[snarks_when_bored]

Sartre was smart, but he was an ideologue who apparently felt comfortable with the mass-murdering actions of the Soviet Communists. Camus was perhaps not as smart as Sartre, but he was much the better man.

This article is interesting both for its characterization of the two men as well as for its discussion of their philosophical and political positions.

[Huber]

PING

[Welsh Rabbit]

Camus was perhaps not as smart as Sartre, but he was much the better man.

Which is probably why I find Camus a much more enjoyable read. I'm not all that knowledgeable about either man, but I was always impressed with Camus' ability to express complex philosophical ideas in a few short, simple sentences. His stuff has stayed with me, while I've pretty much forgotten most of the Sartre I've read. I once read somewhere that William Faulkner predicted Camus would be remembered long after Sartre (although I don't think Sartre will be forgotten any time soon).

[ijcr]

Two drunken Frenchmen meet....each writes a play...the world doesn't care.Peter en soie.

[Clemenza]

C'est Absurd!

[paudio]

Simone de Beauvoir, the writer who was Sartre’s lifelong lover, but whose romance with him admitted all manner of extraneous erotic possibilities, told Camus that he could have her if he wanted her. He did not want her.

What?? The left hasn't made a movie/play about a gay Camus and his relationship with a bi Sartre? They already did to Alexander, Jesus, and Lincoln...

[Choose Ye This Day]

I liked both Sartre and Camus much bettter when I was a smarmy, ill-informed 19-year-old liberal. I'm amazed at how droll they seem now. Of the two, I prefer Camus. But of all the "modern" writers I used to enjoy in my nihilistic era, I still like Kafka the best.

[Choose Ye This Day]

I can turn
And walk away
Or I can fire the gun
Staring at the sky
Staring at the sun
Whichever I chose
It amounts to the same
Absolutely nothing

I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm the stranger
Killing an arab

[nickcarraway]

I'll take Stendhal any day over either of these two.

But Camus is the better writer. The only reason they both agreed that Sartre was more intelligent, is that he was the more intellectually pure of the two, even before Camus strayed.

[nickcarraway]

By the way, this article is total Norman Podhoretz. As is fitting something from Commentary I could hear Podhoretz commenting as I read it.

[nickcarraway]

Camus was perhaps not as smart as Sartre, but he was much the better man.

I completely disagree that Sartre was smarter. He was just more ideologically pure, and among leftists that substiutes for intelligence. (You find this often, even in the 60's the person with the more extreme leftism is acknowledged by both to be smarter) Camus agreed that Sartre was smarter because he knew Sartre trumped him politically. Ironically, Camus was the "more" existentialist, because despite anything Sartre said he had a greater faith in something (leftism, marxism, call it what you will) and Camus was the more isolated one (because he had a more open mind). Sartre became an even more doctrinaire Marxist as he aged, because his talent, such as it was, was declining.