Chile, the Coup and the Gringos – Gabriel García Márquez – 1974

At the end of 1969, three Pentagon generals had dinner with four Chilean soldiers in a house in the suburbs of Washington. The host was then Colonel Gerardo López Angulo, airforce attaché of the Chilean military mission in the United States, and the Chilean guests were his colleagues from the other armed forces. The dinner was in honor of the Director of the Chilean Aviation School, General Toro Mazote, who had arrived the day before for a study visit. The seven military men ate fruit salad and roast beef with peas, drank the warm-hearted wines of their remote southern homeland where there were luminous birds on the beaches while Washington was shipwrecked in the snow, and spoke in English of the only thing that seemed to matter to chileans at that time: the presidential elections the following September. At dessert, one of the Pentagon generals asked what the Chilean army would do if the left-wing candidate Salvador Allende won the elections. General Toro Mazote replied: “We will take the Palacio de la Moneda in half an hour, even if we have to burn it down.”

One of the guests was General Ernesto Baeza, current director of Chile’s National Security Agency, who was the one who led the assault on the presidential palace in the recent coup, and who gave the order to burn it down. Two of his subordinates from those days became famous on the same day: General Augusto Pinochet, president of the Military Junta, and General Javier Palacios, who participated in the final battle against Salvador Allende. Also at the table was Air Brigadier General Sergio Figueroa Gutiérrez, current Minister of Public Works, and a close friend of another member of the Military Junta, Air Force General Gustavo Leigh, who gave the order to bombard the presidential palace with rockets. The last guest was the current admiral Arturo Troncoso, now naval governor of Valparaíso, who carried out the bloody purge of the progressive officers of the navy, and began the military uprising in the early hours of September 11.

Free Will and Fatum – Friedrich Nietzsche (1862)

Freedom of the will, which in itself is nothing other than freedom of thought, is limited in the same way as the freedom of thought. Thought cannot go beyond the horizon to which ideas extend; however, it is based on perceptions which are gradually aquired, and can be expanded as it does so. Likewise, the freedom of the will can also be expanded to that same extent, although, within such confines, it is unlimited. Another thing altogether is the working of the will; the faculty of willing is fatalistically imposed on us.

To the extent that fatum appears to man in the mirror of his own personality, free will and individual fatum are two rivals of equal value. We find that the peoples who believe in a fatum stand out for their strength and the power of their will, and that, on the other hand, men and women who let things flow as they are, since “what God has done well it is done’, they allow themselves to be carried away by circumstances in an ignominious way. In general, “surrender to the will of God” and “humility” are nothing more than covers for the fear of decisively assuming one’s own destiny and facing it.

Now, as much as the fatum appears to us, in its condition of ultimate delimiter, as more powerful than free will, we must not forget two things: first, that fatum is only an abstract concept, a force without matter, which for the individual there is only one individual fatum, that the fatum is nothing other than a concatenation of events, that man determines his own fatum as soon as he acts, thereby creating his own events, and that these, as they concern man, are provoked consciously or unconsciously by himself, and they must adapt to him. But the activity of man does not begin with birth, but already in the embryo and perhaps also – who knows – much earlier in his parents and ancestors. All of you, those who believe in the immortality of the soul, must first believe in its pre-existence, if you do not wish to make something immortal arise from the mortal; you will also have to believe in that kind of existence of the soul if you do not want to make it float through space until it finds a body to suit it. The Hindus say that the fatum is nothing other than the deeds we have done in a previous condition of our being.

How can the argument be refuted that one has not already acted consciously since eternity? From the still undeveloped consciousness of the child? Furthermore, can we not affirm that our conscience is always in relation to our actions?

Emerson also says: “Thought is always attached to the thing that appears as its expression.”

Can a musical note affect us without there being something in us that corresponds to it? Or, put another way: can we capture an impression in our brain if it no longer has the capacity to receive it?

Free will is not, in turn, much more than an abstraction, and means the ability to act consciously, while, under the concept of fatum, we understand the principle that directs us to act unconsciously. Acting, in itself and for itself, always entails an activity of the soul, a direction of the will that we ourselves do not have to have before our eyes as an object. In conscious action we can let ourselves be carried away by impressions much more than in unconscious action, but also much less. Faced with a favorable action, it is usually said: “it came to me by chance”, which need not be true at all. Psychic activity continues its march always with the same intense activity, even when we do not contemplate it with our spiritual eyes.

