The following is an excerpt from my article that was recently published in “Brill’s Companion to Camus”. In it I present an original interpretation of their relationship which challenges the official interpretation of Sartre’s left-wing credentials. Those interested in learning more about their relation, and my “revisionist” interpretation, can contact me at dsprintz@me.com.

I think it is also fair to say, that the pre-WWII Sartre was essentially oblivious to political matters. He spent the academic year of 1933-34 studying philosophy in Berlin with no obvious reference or effective realization of the significance of the rise to power of Adolph Hitler. We cannot know his actual thoughts at that time, because, quite remarkably, practically all of his correspondence from that time is missing. But, de Beauvoir does report on a trip they took to Fascist Italy in 1936 for which they availed themselves, with no expressed misgivings, of a discounted train trip which required them to visit a display of Fascist military equipment, and with no comment made on the political situation by either of them.

Then there was the war itself, for which de Beauvoir, with Sartre’s apparent approval, later concocted a series of fabrications of resistance activity that apparently did not exist. Contrary to their fabrications, Sartre did not escape from the German prison camp, but was liberated by the Germans, probably upon the request of notorious collaborator Drieu la Rochelle. Further, there is absolutely no evidence for the existence of the purported underground group, “Socialism and Liberty”, that Sartre was supposed to have created, nor for the purported French constitution that he was supposed to have written, even supposedly having sent a copy to de Gaulle. In fact, what evidence there is suggests both his and de Beauvoir’s limited collaboration with the German occupation: Sartre, having written a couple of articles for Commoedia, and serving on an artistic jury for them in 1943, and de Beauvoir producing a series of brief programs for Radio Vichy as late as 1944. Thus the almost universally accepted version of a Sartre of the Resistance is a complete fabrication, apparently primarily concocted by de Beauvoir with Sartre’s approval.

At the same time, Sartre’s philosophical and dramatic writing up to that time shows no signs of any left-wing political consciousness. Certainly, there is none in Being and Nothingness. It is often claimed by Sartreans that his mid-War plays, The Flies and No Exit, are expressions of his political commitment to human liberation, being hidden critiques of Nazi occupation, and invitations to resistance. Of course, such interpretations fail to explain how the Nazi censors could have been so dense as to miss those meanings when they approved these plays for presentation under Occupation. But I think the reality is less confusing, as both of these plays in fact say nothing about political oppression and rebellion, but rather address themselves only to the question of the human being’s ontological freedom. A position that perfectly represents the Existential philosophy developed in Being and Nothingness.

Actually, it is Camus who plays a major role in what we might call the beginning of Sartre’s political rehabilitation, by providing Sartre with resistance credibility by using his position as editor of Combat to assign Sartre the task of writing about the liberation of Paris, an article that in fact was probably written by de Beauvoir. It is only with the liberation of Paris, and the consequent defeat of the Nazis that Sartre becomes politically engaged. While there is no adequate account of the nature of his conscious transformation, that transformation is announced with his call for the death penalty for collaborators, his creation of what becomes the premier journal of the French left, Les Temps modernes, along with his subsequent articles on Reflections on the Jewish Question, and his existential critique in Materialism and Revolution. This not only served to completely erase any knowledge of his ambiguous war-time activity, but required him to theoretically begin to confront the profound tension that existed between the ontological celebration of unlimited human freedom that is Existentialism and the historical materialism and apparent causal determinism that was central, at least to official Communist interpretations of Marxism.

Thus begins a profound redirection that will theme much of the rest of Sartre’s life, playing a crucial role in the slow transformation of his relation to Camus, that culminated with their definitive break following the publication by Camus of The Rebel in late 1951. Initiated by Jeanson’s obviously polemical review of The Rebel in Les Temps modernes, the break was consummated by the articles of Camus, Sartre, & Jeanson in response a few months there after. While I’ll have more to say about that controversy shortly, what I want to note here is the divergent political paths that led from their post WWII personal, social, and political alignment — can I say, friendship — to their passionate ideological and political antagonism that endured until the end of Camus’ life.