Sartre on the Nobel Prize (1964)

[_delirium]

This essay has had quite a few lives: in Sweden, in France, in the USA; during the Cold War, after it; now oddly enough, I meet it on HN. It's so well written, in fact, that a more playful Swedish Academy might have awarded the prize to Sartre in a subsequent year, citing this essay itself...

[consumer]

I was just looking for a citation to Clay Shirky's thought about organizations' first priority being the survival of the organization, and on the "Here Comes Everybody" wiki page, some... guy was referenced as "Nobel-prize winning whatever whatsisname": would his ideas about groups have been cited if he hadn't won that prize? And would I've been looking up something Shirky said if he we're'nt Professor of New York at New Media University?

Joy is in being, not having; where one was over some honor flung: to've been at Woodstock in sixty-nine, Manhattan in oh-one, the net/web in $year, off the reef at Barbados, the shoulder of Orion... Awards and titles seem the recluse of rats. Those who got instead of go'd.

[PythonicAlpha]

Groucho Marx said:

   I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member

Sartre sharply found out, that to be an independent thinker "about" society, he must not be entangled to much "into" society.

[blinkingled]

Sartre also said : Hell is other people.

[spectrum]

Richard Feynman on the Nobel prize when the interviewer asks him if his research was worth the Nobel prize that he won: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZF4vBreqmE

[mironathetin]

Feynman is splendid, like always. For my understanding, his reasoning is much clearer and less artificially complex than Sartres.

Thanks for posting this.

[knodi123]

I loved this quote:

"This permits me to collaborate with all those who seek to bring the two cultures closer together. I nonetheless hope, of course, that “the best man wins.” That is, socialism."

[swartkrans]

I wonder how he felt about his fame, you can't shake that off. Maybe I misunderstand his argument, but it seems like he could have used that argument to just always write anonymously.

[patothon]

Sartre only represents himself. Not any institution like the Nobel. That's his argument. So writing in his name is ok.

[d--b]

what the article doesn't say though, being written by Sartre, is that Sartre was pretty pissed off that Camus did get the prize before he did.

[ghshephard]

There is a saying, "Everyone has a price" - Notch's was $2 Billion. I wonder what Sartre's was. Clearly more than 250,000 crowns.

[robomc]

There's really no analogy there at all.

[kghose]

Pompous.

[pastProlog]

The board of the Nobel Foundation bestowing awards on those it deems worthy, or Sartre for not playing along with it all?

[chevas]

Precisely. Just accept the damn honor. I am not impressed. True humility does not rob others the joy of giving, but accepts the gift being offered.