs prs de ceux qui se plaisent moins au commerce des ides qu la forme quelles ont. (Sartre, J.-P., crits de jeunesse, Carnet Midy, 471). 14. Sartre, J.-P., Nausea, trans. Lloyd Alexander, New Directions Publishing, 1964, 133. This could be an ironic reference to what Nietzsche says in The Will to Power: For what do the trees in a jungle ght each other? For happiness?? For power!? (The Will to Power, W. Kaufmann (ed.), New York, Vintage Books, 1967, 704, 375). 15. Sartre, J.-P. Saint-Genet Actor and Martyr, trans. B. Frechtman, New York, George Braziller, 1963, 245. 16. My translation of: tire durement et logiquement toutes les consquences de son athisme. Sartre, J.-P., Situation I, Paris, Gallimard, 1947, 166.

Conclusion: questions of ethics


Nietzsche and Sartre are close in relation to nihilism and the new quest for meaning that is opened up by it. They have a common starting point and provide a similar solution. But does this similarity pertain to the field of ethics? I have shown elsewhere that their humanistic ethics are similar on many levels and that we can even view the overman as Sartres authentic man, who accomplishes himself through his project, is in perpetual becoming and fully afrms his freedom. Yet Sartre was reticent toward Nietzsches philosophy. Perhaps it derives from an erroneous reading of Nietzsches philosophy. Nevertheless, the alienation brought about by the metaphysical-religious tradition is treated by both in a similar fashion. Is the approach altogether the same? To answer that question, we should ask whether the commonality we nd in relation to their nihilism, the quest for meaning and ethics (here only alluded to) is also found at other levels, such as ontological. However, we can conclude tentatively that in the domains mentioned above, they appear to be brothers in arms

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Christine Daigle 17. Sartre, J.-P., Being and Nothingness, trans. H.E. Barnes, New York, Philosophical Library, 1956, xlvi. He says: [...] but once we get away from what Nietzsche called the illusion of worlds-behind-the-scene [...]. 18. My translation of: Quand les Dieux seront vaincus, il ny aura plus de mal sur terre. (Sartre, J.-P., crits de jeunesse, Er lArmnien , 322). This sentence presents the Nietzschean idea expressed in From paradise? Good and evil are the prejudices of God said the snake. (Nietzsche, F., The Gay Science 259). 19. My translation of: Lun des textes les plus mystrieux de Sartre et que nul ne semble avoir encore lu (il nest pas localis lheure actuelle, et peut-tre est-il perdu) est une longue tude sur Nietzsche entreprise lpoque des Cahiers pour une morale (1947-1948) et qui, selon ce que Sartre nous en a dit, faisait partie de sa recherche thique.(ibid). Maybe this is the analysis of the ethics of the will to power that Sartre had promised in appendix I of the Notebooks. But, contrary to what Contat and Rybalka assert, it seems that at least Simone de Beauvoir read it, as we can gather from this part of their discussion: S. de B.: Then, after Being and Nothingness, you began writing an ethics [...] That is when you wrote a big, long and very beautiful study on Nietzsche. J.-P. S : On Nietzsche, yes, that was a part of it. (My translation of: S. de B. : Ensuite aprs LEtre et le nant, vous avez commenc crire une morale [...] Ctait l que vous aviez crit une grande, longue et trs belle tude sur Nietzsche. J.-P. S. : Sur Nietzsche, en effet, a en faisait partie.? S. de Beauvoir, La crmonie des adieux (Suivi de Entretiens avec Jean-Paul Sartre aot-septembre 1974) Paris, Gallimard, 1981, 233-234). Refering to this study on Nietzsche, Uwe Tllner signals that the hopes to nd the study in Simone de Beauvoirs succession has vanished as the study remains unfound (cf. Tllner, U., Sartres Ontologie und die Frage einer Ethik. Zur Vereinbarkeit einer normativen Ethik und/oder Metaethik mit der Ontologie von L?tre et le nant, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, Europische Hochschulschriften, Reihe XX Philosophie, Band 499, 1996, 116. He refers to the Bulletin du Groupe dtudes Sartriennes, no. 4, 37). 20. Sartre, J.-P., Situations IX, Between Existentialism and Marxism, trans. John Matthews, Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1979, 22. 21. Nietzsche, F., The Antichrist, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Penguin Books, 1990, 43. 22. Nietzsche, F., Beyond Good and Evil. Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, vol. 12, Oskar Levy ed., New York, MacMillan Company, 168. 23. Nietzsche, F., Daybreak, M. Clark and B. Leiter eds., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, 87. 24. Nietzsche, F., Twilight of the Idols, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Penguin Books, 1990, Expeditions of an Untimely Man, 5. 25. Nietzsche, F., The Gay Science., Trans. W. Kaufmann, New York, Vintage Books, 1974, 125. 26. Kaufmann, W., Nietzsche. Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 3rd edition, New York, Vintage Books, 1968, 101. Here, Kaufmann summarizes the problem of nihilism and the question of meaning as we nd it in Nietzsche. A world with a god is nihilistic for man but provides meaning to him. A world without a god is liberating but is deprived of meaning. The next task for man is to make his own meaning. 27. Nietzsche, F., Thus spoke Zarathustra. Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, vol. 11, Oskar Levy ed., New York, MacMillan Company, Old and New Tables, 20. 28. Nietzsche, F., The Will to Power, 55.

