A childhood haircut exposed Sartre’s damaged eye and later defined his self-image

Evidence

Everyone loved his girlish curly hair and his delicate beauty. But he developed eye problems after an infection at the age of three. Under the bouncing curls, the results were barely noticeable — until his grandfather took him for a brutal haircut one day, and his damaged eye emerged into the light, together with his fishy lips and other disconcerting features. Sartre describes all this with high irony in his memoir Words, which recounts his early years. His amused tone becomes more intensely jaunty than ever when he discusses his looks, but he was genuinely hurt by the change in people’s reactions to him. He remained obsessed with the topic of his ugliness — which he always referred to with this blunt term. It made him shy away from people for a while, but then he decided that he would not let it spoil his life. He would not sacrifice his freedom to it. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 376

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how Sartre’s self-image later feeds his philosophy of freedom not being defined by circumstances — a biographical seed for his core doctrine. — connects to: A physical defect shaped Sartre’s life course and later addictions — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 463

Broader Connections

• A physical defect shaped Sartre’s life course and later addictions #corroborates (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 463