Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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Francis Schaeffer said that Sartre and Camus could not live with the logical
conclusions of their own systems. “The result of not being able to stand in the honest
integrity of their despair on either level (that of nihilism or that of a total dichotomy
between reason and meaninglessness) has led to modern thought being shifted yet one
stage further into a third level of despair, a level of mysticism with nothing there”
(Schaeffer, 1990:59). Though Sartre criticized Camus for being inconsistent in his
presuppositions, Camus never gave up ‘hope,’ even though it went against the logic of his
own position.
Sartre later opposed the Vietnam War, a conflict that had begun with the French
colonization of the nation, and then escalated into a much broader conflict between the
superpowers (i.e., Soviet Union, China, USA). After Stalin’s death in 1953, Sartre
criticized the Soviet system, but still defended the state. In 1956, he spoke on behalf of
the Hungarians, condemning the invasion of their nation by the USSR, and condemned
the Warsaw Pact assault on Czechoslovakia in 1968. Still, Sartre was inclined toward
Marxism, but now more in agreement with French ‘libertarian socialism,’ a form of
anarchism.
Sartre later criticized the French O.A.S. (Organisation de l'Armee Secrete) -- the group
some claim exploded a bomb in Sartre’s apartment on rue Bonaparte in 1961 -- after
which he moved to a place on quai Louis-Bleriot, opposite the Eiffel tower. Sartre spent
much of his later life trying to reconcile existentialism with communism. The work that
defines this period of his life was Critique de la raison dialectique (Critique of
Dialectical Reason - 1960). While both Kierkegaard and Marx influenced his thinking,
Kierkegaardian thought eventually came to dominate, something especially notable in
Sartre’s later works. Shortly before his death, April 1980, Sartre repudiated Marxism.
Through it all, he remained true to his convictions, and nearing death, wanted to be
remembered by his writings. He died 15 April 1980 in Paris, and some 50,000 people
attended his funeral. The headline of a Parisian newspaper said: “France has lost its
conscience.” According to Schaeffer, in the end, Camus was more loved than Sartre,
because he never did get the real world sorted out, as evidenced in his book, The Plague.
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa