Recently I spent a night in bed turning and tossing and hoping that sleep would arrive. It initially was a terrible experience. Probably many reading this column have had similar experiences. But even a sleepless night can provide a moment of grace. Friends tell me that when they cannot sleep, reciting the rosary helps them to be at peace and to sleep.
During the night I am referring to, I did not recite a rosary but allowed all sorts of thoughts to pass through my head. Guess about whom I started thinking? The atheistic existentialist, Jean Paul Sartre, about whom I had written two columns in this series on existentialism, somehow entered my mind. There would seem to be no relation between atheist Sartre and the rosary.
Before Sartre entered my mind I would never have guessed that he would. If I had a list of people whom I thought might enter my mind, Sartre would not have been at the top of the list. Eventually I realized that he was on my mind because I had recently read a fascinating essay in Commonweal magazine about him. The essay, written by Jack Nuelle, was entitled “A Great Void, A Great Expectancy.” The following is the opening paragraph:
“It’s Christmas Eve, 1940, in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp on the border of occupied Luxembourg, four hours from Paris. Outside a war rages. The Nazis have taken much of Europe, and France is torn between resistance and collaboration. Inside the camp, in front of an audience of fifteen thousand rapt POWs, atheist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and a flock of priests perform an original Nativity play, ‘Bariona, or the Son of Thunder.’ … After the curtain, everyone onstage hurries to midnight Mass ”(p. 62, Commonweal, December 2023).
I am not certain how many times I read the essay. It seemed incredible. The most famous atheist of the 20th Century wrote a Nativity play in which he and a group of priests performed. Neither Jack Neule nor I am trying to “baptize” Sartre. Apparently the French existentialist remained an atheist throughout his life, but Neule’s essay portrays a Sartre I never imagined. He seemed to be open to religious meanings in a way that I never imagined.
Noting that Sartre claimed that he had never abandoned his atheism, Neule writes the following:
“However, by the time of his death in 1980, his thinking had changed at least somewhat. Sartre admitted that Jewish eschatology — in which a new world will emerge from the old, in which the dead will be reborn — was appealing to him. As he put it, ‘It’s the beginning of the existence of men who live for each other.’
“Around the same time, Sartre admitted to Simon de Beauvoir that ‘there are elements of the idea of God that remain in us and that cause us to see the world with some divine aspects.’ And even with his atheism still firmly in place, he couldn’t help but recognize himself as created: ‘I don’t see myself as so much dust that has appeared in the world, but as a being that was expected, prefigured, called forth … this idea of a creating hand that created me refers me back to God’ ”(p.63).
Years ago, my niece, who knows the city of Paris very well, was giving me a tour of the city. She brought me to the café at which Sartre often presented his philosophy to those present. I confess that I found the experience moving. After my “sleepless night” I thought of how much Sartre’s philosophy influenced thousands and also how I had used his philosophy in my classes to invite students to take a more nuanced and more profound view of God.
Nuelle’s essay has given me a new view of Sartre’s philosophy. To express my new view simply, I would say that Sartre was not as much of an atheist as I have thought. In some indirect way Sartre’s philosophy, which has influenced my thinking, perhaps may have helped some of my students to deepen their views of God. I am thinking that perhaps the thoughts that Sartre shared with friends and students in that small café in Paris somehow crossed the Atlantic and through my teaching have helped students review and renew their faith in God. Of course there is no way that I could know that, but I find the possibility fascinating and encouraging. From a café in Paris to my classroom, into my mind and the minds of my students, into my sleepless night and then into this column. Indeed the Holy Spirit moves in mysterious ways, and they are wonderful ways.
I believe that the Spirit is present and operative in our lives in countless ways of which we may not be aware. I feel very grateful to God. And also to Sartre.
Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. He presents two 15-minute talks from his lecture series on the Catholic Novel, 10:30 a.m. Monday through Friday on NET-TV.