Le Blog de Jean-Paul Sartre Discovered

Wednes­day, 22 July, 1959: 10:50 A.M.

This morn­ing over break­fast S. [short for Simone]. asked me why I looked so glum.

“Because,” I said, “every­thing that exists is born for no rea­son, car­ries on liv­ing through weak­ness, and dies by acci­dent.”

“Jesus,” S. said. “Aren’t you ever off the clock?”

Thurs­day, 16 July, 1959: 7:45 P.M.

When S. returned this after­noon I asked her where she had been, and she said she had been in the street.

“Per­haps,” I said, “that explains why you look ‘rue’-ful.”

Her blank stare only rein­forced for me the futil­i­ty of exis­tence.

*  *  *  *  *Find more blog posts full of com­ic exis­ten­tial angst over at The New York­er, and then, if you want to get seri­ous and bone up on Jean-Paul Sartre’s exis­ten­tial­ist phi­los­o­phy, check out these fine resources:

Sartre, Hei­deg­ger, Niet­zsche: Three Philoso­phers in Three Hours (BBC doc­u­men­taries)

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

75 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Sartre’s famous lec­ture Exis­ten­tial­ism is a Human­ism (1946) that oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.