Sartre: Romantic Rationalist

by Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch assesses the different strands of Jean-Paul Sartre’s rich and complex work.

Sartre’s political passions combined with his memorable literary gift place him foremost among the novelists as well as the philosophers of our time. Iris Murdoch discusses the tradition of philosophical, political and aesthetic thought that gives historical authenticity to Sartre’s achievement, while showing the ambiguities and dangers inherent in his position.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, 20th Century, France, Biography, Criticism, Theory

158 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Dame Jean Iris Murdoch

Irish-born British writer, university lecturer and prolific and highly professional novelist, Iris Murdoch dealt with everyday ethical or moral issues, sometimes in the light of myths. As a writer, she was a perfectionist who did not allow editors to change her text. Murdoch produced 26 novels in 40 years, the last written while she was suffering from Alzheimer disease.

"She wanted, through her novels, to reach all possible readers, in different ways and by different means: by the excitement of her story, its pace and its comedy, through its ideas and its philosophical implications, through the numinous atmosphere of her own original and created world--the world she must have glimpsed as she considered and planned her first steps in the art of fiction." (John Bayley in Elegy for Iris, 1998)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Mur...

Reviews

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Rested Upon A Consideration of Sartre’s Novels"

The bulk of this book was first published in 1953 (and was the first of Iris Murdoch's books to be published). She wrote the introduction much later - in 1987.

I read it as a breather or an in-betweenie in the course of reading some of Sartre's works (next on the list - "Nausea"). There's a sense in which it tries to define Sartre's philosophical and literary approach. However, Murdoch herself was both a philosopher and a novelist, so her perspective is that of someone trying to confront similar challenges and define her own approach.

The body of the book consists of ten short idiosyncratic chapters. The whole adds up to something like an introductory guide. It doesn't tell you too much about each book or so little that you can't understand Murdoch's perspective. It deals briefly with all of Sartre's major works. However, it's clear that Murdoch's main interest was Sartre's fiction:

"I have tried to rest what I have to say about Sartre upon a consideration of his novels."

I'd recommend this book if you plan to read any Sartre, especially "Nausea" or "Being and Nothingness".



Littérature Engagée

Sartre demanded of fiction that it be engagée or committed, yet while Murdoch's own fiction would be equally serious, she felt that this was Sartre's weakness:

"His inability to write a great novel is a tragic symptom of a situation which afflicts us all. We know that the real lesson to be taught is that the human person is precious and unique; but we seem unable to set it forth except in terms of ideology and abstraction."

His problem was that he was too much of a rationalist to be a good novelist, even if he might have been a good dramatist:

"The novels are problematic and analytical; and their appeal does in part depend upon our being initially moved by the intellectual conflicts which they resume. All who felt the Spanish War as a personal wound, and all disappointed and vainly passionate lovers of Communism will hear these novels speak to them. But those who, without any pressing concern with these problems, seek their human shape and weight in Sartre's array of people may be left with a sense of emptiness."

New Salvation

Murdoch believes that Sartre placed his fiction too much at the service of his philosophical and political theories. He doesn't leave enough scope for the possibility that "art may break any rule." Sartre's vision is too analytical, disciplined and confined.

Paradoxically, Murdoch states in the introduction that "the metaphysical imagery of 'Being and Nothingness' was, for popular purposes, easily grasped...Existentialism was the new religion, the new salvation."

Pop Sartre

Murdoch describes how she first read it in Brussels in 1945, when she briefly met Sartre, whose "presence in the city was like that of a pop star." The only other occasion when she saw a philosopher "being hailed as a prophet was in California in 1984 when [she] attended a lecture by Jacques Derrida."

Sartre's philosophy carried an overt political message that she found charming and energising. His "obsessive and hypnotic world picture" also appeared in his philosophical novel, "Nausea".

She describes his fiction in terms of late romantic literature, in which "authentic being is attained in extreme situations, and in revolt against society."

For all the flaws she points out, Murdoch concludes that:

"Sartre, thinker and artist, so versatile, so committed, so serious, industrious, courageous, learned, talented, clever, certainly 'lived' his own time to the full, and, whatever the fate of his general theories, must survive as one of its most persistent and interesting critics."

