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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

#philsky #booksky #bristol @stgeorgesbris.bsky.social at St George's Bristol on World Philosophy Day 2026 –– Philosophy Salon: Existentialism as Therapy? Julian Baggini with Emmy van Duerzen and Jonathan Webber Thursday 19 November, 7.30pm Full details: bit.ly/PSEAT

Cover of Emmy van Deurzen's new book, Beginning to Live: The Art of Existential Freedom.

Cover of The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy, edited by Jonathan Webber

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Spotted at (and bought from) Simone de Beauvoir's favourite (English language) bookshop! @shakespeareandcompany.com

A copy of The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy held up outside the legendary Shakespeare & Company bookshop in central Paris.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

“If truth be told, one is not born, but becomes, a genius; and the feminine condition has, until now, rendered this becoming impossible.” - Happy 118th birthday, Simone de Beauvoir!

Black-and-white photo of Simone de Beauvoir signing books at a desk and surrounded by women holding books for her to sign.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

7 December 1945: Beauvoir’s play Les Bouches Inutiles, which had been first performed on 29 October, is published. An English translation is available as The Useless Mouths.

Cover of first edition.

Blank white cover with centred text:

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

LES BOUCHES
INUTILES
pièce en deux actes
et huit tableaux

nrf

GALLIMARD

Front cover of the "The Useless Mouths" and Other Literary Writings, by Simone de Beauvoir. Edited by Margaret A. Simons and Marybeth Timmerman. Foreword by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir. Published by University of Illinois Press.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

2 December 1945: Sartre publishes the second novel in his series Les Chemins de la Liberté –– Le Sursis is set during ‘the phoney war’ of September 1939 to March 1940, after the war was declared but before the fighting had begun. An English translation is available from Penguin as The Reprieve.

Cover of first edition.

Blank white cover with centred text:

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

Les chemins de la liberté
II
Le sursis
roman

nrf

GALLIMARD

Cover of current Penguin Modern Classics edition of the English translation – The Reprieve

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

1 December 1945: Les Temps Modernes issue 3 is published. Beauvoir’s ‘L’existentialisme et la sagesse des nations’ – by far the best short introduction to existentialism ever published – is the lead article. Sartre’s highly influential ‘Portrait de l’antisémite’ is in the same issue.

Cover of the third issue of Les Temps Modernes.

Blank white page with the following column of centred text:

Les Temps
Modernes

1re année REVUE MENSUELLE n° 3

1er Décembre 1945

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR. - L'existentialisme et la sagesse
des nations.
JEAN GENÊT. - Pompes funèbres.
RENÉ LEIBOWITZ. - Prolégomènes à la musique
contemporaine (fin).
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE. — Portrait de l'antisémite.
NATHALIE MOFFAT. - Nuits sans importance.
DOMMARCHI. — Sir William Beveridge et le destin du
néo-libéralisme anglais.
TÉMOIGNAGES
UNGER. - Sélection.
VIOLETTE LEDUC. - Le dézingage
VIES
Vie d'un bourgeois français, magistrat israélite.
EXPOSÉS
IVAN MOFFAT, PIERRE BERGER, ALBERT OLLIVIER.

TM
Rédaction, administration : 5, rue Sébastien-Bottin, Paris

Page 25 of Les Temps Modernes issue 3 – first page of Beauvoir's essay ‘L’existentialisme et la sagesse des nations’.

Page 455 of Les Temps Modernes issue 3 – a page of Sartre's essay ‘Portrait de l’antisémite’.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

15 November 1945: An interview with Camus appears on the front page of Les Nouvelle’s Littéraires headlined: ‘NON, je ne suis pas existentialiste’, nous dit ALBERT CAMUS

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

1 November 1945: Issue 2 of Les Temps Modernes is published Beauvoir’s essay ‘Idéalisme moral et réalisme politique’ addresses a theme of her novel La Sang des Autres and her play Les Bouches Inutiles – the place of morality in political action and the foundational value of each person’s freedom

Cover of the second issue of Les Temps Modernes.

Blank white page with the following column of centred text:

Les Temps
Modernes

1re année REVUE MENSUELLE n° 2

1er Novembre 1945

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE. - La nationalisation de la littérature.
VIOLETTE LEDUC. - Une mère, un parapluie, des gants.
RAYMOND ARON. - La chance du socialisme.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR. - Idéalisme moral et réalisme polltique.
RENÉ LEIBOWITZ. - Prolégomènes à la musique contemporaine.
RICHARD WRIGHT. - Le feu dans la nuée (fin).
TÉMOIGNAGES
LÉON AREGA. - Évasion.
VIES
Vie d'un Juif.
EXPOSÉS
MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY, CLAUDE LEFORT
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR, PONTALIS.
VARIETES
SCIPION, PONTALIS.

