History of World War II

World War II Book Review: The Mandarins

The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir has been described as an existentialist roman a clef, or fictionalized reality of the intellectual impact of the Vichy government upon the leftist elite of French society. In the novel, Simone de Beauvoir turns a merciless analytical eye not only to herself and to her own life, but also to the literary versions of her two male lovers and to the other members of the circle inhabited by Sartre's followers at the time. By using a novel form, de Beauvoir is able to examine the philosophy of existentialism, as well as put her own life and the personal lives of the philosophers around her in an historical as well as in a psychological context.

Existentialism provides perhaps one of the most often parodied and superficially accessible rubrics of 20th century philosophy. It is easy, of course, to assert that life is meaningless, and that the individual citizen and soul is completely, horribly free. But how and why did such a philosophy arise in France in the aftermath of the Second World War? Furthermore, what does it mean, truly, to be the victim of an oppressive regime and yet also part of a system that was part of such oppression? Such were the questions the intellectuals of post-Vichy, World War II France were forced to answer, that drove them to create the negating philosophy of existentialism and also to engage in the sort of transgressing sexual behavior chronicled in the text.

Thus, when one of the author's characters states in anger and in apparent despair, that life's events "are never as important as they seem; they change, they end, and above all, when all is said and done, everyone dies. That settles everything," these are not mere, airy assertions on the part of the speaker, suffering a state of post-adolescent angst in an adult body, but the anger of a philosopher and intellectual at a particular and horrible juncture of French history. (359)

Europe had just overseen tremendous death and destruction, and the virtual demolition of whole classes of people. The personal aspects of daily life suddenly seemed meaningless, and old morality seemed dead, an inefficient and ineffective guide to modern life. If traditional modalities of relation, such as marriage and the church, had not protected France from the Nazi regime, much less collaborating with the Nazi regime. How could these moral structures become valid guides once again, now that the war had come to an end?

But philosophical existentialism is not merely an assertion of the meaninglessness quality of traditional structures of morality or the horrible freedom of human existence. The philosophy of existentialism also expresses rage and frustration at a world where anything is possible, including the subversion of human values, the values that people once thought were what made them truly human, rather than merely beasts. The events of World War II were far more bestial than even animals ever committed. The old order had been stripped away, but chaos and famine still reigned in the streets in an entirely arbitrary way -- the good died, and the unworthy were still able to life, and in some cases to be loved. Where was morality, where was guidance, when humans needed it most?

The protagonists of the novel are continually faced with common callousness, and uncommon amounts of greed and blatant desire. The desire to transgress old morality is sharpened in the face of hunger and privation, rather than dulled by it. The heart may continue to beat but the question if the beloved heart beats "for something," or someone is questionable at best, and laughable more often than not. (610). The depth of this wrestling with preexisting and preconceived notions of human morality and love that now seem out of date is manifested primarily in the cruel nature of the sexual dalliances of the novel's protagonists, all part of existential, intellectual circle of friends testing the limits of sexual exploration without moral barriers.

After the Vichy government had betrayed French ideals about nation and humanity, crossing the bounds of marriage and fidelity seem initially superficial although such existential attitudes towards sexuality become difficult to negotiate, even for philosophers, in reality. How is France still relevant, asks the novel, when its Vichy government's collaboration with the enemy has diminished its stature in the international community? How is love relevant in such a world, much less fidelity? How can a nation that split between Free France and Vichy France during the war become united, even in the face of continued regional divisions? How can two human beings become united for a lifetime, or even as friends and partners, when the values one was taught as a child are continually flouted by the leaders of the world?

The solution of radical sexual sharing seems intellectually obvious, in light of the flouting of even more basic forms of human decency by governance. But such sexual transgressions, although initially attractive, do not really change society. The novel shows how seductive using one's personal life to flout convention may be, but ultimately to merely engage in sexual discourse is to shut one's self off from public discourse and political life, and the realities of what is transpiring in the historical reality of the streets.

The radical embrace of the personal, after all, although it might seem anti-fascist in spirit, also allowed France's intellectuals to ignore the realities of World War II and the horrors of the Vichy collaboration and the Nazi regime. The personal is political may be a popular leftist slogan, but engaging in personal relationships does not give a true leftist intellectual the right to eschew the political -- sexual transgression in and of itself, is not a political act, suggests this mother of feminism, de Beauvoir.

How to engage with one another in a communal way that is politically transgressing of conventional morality that is not merely sexual, but has a real economic application in praxis? Communism provides one solution, the solution of an international and communal order to human class structures and economic life, and the idealism that property matters for nothing, and the material, rather than the ideal is paramount. But communism can also eradicate the personal and the need for human affection, yet another reason why the initial sexual solutions provided by the stand-ins of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and de Beauvoir are so seductive, even as they are ineffectual in really changing society.

All of the aforementioned characters flout conventional sexual morality and marital boundaries, to demonstrate their newfound freedom in the face of the death of all morality. Briefly, they attempt to see what it is like to live merely for pleasure, desire, and the impulse of the moment. But de Beauvoir makes this clear that to live in such a fashion is to court personal and politically diverting pain and to create potential and politically distracting tragedies of the heart. Perhaps because she draws so heavily from her own personal life and loves when discussing such details, her observations of the failures of 'open relationships' are especially sharp.

Even if one reads the novel only as thinly fictionalized account of de Beauvoir's affairs, the novel provides no final solution, grotesque pun unintended, for how to use one's personal life as an effective political springboard. Anne, who is clearly de Beauvoir's stand-in over the course of the novel does not find it easy to transgress conventional morality, and feels little sense of satisfaction in her transgressions. But she does not find an appropriate venue with which to express herself other than her sexuality, perhaps because of her 'plight' as a female in a misogynistic French society, and a masculine 'clique' and ethos that is present even in leftist circles