► Sartre, Camus and the CIA ► ► The FBI files on Being and Nothingness ► The two most famous post-war French writers were closely watched by the CIA over several decades. From 1945 onwards, J Edgar Hoover’s FBI spied on Camus and Sartre. The investigation soon turned into a philosophical inquiry… The american secret services were interested to know if existentialism and the philosophy the absurd were off shoots of communism. Ironically, the agents in charge of their surveillance had to study philosophy in order to decipher the hacked phone calls, the stolen documents, as well as the works of the two thinkers. Andy Martin (professor of French at Cambridge, and author of The Boxer and the Goalkeeper) is currently researching the extensive files of the FBI on French philosophers. To know more, read his recent essay on the topic… prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/camus-sartre-fbi-hoover#.Uuoy8fb-XEV
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 12:05:29 +0000
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