It is as if, closing our eyes to the sunlight, we think that the star is no longer shining. However, neither its life-giving light nor its heat cease, and they continue to exert their effects on us, even if we do not perceive them with the sense of sight.

Thus, if we do not assume the concept of unconscious action as a mere letting oneself be carried away by previous impressions, the strict opposition between fatum and free will disappears for us, and both concepts merge and disappear in the idea of individuality.

The more things move away from the inorganic and the more education and culture expand, the more outstanding individuality becomes and the richer and more diverse its characteristics. What are inner strength and self-determination for acting, and external manifestations -its evolutionary lever-, if not free will and fatum?

In free will, the principle of singularization is encoded for the individual, the principle of separation from the whole, from the unlimited; the fatum, however, once again puts man in a close organic relationship with general evolution and forces him, insofar as it seeks to dominate him, to set reactive forces in motion; an absolute and free will, devoid of fatum, would make man a god; the fatalistic principle, instead, makes him an automaton.

Pforta, April 1862

Fatum and History – Friedrich Nietzsche (1862)

If we could contemplate the Christian doctrine and the history of the Church with a view free of prejudices, we would be forced to express some opinions opposed to the current general ideas. But, subjected from our first days to the yoke of customs and prejudices, restrained by the impressions of our childhood on the natural evolution of our spirit and determined in the formation of our temperament, we almost believe ourselves obliged to consider the choice of a freer point of view from which to make a non-partisan and timely judgment on religion and Christianity as criminal.

An attempt of this kind is not the work of a few weeks, but of a lifetime.

Well, how could the authority of two millennia, guaranteed by so many distinguished men of all time, be destroyed through the result of some youthful meditations? How could it be possible that phantasmagorias and immature ideas came to replace all the sufferings and blessings that the development of religion has caused to take root in the history of the world?

It is an absolute presumption to try to solve philosophical problems on which many different opinions have been disputed for millennia: to fight against opinions that, according to the conviction of the wisest men, elevate man towards true humanity. Joining science to philosophy, without even knowing the principle results of both; erecting, finally, a system of reality by resorting to science and history, while the unity of universal history and its main foundations have not yet been opened to the spirit, daring to enter the sea of doubts without compass or guide is crazy, and spells ruin for minds still immature; most of them will be overthrown by storms, and only a very few will discover new lands.

From the center of the immense ocean of ideas, how often does man feel the nostalgia for the mainland: how many times, in the face of so many sterile speculations, has the desire to return to history and natural sciences assailed me!

How often has our entire philosophy seemed to me no more than a great Babylonian tower: penetrating heaven is the purpose of all great endeavors; the kingdom of heaven on earth means practically the same thing.

Selection of Aphorisms from: Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims – François de La Rochefoucauld

§ 12 – No matter how carefully we hide our passions with appearances of piety and honour, they can always be seen through the veils.

Quelque soin que l’on prenne de couvrir ses passions par des apparences de piété et d’honneur, elles paraissent toujours au travers de ces voiles.

§ 42 – We do not have enough strength to follow our reason fully.

Nous n’avons pas assez de force pour suivre toute notre raison.

§ 47 – Our temperament decides the value of everything brought to us by fortune.

Notre humeur met le prix à tout ce qui nous vient de la fortune

§ 61 – Men’s happiness and unhappiness depend on their temperaments, no less than on fortune.

Le bonheur et le malheur des hommes ne dépend pas moins de leur humeur que de la fortune.

§ 66 – A clever man must arrange his interests in order and carry out each of them in its proper place. Our greed often disturbs this, and makes us run after so many things at the same time that we miss out on the most prestigious ones because we have too great a desire for those of least importance.

Un habile homme doit régler le rang de ses intérêts et les conduire chacun dans son ordre. Notre avidité le trouble souvent en nous faisant courir à tant de choses à la fois, que pour désirer trop les moins importantes, on manque les plus considérables.

The Philosophy of Hunger – Luís Martín Trujillo Flórez

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUNGER

Text extracted from the book: Letters to a Young Teacher by Luís Martín Trujillo Flórez.

Educational pragmatism is always counterproductive. An ignorant specialist or technician produces less and produces badly, because he thinks less and thinks badly.

