JASON SLAYS JEAN PAUL SARTRE

read 'Jason and the Argonauts' today with class, which reminded me of several things. first, the Argo was a talking ship and secondly the story contains the myth of Orpheus. magical elements in 'Jason' are opposed to general theme of utter cruelty, how callous the gods/nature is, how unremitting, inescapable the torments of the afterlife. what makes life living? well,slaying the sea monster, escaping with the girl...hard to see. nature as blind, indifferent, nihilistic force, man caught up in it. unhappiness the only result, Sisyphean torments afterwards. total indifference to acts and their consequence while alive. all the dead become shades. Hades an existentialist trope, the Greeks touched upon this but couldnt muster the courage for a Sartean 'project', such as his (Sartre's) Marxism-Leninism. Ultimately Sartre's 'intellectual dishonesty' diminished his reputation (a monster) but shifted power away from the Gaullists so that Communists had a wider influence. as they do today.