"Being and Nothingness" was based on Sartre's interpretion of
Heidegger's phenomenology of "
Dasein" (being there, one's experience of the present) as "thrown", or random and uncontrollable. Despite the difficulties he was experiencing during this time for his never revoked alignment with
National Socialism and the ways in which Sartre's enthusiasm benefitted him, Heidegger felt he had no choice but to denounce Sartre and his views in the essay, "Exisentialism is Not a
Humanism" (in direct confrontation with Sartre's
apologia "Existentialism is a Humanism"). In the mid
1950s, following
Nikita Kruschev's
revelation of the actual
history of the
Soviet Union under
Stalin, Sartre's undaunted
vamping for the
Communist Party was seen by most as
grotesque and
distasteful. His
rationale was that in the face of the
meaninglessness of
existence, all that mattered was that a
decision be made, even if it was
absurd. His
presence in
French media continued but his
thought was utterly
discredited amongst French
philosophers by the time of
Michel Foucault's emergence into prominence in the early
1960s. Of course, this was just the time that he was becoming well known and influential in the
U.S. This
phenomenon is quite familiar and continues.
Jacques Derrida has had no
credibility in
France since the late
1970s but throughout the late
1980s and
1990s his
philosophy of
Deconstruction and the
post-modern (aka Po-Mo)
marginal was tremendously influential. It is perhaps to blame for the bloat of
Cultural Studies prevalent in
American academia.
Nonetheless, Sarte's relationship with Simone de Beauvoir earns him a bit of a place in 20th century history.