The Existential Star Wars: Sartre Meets Darth Vader

A few weeks ago we direct­ed you to a won­der­ful three-part BBC doc­u­men­tary about mod­ern phi­los­o­phy called Human, All Too Human, adding that we con­sid­ered the chap­ter on Jean-Paul Sartre the most sat­is­fy­ing of the three.

Now we give you a light-heart­ed chas­er for that doc­u­men­tary’s strong spir­its: The French philoso­pher’s teach­ings as inter­pret­ed by the sci­ence fic­tion over­lord Darth Vad­er. Per­haps more than any oth­er 20th cen­tu­ry supervil­lain, the dis­graced Jedi knight trag­i­cal­ly and per­fect­ly embod­ies the Sar­tri­an notion that “Free­dom is what you do with what has been done to you.”

For those who might con­sid­er the Jok­er a bet­ter can­di­date, we humbly sub­mit that with the Jok­er, it’s more of a Niet­zschean thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

The Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, the First Exis­ten­tial­ist Philoso­pher, Revis­it­ed in 1984 Doc­u­men­tary

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

via Roger Ebert’s Jour­nal

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly