Abstract

One of the latest volumes in the "Modern Masters" series edited by Frank Kermode, this small, introductory study exhibits that admixture of philosophical acuity, wit, and style which we have come to associate with the work of Arthur Danto. That a thinker noted for his significant contributions to the analytic tradition should focus his attention on the prince of existentialists is itself something of a Wunder. That he does not approach Sartre like a silhouette-maker appraising an impressionist painting reveals Danto’s own catholicity as well as the clarity and rigor of Sartre’s underlying insights and arguments. After acknowledging a professional debt to Sartre: "I have quarried Sartre’s work like a Barbarini over the years, taken fragments of his thought which I would never, I am certain, have been able to think of by myself," Danto employs a structural and synchronic approach to elucidate "the Sartrian system..., the most important and least accessible and most widely misappreciated of all that he has done." The elements of that system which Danto examines are five, treated in as many chapters. Characteristic of the book’s irenic spirit, each chapter bears two titles, one the canonized Sartrian term and the other Danto’s translation of the same into current analytic discourse. So we are offered: "Ambiguity: or, Language and Existence" ; "Nothingness: or, Consciousness and Ontology" ; "Engagement: or, Knowledge, Action, and the World" ; "Shame: or, The Problem of Other Minds" ; and "Anguish: or, Factual Beliefs and Moral Attitudes".