The ethical turn in postmodern thought has made ever more pressing the question, How is one to live one’s life? In this thesis, I propose an answer based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism, extended upon by the work of Alain Badiou.

Chapter One introduces an existential understanding of ethics and meaning, presenting concepts such as the ethical chain, the economy of meaning, and bad faith, that lead us to a perspectivist non-binding normative ethics that is compatible with the three poststructuralist tenets of performativity, contextualization, and the amelioration
of difference.

Chapter Two addresses the validity today of Sartrean existentialism — including not only Being and Nothingness but also the Notebooks for an Ethics, the two volumes of the Critique of Dialectical Reason, and the Hope Now interviews with Benny Levy—via a series of Refutations to charges that it is outdated; that it is irrational; that it is not universal and therefore not a philosophy; that it is nihilist; that it absolutizes freedom and is therefore relativist; that it is humanist; that it is metaphysical, or ontotheological; and that it is incompatible with the poststructuralist belief in the decentering of the center. I establish that Sartrean existentialism withstands these criticisms.

Chapter Three brings in the work of Alain Badiou to elaborate upon Sartre’s rather vague notion of an Apocalypse, which Badiou calls an event. I provide biographical and intellectual links between the work of Sartre and that of Badiou, before detailing how Badiou extends and enhances the Sartrean framework in his development of the structure of an event.

Chapter Four employs the Sartrean-Badiouian existentialist framework in a reading of John Williams’s novel, Stoner, whose protagonist seems ordinary and unsuccessful, but who is shown with the aid of my reading to lead a life full of
meaning. This reading also brings in details of Badiou’s four truth procedures and thus makes concrete his often abstract thought.

Chapter Five concludes with a summary of the previous four chapters, followed by a direct comparison of Sartre’s and Badiou’s thought. I then engage with two other leading postmodern ethical theories, Richard Rorty’s liberal ironism and Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida’s ethics of the Other, to show how Sartrean-Badiouian existentialism offers the more comprehensive ethical framework.

Acknowledgements and Dedication 2
Abstract 3
Contents 5
I. Introduction: Background and Outline 6
II. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism: Refutations 17
1. Existentialism is passe 19
2. Existentialism is a form of irrationality 20
3. Existentialism is not universal and therefore not a philosophy 21
4. Existentialism is a form of nihilism 26
5. Existentialism absolutizes freedom and is therefore a form of relativism 32
6. Existentialism is a form of humanism 36
7. Existentialism is a form of metaphysics or ontotheology 43
8. Existentialism maintains a fixed and stable center 45
III. Alain Badiou’s Existentialism: Structural Addenda 48
IV. A Meaningful Life: Reading John Williams’s Stoner 63
V. Conclusion: Summary and Response to Criticism 82
Works Cited 92

Abrams, M.H. and Geoffrey Harpham. “Poststructuralism.” A Glossary of Literary Terms. 8th ed. Boston: Wadsworth-Thomson, 2005. Print.

Althusser, Louis. “From Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation).” 1970. Trans. Ben Brewster. Leitch, et al. 1335-61. <http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/LPOE70ii.html>.

Anderson, Thomas C. Sartre’s Two Ethics: From Authenticity to Integral Humanity. Chicago: Open Court, 1993. Print.

Aronson, Ronald. “Celebrating the Critique’s Fiftieth Anniversary.” Sartre Studies International 16.2 (2010): 1-16. JSTOR. Web. 20 November 2014.

Austin, J.L. “Performative Utterances.” 1955. Leitch, et al. 1289-1301.

Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. 1988. Trans. Oliver Feltham. London: Continuum, 2005. Print.

---. “Can Change Be Thought?” Interview by Bruno Bosteels. 1999. Trans. Bruno Bosteels. Badiou and Politics. By Bruno Bosteels. Durham: Duke UP, 2011. 289-317. Print.

---. The Century. 2005. Trans. Alberto Toscano. Cambridge: Polity, 2007. Print.

---. “Commitment, Detachment, Fidelity.” 1990. The Adventure of French Philosophy. London: Verso, 2012. Print.

---. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. 1993. Trans. Peter Hallward. London: Verso, 2001. Print.

---. Handbook of Inaesthetics. 1998. Trans. Alberto Toscano. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2005. Print.

---. In Praise of Love. Interview by Nicolas Truong. 2009. Trans. Peter Bush. London: Serpent’s Tail-Profile, 2012. Print.

---. Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II. 2006. Trans. Alberto Toscano. London: Continuum, 2009. Print.

---. Number and Numbers. 1990. Trans. Robin Mackay. Cambridge: Polity, 2008. Print.

---. “On a Finally Objectless Subject.” Cadava 24-32.

---. Peut-on penser la politique? Paris: Seuil, 1985. Print.

---. Philosophy and the Event. Interview by Fabien Tarby. 2010. Trans. Louise Burchill. Cambridge: Polity, 2013. Print.

---. The Rebirth of History. 2011. Trans. Gregory Elliott. London: Verso, 2012. Print.

---. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. 1997. Trans. Ray Brassier. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. Print.

---. Second Manifesto for Philosophy. 2009. Trans. Louise Burchill. Cambridge: Polity, 2011. Print.

---. The Subject of Change: Lessons from the European Graduate School, 2012. Ed. Duane Rousselle. New York: Atropos, 2013. Print.

---. Theory of the Subject. 1982. Trans. Bruno Bosteels. London: Continuum, 2009. Print.

Barnes, Hazel E. Existentialist Ethics. 1967. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978. Print.

Barrett, William. Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy. New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1962. Print.

Bartlett, A.J. Badiou and Plato: An Education by Truths. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2011. Print.

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Ethics of Ambiguity. 1947. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Citadel, 1948. Print.

Bell, Linda A. Sartre’s Ethics of Authenticity. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1989. Print.

Belok, Michael V. and Malcolm S. Enger. “Alienated: The College Professor.” Journal of Thought 7.4 (1972): 280-88. JSTOR. Web. 10 December 2014.

Bowman, Elizabeth A. “Thanks to BHL, France Rediscovers Her Hated Sartre.” Sartre Studies International 8.2 (2002): 68-93. JSTOR. Web. 6 Sept 2014.

Braddock, Glenn. “Sartre on Atheism, Freedom, and Morality in The Humanism of Existentialism.” Daigle, Existentialist 102-17.

Cadava, Eduardo, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy, eds. Who Comes after the Subject? New York: Routledge, 1991. Print.

Callus, Ivan. “Exhausted Replenishment: Experimental Fiction and the Decomposition of Literature.” Word and Text: a Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics 4.1 (2014): 116-35. Central and Eastern European Online Library. Web. 10 December 2014.

Cameron, Claire. “A Forgotten Bestseller: The Saga of John Williams’s Stoner.” The Millions. 6 June 2013. Web. 10 December 2014.

Caws, Peter. “The Curve of the Epoch: Sartre at the End of the Twentieth Century.” Sartre Studies International 5.2 (1999): 15-29. JSTOR. Web. 10 December 2014.

---. “Sartrean Structuralism?” 1992. Sartre’s French Contemporaries and Enduring Influences. Ed. William L. McBride. New York: Garland, 1997. 297-321. Print.

Cole, Michael G. “Existentialism and Selected Contemporary Novels in English.” MA thesis. McMaster U, 1975. PDF file.

Copjec, Joan. Imagine There’s No Woman: Ethics and Sublimation. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002. Print.

Copleston, Frederick. 19th and 20th Century French Philosophy. London: Continuum, 2003. Print. Vol. 9 of A History of Philosophy.

Cox, Cristoph. Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation. Berkeley: U of California P, 1999. Print. <http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=
ft5x0nb3sz&brand=ucpress>.

Cox, Gary. Sartre: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum, 2006. Print.

Daigle, Christine. “The Ambiguous Ethics of Beauvoir.”
Daigle, Existentialist 131-52.

---, ed. Existentialist Thinkers and Ethics. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2006. Print.

