This research examines the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre on Marxist criticism. The research will set forth the literary context in which Marxist and Sartrean commentary intersect and then discuss ways in which Sartre's approach to literary texts, including the drama, has affected the Marxist approach to the pattern of ideas in literary works and the means by which such ideas are developed.
In order to locate Sartre's position in the Marxian tradition of criticism, it is necessary to identify Sartre's position in the tradition of critical and philosophical discourse more generally. Sartre is most famously associated with the philosophy of existentialism, and his arguments elucidating it, developed in such texts as Being and Nothingness and Existentialism and Human Emotions, are dense and complex. However, two concepts permeate existential thought: (1) that the reality of the universe is universally unknowable and continually eludes understanding; and (2) that the individual creates his or her own reality and the reality of the world with every projection of self into the world. That makes every next decision or choice a matter of utmost ethical importance and of utmost uncertainty since the contingency of experience canot be conquered. The existentialist standpoint posits both radical human freedom and an inchoate cosmos in which it is enacted.
Existentialism and Human Emotions elaborates an intensely subjective human ontology, or conception of the nature of human being-ness or reality. He deals with familiar subjects of human and philosophical concern: freedom and responsibility, the problem of God, human psychology in general, the experience of the "hole" of cosmos, which human interpretation, behavior, and creativity alone can fill. Existentialism is not nihilism in Sartre's formulation. Rather, it is "a doctrine which makes human life possible and, in addition, declares that every truth and every action implies a human setting...