Jean-Paul Sartre’s Situations – contents and a guide to the English translations

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Situations is difficult to navigate, both in French and in translation. The first edition, produced by Sartre himself, had ten, loosely thematic volumes. The second edition, produced initially by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre, reorganises material chronologically. Nine volumes of that second edition have been published so far. But this means that many essays are in different volumes of the two editions.

There are also issues with the English translations. The English book Situations is a partial translation of Volume IV, while Literary and Philosophical Essays picks essays from volumes I and III. Seagull have done important work in translating Volumes I, III and IV of the first edition complete as Critical Essays, The Aftermath of War and Portraits, but they are not explicitly labelled as translations of the series. The essays translated in those three volumes are also reprinted in their series of thematic volumes. All the texts in the 1948 edition of Situations II are translated in What is Literature? and Other Essays, published in the US, which also includes “Black Orpheus” from Situations III; but the UK editionWhat is Literature? does not include the other essays. Colonialism and Neocolonalism is a translation of volume V of the first edition. Two books translate large parts of Situations VI and VII; some of Situations VIII and IX is in another book; all of Situations X is translated. As far as I know, there are no plans to translate the second, more complete, and chronological edition.

The French Wikipedia page has a useful Liste des œuvres de Jean-Paul Sartre – though the references are to the first edition of Situations.

A photograph of the first seven volumes of the first edition of Situations.

What is below is an attempt to make sense of the first edition, with links to the useful French Wikipedia articles and Gallimard pages which give details for the second editions, and a list of the places where essays are available in English. I’m sure I’ve missed some of the pieces which appeared in journals or other collections. Corrections and additions welcome. As with the other resource pages on this site, this is intended to be a work in progress.

Abbreviations

LPE – Literary and Philosophical Essays

MT – Modern Times

SP – Situations Philosophiques

Situations I: Essais Critiques – first edition. Reprinted as Critiques littéraires. All translated in Critical Essays.

The second edition removed the final essay, which is instead in Situations II,  and added 11 other texts. For details see Gallimard and Wikipedia.

Situations II – first edition

  • Présentation des Temps Modernes[“Introducing Les Temps modernes” in “What is Literature?” and Other Essays?]
  • “La Nationalisation de la littérature” “The Nationalisation of Literature” in “What is Literature?” and Other Essays?]
  • Qu’est-ce que la littérature :
    • Qu’est-ce qu’écrire ?
    • Pourquoi écrire ?
    • Pour qui écrit-on ?
    • Situation de l’écrivain en 1947

The four parts of “Qu’est-ce que la littérature?” are reprinted as a French book of that name; translated as What is Literature? and in “What is Literature?” and Other Essays. These also contain an appendix, “Writing for One’s Age”

The Wikipedia page for Situations II says the first edition also contained “La responsabilité de l’écrivain” [“The Responsibility of the Writer”, trans. Betty Askwith, in Reflections on our age; lectures delivered at the opening session of UNESCO at the Sorbonne University, Paris, New York: Columbia University Press, 1949, 67-83], but this is not in printings I have seen.

The second edition of Situations II contains entirely different material. For details see Gallimard and Wikipedia. “Qu’est-ce que la littérature?” appears in the second edition of Situations III.

Situations III – first edition. All translated in The Aftermath of War. The first two parts are also published in English as Post-War Reflections; the other essays in different collections.

I. 

  • La République du silence
  • Paris sous l’Occupation
  • Qu’est-ce qu’un collaborateur ?
  • La Fin de la guerre

II.

  • Individualisme et conformisme aux États-Unis
  • Villes d’Amérique [translated in LPE]
  • New York, ville colonial [translated in LPE and MT]
  • Présentation

III.

  • Matérialisme et révolution [also in SP; translated in LPE; also in On Revolution]
    • Le Mythe révolutionnaire
    • La Philosophie de la révolution

IV.

V.

The second edition contains largely different essays, including “Qu’est-ce que la littérature”. For details see Gallimard and Wikipedia.

Situations IV – first edition. Parts I and II, and the first two essays of Part III are translated in Situations (1965), though the sequence is different. All translated in Portraits; reprinted in some shorter collections.

I. Préfaces

II. Tombeaux littéraires

III. Sur la peinture

The second edition contains largely different essays. For details see Gallimard and Wikipedia.

Situations V – first edition. Translated as Colonialism and Neocolonialism.

  • « D’une Chine à l’autre »
  • Le colonialisme est un système
  • « Portrait du colonisé », précédé du « Portrait du colonisateur »
  • « Vous êtes formidables »
  • « Nous sommes tous des assassins »
  • Une victoire
  • « Le Prétendant »
  • La Constitution du mépris
  • Les grenouilles qui demandent un roi
  • L’analyse du Référendum
  • Les somnambules
  • « Les Damnés de la terre »
  • La pensée politique de Patrice Lumumba

The second edition contains a different arrangement with some of the first edition essays and others. See the Gallimard and Wikipedia pages.

