Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes on Knowledge
Jean-Paul Sartre's reflections on knowledge, gathered here, are bound up with his phenomenology of consciousness and his existentialism. His early work on the imagination treated it not as a minor faculty but as a fundamental power of consciousness, and his philosophy gave special weight to a particular kind of knowledge: the awareness of human freedom. In The Flies, the deepest and most disturbing secret of gods and kings is simply that men are free, a truth that authority depends on people not recognising. Other passages here, including the preface he wrote for an anthology of Black poetry, show Sartre using knowledge politically, asking what follows once the silenced come to see their own situation clearly. For Sartre, to know is never neutral; it bears directly on freedom and action.
Quotes
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“L'imagination ( Imagination: A Psychological Critique ) (1936)”
Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom . -
“What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes?”
Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)" preface, Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Nègre et Malgache (1948) -
“Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)" preface, Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Nègre et Malgache (1948)”
What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes? -
“Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)”
Every age has its own poetry ; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry. -
“The painful secret of Gods and kings; it is that men are free. They are free, Aegisthus. You know it and they don't.”
The Flies(1943) | As quoted in Sartre : A Philosophic Study (1966), by Anthony Manser, p. 227 -
“But, if it will help ease your irritated souls, please know, dearly departed, that you have ruined our lives.”
The Flies(1943) | Aegistheus, Act 2 -
“Listen to me: a family man is never a real family man. An assassin is never entirely assassin. They play a role, you understand. While a dead man, he is really dead. To be or not to be, right?”
Dirty Hands(1948) | Hugo, Act 4, sc. 6 -
“People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is so naked?”
Nausea(1938) | Diary entry of Friday (2 February) -
“If only you knew how little I care. Cowardly or not, as long as he is a good kisser.”
No Exit(1944) | Estelle on Garcin, Act 1, sc. 5