The Experience of Freedom

Murdoch identifies freedom as the touchstone of Sartre's philosophy and fiction.

Yet it is trapped in the mind of the individual and unconsummated in society:

"The individual is the centre, but a solipsistic centre. He has a dream of human companionship, but never the experience. He touches others at the fingertips. The best he can attain to is an intuition of paradise..."

"It seemed from 'Being and Nothingness' that what Sartre meant by 'freedom' was the reflective, imaginative power of the mind, its mobility, its negating of the 'given', its capacity to rise out of muddy unreflective states, its tendency to return to an awareness of itself. For this sense of freedom, needless to say, stone walls make no prison; we are potentially free so long as we are conscious."

Freedom becomes the basis of all value. In the words of Sartre:

"The ultimate meaning of the actions of men of good faith is the pursuit of freedom as such...I cannot take my own freedom as an end without also taking the freedom of others as an end."

Freedom "becomes a weapon to use against the soul-destroying ossifications of both capitalism and communism."

Romantic Rationalist

Murdoch explains the title of her book in stages:

"Sartre is a rationalist; for him the supreme value is reflective self-awareness...Sartre prizes sincerity, the ability to see through shams, both social shams and the devices of one's own heart...The rationalism of Sartre is not geared on to the techniques of the modern world; it is solipsistic and romantic, isolated from the sphere of real operations...His reason is not practical and scientific, but philosophical. His evil is not human misery or the social conditions, or even the bad will, which may produce it, but the unintelligibility of our finite condition...

"What Sartre does understand, the reality which he has before him and which he so profoundly and brilliantly characterises in 'Being and Nothingness', is the psychology of the lonely individual. The universe of 'Being and Nothingness' is solipsistic. Other people enter it, one at a time, as the petrifying gaze of the Medusa, or at best as the imperfectly understood adversary in the fruitless conflict of love..."

"The general impression of Sartre's work is certainly that of a powerful but abstract model of a hopeless dilemma, coloured by a surreptitious romanticism which embraces the hopelessness."

A Pleasing Likeness

Murdoch continues, "It is patent that what many readers of Sartre find in his writings is a portrait of themselves. A likeness is always pleasing...; and to be told that one's personal despair is a universal human characteristic may be consoling...We can no longer formulate a general truth about ourselves which shall encompass us like a house...

"Sartre described very exactly the situation of a being who, deprived of general truths, is tormented by an absolute aspiration...Sartre is enough of a humanist to find this aspiration touching and admirable, enough of a romantic to enjoy adding that it is fruitless, and enough of a politician to introduce a theoretical contradiction for immediate practical ends. His philosophy is not just a piece of irresponsible romanticism; it is the expression of a last ditch attachment to the value of the individual, expressed in philosophical terms."

Having read "Being and Nothingness", I didn't find it as pessimistic or despairing about humanity as Murdoch seems to think it is. It was actually far more positive and liberating than I had anticipated. In particular, I didn't feel that Sartre's concept of "nothingness" was as negative as popular imagination would have you believe. Perhaps, the pessimism is more inferred from Sartre's fiction than his philosophy?

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have started to read Sartre and this 10 chapter book by Murdoch is a great introduction to Sartre’s earlier works without going into detail. Sartre a rationalist is interested in the idea of reflection or contemplation by the individual and the lack of it. His ideas around freedom are refreshing.

‘Sartre’s man is depicted in the moment-to-moment flux of his thoughts and moods, where no consistent pattern either of purposeful activity or of social condition can be easily discerned; at this level freedom seems indeed like randomness, the freedom of indifference.’ (Pg 84)

Murdoch also discusses Sartre’s ideas on consciousness and the problems of communication and language as well as an evaluation of Sartre as a novelist.

[Bruno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Murdoch is a better philosopher than Sartre!

