In 1960, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote "an anti-communist is a dog". Sartre was a convinced Marxist. It is partly due to his influence that there is still a substantial communist party in France today. His existentialist ideology made him become an engaged political activist. He spent much his late life attempting to reconcile his existentialist ideas about self-determination with communist principles.
So my question is "Was Sartre is failed philosopher ?". A good philosopher should be the voice of reason. Yet, apart from conveniently escaping the most essential philosophical subjects, most of his ideas revolve around communism, one of the worst economic theory ever invented. It is easy to say "oh, but he didn't know at the time". In 1960, Lenin and Stalin were both dead, and Mao had been leading the Chinese Communist party for 25 years and completed his disastrous "Great Leap Forward". So Sartre had no excuse. Sartre died in 1980, when communism in Europe was nearing its end, but he remained vociferously pro-communist.
Sartre was also a defender of terrorism. When eleven Israeli Olympians were killed by the Palestinian organization Black September in Munich 1972, Sartre said terrorism was a "terrible weapon but the oppressed poor have no others." He also found it "perfectly scandalous that the Munich attack should be judged by the French press and a section of public opinion as an intolerable scandal." In this sense he may have influenced modern Islamic terrorism by justifying it, because most Islamic terorist are poor and feel oppressed (by the concept of free society in the West).
Shame on Sartre.
So my question is "Was Sartre is failed philosopher ?". A good philosopher should be the voice of reason. Yet, apart from conveniently escaping the most essential philosophical subjects, most of his ideas revolve around communism, one of the worst economic theory ever invented. It is easy to say "oh, but he didn't know at the time". In 1960, Lenin and Stalin were both dead, and Mao had been leading the Chinese Communist party for 25 years and completed his disastrous "Great Leap Forward". So Sartre had no excuse. Sartre died in 1980, when communism in Europe was nearing its end, but he remained vociferously pro-communist.
Sartre was also a defender of terrorism. When eleven Israeli Olympians were killed by the Palestinian organization Black September in Munich 1972, Sartre said terrorism was a "terrible weapon but the oppressed poor have no others." He also found it "perfectly scandalous that the Munich attack should be judged by the French press and a section of public opinion as an intolerable scandal." In this sense he may have influenced modern Islamic terrorism by justifying it, because most Islamic terorist are poor and feel oppressed (by the concept of free society in the West).
Shame on Sartre.