Sartre himself doubted whether art really saves us from life’s chaos

Evidence

The novel ends with Roquentin finding his way out through this vision of art as a source of necessity. He resolves to leave for Paris, in order to write — not a biography, but a different kind of book that will be ‘beautiful and hard as steel and make people ashamed of their existence’. Later, Sartre reflected that this solution was a bit too easy; can art really save us from the chaos of life? — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 339

Categorization

• QUESTION: Whether art genuinely redeems contingency remained unresolved for Sartre — worth tracing through his later essays on committed literature.
• XREF: connects to: Sartre came to doubt whether art alone could justify a life — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 698; Sartre admitted his pre-1940 journals lacked originality — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 322

Broader Connections

• Sartre came to doubt whether art alone could justify a life #corroborates (0.95) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 698
• Sartre admitted his pre-1940 journals lacked originality #corroborates (0.72) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 322