Sartre is contradictory, arbitrary, purposefully obscure, and above all, dour. He wants desperately to motivate his political project but has NO viable way to do so given his metaphysics. What results is a total conflation between three very distinct senses of the word ‘freedom’ (1. Freedom as a general phenomenological quality of consciousness, 2. Freedom as the openness of our response to works of art, 3. Freedom as it is used in contemporary politics) in the service of a flimsy justification of Marxist Communism.

Murdoch very charitably calls it a “flagrant case of a ‘persuasive definition’” but I’m much more inclined to call it a paradigmatic example of bad faith (pg 83).

I always thought Sartre’s evocation of Kant’s Kingdom of Ends in Existentialism is a Humanism was bizarre, but Murdoch here very clearly lays bare his reasons for doing it: he needed some way to connect his totally egocentric conception of personal life with his pragmatic, utilitarian, and Marxist political aspirations.

Again Murdoch very charitably calls this “clumsy” and points out that “he has not provided for this picture the metaphysical background needed to integrate it into his philosophy”, and again I am far more inclined to view this as a clearly bad faith attempt at combining two ideas that blatantly contradict (pg 106-107).

Sartre is at his best when he is doing phenomenology (and according to Murdoch writing plays but since I haven’t read any of his plays I’ll just stick to phenomenology side). He has some great descriptions of certain aspects of love, of being-for-others, and of the emptiness of the self. But when he attempts to use this phenomenology to justify his ethics or his politics we are left not only with absurdity and contradiction but a TOTAL lack of arguments. One of my professors in undergrad said philosophy is the love of arguments. If that’s the case then I don’t see how Sartre could be considered a philosopher!

I think Murdoch describes him best in this book as a man drawing an “irresponsible caricature of a modern mood” (pg 83) or as a man “describing exactly the situation of a being who, deprived of general truths, is tormented by an absolute aspiration” (pg 108).

She goes on to reject the first description and endorse the second but I see them as far more similar than she realizes!

Regardless, while these Sartrean drawings and descriptions can make for an interesting depiction of a particular mood or a particular person, it becomes silly when you try to extrapolate it into an all encompassing system or when you attempt to use it as grounds for your ethics and politics. This is demonstrated, again, in Sartre’s almost total lack of arguments!

As for Murdoch, I think she is excessively charitable to Sartre but that’s my only criticism. She writes clearly, concisely, and with insight. She is clearly very sympathetic to Sartre but also does not shy away from criticism. I only think the criticism should’ve been harsher. Overall great stuff from Murdoch.

[Jackson Evans]

Should have read literally anything Sartre wrote before letting sister convince me to read this

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling analysis of Sartre both as a novelist and as a thinker, and alleviates my compulsion to actually read Being and Nothingness.

[Lazarus P Badpenny Esq · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a novelist and philosopher herself, Iris Murdoch proves the appropriate choice to provide an unscary and largely jargon-free explication of Sartre's writing and thought which only occasionally leans towards the impenetrable.

[John Cairns · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book of Iris Murdoch I read except for the introduction which came later. She says ‘Sartre attempts to see history as “driven... by human willed purposes, so that it’s explanation and being lies in a study of conscious human activity”.’ This presupposes the will is conscious whereas any drive has to be by the unconscious will consciousness need not even be aware of. The purposive projet characteristic of consciousness is apparently an imagined future! Would that explain Brexit?

One can live or tell; not both at once, she paraphrases Sartre’s thinking. Maybe true to his but not to my experience. Mum said, agreeing with Sartre, ‘life is not a play, Johnny.’ ‘No, it’s a book,’ in which she was a character and her words scripted. She quite failed for all her clever consciousness to disprove this. The future is not already there, Murdoch goes on paraphrasing. It may be. My cousin offered to show me a flip book. ‘You’ve shown me that already.' He hadn’t but my unconscious had in a dwam presaged his doing so. From this Mum, another mum, realised I could see the future which is, therefore, already there, in fact remembered as past.

