h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

ooh...me is writing my dissertation on the man at the moment. Would welcome chance to discuss and stuff.

Clive

Sure- what is the gist of the dissertation?

It's only an undergraduate one so pretty constrained. I'm investigating Sartre's uncompleted ethical works and the focus of my dissertation is how important Bad faith is in that overall scheme.
I'm working on the first part today as it happens, 3,500 words on Phenomenology and how that relates directly into the "Phenomenological Ontology" of Being and Nothingness. Wherein he presents what Bad Faith is but concludes that the ethical dimension cannot be resolved from purely ontology and so points to a further work - WHICH HE NEVER WRITES!!! - save for some recently published Notebooks and the general sense of ethics that permeates his work (vis. "Existentialism is a Humanism" "Nausea" etc.)
I've read a very interesting book by Gail Linsenbard where she discusses that the possibility of living authentically (i.e with the recognised freedom created by our being and escaping the desire to be The Causa Sui (The self-caused-cause i.e God- and thus defined and conceivable in an intelligeble heaven.) I'm using that and the aformentioned Notebooks as a template for my third section in which i dicuss the importance of the bad-faith project garunteed by the phenomenological ontology of Sartres and how in over-coming that project we can indeed live ethically.

Phew!

So early and so many Big Words!

Are you bringing anything from Heidegger into this? I studied Wittgenstein and Heidegger at Essex University. I read Sartre for my own interest, quite a while ago. The general approach at Essex, regarding the existential project, was to question the purpose of this project and the impact that this purpose has the form of the writings that embody it. The main problem considered was the fundamental subjective quality of existential truth, and of how this might clash with more objective forms of communcation, particularly with more formal analytical approaches to philosophy. Thus the literary form of Sartre's works might be assessed by looking at the fictional or poetic forms of writing, and the natures of the truths (if any) that these writings impart. If I were being particularly speculative, I would like to think of Sartre's final unwritten work as a statement on the fundamental subjectivity of existential ethics- an unwritten work is a form of communication that leaves the reader- or pupil- right back to him or herself and his or her own actions. However, my knowledge of Sartre's entire output is quite slim- so I can only get so far as these speculative remarks here.