Jean-Paul Sartre continues to add to the file which he opened with the 1964 publication of his autobiography, The Words. At the time, those who expected that the philosopher-writer would reveal secrets of his adult life were doubtless disappointed by the self-portrait of his childhood. For the philosopher whose task is to "situate" the individual, The Words could at most be the first gesture. Yet in this account of the early years, much of his mature thought is presemt—albeit in an oblique and barely explicit form. By 1964, Sartre's thought had already undergone a significant revision from his early theory of consciousness. The young boy's "fundamental project" of becoming a writer is revealed in The Words as an autobiographizing which incorporates a theory of individual action as conditioned by, but attempting to overcome, social institutions and social class. (p. 142)
Life/Situations—will do more for those seeking to follow [Sartre's] philosophic-literary-political career than the whole series of minimally substantive remarks that have appeared here and there. Above all, these interviews help to complete the more systematic autobiographical account which Sartre himself has offered in The Words….
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