‘The relation of ...words to their context of application is shifting and arbitrary.’ I didn’t understand the word ‘and’. I no longer knew what it meant, what it did. I could see it was made up of three letters which might as well be in a different order of combination or a permutation of a different no of different letters or no letters at all for all the enlightenment they brought to bear on what together they meant and function served. There was no necessary relation between letters, word and meaning. This apparently old and familiar metaphysical doubt lasted from school to past the railings I wasn’t sure of either. ‘What does exist is brute and nameless, ...it escapes from language and science.’ She regards the rationality of science of a limited kind but so is her admirable philosophical rationality which is restricted, quite properly in this context, to conscious thinking.

‘The subject is the final arbiter, Sartre argues. Sartre thus rejects the idea of the unconscious mind.’ Oh! I didn’t go on to think how can so clever a man be so stupid because Murdoch does immediately go on, ‘but has his own substitute for it in the notion of the half-conscious, unreflective self-deception which he calls “bad faith”.’ That could be consistent with an unconscious having its way with a consciousness it must act through. Without an unconscious, it’s the reflective consciousness that’s thought of by Sartre as imagining. He describes ‘imagination as a spontanéité envoûté.’ Bewitched? By what? By something coming from within the writer’s consciousness is aware of but that didn’t originate in it. Using the word, ‘bewitched’, is an act of glib bad faith by both his consciousness and unconscious for the former to take all credit for a joint act while maintaining its ignorance of an unconscious that doesn’t want to be known to it.

‘What the aspiring spirit... desires is complete stillness,’ which can only come through unconscious communication without any use of consciousness except on an interface with the unconscious that would render it also unconscious but able to be realised from unconscious memory. The ideal of an aspiring spirit would not be that of the silence of consciousness. That’s simply a side-effect.

Sartre treats ‘personal relationships at the level of the psychological casebook.’ I may do too. At least that’s how Betty Clark described me as doing, as seeing people as psychological cases. “Is that bad?” She thought not. Iris Murdoch thinks it is, in Sartre’s case.

Sartre does not view consciousness as what Ryle has called ‘the ghost in the machine.’ I thought by ghost in the machine what was meant was spirit, not consciousness.

She says, ‘Serious reflexion about one’s own character will often induce a curious sense of one’s emptiness.’ Really? ‘Our consciousness of how other people label us ...and how they see is often very acute.’ Really? Maybe I’ve achieved the desideratum of self-completion without experiencing ennui or être-pour-autrui respectively. I like that ‘autrui’ is indefinable in French.

Kant believed the rational will, which alone was good, remained separate from the world of empirical phenomenon and [was] unseen in its operation. That, I wrote in the margin, sounds like my unconscious will. His he’d think was conscious. She, paraphrasing what he’d think, says ‘I do not know the working of the rational will in myself.’ That sounds like the view of a consciousness of its unconscious will it’s ignorant off. My unconscious will is rational. Other people’s aren’t so much, not when they’re attributing to themselves that they’re the absolute centre of the universe, that they’re the king, while their father’s alive etc as explanations by their unconsciouses to themselves why they’re important. Such irrationality need never surface into consciousness. I never did work out if by keeping his eyes on me, whether Rich was conferring reality on me or only felt real if I were keeping my eyes on him. ‘Stability derives ..from the steady adoring gaze of the lover, caught in which the beloved feels full, compact and justified.’ Sartre wishes ...to preserve the sovereignty of the individual psyche as a source of meaning. ‘For him the psyche is coextensive with consciousness.’ He’d nowhere else he could consciously think to put it, had he?

Sartre says no good novel could be written in praise of anti-Semitism. How does he know? Murdoch asks. Wasn’t Celine of his time a good novelist?

[Androosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

stunned shocked and understanding of simone de beauvoir because if i was her i’d be madly in love with him too

[Brandon Sampson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Iris Murdoch’s first book is an intelligent and comprehensive examination of Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy. While the writing is clear and exact, the book struggles to translate Sartre’s dense and often confusing writings. If one is looking for an introduction to Sartre and Existentialism more generally, look toward Sarah Bakewell’s “At the Existentialist Cafe”.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a fascinating glimpse of the younger Murdoch - happier and more sustained in its opening chapters, and much more interested in and interesting on the novels - particularly Nausea - than on the philosophical works.