TM
Rédaction, administration: 5, rue Sébastien-Bottin, Paris

Page 259 of Les Temps Modernes issue 2 – a page of Beauvoir's essay ‘Idéalisme moral et réalisme politique’.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

24 October 1945: The United Nations officially comes into being, as the UN Charter has now been ratified by the majority of its signatories including the five permanent members of the Security Council. 24 October has been celebrated as United Nations Day since 1948.

Flag of the United Nations, which is a bright blue landscape rectangle containing a white wreath encircling a flattened projection of the continents of the world with the north pole at the centre.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

Sources: The Iris Murdoch archive at the University of Kingston for the notebook. Thank you to Lucy Bolton for the photo. Iris Murdoch, A Writer at War: Letters and Diaries, 1939-45, edited by Peter J. Conradi for the letter.

Cover of the book mentioned in this post. Cover features a grainy monochrome (though browns rather than black and greys) photo of Iris Murdoch walking on a rainy street wearing a big coat and carrying two bags. There is a buss heading the other way in the distance. Photo presumably taken at some point between 1939 and 1945.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

24 October 1945: Sartre gives a lecture on existentialism in Brussels and one Iris Murdoch is in the audience. From her notes, this was clearly a version of the now rather famous lecture he was to give in Paris five days later.

Page from Iris Murdoch's notebook. Thank you to Lucy Bolton and the Iris Murdoch archive at the University of Kingston for the photo.

The page reads:

Notes on a lecture given by
Jean Paul Sartre.
Brussels Oct 24 1945.

There is a christian & a nonchristian variety of existentialism. They have in common a certain theory of subjectivity. For the subject, essence is not existence. Each man is a "projet". He trancends himself.

There are however "universals." There is no "human nature " (in the sense of qualities X Y or Z in every man) but there is a universal "human condition."

Existentialists are not relativists in the ordinary sense. Their theory of liberty is crucial.

Liberty is not a quality of man. It is a form of act, of being. A transcendence.

Man is defined from without

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

21 October 1945: A general election to the legislative assembly is held. This is the first time women can vote in a French national election. A referendum asks whether the newly elected legislature should draft a new constitution. 96% of the votes cast are in favour.

Black-and-white photo of at least fifteen women collecting their ballot papers, administered by four women and two men. Photo taken on 29 April 1945 somewhere in France. Photographer unknown.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

15 October 1945: Pierre Laval, who had the official title Prime Minister of France in the collaborationist Vichy government, is executed by firing squad.

Black-and-white photo of Pierre Laval testifying at his trial in a large and crowded room.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Two chapters of the projected fourth and final novel in the series were published in Les Temps Modernes in 1949, but the book was never finished. Fragments of the book were gathered together in a posthumous edition of Sartre’s novels. They are available in English as The Last Chance.

Cover of first edition.

Blank white cover with photo of Sartre in centre of top one-third of the cover. Below that the centred text:

Jean-Paul Sartre
Œuvres romanesques

EDITION ÉTABLIE
PAR MICHEL CONTAT ET MICHEL RYBALKA
AVEC LA COLLABORATION DE GENEVIÈVE IDT
ET DE GEORGE H. BAUER

BIBLIOTHÈQUE DE LA PLÉIADE
nrf

Cover of the English translation. Whole cover is an eerie photo of what appears to be a rather spacious prison cell wth one bed in the middle ground and behind that a door made of bars with light shining through. the whole image is in shades of red.

Text is in the bottom half of the cover, in the foreground of the image. In white lettering:

JEAN-PAUL
SARTRE

THE
LAST CHANCE

and then in crimson red:
ROADS TO FREEDOM IV

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

It will be followed two months later by Le Sursis (The Reprieve) … … and then four years later by La Mort dans l’Âme (Iron in the Soul). The BBC broadcast a superb thirteen-episode TV adaptation of the first three novels in 1970.

Image of the central character Mathieu (played by Michael Bryant) aiming a gun from a beseiged bell tower in one of the final scenes of the TV show.

Image of the central character Mathieu (played by Michael Bryant) actually firing the gun from a beseiged bell tower in one of the final scenes of the TV show.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

2 October 1945: The day after Les Temps Modernes is launched, Sartre publishes the first novel in his series Les Chemins de la Liberté: L’Âge de Raison is set in the summer of 1938 as Europe teeters on the brink of war.

Cover of first edition.

Blank white cover with centred text:

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

Les chemins de la liberté
I
L'âge de raison
roman

nrf

GALLIMARD

Cover of current Penguin Modern Classics edition of the English translation – The Age of Reason.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

1 October 1945: The first issue of Les Temps Modernes is published –– a monthly cultural and political journal led by Sartre and Beauvoir, with a host of other major figures on the editorial board. The journal is named after a Charlie Chaplin film. Pablo Picasso designed the cover.

Cover of the first issue of Les Temps Modernes.

