Jean-Paul Sartre
FOR WHOM DOES ONE WRITE? "'
In the first centuries of our era the spiritual was a captive
of Christianity, or,
if
you prefer, Christianity itself was the spiritual,
but
alienated.
It was the spirit m4de object. Hence, it
is
evident that
instead of appearing as the common and forever renewed enterprise
of all men, it manifested itself at first as the specialty of .a few. Medie–
val society had spiritual needs, and to take care of them set up a
body of specialists who were recruited by co-optation. Today we
consider reading and writing as rights of man and, at the same
tilne, as means which are .almost as natural and spontaneous as oral
language for communicating with the Other. That is why the most
uncultured peasant
is
a potential reader. In the time of the clerks,
however, they were techniques reserved strictly for professionals.
They were not practiced for their own sake, like spiritual exercises.
Their
aim
was not to obtain access to that large and vague humanism
which was later to be called "the humanities." They were means
solely of preserving and transmitting Christian ideology. To be able
to read was to have the necessary tool for acquiring knowledge of
sacred texts and their innumerable commentaries; to be able to write
was to
be
able to comment. Other men no more aspired to possess
these professional techniques than we .aspire today to acquire those of
the cabinetmaker or the paleographer
if
we practice other profes–
Sions.
The barons counted on the clerks to produce spirituality and
watch over it. By themselves they were incapable of exercising control
over writers .as the public does today, and they were unable to dis-
*
This is another section of Sartre's
Qtlest-ce que la litterature?,
the first
part of which was published in the January number under the title of "What
is Writing?" Further selections will appear in later issues. Early next autumn
the Philosophical Library plans to bring out the entire work.
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