[João Vaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chaos in my head. Highbrow disarray is the problem with philosophy. And such is the criticism that could be made about Sartre’s work. Iris dedicates an entire chapter to his inconsistencies. But only at the end of the book. What appeared to be a logical sequence of thought, or a well-developed theory of human conduct, turned out to be a royal mess (to me!, that is). But, hey, Sartre is only human: a pool of contradictions. Here’s my take.

Sartre's main idea is that people are "condemned to be free.” There is no Creator and therefore our existence precedes our essence.

To justify our being free, he defines consciousness as a gelatin (at least that’s how I interpreted it). Basically, a mass that is spongy but that our freedom solidifies whenever we are engrossed in reflection. That's his definition of freedom. Freedom is not associated with the motives that spur action at any given moment like what determinists and libertarians disagree about. But rather the control over our thoughts, which we constrain or liberate at will. Consciousness, Sartre says, is separated into a reflective and an unreflective state.

He then characterizes our actions as being deterministic in the sense that they are motivated by our unreflective state and that our current being is conditioned by former reflective states. According to Sartre, freedom of action takes on a more long-term type of definition. We think about a project for our future, for our character, and that will create the future us, or our future actions. “[Freedom] is not just the lighting up of our own contingency, it is its comprehension and interiorization.”

But this is at odds with his political writings. Sartre lived at a time when the dualism between communism and capitalism was THE topic. He was a socialist. But his theory of consciousness, freedom, and action cannot give an account of political life. To justify political action, he says that there is a different mode of freedom. His first mode of freedom (the gelatin) is characteristic of any consciousness (rationalist). But his second mode of freedom implies a spiritual discipline toward the common good (romantic). It imposes practical commands à la Kant that only then justify his views of socialism. This is what confused me. As Iris writes, Sartre lacks the metaphysical framework, call it God or whatever, to unify his theories. Unsatisfactory, at best.

But a super interesting thing that Sartre dedicated a lot of his writing to was language. I particularly liked the chapter where Iris puts Sartre’s opinions on language and novels in perspective by making an historical account of how philosophers perceived the role of language in translating or formulating our thoughts. The actual discussion of language is a bit complicated and I can't write about it and do it justice. But, trust me, it's cool.

As for the book itself, I thought it was difficult to follow. I feel like I missed the point of many interesting topics. Iris puts on her hat of philosopher and dissects Sartre's work using all the jargon in the book. But her summary paragraphs at the end of chapters are far easier to understand. Interesting read, overall.

[Ebrar Beyza]

‘melodi, sen de benim gibi olmalısın, ritim içinde acı çekmelisin der.’
başkalarının varoluşunu içinde bükebilmek ister.

‘varolan şey kaba ve adsız bir şeydir. onu birtakım bağlantılar içine soktuğumuzu sanırız ama o bu bağlantılardan kaçar.’
yaptığımız işlere daha sonra bir hayli anlam konulması gerekir.
‘kelime dudaklarımda kalıyor; gidip nesneye yapışmıyor.’
dil anlamsız birtakım ses ve işaretlerden oluşur ve bu dilin arkasında iyice görülmeyen taşkın bi kaos var.

gerçeklik bir düşüş, varoluş bir yetkinsizlik

‘… zorunlu olarak varolmak ister.’
‘durup dururken ölmeye hakkım var mı? acaba insan ruhunu hangi biçimde kaybetmelidir ki bu ruh kurtulabilsin?`

‘sovyetler kazansa bile İNSANLAR YAPAYALNIZDIR.’
özgürlük dehşetin ta kendisidir.
bilincin ve farkında olmanın yıkamayacağı toplumsal çerçeve yoktur.
‘köprünün üzerinde yalnızdı; yeryüzünde yapayalnızdı; kimse ne yapması gerektiğini söyleyemezdi ona. bitkinlik içinde, boşu boşuna özgürüm, dedi.’

bu boşluk geçiyor mu?


