Responsibility and freedom: the foundations of Sartre’s concept of intellectual engagement

Abstract

Sartre’s concept of responsibility is closely linked to his philosophy of freedom. It is the basis for a practical morality: that of engagement, and has a specific application for his theory of the responsibility of the writer and hence of politically committed literature. This article analyses this concept of responsibility and its sources, both intellectual and biographical, from a sociohistorical point of view, which sheds a new light on the Sartrean theory of the engagement of the intellectual. Using Paul Fauconnet’s distinction, it first examines the tension between objective and subjective responsibility in L’Etre et le neant. It then shows how the experience of war and the purge trials after the Liberation contributed to its elaboration and its embodiment in Sartre’s theory of committed literature.

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