Carlos Fuentes

Dear son: I am glad that you have answered my letter, in the same way, I am flattered to know that you investigated arduously what I proposed and they served you to apply them in your classes. There is nothing more flattering for a teacher than to awaken in his students a hunger for knowledge. Today I want to address an issue that frames education and that unfortunately bleeds out or detains many, if not all, the advances that could be made in it, without distinguishing between large or small. I mean the Philosophy of Hunger. I had already given you glimpses of the subject in the previous letters. It is time for you to meet her, I had not dared to approach her because she seems to me a tale of terror, of those monsters that walk in the collective unconscious ready to destroy us, another of the mental barriers that we have and is linked to our way of being and to think, not only in school but in society. That is why, my boy, I want you to excuse me since this letter will be visceral, because this land hurts me, here I grew up, made my roots, what I am and what I was I owe to this country. In addition, I must confess that there is no worse enemy for any educational process than the philosophy of hunger, indeed, there is no worse evil that afflicts this land.

Education has always gone hand in hand with philosophy, since thought and the way of thinking define the way of learning and what should be learned. It is no mystery to anyone that education creates social change. In developed countries it is clear that education is a priority in the economy, not free its percentages in research are colossal compared to ours. And let me tell you that nobody invests so much if it is going to give them losses, from the beginning of man, knowledge is linked to power, so whoever handles knowledge, handles everything. In underdeveloped countries, education is not a priority because educating a developed people is expensive and educating an underdeveloped people is dangerous. More so for those who benefit from underdevelopment, and believe me that such people do not want to make a country even if they use the flag as a shield. They to some extent further the philosophy of hunger, the rest we foster with indifference. And we teachers do it with our lack of exigency in the classrooms, and believe it or not, mediocre education is the biggest niche of the philosophy of hunger.

The possibilities of error and illusion are multiple and permanent: those that come from the cultural and social exterior inhibit the autonomy of thought and prohibit the search for truth; those that come from within, sometimes locked within our best means of knowledge, cause thoughts to make mistakes among themselves and about themselves.

Edgar Morin, The seven necessary knowledge for the education of the future.

I want you to read these paragraphs by Mario Mendoza, from his novel Satanás, to see if you better understand what I want to talk to you about:

There is a line of individuals that I cannot stand: beggars. Those scoundrels who go around showing their stumps, their scars, their starving and malnourished children, they only disgust me and want to strangle them. And when I say disgust I do not mean his extreme poverty, that I dislike his smell or his rags, but his attitude of baseness and self-pity. It disgusts me that someone turns their own weakness into a show, and on top of that forces others to degrade themselves by giving them alms. That’s too much.

But what can you expect from a country where everyone has a beggar mentality. Politicians ask for contributions from their constituents, priests are lazy people who live off someone else’s pocket, schools ask parents for extra help every year, hospitals often invent pretexts to beg such as “different children’s day” (a euphemism that refers to mental morons, Mongolians and oligophrenics), “cancer day” or “polio day”, and even the President of the Republic passes himself like a destitute begging that the developed nations throw him a few pesos. The television news reports inform us every month that “the President met with the World Bank to specify the aid for Colombia”, or that “the President is visiting Madrid to remind Spain of the importance of his donations to the problem of drug trafficking”. What an example is given to a nation that sees its chief president on his knees begging for a few coins. Colombia is not a country, but a mendicant order.

Mario Mendoza, Satan.

The philosophy of hunger is born when we think that nothing works here, when we deny what we have, when we believe that it is not possible, when we believe we are poor, not only economically but intellectually. When we do not accept what we are capable of doing. We doubt our abilities, and doubt kills. How can we be competent if we question our knowledge?