Situations VI: Problèmes du marxisme, 1, 1964

  • Portrait de l’aventurier (Introduction to Roger Stéphane, Portrait de l’aventurier, 1950)
  • Faux savants et faux lièvres (preface to Louis Dalmas, Communisme yougoslave, 1950)
  • Sommes-nous en démocratie ? (Les Temps Modernes 78, 1952)
  • « La Fin de l’espoir » (Préface to Juan Hermanos, La Fin de l’espoir, 1950)
  • Les communistes et la paix (Les Temps Modernes 81, 84-85, 101, 1952 and 1954) [The Communists and Peace, trans. Martha H. Fletcher with John R. Kleinschmidt, New York: George Braziller, Inc. 1968; The Communists and Peace, trans. Irene Clephane, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969. Both out of print; Clephane translation on archive.org]

The second edition contains different material from 1958 to 1964. See the Gallimard and Wikipedia pages.

Situations VII: Problèmes du marxisme, 2, 1965

  • Réponse à Claude Lefort [“A Reply to Claude Lefort”, trans. Philip R. Beck in The Communists and Peace (1968); “An Answer to Claude Lefort”, in The Communists and Peace (1969)]
  • Opération « Kanapa »
  • Le réformisme et les fétiches
  • Réponse à Pierre Naville
  • Le fantôme de Staline, Les Temps modernes 129-31 (1956-57)  [The Ghost of Stalin, trans. Martha H. Fletcher, New York: George Braziller, 1968]
  • Quand la police frappe les trois coups…
  • La démilitarisation de la culture
  • Discussion sur la critique à propos de « L’Enfance d’Ivan »

The second edition contains different material from 1964 to 1966. See the Gallimard and Wikipedia pages.

Situations VIII: Autour de 68, 1971

I. Viêt-nam : le tribunal Russell

  • « Il n’y a plus de dialogue possible »
  • Un Américain écrit à Sartre
  • Sartre répond
  • Le crime [translated as “Imperialist Morality: Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre on the War Crimes Tribunal”, New Left Review 41, 1967]
  • Lettre au président de la République et réponse
  • Sartre à de Gaulle
  • Douze hommes sans colère
  • Tribunal Russell Discours inaugural [translated as “Vietnam: Imperialism and Genocide” in Between Existentialism and Marxism, trans. John Matthews, London: Verso, 2025 (2008)]
  • De Nuremberg à Stockholm
  • Le génocide [translated as “Genocide”, New Left Review 48, 1968, omitting a short introductory paragraph]

II. La France

  • L’alibi
  • « Refusons le chantage »
  • Achever la gauche ou la guérir ?
  • Le choc en retour
  • Les bastilles de Raymond Aron
  • L’idée neuve de Mai 1968
  • Les communistes ont peur de la révolution
  • Il n’y a pas de bon gaullisme…
  • Le Mur au lycée
  • La jeunesse piégée
  • Masses, spontanéité, parti [translated as “France: Masses, Spontaneity, Party” in Between Existentialism and Marxism]
  • Le peuple brésilien sous le feu croisé des bourgeois
  • L’affaire Geismar
  • « Le tiers monde commence en banlieue »
  • Toute la vérité
  • Intervention à la conférence de presse du Comité, le 27 janvier 1970
  • Premier procès populaire à Lens

III. Israël – le monde arabe

  • Interview
  • Israël, la gauche et les Arabes

IV. Les intellectuels

  • Note
  • Plaidoyer pour les intellectuels [translated as “A Pleas for Intellectuals” in Between Existentialism and Marxism]
  • L’ami du peuple [translated as “A Friend of the People” in Between Existentialism and Marxism]

Situations VIII has been reedited with chronological rather than thematic arrangements – 1966 to 1970. It includes much of parts I and II of the original along with some texts from the original Situations XI.  For the Wikipedia page describing the content see here. 

