RONALD HAYMAN
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theoretical generalization, but he is at his best as a writer when he is
drawing more on fresh memories of experience and observation than
on his reflective abstractions. In
L 'Etre et ie Neant
the brilliant analysis
of interpersonal relationships seems no further removed from
Sartre's private experience than the examples based on observation
of cafe life. But implicit in his later much more grandiose idea of
totalizing history is the dismissal of private experience as irrelevant.
This is requisite anyway if the intellectual is to do what Sartre said
he must do - put himself entirely in the service of the masses.
In this essay I have approximated to the method Sartre uses in
his biographies . I have tried to give a synchronic impression of the
whole man, summarizing tendencies while generalizing about traits
which remained more or less constant and providing only the sketch–
iest indications of development from one phase of his life to the next.
He stuck more rigidly than most men do to the strategies he evolved
for dealing with everyday life. He worked, for instance, between
fixed hours and regularly went abroad at the same time each year.
But one of his reasons for needing rigid patterns was that he cul–
tivated discontinuity so assiduously. He loved changing his mind,
rejecting principles that had been vital, making a fresh start. He was
consistent in nothing- not even in his love for freedom . But the full
story of his divagations needs to be told chronologically.
