- Home »
- Issues »
- 28/2 – Fall 2023 »
- Articles »
“Man is always a Sorcerer to Man.”
Sartre and Leiris on the Magic of the Social
Abstract
This article sets out to reinterpret Sartre’s famous analysis of the look in Being and Nothingness from the cultural-anthropological perspective developed in the posthumous Notebooks for an Ethics. In the latter, he comments on some passages by Michel Leiris on the cult of the zar, a North-African belief and practice involving spirit possession. The article also seeks to show the influence of cultural-anthropological thought on Sartre, asking about what new light these rather unexpected analyses may shed on his thinking about the relationship to the Other. I start with the doctrine of the look as we know it from Being and Nothingness. Then I examine how, in Sartre’s Notebooks, his account takes some new directions. The link with possession, already present—though underdeveloped—in Being and Nothingness, becomes clear. I briefly introduce Michel Leiris in order to interpret Sartre’s comments on the zar cult as described by Leiris. This opens up a new perspective on religion and the social. Finally, I offer some concluding considerations.
Keywords
- Leiris Michel
- Lévy-Bruhl Lucien
- magic
- spirit-possession
- The Look
- zar
- cultural anthropology
- Sartre Jean-Paul
Cite this article
Welten, Ruud. 2023. “‘Man is always a Sorcerer to Man.’ Sartre and Leiris on the Magic of the Social.” Forum Philosophicum 28 (2): 223–41. doi:10.35765/forphil.2023.2802.14
Bibliography
Albers, Irene. 2008. “Mimesis and Alterity: Michel Leiris’s Ethnography and Poetics of Spirit Possession.” French Studies 62 (3): 271–89. https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/knn028. Davies, Howard. 1997. “Sartre: The Uses and Abuses of Anthropology and Sociology.” Modern and Contemporary France 5 (4): 433–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489708456397. Hewitt, Leah D. 1992. “Between Movements: Leiris in Literary History.” In On Leiris, edited by Marc Blanchard, Yale French Studies, 77–90. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Keck, Frédéric. 2008. Lucien Lévy-Bruhl entre philosophie et anthropologie. Contradiction et participation. Paris: CNRS Éditions. Kojève, Alexandre. 1947. Introduction à la lecture de Hegel. Paris: Gallimard. Lacan, Jacques. 1998. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Leiris, Michel. 1966. “L’ethnographe devant le colonialisme.” In Brisées, 141–63. Paris: Gallimard. —. 1989. Brisées: Broken Branches. Translated by Lydia Davis. San Francisco: North Point Press. —. 1992. Journal 1922–1989. Paris: Gallimard. —. 1996. Miroir de l’Afrique. Paris: Quarto Gallimard. —. 2018. Le Sacré dans la vie quotidienne. Paris: Éditions Allia. Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien. 2010. La mentalité primitive. Paris: Flammarion. Lewis, I. M. 2003. Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism. London: Routledge. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2001. Psychologie et pédagogie de l’enfant: Cours de Sorbonne 1949-1952. Paris: Lagrasse. O’Shiel, Daniel. 2019. Sartre and Magic. Being, Emotion and Philosophy. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1947. Baudelaire. Paris: Gallimard. —. 1956. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library. —. 1992. Notebooks for an Ethics. Translated by David Pellauer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. —. 1993. The Emotions. Outline of a Theory. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York: Carol. —. 2001a. Black Orpheus. Translated by S. W. Allen. New York: French & European Pubns. —. 2001b. Colonialism and Neocolonialism. Translated by Azzedine Haddour, Steve Brewer and Terry McWilliams. London: Routledge. —. 2010. Critical Essays. Translated by Chris Turner. Chicago: Seagull Books. Weber, Max. 2001. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. London: Routledge.