De Lacoste, Guillermine. “A Lacanian Elucidation of Sartre.” Sartre Studies International 8.1 (2002): 18-44. JSTOR. 8 December 2014. Web.

Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. 1968. Trans. Paul Patton. 1994. London: Continuum, 2004. Print.

---. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. 2002. Trans. Daniel W. Smith. London: Continuum, 2003. Print.

Derrida, Jacques. “Afterword.” Trans. Samuel Weber. Limited Inc. Ed. Gerald Graff. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1988. 111-60. Print.

---. “Differance.” 1967. Derrida, Margins 1-27.

---. “The Ends of Man.” Derrida, Margins 109-36.

---. The Gift of Death. 1992 Trans. David Wills. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. Print.

---. Margins of Philosophy. 1972. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982. Print.

---. “Passions: ‘An Oblique Offering.’” 1993. Trans. David Wood. On the Name. Ed. Thomas Dutoit. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995. 3-31. Print.

Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. Donald A. Cress. 3rd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993. Print.

Dickstein, Morris. “The Inner Lives of Men.” New York Times Sunday Book Review. New York Times, 17 June 2007. Web. 10 December 2014.

Drake, David. “Sartre and May 1968: The Intellectual in Crisis.” Sartre Studies International 3.1 (1997): 43-65. JSTOR. 5 November 2014. Web.

Foucault, Michel. “An Aesthetics of Existence.” Trans. Alan Sheridan. Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984. Ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.

---. “What Is an Author?” Trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Leitch, et al. 1475-89.

Fuh, Shyh-jen. “Derrida and the Problem of Ethics.” Concentric: Studies in English Literature and Linguistics 29.1 (2003): 1-22. Web. 24 December 2014.

Habermas, Jurgen. “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification.” Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. 1983. Trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990.
Print.

Holsinger, Bruce. “Medievalization Theory: From Tocqueville to the Cold War.” American Literary History 22.4 (2010): 893-912. Oxford UP Journals. 18 November 2010. Web. 10 December 2014.

Jameson, Frederic [sic]. “The Sartrean Origin.” Sartre Studies International 1.1/2 (1995): 1-20. Web. JSTOR. 16 July 2014.

Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982. Print.

---. “Sartre’s Critique, Volume 1: An Introduction.” 2004. Jameson, Valences 223-40.

---. “Sartre’s Critique, Volume 2: An Introduction.” 2006. Jameson, Valences 241-53.

---. Valences of the Dialectic. London: Verso, 2009. Print.
Jenkins, Keith. Refiguring History: New Thoughts on an Old Discipline. London: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. 2nd ed. Hampshire: Palgrave, 2007. Print.

Keefe, Terry. “The Other in Sartre’s Early Concept of ‘Situation.’” Sartre Studies International 1.1/2 (1995): 95-113. JSTOR. Web. 27 August 2014.

Kofman, Sarah. “Descartes Entrapped.” Trans. Kathryn Aschheim. Cadava 178-97.

Kohn, Alfie. “Existentialism Here and Now.” The Georgia Review 38.2 (1984): 381-97. JSTOR. Web. 28 August 2014. <http://www.alfiekohn.org/miscellaneous/existentialism.htm>.

Leitch, Vincent B., et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2010. Print.

Leuschner, Eric. “Body Damage: Dis-Figuring the Academic in Academic Fiction.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 28.3-4 (2006): 339-54. Taylor & Francis Online. Web. 10 December 2014.

Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. 1961. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979. Print.

Livatino, Mel. “Revaluation: A Sadness unto the Bone John Williams’s Stoner.” Sewanee Review 118.3 (2010): 417-22. EBSCOhost. Web. 10 December 2014.

Lucy, Niall. A Derrida Dictionary. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. Print.

Lyotard, Jean-Franc ois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. 1979. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1986. Print.

Marr, Liz. “Widening Participation, Lifelong Learning and MOOCs: Challenging the ‘true nature’ of the university.” Editorial. Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning 15.3 (20013): 1-5. Open University. 11 September 2013. Web. 10
December 2014.