El amor y asuntos relacionados (1920) – Fragmento Inédito de Walter Benjamin

Amor y asuntos relacionados
(un problema europeo)

(Sobre el matrimonio, véanse las págs. 68 y ss. En el otro cuaderno.) Esta época está participando en una de las mayores revoluciones que jamás haya tenido lugar en las relaciones entre los sexos. Solo alguien que esté consciente de este desarrollo tiene derecho a hablar sobre la sexualidad y lo erótico en nuestros días. Una condición previa esencial es la comprensión de que las formas centenarias y, junto con ellas, un conocimiento igualmente antiguo sobre las relaciones entre los sexos, están dejando de ser válidas. Nada constituye un obstáculo mayor para darse cuenta de esto que la convicción de que esas relaciones son inmutables en sus niveles más profundos: la creencia errónea de que sólo las formas más efímeras de la moda erótica están sujetas al cambio y a la historia, porque el terreno más profundo y supuestamente inalterable subyacente es el dominio de las leyes eternas de la naturaleza. Pero, ¿cómo puede alguien sentir el alcance de estas preguntas y no saber que lo que la historia muestra con más fuerza son las revoluciones en la naturaleza? Bien puede ser que todo mundo pre-apocalíptico contenga un residuo de existencia inmutable, pero si es así, este residuo se encuentra en un estrato infinitamente más profundo de lo que implican las triviales afirmaciones de quienes están acostumbrados a escribir sobre la guerra eterna entre los sexos. Incluso si esta guerra pertenece a las verdades eternas, las formas que asume ciertamente no lo hacen. Pero si reaparece constantemente y continúa haciéndolo, la causa está en la unidad de lo erótico y lo sexual en la mujer. Un acto de ocultación sumamente desafortunado consigue hacer que esta unidad parezca natural, excepto cuando los hombres son capacitados por un acto incomparable de amor creativo para reconocerla como sobrenatural. Una y otra vez este conflicto se enciende debido a la incapacidad del hombre para percibirlo, particularmente cuando, como en la actualidad, una vez más, las formas históricas de tal creatividad se han marchitado y muerto. Hoy el hombre europeo es tan incapaz como siempre de afrontar esa unidad en la mujer que induce un sentimiento cercano al horror en los miembros más alertas y superiores de su sexo, ya que incluso ellos permanecen ciegos a sus exaltados orígenes. Al no percibirlo como sobrenatural y ciegamente imaginándolo como natural, huyen de él. Oprimida por la ceguera de los hombres, la vida sobrenatural de la mujer se atrofia y declina hacia lo meramente natural y, por tanto, hacia lo antinatural. Sólo esto explica el extraño proceso de disolución que en nuestros días ha sido provocado por los instintos primitivos de los hombres, por lo que la mujer sólo puede entenderse en términos de imágenes simultáneas de la ramera y la amada intocable. Esta pureza intocable, sin embargo, no forma más parte de la definición espiritual inmediata de mujer que el deseo básico; también es profundamente instintivo y coercitivo. El gran y auténtico símbolo de la permanencia del amor terrenal siempre ha sido la única noche de amor antes de la muerte. Solo que ahora no es la noche del amor, como antes, sino la noche de la impotencia y la renuncia. Esta es la experiencia clásica del amor de la generación más joven. ¿Y quién sabe para cuántas generaciones futuras seguirá siendo la experiencia principal? Sin embargo, tanto la impotencia como el deseo representan un camino nuevo e inédito para el hombre que encuentra bloqueado el antiguo camino: llegar al conocimiento a través de la posesión de una mujer. Ahora busca el nuevo camino: llegar a la posesión a través de su conocimiento. Pero cada cosa reconoce y atrae lo semejante [like recognizes like]. De modo que el hombre intenta parecerse a la mujer, e incluso se parece a ella. Y este es el punto de partida de la vasta y, en un sentido más profundo, casi planificada metamorfosis de la sexualidad masculina en sexualidad femenina a través de la mente. Ahora es Adán quien toma la manzana, pero es igual a Eva. La serpiente vieja puede desaparecer, y en el jardín del Edén repurificado no queda nada más que la pregunta de si es el paraíso o el infierno. Mientras miramos en la oscuridad de las transformaciones que tienen lugar en esa gran corriente fluida de la fisicalidad humana, nuestra vista falla al contemplar un futuro para el cual tal vez se haya determinado que, aunque ningún profeta traspasará su velo, puede ser ganado por el hombre más paciente. Aquí fluye la corriente oscura que para los más nobles puede resultar su tumba predestinada.

El único puente que cruza ese arroyo es el espíritu. La vida pasará por encima de él en un carruaje triunfal, pero tal vez sólo queden esclavos para ser enjaezados.

