# Merleau-Ponty leaves Les Temps modernes over Sartre’s Communist line

Date: 1955

## The fact

By the mid-1950s Maurice Merleau-Ponty had left Les Temps modernes, unable to share [Jean-Paul Sartre](/people/jean-paul-sartre)’s Communist fellow-travel after Korea and the camp fights, a public fracture of the 1945 founding group. It is cohesion cost inside the review Sartre dominated. Merleau’s agency in leaving is his; Sartre’s line is the pressure.

## Context

1945 TM was a coalition. 1952 peace essays broke it. Sharing the masthead’s history does not erase the squeeze. Aron was already out. Camus was out. The circle shrank into a camp. Do not treat later academic Merleau as this resignation.

Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, museums, and adaptations are not converted into extra lifetime acts.

## Evidence and sources

SEP at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/ independently treats the Merleau split as a documented cost of the Communist years. Britannica at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Paul-Sartre independently notes the inner-circle fractures of the 1950s.

Official or archival record: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Jean-Paul Sartre (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

## Significance

Cohesion path, modest-to-mid weight. High confidence on the split. 1945 founding remains an improving neighbour.

Confidence is stated on the impact path, not hidden in adjectives. Merleau’s exit is not the 1945 first issue. Mixed effects of Merleau-Ponty leaves Les Temps modernes over Sartre’s Communist line are separate paths.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Merleau-Ponty left TM over Sartre’s Communist line in the mid-1950s. Not established: a unique circulation-drop figure from the split. Contribution is recorded as Sartre’s fellow-travel made the review uninhabitable for Merleau-Ponty, who resigned. Both men authored the split. Complex. The impact note is A founding co-editor driven out over Stalinist alignment is a cohesion path: a review that cannot hold its own philosophers. The dated heading stays Merleau-Ponty leaves Les Temps modernes over Sartre’s Communist line on 1955-01-01, not a later statue, UNESCO listing, or school film. Printers, unnamed clerks, and later editors may appear in the same file without becoming this instrument. Later competitions, monuments, and adaptations are refused as extra lifetime acts of this person on this date.

Shared responsibility is part of Merleau-Ponty leaves Les Temps modernes over Sartre’s Communist line. Naming Jean-Paul Sartre does not delete co-authors, institutions, or later transmitters. The lag from 1955-01-01 to any measured indicator is not treated as zero. Alternative explanations — weather, other armies, later statutes, or independent cultural change — remain live where the sources do not close them.

The attached driver is [social-cohesion](/drivers/social-cohesion). The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself.

If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Jean-Paul Sartre: https://factrail.ai/people/jean-paul-sartre

## Drivers

- Social Cohesion: https://factrail.ai/drivers/social-cohesion

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Paul-Sartre
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/sartre-merleau-1955