The Words by Sartre

What must be first of all understood about the text under discussion is that its autobiographical nature positions it in the tradition of a confessional. However, the big picture of the text is that it is plainly an analytical confessional. The perspective from which the writer is presenting his account of his relationship with his family is adulthood, and it is to be expected that an adult who reflects on his childhood would be able to characterize his behavior and feelings in a way that would help explain how the adult emerged. But Sartre's approach vividly illustrates how much more complex, detailed, and nuanced the psychology of one developing child is than most people might think.

Whether the subject of the text--the child Sartre himself--is typical or atypical of all children is less important than the evidence the adult Sartre is willing to marshal in presenting the manner in which the child makes a complex project of presenting himself both to himself and to those with whom he comes in contact. The declaration "I keep creating myself" (32) is strong support for early onset of a complex psychology. Furthermore, the complexity derives not so much from the chil

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ober voice" with servants and with respect to the "anomalies [that] are nobody's fault" (33). Yet he is child enough to analyze the worthy poor as not smart enough to recognize that "their function is to exercise our generosity" (33). In other words, the child's consciousness has mistaken behavior for the content of being when what the adult has figured out is that the content of being is an understanding of the scope and limit of both being and behavior. The egocentrist child lacks insight into the limits of his ability to affect his environment and those who populate it. He conveys the impression, indeed, that the experience of inferiors does not belong to them but rather is relevant only insofar as it touches him. This sense of the self as the center of the universe is in the background of his generosity with a coin and "a fine equalitarian smile" (34). And for that, he "must" be loved. Indeed, the child-that-was even went so far as to valorize his perceptive analysis of the world, thinking that even the poorest of the poor did not have to endure the hardship of a grandfather who had no running water when growing up (34). The ironic tone of the last bit of text, which positions grandfather and grandson as bourgeois believers
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Jean-Paul Sartre, Knowing Sartre's, Mind Knowing, , York Oxford, sense self, sartre describes, Words Np, Hegel's Phenomenology, found elsewhere, self adult, york oxford, emotion sartre, child sartre, consciousness self, mode behavior, world sartre,
Approximate Word count = 1580
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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