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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

190500

Equality in existentialism

Herbert Spiegelberg

pp. 155-174

Abstract

All generalizations about existentialism, amorphous as this movement is in its philosophical, literary, and political expressions, are apt to be misleading. But if one limits its circumference to the core of what is sometimes called the Paris group, i.e., Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Francis Jeanson, and most of the staff of Sartre's Les Temps Modernes, one statement about its political line needs no qualification: It is unequivocal in its stand for human equality. This stand is part of the struggle of these existentialists for the liberation of human existence from all types of discrimination and oppression based on class, race, and sex. Thus they have fought "colonialism", old and new, in Vietnam, Madagascar, and Algeria. They have also denounced discrimination in the American South and in totalitarian dictatorships, both fascist and communist.

Publication details

Published in:

Spiegelberg Herbert (1986) Steppingstones toward an ethics for fellow existers: essays 1944–1983. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 155-174

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-4337-7_9

Full citation:

Spiegelberg Herbert (1986) Equality in existentialism, In: Steppingstones toward an ethics for fellow existers, Dordrecht, Springer, 155–174.