The pursuit of being in the life and thought of Jean-Paul Sartre

This paper has examined the relationship between the life and the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre. The central themes of Sartre's personal existence are shown to revolve around a struggle for self-definition and self-formation, rooted in the empathic failures of significant others during his formative years. It is argued that Sartre's experience of this struggle is mirrored and symbolized by the dialectic of being and nothingness which constitutes the central preoccupation of his philosophy.     

Sartre and Ricoeur on Productive Imagination

Commenting on Jean‐Paul Sartre's theory of imagination, Paul Ricoeur argues that Sartre fails to address the productive nature of imaginative acts. According to Ricoeur, Sartre's examples show that he thinks of imagination in mimetic terms, neglecting its innovative and creative dimensions. Imagination, Ricoeur continues, manifests itself most clearly in fiction, wherein new meaning is created. By using fiction as the paradigm of imaginative activity, Ricoeur is able to argue against Sartre that the essence of imagination lies not in its ability to reproduce absent objects, but rather in the ability to transform reality through creative acts. Motivated by the intuition that Sartre the writer could not have forgotten to address such crucial dimensions of imagination, I examine Sartre's philosophical and literary work, showing that not only does he develop a notion of productive imagination, he also puts this notion to work by articulating the relationship between imagination, narrative, and identity formation, well before Ricoeur advanced his narrative‐identity theory. I argue that Sartre, like Ricoeur and MacIntyre, another representative of narrative‐theory whose criticism of Sartre I address in this essay, views imagination and narrativity as necessary conditions for the formation of a coherent and meaningful sense of self.     

Putting Imagination to Work: Commentary on Papers by Kenneth Eisold and Marc Maltz

Writing as one engaged in the enterprise, the author discusses critically the possibilities and limitations of psychoanalytic and post-Jungian theorizing in connection with consultancy work in the field of organizations and corporations. Slippage between the individual and more collective perspectives is inevitable and, though intellectually inadequate, may turn out to be useful. Often in such work, the paucity of many approaches to leadership available to consultants becomes apparent. The author contributes some ideas of his own concerning the “good-enough leader.” In the next section of his response, the author discusses whether these consultancy interventions are of any use or not, and concludes, broadly speaking, caveat emptor. Finally, specific ethical challenges inherent in psychoanalytic consultancy work are identified and explored.     

The priority ofthe world tomy world: Heidegger's answer to Husserl (and Sartre)

Continental Philosophy Review -