The Korean War and Soviet camp revelations reversed Merleau-Ponty and Sartre’s relative Communist sympathies

Evidence

The underlying disagreement was about more than editorial policy; it was about how far one should take one’s belief in Communism. Merleau-Ponty had been shocked by North Korea’s invasion of the South, and thought it showed the Communist world to be just as greedy as the capitalist world and just as inclined to use ideology as a veil. He had also been disturbed by the increasing publicity about Soviet camps. This represented a major change of perspective for the man who, until recently, had been the most pro-Communist of them all. Conversely, the once-wary Sartre was becoming more inclined to give Communist countries the benefit of the doubt. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 802

Categorization

• XREF: This crossing of tracjectories between two close friends over political reality echoes how later divisions over Mao and the 1960s would split the existentialist circle; connects to the reader’s interest in intellectual friendship ruptures. — connects to: Soviet brutality shook Western Communist sympathizers including Sartre and Beauvoir — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 852; Merleau-Ponty deployed whataboutery to defend Soviet flaws against Western abuses — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 778; Beauvoir saw Sartre and Merleau-Ponty diverging on the subject by 1945 — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 501 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• The war drove Sartre from individualist freedom toward Marxist social determinism #expands (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 525
• Beauvoir saw Sartre and Merleau-Ponty diverging on the subject by 1945 #expands (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 501
• The Beauvoir-Sartre-Merleau-Ponty collaboration broke in 1955 #corroborates (0.72) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 90
• Beauvoir resented Merleau-Ponty for not seeing Sartre moving toward her views and his #expands (0.72) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 94
• Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty’s intellectual friendship decayed from public amicability into rivalry #expands (0.72) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 93
• War’s arbitrary cruelty shaped Merleau-Ponty’s later emphasis on embodiment #complicates (0.70) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 454