Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir

The course will examine the relation between the two thinkers, with special emphasis on the debate in France about the "engaged intellectual". It will also explore the Sartre/Merleau-Ponty correspondence at the time of their quarrel around 1953, as well as the Sartre/Camus controversy. Readings include: Sartre's Qu'est-ce que la littérature ?, Situations II, L'idiot de la famille; Beauvoir's, Le deuxième sexe, Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée, Les Mandarins, La Force des choses; Merleau-Ponty's "Sartre et l'ultra-bolchévisme", in Parcours demu; and Adorno's paper "Engagement", in Notes to Literature.