Sartre.

A systematic reading of the entire corpus of Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophical writings, Peter Caws' study begins with the juvenilia
and the early academic works, following the development of Sartre's thought through to the third volume of L'Idiot de la famille, the
monumental study of Flaubert. After indicating the place of Sartre's philosophy in relation to trends more familiar to English-speaking readers, and offering a conspecttlS of his philosophical output, the study shows that many of the themes of the two major works (Being and Nothingness and the Critique of Dialectical Reason) are to be found in well-developed form in the early writings, and that there is a relatively continuous transition from the existentialism of Being and Nothingness to the Marxism of the Critique of Dialectical Reason, especially when the intermediate works - the studies of Baudelaire and Genet, and the political writings - are taken into account. Special attention is paid to the changing concept of freedom, from the heroic indetermination of existentialism to the almost total conditioning of Marxism, and to the working out of the concepts of seriality and the evolution of groups in the Critique. Finally, Peter Caws discusses the unexpectedly rich philosophical content of L' Idiot de la famille, which while devoted to Flaubert takes up again the question of history left unresolved in the Critique.