You make good points. However, after reading the biography of Simone de Beauvoir (by Deirdre Bair) I believe the emotional abuse both Sartre and de Beauvoir engaged in when dealing with very young women is something difficult for men to comprehend because sex is different for women.
While it’s true that modern life and thinking differ from the past, I’m referring to comments de Beauvoir wrote about their “conquests” at the time. I don’t know if you found this when you read it, but I got a very strong impression that de Beauvoir was denying her needs as a woman in order to please Sartre. Her willingness to bring other women into it was to keep Sartre close so she could fulfill what she’d so publicly announced as the true partnership of a man and woman. And it did not come without severe emotional and even physical pain for her, which she describes in great detail.
It was heartbreaking to read her visceral reaction to the realization that Sartre was not loyal to her the way she believed him to be. But it seemed as if her pride prevented her from seeing it clearly. So to keep her fantasy of him, and perhaps more importantly, of herself, she went along. She did not discourage his later liaisons with very young women, but if you read her accounts of it, it is painfully clear that it was not in any way for her own satisfaction — she simply needed to comply because she knew deep down that if she didn’t, despite all the professions of love and loyalty he showered her with, his affections would be withdrawn in a heartbeat. They were co-dependent in the extreme.
I was also very disappointed in both of them to read so many accounts of how they spent their time ridiculing others. They seemed to get much of their personal satisfaction from disparaging others.
Both of them died horrible deaths due to years of physical neglect, alcohol and smoking. Neither seemed particularly self-aware and both were far too enamored of their own intellectualism. I imagine living through two wars and such extreme poverty was to blame for much of that, so I don’t want to be judgmental, but for modern thinkers who do not have those challenges I think their philosophies are not nearly as relevant as they might have seemed back then.
Finally, if the goal of philosophy is to help us understand ourselves and our place in the world, Sartre never succeeded, in my opinion. He failed to take responsibility for his own life, relying on women exclusively to fight his emotional battles as well as handle all his business affairs.
The most honest thing he may have ever said was that he hated nature and other people and would rather be in prison than have to take responsibility for himself.
That alone is enough to make me look elsewhere for guidance of any kind.
