Sartre intended to “write for his time.” Yet his work still resonates today, both in France and around the world. What is the source of this enduring or renewed interest? How does Sartre’s work help us to think about today’s world?
In French-speaking countries, philosophical Sartre studies have experienced a renaissance over the past twenty years. Numerous conferences are organized, doctoral theses and collective works are written to interpret and analyze Sartre’s philosophy, which has become an integral part of the “tradition.”
The influence of Sartre’s philosophy on his contemporaries (Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Bourdieu, etc.) has been carefully studied. These receptions are often critical: they denounce the idealism or abstraction of Being and Nothingness, the primacy of history in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, or its relationship with Marxism, whether it be its influence or, on the contrary, its poor integration into Sartre’s philosophy.
In the English-speaking world, a similar phenomenon can be observed, where Sartre’s phenomenology has become an important reference in the analytical philosophy of mind (Moran 2001; Morag 2024). In these approaches, Sartre’s work is not studied for its own sake but as a theoretical resource that can be appropriated. Recent work has shown, moreover, that the reception of Sartre in the United States and England is not limited to Existentialism’s initial vogue in the postwar period and the disqualifying judgment issued by certain logical positivists (see Fulton 1999; Germain 2019; Ayer 1945). The recent publication of a new scholarly translation of Being and Nothingness by the English philosopher Sarah Richmond attests to the relevance of this thought for a new generation (see also Webber 2018).
This philosophical discussion is fascinating, but it is only one dimension of the reception of Sartre’s work.
On the one hand, philosophical studies are not the only ones to work on, with, and against Sartre’s corpus. Postcolonial/decolonial studies have found in Sartre's work conceptual tools, arguments, and theses to defend decolonial movements but also to support their own theoretical elaborations. This relationship is supported by the texts Sartre wrote directly on racism, anti-Semitism, colonization, and decolonization: from his “Reportages aux Etats-Unis” to the preface to Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, by way of “Black Orpheus,” Anti-Semite and Jew, or passages from Notebooks for an Ethics or the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre was always involved in these issues and his readership followed his various texts, as well as his various trips to North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, for example.
Other fields of study can be considered: for example, authors in gender studies read Sartre’s work critically, either to denounce its androcentrism or to draw inspiration and adapt some of his analyses to a context different from that envisioned by Sartre. The same is true in critical phenomenology, where Sartre, alongside Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir, has emerged as an essential thinker.
On the other hand, the geographical reception is worth studying: whether in Latin America, North Africa, the Middle East, or Asia, regional reception is taking place to such an extent that we can speak of Arab existentialism (Di-Capua 2012; 2018) or “Black existentialism” (Gordon 2008), for example. It would be important not only to bring to light the origins of this influence, as some studies have begun to do (Betschart & Werner [eds.] 2020), but above all its originality both in relation to Sartre’s work and in comparison with other receptions. What perspectives are opened up today by these differentiated global receptions?
The persistence of Sartre’s influence raises a theoretical question: what makes a philosophical work “appropriable” by historical and cultural contexts different from its own? How do concepts travel from one disciplinary field to another, from one geographical area to another, sometimes at the cost of substantial transformations?
This call for papers thus aims to bring together contributions that study the reception of Sartre in fields of study that are not only those of philosophy, but also literature, or militant feminist or decolonial movements, in particular. Finally, the issue will also welcome articles that focus on the reception of Sartre’s work by non-European authors. Beyond simply mapping influences, the issue aims to bring together contributions that question the mechanisms and problems involved in these multiple receptions. How do Sartrean concepts transform when they change context? What are the criteria for evaluating the philosophical fruitfulness of these different appropriations?
Proposals for contributions must be sent to the following address by December 21, 2026: impactsartretoday@gmail.com. Both English and French language proposals will be considered.
Proposals must not exceed 750 words (including the title and notes). They must be submitted as a PDF document for review by the call coordinators.
Authors whose proposals are selected will submit their full papers (limited to 5000 words) by June 15, 2027.
Initial feedback will be provided in October 2027, with the final version of the paper due in January 2028.