Martinot, Steve. “The Site of Postmodernity in Sartre.” Sartre Studies International 5.2 (1999): 45-60. JSTOR. Web. 10 December 2014.

McCulloch, Gregory. Using Sartre: An Analytical Introduction to Early Sartrean Themes. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.

Morgan, Jamie. “What Is Progress in Realism? An Issue Illustrated Using Norm Circles.” Journal of Critical Realism 13.2 (2014): 115-38. Metapress Essential. 24 March 2014. Web. 10 December 2014.

Murdoch, Iris. Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature. Ed. Peter Conradi. London: Chatto & Windus, 1997. Print.

---. “Metaphysics and Ethics.” Murdoch, Existentialists 59-75.

---. “Vision and Choice in Morality.” Murdoch, Existentialists 76-98.

Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Inoperative Community. 1986. Ed. Peter Connor. Trans. Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1991. Print.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. 1886. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage-Random, 1966. Print.

---. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 1891. The Portable Nietzsche. Ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Viking, 1968. 103-439. Print.

Nirenberg, Ricardo L. and David Nirenberg. “Badiou’s Number: A Critique of Mathematics as Ontology.” Critical Inquiry 37 (2011): 583-614. 10 September 2014. Web.

Palmer, Jeremy N.J. “Les Sequestres d’Altona: Sartre’s Black Tragedy.” French Studies 24.2 (1970): 150-62. Print.

Patton, Colleen Hill. “Images of Experience: Decolonizing Medicine.” Diss. Georgia Southern U, 2011. Digital Commons @ Georgia Southern. Georgia Southern University. Web 10 December 2014.

Plato. The Dialogues of Plato. Vol 1. Trans. and ed. R.E. Allen. New Haven: Yale UP, 1984. Print.

---. The Republic. Trans. R.E. Allen. New Haven: Yale UP, 2006. Print.

Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. Print.

Santoni, Ronald E. “In Defense of Levy and Hope Now: A Minority View.” Sartre Studies International 4.2 (1998): 61-68. JSTOR. 5 November 2014. Web.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate. 1946. Trans. George J. Becker. New York: Schocken, 1948. Print.

---. Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. 1943. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. 1956. New York: Washington Square, 1992. Print.

---. Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume I: Theory of Practical Ensembles. 1960, 1985 revised. Trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith. Ed. Jonathan Ree. 1976, 1991 corrected. London: Verso, 1991. Print.

---. Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume II (Unfinished): The Intelligibility of History. Ed. Arlette Elkaim-Sartre. 1985. Trans. Quintin Hoare. London: Verso, 1991. Print.

---. “Elections: A Trap for Fools.” 1973. Sartre, Life/Situations 198-210.

---. “Existentialism.” 1945. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. 1957. Basic Writings of Existentialism. Ed. Gordon Marino. New York: Modern, 2004. 341-67. Print.

---. “The Itinerary of a Thought.” 1972. Between Existentialism and Marxism. Trans. John Matthews from Situations VIII and IX. 1974. London: Verso, 2008. 33-64.
Print.

---. Life/Situations: Essays Written and Spoken. Trans. Paul Auster and Lydia Davis of Situations X. New York: Pantheon, 1977. Print.

---. “A Long, Bitter, Sweet Madness.” Interview. 1964. Trans. Anthony Hartley. Encounter 22.6 (1964): 61-63. Print.

---. “The Maoists in France.” 1972. Sartre, Life/Situations 162-71.

---. Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr. 1952. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Pantheon, 1963. Print.

---. Search for a Method. 1960. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Knopf, 1963. Print.

---. War Diaries: Notes from a Phoney War 1939-40. 1983. Trans. Quintin Hoare. 1984. London: Verso, 1999. Print.

Sartre, Jean-Paul and Benny Levy. Hope Now: The 1980 Interviews. Trans. Adrian van den Hoven. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996. Print.

Scheingold, Lee D. One Silken Thread: Poetry’s Presence in Grief. New Orleans: Quid Pro, 2013. Google Books. Google. Web. 10 December 2014.

