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It might seem that Sartre's thought is no longer relevant in understanding and combating the maelstrom unleashed by triumphant neoliberalism. But we can still draw inspiration from Sartre's hatred of oppression and his project to understand how his most famous theme of individual self-determination and responsibility coexists with our social belonging and determination by historical forces larger than ourselves. Most important today is Sartre's understanding in Critique of Dialectical Reason of how isolated, serial individuals form into groups to resist oppression, and the ways in which these groups generate social understandings and collective power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unresolved conflict between Camus and Sartre over terrorism, violence and colonialism reflects some of today's arguments over similar issues. Above all, the two men disagreed over how to overcome the structural violence of imperialism and colonialism and whether terrorism can ever be justified. The starting terms for the discussion appear in my Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Conflict That Ended It (Aronson 2004); this article goes on to explore the half-truth and half- blindness characteristic of each man on these issues. Today we might bring their insights together only by insisting on a coherent analysis that includes understanding both structural or systemic violence and revolutionary violence and terrorism. I appeal for judging all sides in contemporary conflicts by a single standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By what incredible foresight did the most significant intellectual quarrel of the twentieth century anticipate the major issue of the twenty-first? When Camus and Sartre parted ways in 1952, the main question dividing them was political violence—specifically, that of communism. And as they continued to jibe at each other during the next decade, especially during the war in Algeria, one of the major issues between them became terrorism. The 1957 and 1964 Nobel Laureates were divided sharply over which violence most urgently demanded to be addressed and attacked—the humiliations and oppressions, often masked, that Sartre described as systematically built into daily life under capitalism and colonialism, or the brutal and abstract calculus of murder seen by Camus as built into some of the movements that claimed to liberate people from capitalist and colonial oppression. The Sartre-Camus conflict remains, fifty years later, philosophically unresolved. And I would argue—against today's conventional wisdom so persistently asserted by Tony Judt—it is also historically unresolved, despite today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Books reviewed in this article: Stéphane Courtois et al.,The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression François Furet, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century Michel Dreyfus et al., Le Siècle des communismes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]