French literature has long been philosophical — the French moralists (La Rochefoucauld: “our virtues are most often only vices disguised”) and the essayists were thinkers, and the thinkers wrote like novelists. Michel de Montaigne invented the essay; Blaise Pascal left fragments that read like prose poems; Voltaire‘s Candide is philosophy as comedy; Jean-Jacques Rousseau‘s Confessions invented modern autobiography.
The nineteenth century brought the great novel — Balzac’s Human Comedy, Stendhal, Hugo’s Les Misérables, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary — and modern poetry with Baudelaire and Rimbaud. Proust’s In Search of Lost Time made memory itself the subject of a seven-volume novel.
In the twentieth century, philosophy and literature fused again: Jean-Paul Sartre‘s Nausea and No Exit, Albert Camus‘s The Stranger and The Plague, Beauvoir’s novels, Beckett’s plays (written in French).
Map of Influence
who answered whom, inside this roomThinkers & Authors
5
Voltaire
The wittiest man of the Enlightenment — playwright, historian, satirist and campaigner against intolerance — whose Candide demolished Leibnizian optimism and whose cry was “Écrasez l’infâme!”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Genevan philosopher of nature, freedom and feeling — “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” — whose Social Contract inspired revolutionaries and whose Confessions invented modern autobiography.
Jean-Paul Sartre
The face of French existentialism — existence precedes essence, we are condemned to be free, and hell is other people.
Simone de Beauvoir
French existentialist philosopher and novelist whose The Second Sex (1949) — “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” — founded modern feminist philosophy, and whose ethics of ambiguity argued that my freedom requires the freedom of others.
Albert Camus
Algerian-born novelist and essayist of the absurd and of revolt — “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
Works
2
Candide
Voltaire’s comic philosophical tale, in which a naïve young man and his optimist tutor suffer every disaster the eighteenth century could offer — ending with “we must cultivate our garden”.
The Stranger
Camus’s first novel — Meursault, who will not pretend to feel what he does not feel, kills an Arab on a beach and is condemned for not weeping at his mother’s funeral.
Characters
1Great Scenes
2Meursault and the Chaplain
On the eve of execution, Meursault explodes at the prison chaplain’s certainty — and finds peace in the “gentle indifference of the world”.
Sisyphus at the Foot of the Mountain
Condemned to roll his rock eternally uphill, Sisyphus pauses as it falls back — and Camus imagines him, in that moment of consciousness, happy.
Coming to the Library
21 pages being writtenVoices
quotations from this traditionThere is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.
Il n'y a qu'un problème philosophique vraiment sérieux — c'est le suicide.
The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un cœur d'homme. Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.
I rebel — therefore we exist.
Je me révolte, donc nous sommes.
Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.
Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.
I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.
Je m'ouvrais pour la première fois à la tendre indifférence du monde.
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été.
Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
L'homme est condamné à être libre.
Existence precedes essence.
L'existence précède l'essence.
Hell is other people.
L'enfer, c'est les autres.
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
On ne naît pas femme, on le devient.
To will oneself free is also to will others free.
He is the Subject, he is the Absolute — she is the Other.