1001Philosophers

Jean-Paul Sartre vs Simone de Beauvoir vs Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Sartre, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty are the three central figures of postwar French existential phenomenology. They were collaborators, friends, and co-editors of Les Temps Modernes; the three should be read together rather than in succession. Their philosophical disagreements eventually contributed to the break between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty in 1953 and shaped much of the subsequent reception of existentialism.

Key differences at a glance

Jean-Paul SartreSimone de BeauvoirMaurice Merleau-Ponty
Consciousness and body Sharp dualism: for-itself confronts the in-itself.Embodied freedom in social-historical situation.Lived body as a third term; situated and continuous.
Account of freedom Absolute; choice cuts against situation.Freedom constituted in relation to the other.Embodied and situated; situation is part of freedom.
Worked-out ethics Largely deferred and fragmentary.Ethics of Ambiguity develops obligations among free agents.Phenomenological analysis prior to systematic ethics.
Distinctive contribution Ontology of consciousness and freedom.Analysis of women's situation and existentialist ethics.Phenomenology of perception and embodiment.

Biographical facts

Jean-Paul SartreSimone de BeauvoirMaurice Merleau-Ponty
Dates 1905 – 19801908 – 19861908 – 1961
Nationality FrenchFrenchFrench
Era ContemporaryContemporaryContemporary
Profile Jean-Paul Sartre →Simone de Beauvoir →Maurice Merleau-Ponty →

Where they agree

All three inherited and developed Heideggerian phenomenology in distinctively French directions, all three held that human existence is fundamentally engaged with the world rather than detached from it, and all three took political engagement as a serious test of philosophical seriousness. All three treated literature and lived experience as proper philosophical materials.

Where they disagree

The disagreements concern the structure of consciousness and freedom. Sartre's Being and Nothingness articulates a sharp dualism: consciousness is the for-itself, a nothingness that confronts the in-itself of brute being, and human freedom is absolute. Beauvoir extended the framework into a sustained analysis of the situation of the other, particularly women, and developed in The Ethics of Ambiguity a more fully worked-out existentialist ethics than Sartre had produced. Merleau-Ponty rejected the Sartrean dualism altogether: consciousness is essentially embodied, and the lived body is a third kind of thing that resists the for-itself / in-itself framework.

Representative quotes

Jean-Paul Sartre

  • “Hell is other people.”

    Alors, c'est ça l'enfer. Je n'aurais jamais cru... vous vous rappelez: le soufre, le bûcher, le gril... ah! Quelle plaisanterie. Pas besoin de gril, l'enfer, c'est les autres.

  • “Existence precedes essence.”

    L'existence précède et commande l'essence.

  • “Man is condemned to be free.”

    Existentialism Is a Humanism, 1946

Simone de Beauvoir

  • “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

    On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.

  • “I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth, and truth rewarded me.”

    All Said and Done (1972), p. 16 ISBN 1569249814

  • “If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.”

    All Men Are Mortal, 1946

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  • “Montaigne [puts] not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.”

    Signs , trans. R. McCleary (Evanston: 1964), p. 203

  • “Signs , trans. R. McCleary (Evanston: 1964), p. 203”

    Montaigne [puts] not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.

  • “[The sensate body possesses] an art of interrogating the sensible according to its own wishes, an inspired exegesis”

    The Visible and the Invisible , trans. A. Lingis (Evanston: 1968), p. 135

Pairwise comparisons

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