Blank white page with the following column of centred text:

Les Temps
Modernes

1re année REVUE MENSUELLE n° 1

1er Octobre 1945

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE - Présentation.
RICHARD WRIGHT - Le feu dans la nuée.
MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY - La guerre a eu lieu.
FRANCIS PONGE - Notes premières de l'homme.
RAYMOND ARON - Les désillusions de la liberté.
JACQUES-LAURENT BOST - Le dernier des métiers.
VIES
Vie d'une sinistrée.
TÉMOIGNAGES
JEAN ROY - Les morts.
EXPOSÉS
F. PASCHE, RAYMOND ARON, JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
LEENHART, PHILLIP TOYNBEE, IVAN MOFFAT, JEAN POUILLON.

TM
Rédaction, administration : 5, rue Sébastien-Bottin, Paris

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

It is 80 years since Beauvoir and Sartre gave the word 'existentialism' a definition ... ... in a campaign of publications and events that Beauvoir later called 'the existentialist offensive'. To celebrate, this feed will mark each key moment (including political events) for the next three months.

Black-and-white image. The first ever photo of Beauvoir and Sartre together, taken at a travelling fair visiting Porte d'Orléans in Paris, 1929. Beauvoir is pointing a gun and has her eyes closed. Sartre is by her side, hand on her shoulder, pipe in his mouth. The attraction required you to fire at a target. If you hit the bullseye, a camera was triggered and you got to keep the photo. Beauvoir's eyes are closed presumably as an involuntary reaction to the gun firing. Otherwise she hit the bullseye without looking!

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

#philsky #fanon "The collective unconscious is not governed by cerebral heredity: it is the consequence of what I shall call an impulsive cultural imposition" — Frantz Fanon

Cover of The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy, featuring Marie Raymond's painting Arabesques ou Variations sur la volute, 1948, oil on canvas, 91 x 72.5 cm, © ADAGP, Paris, banque d’images de l’ADAGP

Painting is an abstract of bold curves, lines, rectangles, and the suggestions of triangles in yellows, whites, greys, and black.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

#philsky #beauvoir "Existentialist thought is an effort to reconcile the objective and the subjective, the absolute and the relative, the timeless and the historical" – Simone de Beauvoir

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

#philsky #sartre "If the whole of humanity continues to live, it will do so not simply because it has been born but because it will have decided to prolong its life" – Jean-Paul Sartre

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

#philsky The cover art for the forthcoming –– ✨The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy ✨ –– is Marie Raymond's painting: ✨ Arabesques ou Variations sur la volute ✨ (1948) For more on Marie Raymond, including images of many paintings, visit her archive's website: marieraymond.com

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

In 1984, HBO made a three-hour TV film of it starring Jodie Foster, which was then edited down for the French market into a 40-minute cinema release with dubbed dialogue.

Poster for VHS release of the English language version. In the main image, Jodie Foster is central and in the foreground flanked by Sam Neill and Michael Ontkean slightly behind her. They all look rather serious. Superimposed in front of them there is a knife bloodily stabbing a Nazi swastika. The film's strapline is "An obsession stronger than love. More violent than war".

Poster for cinema release of French version. Essentially the same as the English language VHS cover except for some reason Foster and Neill are both looking out towards the viewer and smiling in a slightly dopey way. Guess they're supposed to look like they're in love, but they really just look rather vacant. And weirdly content.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

It is available in English under the title The Blood of Others

Cover of first English edition of Beauvoir's The Blood of Others, published in 1948 by Secker & Warburg in USA and Lindsay Drummond in UK.

Along the bottom of the cover image (which has title and author at top) is the legend: Recommended by the Book Society

Cover of current Penguin Modern Classics edition of the book, with cartoony abstract artwork.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

80 years ago today ... 1 August 1945 Beauvoir published her second novel, Le Sang des autres. Set in Paris during the outbreak of the second world war, the novel explores tensions between individual relationships and political commitment.

Cover of the first edition of Beauvoir's novel Le Sang des Autres, in the classic and rather plain Gallimard style.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

. . Happy *100th* birthday, Frantz Fanon! . . To celebrate, here is Rethinking Existentialism Chapter 8 –– Black Skin, White Masks –– free to download for one week only :: bit.ly/RethExistFan... . . #philsky

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

A mere 29 pages into his 32-page ‘Meditations on Nausea’ Robert Solomon opens the final section with …

“It would be odd, too dismissively philosophical, to discuss an entire novel while hardly mentioning the plot or the characters, even though Nausea is essentially without a plot and almost devoid of characters.”

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 01/01/2024

(exciting news coming in 2024 …) :: ~~~ Happy new year, everyone! ~~~ :: 🥳

Abstract painting by Marie Raymond, in yellow, white, and black.

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Rethinking Existentialism @rethinkexistent.bsky.social · 23/10/2023

Jonathan Webber, Matthew Eshleman, Kate Kirkpatrick, and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc discussing some of the central arguments of Rethinking Existentialism at this year's UK Sartre Society conference.

Photo of the Rethinking Existentialism panel at the 2023 UK Sartre Society conference. From left to right: Jonathan Webber, Matthew Eshleman, Kate Kirkpatrick, Komarine Romdenh-Romluc.

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