Situations IX: Mélanges, 1972

I. Sur moi-même

  • Les écrivains en personne [translated as “The Purposes of Writing” in Between Existentialism and Marxism]
  • L’écrivain et sa langue [translated as “The Writer and his Language”, in Politics and Literature, trans. J.A. Underwood, London: Calder & Boyars, 1973]
  • L’anthropologie
  • Sartre par Sartre [originally published as “The Itinerary of a Thought”; also in Between Existentialism and Marxism]

II. Textes

  • Palmiro Togliatti [BL48]
  • L’universel singulier [translated as “Kierkegaard: The Singular Universal” in Between Existentialism and Marxism]
  • Mallarmé (1842-1898) [translated as “Mallarmé: The Poetry of Suicide” in Between Existentialism and Marxism]
  • Sainte Georges et le dragon, réflexion esthétique [translated as “Tintoretto: St George and the Dragon” in Between Existentialism and Marxism]
  • Le socialisme qui venait du froid, (préface to Antonin Liehm, Trois générations, 1969) [translated as “Czechoslovakia: The Socialism that Came in from the Cold” in Between Existentialism and Marxism; part in MT]
  • Je – Tu – Il 
  • « Coexistences » 

III. Psychanalyse et polémique

  • L’homme au magnétophone [“The Man with the Tape-Recorder” in Between Existentialism and Marxism; also in MT]
  • Dialogue psychanalytique [“Psychoanalytic Dialogue” in Between Existentialism and Marxism]
  • Réponse à Sartre, par J.-B. Pontalis [“Reply to Sartre = Pontalis” in Between Existentialism and Marxism]
  • Réponse à Sartre, par Bernard Pingaud [“Reply to Sartre – Pingaud” in Between Existentialism and Marxism]

Situations IX has been reedited with chronological rather than thematic arrangements – 1970 to 1975. For the Wikipedia pages describing the content see here. 

Situations X: Politique et autobiographique – first edition, 1976. Translated as Life/Situations: Essays Written and Spoken, trans. Paul Auster and Lydia Davis, New York: Pantheon, 1977, with different order of essays; reprinted as Sartre in the Seventies: Interviews and Essays, London: André Deutsch, 1978 (both out of print; Life/Situations is on archive.org).

I. Textes politiques 

  • Le procès de Burgos [“The Burgos Trial”; preface to Gisèle Halimi’s book]
  • Les maos en France [“The Maoists in France”; preface to Michèle Manceaux]
  • Justice et État [“Justice and the State”]
  • Élections, piège à cons [Les Temps modernes 318, 1973; “Elections: A Trap for Fools”]

II. Entretiens sur moi-même

  • Sur « L’Idiot de la famille » (1971) [“On The Idiot of the Family”]
  • Simone de Beauvoir interroge Jean-Paul Sartre [“Simone de Beauvoir Interviews Sartre”; also available as “Simone de Beauvoir questions Jean-Paul Sartre”, New Left Review 97, 1976]
  • Autoportrait à soixante-dix ans [“Self-Portrait at Seventy”; also in The New York Review of Books; Le Nouvel observateur 23, 30 juin et 7 juillet 1975; excerpts in Amélie Oksenberg Rorty ed. The Many Faces of Philosophy: Reflections from Plato to Arendt, Oxford University Press, 2003]

Volume X of the second edition of Situations has not yet been published. All of the essays in Volume X of the first edition appear in Volume IX of the second edition, along with some texts from the original Volume VIII and IX. It is likely that the new series Volume X will collect Sartre’s texts from 1975 until his death in 1980, mostly interviews, since he was unable to write in his last years.

Politics and Literature also includes pieces not in either the original or revised edition of Situations.

  • “A Theoretician in Bolivia” – “Théoricien en Bolivie !”, Le Point, July 1967.
  • “Revolution and the Intellectual” – “L’intellectuel face à la revolution”, Le Point 13, January 1968.
  • “Myth and Reality in the Theatre”, “Mythe et réalité du théâtre”, Le Point, January 1967; also included in Un théâtre de situations, eds. Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka, Paris: Gallimard, 1973.
  • “A Structure of Language” – “Une structure du langage”, Le Point 8, February 1967.

The reprint of Politics and Literature, trans. J.A. Underwood, London: Calder, 2019 has the same essays as the 1973 edition, but in a different order.

The other pieces in Politics and Literature are a good indication that the new edition of Situations is not a ‘complete works’. 

[Updated: 18 July 2024 – added a link to a translation of “Black Orpheus”; 28 May 2025 – added a reference to Between Existentialism and Marxism; 27-28 September 2026 – general updating and added references to where texts are reprinted in the Seagull thematic collections Occasional Philosophical Essays; On Bataille and Blanchot; On Novels and Novelists; On Camus; On Merleau-Ponty; On Poetry; Venice and Rome; On Modern Art and On Revolution; 30 September 2026 – volumes VI and VII added; 6-7 October 2026 further minor edits; 11 October 2026 – link to a 1951 translation of “Black Orpheus”; 16 October 2026 – volumes VIII, IX and X added, and the additional essays in Politics and Literature]

There are lots of other research resources on this site, relating to Foucault, Bataille, Lefebvre, Althusser, Sloterdijk, Binswanger and others.