Sartre’s conviction that life and philosophy coincide drove his biographical writing
Evidence
‘My life and my philosophy are one and the same’, he once wrote in his diary, and he stuck to this principle unflinchingly. This blending of life and philosophy also made him interested in other people’s lives. He became an innovative biographer, publishing around two million words of life-writing, including studies of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Genet and Flaubert as well as a memoir of his own childhood. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 53
Categorization
- XREF: Links to the reader’s existing interest in life-writing and biography — e.g., A Memoir of My Former Self and how a life produces charged prose. — connects to: Sartre equated writing with living itself — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 969; Sartre’s biographies all ask what makes a writer a writer — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 697; Both Beauvoir and Sartre derived their philosophical theories from lived love affairs — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 141
Broader Connections
- Sartre equated writing with living itself
#corroborates(0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 969 - Sartre’s biographies all ask what makes a writer a writer
#expands(0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 697 - Both Beauvoir and Sartre derived their philosophical theories from lived love affairs
#corroborates(0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 141