‘karakterin diğer insanlar için bir bilgi nesnesi olması dışında belirgin bir varoluşu yoktur. bilinç -kendisinin başkası açısından reflektif olarak ele alınabilmesi dışında- kendi karakterini bilemez.’


bilincin: titrek, kaypak, yarı saydam ve kesikli varlığı. şeylerin; sağlam, koyu ve hareketsiz kendindeliği.

kötülük: sonlu varoluşumuzun kavranamazlığıdır.
‘değer, bilincin özlemini duyduğu sağlam ve dolgun varlıkla birdir.’
insan kendi yetersiz durumundan uzaklaşarak bir tamlaşmaya ulaşma özlemindedir.

‘insan beyhude bir tutkudur.’

güzelliğin temel yapısı dünyanın hiçlenmesini gerektirir.
‘bu dünya akıldışının suskun anlamsızlığını içinde taşımaktır. öteki insanlar birer medusadır. ve biricik kaçış uzaklaşmak ya da kendini kaybetmektir.’

delirmek, aslolan delirmek.


“artık ne refleksiyonsuz yaşamamız ne de ne olduğumuza dair zihni tatmin edecek sistematik terimlerle bir görüş ifade etmemiz mümkün görünüyor. artık kendimiz hakkında bizi bir ev gibi kuşatacak genel bir hakikat formüle edemeyiz. ortak noktamız parçalamış bir bütünlük, bölünmüş bir varlık.”


yaşasın çok istedim.
bi çözüm getirdiğinden falan değil, sorunu tanımlamak dışında bi şey yok ortada aslında. ama sorun o kadar çevrede, o kadar derinde, o kadar var ama yok ki; hiç kimse tanımlayamaz gibi gelmişti.
yarım yüzyıl önce de bireye dair en büyük problemin aynı olması umutsuz, çaresiz biraz. ama şu an aldığı derinliği, geldiği son noktayı görse ne derdi, ne düşünürdü, belki en önemlisi hala politikaya inanır mıydı?
birey olarak insanın kendi sorunlarını bu kadar iyi anlayıp tanımlamış. aynı zamanda sosyal ve politik olarak çok var olan biri. böyle bi kafayla asosyal, depresif, tatminsiz birine dönüşmesi biraz olmalı gibi duruyordu. ama bulduğu çözüm beni tatmin etmese de onu etmiş gibi? politik olarak bu kadar ortada olmak için başka bir sebep olmaz herhalde.

bu kadar kafamın içi başka biri daha okur muyum bilmiyorum

[Stephen]

I spotted this on the shelf in our holiday cottage, surrounded by one or two of Murdoch's novels, lots on yoga, philosophy, guides on novel writing, and various other books. It was last year that I finished reading the last of Murdoch's 26 novels, with my non-fiction limited to biographies on her life, rather than her own work. Anyway, this slim debut publication seemed a fitting way to follow-up.

It proved a fortuitous choice, as we then went to see the National Theatre Live performance of 'Good' that evening, which grappled through fiction and performance with some of the same contexts making sense of Nazi totalitarianism and the isolation of experience brokered through imperfect linguistic exchanges. A week later and I can't honestly remember much about it - philosophy is a hard pill that tends to run through me undigested - but it's not totally unapproachable for a lay reader.

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

"He is at his most original (philosophically) when he is at his least persuasive." Damning praise to be sure but Murdoch's distillation and analysis of Sartre's work, specifically "Being and Nothingness," "Nausea," "The Roads to Freedom" and "What Is Literature" isn't reverential so much as deeply respectful. She's fascinated by his ideas around a "sticky" consciousness but admits he's neither a natural novelist nor an entirely coherent philosopher. She makes you glad you've read him so you can hear what she has to say but unenthused to read more of his books afterward.

