Sartre

For many Jean-Paul Sartre is the iconic exemplar of the post-war French "committed intellectual", the "Philosopher of Freedom" whose message emphasizes life's lack of intrinsic meaning. Yet in this study, Katherine Morris displays the rigorous and original philosophy behind the popular image and portrays Sartrean phenomenology as a living enterprise of continuing relevance. She stresses the Gestalt-psychology roots of Sartre's conception of the "life-world" and highlights Sartre's account of the "lived body" on which Merleau-Ponty more famously built. The book depicts the relationship between Sartre's methodology and the results of his reflections by focusing on the ways the philosopher, as a human being, explores what it is to be human. What Sartre terms "bad faith" can serve to alienate philosophers from human reality. Drawing on an analogy with Wittgenstein's view of philosophy as therapy, Morris argues that Sartre's methodology offers freedom from such philosophical bad faith, ultimately liberating philosophers to embrace the "life-world" as the real world. Sartre's goal, she suggests, was not merely to change our minds, but ultimately to change our lives.

Katherine Morris has been a Lecturer in philosophy at Mansfield College, Oxford University since 1986 and a fellow since 1998; she holds an MPhil in medical anthropology as well as a DPhil in philosophy. The author of numerous articles on Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Descartes and Wittgenstein, she is also the co-author of Descartes’ Dualism (1996) with G.P. Baker.