A full draft of chapter 6 is now available to download.
It argues for a new interpretation of Sartre’s play Huis Clos (aka No Exit or, better, In Camera).
More specifically, it argues that the usual reading of the play’s characters as three mortals facing an eternity of torturing one another is mistaken, and that the play is rather set at the Last Judgment, with Inez as an undercover prosecutor attempting to bring Garcin and Inez to recognise and regret their basic sin in front of us, the audience, who sit in judgment.
On this interpretation, the play dramatises Sartre’s theory that other people are hell only if we are committed to the project of seeing ourselves as having a particular fixed essence, which is what Sartre sees at this point in his career as the original sin of bad faith.
Please do let me know what you think of it, either by posting in the Comments thread to this news item or sending me an email.
Draft chapters are available from the Book page.