Gone Respectable

When existentialism first became the rage in Paris, she was a slinky creature with a dubious reputation. She came from a good enough family (one grandfather was Danish Philosopher Soeren Kierkegaard, as respectable as he was gloomy), but the lady's morals were, to say the least, confused. But that never stopped anyone from making a hit in Paris.

The sidewalk existentialists said that, since nothing really mattered very much, everything mattered. Since life was too utterly futile, everybody ought to live it to the hilt. "It is absurd for us to be born," proclaimed existentialism's protector, Jean-Paul Sartre. "It is absurd for us to die." For Parisian intellectuals, desperately in quest of an interesting pose, this was the ticket.

In St. Germain des Pres, on the Left Bank, long-haired men and short-haired women worked diligently to keep the cult going. Bebop boites, hairdos, beards, evening gowns, newspapers, cocktails, hot-dog stands became "existentialist." An under-tipped taxi driver would curse: "Espece d'existentialiste." Existentialism became a familiar tourist attraction, like the Folies-Bergere. Sartre, increasingly successful and respectable, occasionally deplored the popularizations of his fad--he even felt compelled to move out of his favorite cafe, the Flore, to escape the tourists' vulgar stares. Last week existentialism took its ultimate step to solid respectability. The dignified College de France elected Existentialist Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty--an old school friend of Sartre's--to its coveted chair of philosophy.

The College (founded in 1530 by Franc,ois I) is something like the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton: its members do not have to bother with students or lectures; they get paid (about $5,000 a year) to sit and think. This Merleau-Ponty is eminently well qualified to do. A shy, retiring type, less noticed than his flashier school chum, he has been writing heavy technical works on philosophy ( The Structure of Behavior, The Phenomenology of Perception). In the existentialist cafes, Merleau-Ponty's appointment was greeted with dismay, "C,a alors," protested a young woman in blue denims and a wind jacket, "you think you are in the avant-garde and then one day, presto, you are in the rear guard."

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