Sartre and Nietzsche 29. Sartre, J.-P.,Notebooks for an Ethics, trans. David Pellaur, University of Chicago Press, 1992, 89. 30. Sartre, J.-P., The Devil and the Good Lord and Two Other Plays, trans. K. Black, Alfred A. Knopf, 1960, 141. 31. Sartre, J.-P., Notebooks for an Ethics, 494. 32. Sartre, J.-P., The Devil and the Good Lord and Two Other Plays, 143. 33. ibid, 141-142. 34. Sartre, J.-P., Notebooks for an Ethics, 34. 35. ibid, 494. 36. At the least, this order must include an ontology, an anthropology, and an ethics. The meaning one is looking for in the process of questioning ones life is a meaning that is broad enough and coherent enough so as to explain every aspect of ones life. An ontology will explain being in general, an anthropology will explain the nature of man, and an ethics will cover the axiological and practical aspects by giving directions to man on how to live in the world and with other human beings. 37. Nielsen, K., Ethics without Religion, in Kurtz, P. (ed.), Moral Problems in Contemporary Society. Essays in Humanistic Ethics, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1969, 31-2. 38. Sartre, J.-P., Nausea, 134. 39. Nietzsche, F., The Gay Science, 341. 40. For example H. Fahrenbach in his Existenzphilosophie und Ethik (Frankfurt am Main, Vittorio Klostermann, Philosophische Abhandlungen Band XXX, 1970) holds that Nietzsche and Sartre stand in opposition since Nietzsche advocates the innocence of becoming and Sartre the absolute responsibility for man. Because Fahrenbach understands the innocence of becoming as full irresponsibility, he concludes to an incompatibility between the two thinkers. 41. This is similar to Kants distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal world. Kant says that we do not have access to the noumena, only to phenomena. To Nietzsche and Sartre, the brute physical world is out of our reach because it does not have any meaning. It is irrelevant for man. What matters is the meaningful world that man creates. 42. Nietzsche, F., The Birth of Tragedy, W. Kaufmann ed., New York, Vintage Books, 1967, 5. 43. Nietzsche, F., Daybreak, 119. 44. Nietzsche, F., The Genealogy of Morals, II, 12. 45. Again it is a question of creating these as meaningful for man. The brute physical facts are there: mans being, mans life, life in general, and the world. But these facts are all absurd until man creates their meaning. He thus creates them as having some meaning for him. 46. My translation of: Knstler (Schaffender), Heiliger (Liebender) und Philosoph (Erkennender) in Einer Person zu werden: [...]? (Nietzsche, F., Kritische Studien Ausgabe10, Colli-Montinari ed., Walter de Gruyter, 1967, 16[11]). 47. Sartre, J.-P., Nausea, 22. 48. ibid, 174. 49. ibid,177. 50. ibid, 178. 51. Sartre, J.-P., Notebooks for an Ethics, 486. 52. ibid, 449. 53. ibid, 494. 209

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Christine Daigle 54. 55. 56. 57. ibid, 528. ibid, 543. ibid, 540. ibid, 482. This certainly looks like the will to power that recuperates being by its act of will. 58. ibid, 485.

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