[Alenezi.A · Rating 3 out of 5]

" نحن نتألم، ونحن نتألم من ألم غير كاف وهذا الألم الذي نتكلم عنه هو نفسه الذي نشعر به. بماذا ندعو (الحقيقي) أو (الصادق) أو (النظيف) المتألم؟ ذلك أن الألم الذي يحرك عواطفنا هو ما نراه في وجوه الآخرين، أو بالأحرى هو الذي يظل في الصور الزيتية، أو في وجه التمثال، أو في القناع التراجيدي .. ذلك هو الألم الموجود. "

*

نجح هذا الكتاب في إقناعي بالقراءة في مجال الفلسفة .. فضلت أن اقرأ هذا الكتاب قبل قراءة أي من أعمال سارتر او الفلاسفة الآخرين. و هذا يفسر صعوبة فهمي للكثير من المصطلحات و النصوص المذكورة. استمتعت بقرائته.

[Bohemian Bluestocking · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a rich investigation into Sartre's novels. Iris Murdoch is perfect for the literary criticism of philosophical fiction. I gained a lot of insight from this book. I think that perhaps not everyone will be convicinced of Murdoch's style and content. I would say her ideas are quite sound, and if not as dense or in a particular kind of academic style as one would perhaps hope for or expect, it is quite a wonderful book to read if you are also reading Sartre's novels and are perhaps unfamiliar with his philosophy.

[Tim McKay · Rating 3 out of 5]

First quarter of the book was excellent then it became a bore.

[Eric Kalnins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief but detailed examination of the literary work of Sartre. For me parts took some understanding but that largely is due to my limitations and ignorance.
Certainly an interesting exploration which I would recommend to the general lover of literature as well as supporters of Sartre

15.20

[Salvatore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Murdoch explains Sartre's philosophy - through Nausea, Being and Nothingness, and his proposed tetralogy of novels - perhaps better than he himself does. She claims he may be a better playwright. Which is probably true.

[Dave]

God bless the Iris, but I am delighted not to be reading this anymore.

[Lysergius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Iris Murdoch carefully elides Satre's post war claims to have been an active resistant, other wise a fair review.

[Amy]

"It must be very amusing, deliberately to do the opposite of what one wants. One feels oneself becoming another person."

[Melusine Parry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great little book packed with clear, insightful and wide-ranging explanations and explorations of Sartre's works. Murdoch's background as a philosopher and a novelist appears throughout.

[Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sartre: Romantic Rationalist was Iris Murdoch’s first published book and the first book on Sartre’s work to appear in English. In it, Murdoch studies Sartre’s fiction, his philosophy, and his politics. And over the course of the book she offers insights and criticisms that both contextualise and historicise Sartre’s work and key concepts; and these offerings both clarify and hit their mark. Her writing is more substantial than structural and more literary than philosophical, the layout initially appears idiosyncratic and conversational; but as the details of Sartre’s work begin to appear (opening after the later produced introduction, as the monograph does truly, with an energetic discussion of La Nausée) the book finds its force of explication and exegesis.

Initially it might appear strange to assimilate Sartre to romanticism or rationalism or some combination thereof. Sartre, after all, is the go-to existentialist for many and existentialism for many more is a kind of considered and politicised subjectivism or the mature consequences of a fully realised and worked out atheism. And further, Murdoch came to have a complex relationship with existentialism, as can be seen in The Sovereignty of Good (and less so in the misguided recent attempts to assimilate Murdoch’s own work to existentialism). But Murdoch relates the point of the charge to Sartre’s uses of freedom and the will, and particularly with his use of self-aware reflectivity, isolation, and the energetic upshot of his employment of a certain existential paradox.

I’d praise this book for the author’s work on Sartre alone, but for a reader of Murdoch whose interest is primarily or latently in her philosophical and artistic writings, there are further points of interest here that only passingly have to do with Sartre himself. There are early and spectral glimpses of ideas from Murdoch about art, novels, and the poverty of the contemporary picture of the human personality, that we’d see fully embodied in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals and essays like On Dryness. There are also key terms and their usages that would develop into later points of interest in Murdoch scholarship and novel criticisms of Sartre from other writers, such as her uses of ‘flux’ to describe the acute experiences of contingency in La Nausée.

So, while I’d recommend the book to anyone looking to situate Sartre, my own selfish interest here is in how it situates Murdoch. I think it succeeds at both.