BBC just concluded an interesting online reading of "Tete a Tete", which recounts the life and loves of Sartre, De Bouvoire, and the "family" that formed around them.
"Family" has an interesting meaning when used in relation to Sartre. It's meaning describes "family" in a way similar to the Manson family, except without the drugs or murder (but with all the sex).
The Sartre describe in "Tete a Tete" is intellectually gifted (which we already know from reading "Being and Nothingness.-"). His superior intellect and his free thinking attitudes attract a harem of intellectual free thinking groupies. De Bouvoir was the first. She became something like the head ayah of this harem.
This book approaches Sartre and De Bouvoire from the perspective of their relationship with each other and their ancillary loves. After the book you have come to know Sartre the man: the deceptive, manipulative, exploitive, and immature, "in bad faith" man. De Bouvoire, for all her alledge free thinking, is ultimately the victim. She is an extremely smart, literate, bisexual, boy toy. Sartre treats her like an object, and trailer park mama that she is, she's ok with that. Ofcourse, Sartre needed and emotional and intellectual crutch - a second fiddle - so why not someone who can tell all about it in a really literate manner in the "seminal work" called "The Second Sex."
How is it possible that two people of such great intellect could have lived so stupidly?
One thing I was rather disappointed with: There was very little discussion of Sartre's ideas. No mention of his writing of Being and Nothingness, nor mention of any role De Bouvoire may have had in formulating the ideas. I imagine she had at least as big a part in Sartre's thories as Mrs. Einstein (a physicist herself) had with the discoveries attributed solely to Albert. One can hope that Sartre felt her influence in his famous proof of the existence of others - proof obtained by the immediate experience, when caught doing wrong, of shame.
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