Jean-Paul Sartre and Our Responsibility for Teaching History

Jean-Paul Sartre and Our Responsibility for Teaching History

ABSTRACT: Historical research was one of Jean-Paul Sartre's major concerns. Sartre's biographical studies and thought indicate that history is not only a field in which you gather facts, events, and processes, but it is a worthy challenge which includes a grave personal responsibility: my responsibility to the dead lives that preceded me. Sartre's writings suggest that accepting this responsibility can be a source of wisdom. Few historians, however, view history as transcending the orderly presenting and elucidating of facts, events, and processes. I contend that Sartre's writings suggest a personally enhancing commitment. A lucid and honest response to the challenges and demands of history and the dead lives that preceded my own existence is an engagement that requires courage, wisdom, and thought. The consequences of this commitment for teaching history is discussed.

Historical research was one of Jean-Paul Sartre's major concerns. Roquentin, the central character of his first novel, Nausea, has chosen the "profession of historian." (1) He comes to Bouville in order to write a history of Monsieur de Rollebon, who was active at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. Important documents pertaining to Rollebon's life are in the Bouville library. As the novel develops Roquentin decides—for good reasons—to abandon his historical research, a decision to which we return.

Unlike Roquentin, Sartre never abandoned the realm of historical research. Quite often he discussed history in his philosophical writings. His plays repeatedly deal with the need to relate authentically, truthfully to history. In addition, Sartre wrote three biographies—of Charles Baudelaire, Jean Genet, and The Family Idiot, a close to three thousand page study of the life of Gustave Flaubert—in which he suggested and presented an approach to studying the life of a specific person within his or her situation. Sartre also wrote abbreviated studies of contemporary history, such as his short book on Castro's Cuba. (2) Consequently, the corpus of Sartre's writings abounds with enlightening insights and ideas on how to study and write history.

Very few, if any, of Sartre's insights have been transferred to the realm of historical scholarship or of teaching history. Our survey of relevant literature revealed virtually no attempts to learn from Sartre in these fields. Someone may argue that the compartmentalization of scholarship—whereby many, if not most, historians rarely read books by philosophers—may be an important reason for the ignoring of Sartre's insights in the fields of history and teaching history.