Abstract

Written in 1948 and posthumously published in 1989, this transitional essay is not, as Arlette Elkaim-Sartre suggested in her brief introduction to it, centered on an existential ethics. Rather, it is an attempt to grapple with the question of truth in relation to the ontology of Being and Nothingness. In part, Sartre wrote this work in response to the appearance of the French translation of Heidegger's "The Essence of Truth." Truth is characterized as the "event" in which there is a temporalizing, progressive disclosure of Being. Although Sartre refers to "truth" as the objectivity of the subjective, his emphasis throughout is on a curious form of unargued-for realism. Knowledge of "Being" presupposes freedom and is fundamentally practical. Sartre continually subjects the questions of truth and knowledge to his distinctive form of psychologism. He views non-truth or ignorance as the background and uncovered, unveiled truth as foreground. In fact, this compact essay has more to say about a wilful ignorance or not-knowing than about coming-to-know. There are already indications of the movement towards praxis in Sartre's thought in that he refers to the continuous verification process in human experience, the problem of scarcity, the way economic crises, slavery, and so forth render certain freedoms impossible. Sartre's proclivity to reformulate in different ways central conceptions generates paradoxes, if not contradictions. When he attributes deliberate ignorance to the innocent child, he undermines his idea of a willful choice of "ignorance." Truth and Existence is an interesting transitional piece in Sartre's development, but one that expresses an undefended ontology and slides past epistemic issues. It is an essay that is interesse or "in between" his two most powerful philosophical works.--G. J. Stack State University of New York at Brockport.