Sartre on the Nobel Prize (1964)

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1964/dec/17/sartre-on-the-nobel-prize/

by samclemens • 12 years ago

105 33 12 years ago

ghshephard2• 12 years ago

There is a saying, "Everyone has a price" - Notch's was $2 Billion. I wonder what Sartre's was. Clearly more than 250,000 crowns.

robomc• 12 years ago

There's really no analogy there at all.

WilliamRay• 12 years ago

They are both renouncing something in a spectacular way to maintain a personal ideal.

ghshephard2• 12 years ago

Notch, for better or worse, was an idealistic symbol of anti-establishmentarianism, most famously when he declared that Mojang wouldn't be developing Minecraft for Facebook after oculus sold out to them, even though the financial incentives were obviously greatly enhanced by such an acquisition, which was going to accelerate development of VR as a platform, particularly with Minecraft sitting right in the nexus of Social/Gaming. He stood on principals, rather than align him self conceptually or monetarily with (what he perceived) to be Oculus selling out.

But, there comes a point, when everyone says, "You know what - pay me enough money and you can do anything you want with my greatest creation."

Would Sartre have been willing use his voice, his writing, and his intellectual heft to support various bourgeois position for $2B, knowing that he could have used that money to support the "concrete" freedoms for so many people in so many places? He was tortured by turning down 250,000 crowns (around $2mm in current dollars?)

Of course, the contrary position to this is that what Sartre did not want to sacrifice was his freedom to not be associated with any one political body, so that his writing would in no way be restrained by anything other than his intellect; and Notch, in selling Mojang to Microsoft, gave up none of his independence, and in no way became associated with Microsoft (indeed, he immediately left the company upon acquisition). Watch Notch did was the intellectual equivalent of Sartre selling the copyrights of one his books to someone wanting to buy them, nothing more.

PythonicAlpha2• 12 years ago

Groucho Marx said:

   I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member

Sartre sharply found out, that to be an independent thinker "about" society, he must not be entangled to much "into" society.

blinkingled2• 12 years ago

Sartre also said : Hell is other people.

ekianjo2• 12 years ago

He did not say that, it's what one character says in Huis Clos. That's just like saying Tyrion is actually expressing what George Martin thinks.

PythonicAlpha2• 12 years ago

I guess, he knew why he made one person say that.

microtonal• 12 years ago

Which is probably one of the most misunderstood citations in philosophy. It's the presence of other people that makes one acutely aware of oneself (since you are an object in the conscience of others).

From L'Être et le Néant:

But the Other is the indispensable mediator between myself and me. I am ashamed of myself as I appear to the Other.

swartkrans• 12 years ago

I wonder how he felt about his fame, you can't shake that off. Maybe I misunderstand his argument, but it seems like he could have used that argument to just always write anonymously.

patothon• 12 years ago

Sartre only represents himself. Not any institution like the Nobel. That's his argument. So writing in his name is ok.

kghose2• 12 years ago

Pompous.

pastProlog• 12 years ago

The board of the Nobel Foundation bestowing awards on those it deems worthy, or Sartre for not playing along with it all?

kghose2• 12 years ago

Sartre, for writing with such unnecessary length.

chevas• 12 years ago

Precisely. Just accept the damn honor. I am not impressed. True humility does not rob others the joy of giving, but accepts the gift being offered.

mercurial• 12 years ago

Why should he have done that? He explains in details his reasons, and for somebody in his position. They sound perfectly valid, and he goes out of his way to say that his refusal is in no way a indictment of the Nobel committee. Other people have refused prestigious awards in the past, without being taxed of arrogance.

Renaud• 12 years ago

His refusal wasn't about humility but about retaining his freedom by not having to carry the weight of the Nobel Academy around.

Being bestowed a prestigious honour changes the man and the perception other people have of him. He didn't want that and he -like Feynman- would have preferred that the Nobel Academy had asked him if he wanted the prize at all before making any announcement.

_delirium• 12 years ago

This essay has had quite a few lives: in Sweden, in France, in the USA; during the Cold War, after it; now oddly enough, I meet it on HN. It's so well written, in fact, that a more playful Swedish Academy might have awarded the prize to Sartre in a subsequent year, citing this essay itself...

consumer• 12 years ago

I was just looking for a citation to Clay Shirky's thought about organizations' first priority being the survival of the organization, and on the "Here Comes Everybody" wiki page, some... guy was referenced as "Nobel-prize winning whatever whatsisname": would his ideas about groups have been cited if he hadn't won that prize? And would I've been looking up something Shirky said if he we're'nt Professor of New York at New Media University?

Joy is in being, not having; where one was over some honor flung: to've been at Woodstock in sixty-nine, Manhattan in oh-one, the net/web in $year, off the reef at Barbados, the shoulder of Orion... Awards and titles seem the recluse of rats. Those who got instead of go'd.

spectrum• 12 years ago

Richard Feynman on the Nobel prize when the interviewer asks him if his research was worth the Nobel prize that he won: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZF4vBreqmE

mironathetin• 12 years ago

Feynman is splendid, like always. For my understanding, his reasoning is much clearer and less artificially complex than Sartres.

Thanks for posting this.

stephancoral• 12 years ago

Sarte's reasoning is pretty simple: he doesn't want to become a component of an institution. He wants to be able to write as Jean-Paul Sartre, not Jean-Paul Sartre the Nobel Prize winner.

d--b• 12 years ago

what the article doesn't say though, being written by Sartre, is that Sartre was pretty pissed off that Camus did get the prize before he did.

knodi123• 12 years ago

I loved this quote:

"This permits me to collaborate with all those who seek to bring the two cultures closer together. I nonetheless hope, of course, that “the best man wins.” That is, socialism."

Sartre on the Nobel Prize (1964)

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