Sartre’s childhood bullying shaped his adult attitudes toward violence

Evidence

Sartre was aware that odd personal impulses underlay his interest in violence. He traced it to his childhood experience of bullying, and his decision to take on the bullies’ aggression as part of himself. Talking about it with Beauvoir in 1974, he said that he had never forgotten the violence he had learned at the school in La Rochelle. He even thought it had influenced his tendency to put friendships on the line: ‘I’ve never had tender relationships with my friends since then.’ One suspects it also fed his desire for extremism in all things. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 872

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Sartre’s own philosophy of bad faith and self-construction — the autobiographer interpreting the self as constituted by past events, echoing the existentialist doctrine of radical freedom being constrained by facticity. — connects to: Childhood bullying in La Rochelle taught Sartre about contingency and violence — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 377; Severe humiliation and bullying can drive violent rebellion against low self-esteem — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 253

Broader Connections

• Severe humiliation and bullying can drive violent rebellion against low self-esteem #corroborates (0.85) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 253