Schrift, Alan D. Nietzsche’s French Legacy: A Genealogy of Poststructuralism. New York: Routledge, 1995. Print.

Schuster, Shlomit C. “Revisiting Hope Now with Benny Levy: A Note on the 1996 English Edition of Hope Now.” Sartre Studies International 4.1 (1998): 63-75. JSTOR. 5 November 2014. Web.

Smith, Brian A. “Badiou and Sartre: Freedom, from Imagination to Chance.” Badiou and Philosophy. Ed. Sean Bowden and Simon Duffy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012. 203-24. Print.

Sokal, Alan and Jean Bricmont. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. New York: Picador, 1998. Print.

Stone, Robert V. and Elizabeth A. Bowman. “Dialectical Ethics: A First Look at Sartre’s Unpublished 1964 Rome Lecture Notes.” Social Text 13/14 (1986): 195-215. JSTOR. Web. 7 August 2014.

---. “Sartre’s Morality and History.” Sartre Alive. Eds. Ronald Aronson and Adrian van den Hoven. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1991. 53-82. Print.

Szekely, Peter. “The Academic Novel in the Age of Postmodernity: The AngloAmerican Metafictional Academic Novel.” Diss. Eotvos Lorand U, 2009. PDF file.

Terray, Emmanuel. “Badiou et Sartre.” Autour d’Alain Badiou. Ed. Isabelle Vodoz and Fabien Tarby. Meaux: Germina, 2011. 127-44. Print.

“Thinking with Sartre Today: New Approaches to Sartre Studies? | Penser avec Sartre aujourd’hui. De nouvelles approches pour les etudes sartriennes?” Call for
papers. Maison Francaise d’Oxford. The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH). N. d. Web. 15 October 2014. <http://torch.ox.ac.uk/sartretoday>.

Tho, Tzuchien and Giuseppe Bianco, trans. and eds. Badiou and the Philosophers: Interrogating 1960s French Philosophy. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Print.

Thurschwell, Adam. “Specters of Nietzsche: Potential Futures for the Concept of the Political in Agamben and Derrida.” Cardozo Law Review 24.3 (2003): 1193-1259. HeinOnline. Web. 24 December 2014.

Toth, Josh. “A Differance of Nothing: Sartre, Derrida and the Problem of Negative Theology.” Sartre Studies International 13.1 (2007): 16-34. JSTOR. Web. 21 April 2014.

Vermeren, Patrice. “Alain Badiou, Fiel Lector de Sartre 1965/2005 (Collages).” JeanPaul Sartre, Actualidad de Un Pensamiento. Horacio Gonzalez, et al. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Colihue, 2005. 109-22. Print.

Wakefield, Dan. “John Williams, Plain Writer.” Ploughshares 7.3/4: 9-22. JSTOR. Web. 12 December 2014.

Williams, Bernard. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. 1985. London: Routledge, 2006. Print.

Williams, Jeffrey J. “Teach the University.” Pedagogy 8.1 (2008): 25-42. Duke University Press. Web. 10 December 2014.

Williams, John. Stoner. 1965. New York: NYRB, 2003. Print.

Wood, Philip R. “‘Democracy’ and ‘Totalitarianism’ in Contemporary French Thought: Neoliberalism, the Heidegger Scandal, and Ethics in PostStructuralism.” Terror and Consensus: Vicissitudes of French Thought. Eds. Jean-Joseph Goux and Philip R. Wood. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998. 75-103. Print.

---. “A Revisionary Account of the Apotheosis and Demise of the Philosophy of the Subject: Hegel, Sartre, Heidegger, Structuralism, and Poststructuralism.” Situating Sartre in Twentieth-Century Thought and Culture. Eds. Jean-Francois
Fourny and Charles D. Minahen. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997. 165-95. Print.

Wood, Philip. “Philip Wood on Life ‘After the Subject’—the Example of Aesthetic Ecstasy.” Interview by Izabel Gass. Manifold 3 (2009): 56-69. PDF file.

Zheng, Yiwei. Ontology and Ethics in Sartre’s Early Philosophy. Lanham: Lexington, 2005. Print.