Fragmento escrito en 1920; inédito en vida de Benjamin. Traducido por Rodney Livingstone

Translated by Richard Bowling from Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926

Socrates (1916) – Fragmento Inédito de Walter Benjamin

SOCRATES

I
Lo más bárbaro de la figura de Sócrates es que este ser humano poco artístico [unmusisck] constituye el centro erótico de las relaciones del círculo alrededor de Platón. Sin embargo, si su amor por la capacidad general de comunicar prescinde del arte, ¿por cuáles medios lo hace tan efectivo? Por medio de la voluntad, Sócrates convierte a Eros en un esclavo de sus propósitos. Este sacrilegio se refleja en la castración de su persona. Porque, en última instancia, esto es lo que aborrecen los atenienses; su sentimiento, aunque sea subjetivamente básico, está históricamente en lo cierto. Sócrates envenena a los jóvenes; los lleva por mal camino. Su amor por ellos no es ni un “fin” ni un eidos puro, sino un medio. Este es el mago, el mayéutico que intercambia sexos, el condenado inocentemente que muere por ironía y desafiando a sus oponentes. Su ironía se nutre del horror, sin embargo, sigue siendo el reprimido, el ostracizado, el despreciado. Es incluso una especie de payaso. El diálogo socrático debe estudiarse en relación con el mito. ¿Qué pretendía Platón con él? Sócrates: con esta figura, Platón aniquila el viejo mito mientras lo adopta. Sócrates: esta es la ofrenda de la filosofía a los dioses del mito que exigen sacrificios humanos. En medio de la terrible lucha, la joven filosofía intenta afirmarse en Platón.

II
Griinewald pintó a los santos con tal grandeza que sus halos emergieron del negro más verde. Lo radiante es verdadero sólo donde se refracta en lo nocturno; sólo allí es grande, sólo allí es inexpresivo, sólo allí es asexual y sin embargo de sexualidad supramundana. El Así Radiante [Thus Radiant One] es el genio, el testigo de toda creación verdaderamente espiritual. Confirma, garantiza su asexualidad. En una sociedad de hombres, no habría genio; el genio vive a través de la existencia de lo femenino. Es cierto: la existencia de lo femenino garantiza la asexualidad de lo espiritual en el mundo. Dondequiera que surja una obra, una acción, un pensamiento sin conocimiento de esta existencia, surge algo maligno, muerto. Dondequiera que se desarrolle a partir de este femenino mismo, es sin profundidad [flat] y débil y no se abre paso en la noche. Pero dondequiera que este conocimiento sobre lo femenino prevalezca en el mundo, nace el que pertenece al genio. Toda relación extremadamente profunda entre hombre y mujer se basa en esta verdadera creatividad y está bajo el signo del genio . Porque es falso designar el contacto más íntimo entre el hombre y la mujer como amor codicioso, ya que de todas las etapas de tal amor, incluido el amor masculino-femenino, el más profundo, el más espléndido y el más erótica y míticamente perfecto, incluso el más radiante (si no fuera tan totalmente de la noche), es el amor de la mujer por la mujer. Cómo la mera existencia de la mujer garantiza la asexualidad de lo espiritual sigue siendo el mayor secreto. Los seres humanos no han podido solucionarlo. Para ellos, el genio sigue siendo no el inexpresivo que surge de la noche, sino el expresivo, explícito que vibra en la luz.

Notes on Bartleby

The heart of the eternal pyramids, it seemed, wherein, by some strange magic, through the clefts, grass-seed, dropped by birds, had sprung.

Herman Melville

After reviewing writings by various philosophers, it seems we fall closest to Hardt and Negri, along with Lazzarato: Bartleby, when taken in context, is rigor mortus setting in, and should be considered as a detained instance where both annihilation and spontaneous species activity might result; or as a black hole, a limit point where the casting off of our mule-like, burden-bearing attitude, and the disengagement from all oaths brings the self to a precipice which needs ever-new perspectives and experiences or it will lose its balance and momentum, thus falling towards decadance and death.

“of my novel covering all. If I fail in this, I’ll hang myself.”

Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoyevsky to his family and friends

Bartleby can be seen to be ‘incurably forlorn’, he displays a docile attitude (‘the domain of the spirit and subconscious’, Birth of the Prison) since he has no access to the labyrinth of his self, or to the chance and repetition of existence; though docile or passive resistance is an aggravating, often unintelligible form of resistance, like a phantom limb or unplaceable itch, in this case it manifests itself, after years of silence, at a time of Bartleby’s rotting away and eventual death. Lack of preference, one of Musashi’s 21 ideals, is not a quality of life; changing and overflowing preferences which can be feelthought, on the other hand…

“Yo me sucedo a mi mismo,” I say like that old man in Lope de Vega, smiling, as he did: for I know it absolutely cannot be remembered how old I am already, and how young I’ll still be…

F.N. Final 22 Notebooks: November 1887—March 1888

Bartleby is the emergence of burn out. Yes, this burn out can be affirmed, and one must will one’s own death… but through an active vita contemplativa which prefers fate (our actions and inactions) as it was, is and shall be: “Was that life? Well then, once more!”

A Few Perspectives [Pareceres] of Nietzsche (1940) – Jorge Luis Borges

By Jorge Luis Borges
02-11-1940

Glory is always a simplification and sometimes a perversion of reality; there is no famous man who is not a little slandered by his glory. For America and Spain, Artur Schopenhauer is primarily the author of Love, Women and Death: a rhapsody made from sensational fragments by a Levantine Publisher. Of Friedrich Nietzsche, Schopenhauer’s rebellious disciple, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, London, 1905) has already observed that he was the worldwide victim of the phrase “blond beast” and that everyone attributed his renown and limited his work to a gospel for bullies. Despite the years that have passed, Shaw’s observation has not lost its validity, although it must be admitted that Nietzsche has consented to and perhaps courted this misunderstanding. In his final years he aspired to the dignity of a prophet and knew that such a ministry is incompatible with a reasonable or explicit style. The most famous (not the best) of his books is a Judeo-German pastiche, a more artificial and far less passionate prophetic book [original in English] than Blake’s. Parallel to the composition of his intended public work, Nietzsche pointed out in other notebooks the reasoning capable of justifying this work. These arguments (and all sorts of related meditations) have been organized and edited by Alfred Bacumler and comprise two volumes of four hundred and five hundred pages each. The general work is titled – somewhat awkwardly – The Innocence of Becoming and was published in 1931 by Alfred Kröner. “In published books,” writes the editor, “Nietzsche always speaks before an adversary, always with reluctance; the foreground predominates in them, as the author himself has declared. On the other hand, his unpublished work (which covers from 1870 to 1888) registers the background of his thought, and for that reason it is not a secondary work, but a capital work.”

This fragment -1072 of the first volume- is a pathetic testimony of his loneliness: “What do I do when I smudge these pages? Watch over my old age: record for that time, when the soul cannot undertake anything new, the history of its adventures and sea voyages. In the same way I reserve music for the age when I am blind. “

It is common to identify Nietzsche with the intolerances and aggressions of racism and elevate him (or denigrate him) as a precursor of that bloody pedantry; let’s see what Nietzsche – a good European, after all – thought about such problems around 1880. “In France – he notes – nationalism has perverted character; in Germany, spirit and taste: to endure a great defeat – indeed, a definitive one – you have to be younger and healthier than the victor.”

Men and Gears (1951). Ernesto Sabáto / Part 26: Chapter 4.6 – So, What Now?

Chapter 4: The Arts and Letters in Crisis

Part 6: So, What Now?

For Berdiaeff, History has no meaning in itself: it is nothing more than a series of disasters and failed attempts. But all this accumulation of frustrations is destined to prove, precisely, that man should not look for the meaning of his life in history, in time, but outside of history, in eternity. The end of history is not immanent: it is transcendent.

Thus, for Berdiaeff, that set of calamities denounced by Ivan Karamazovit is, paradoxically, a reason for optimism, since it constitutes proof of the impossibility of any earthly solution. 

Now: it is very difficult not to fall into pure despair if we take away the belief in God from this existentialism, because we are left in a world without meaning, which ends in a definitive death. It is a bit of Verkhovensky’s conception, in The Demoniads , and therefore a part or a moment in Dostoevsky’s perplexities. But Dostoevsky is saved from total despair, as Kierkegaard is saved, because he finally believes in God. Those who, like Nietzsche or Rimbaud — or many energetic and vigorous atheists — have God as an enemy, since in order for him to exist as an enemy he must first exist. But for an atheist existentialist like Sartre, there seems to be no other way out than sheer despair.