Sartre's second century

Sartre, Intentionality and Praxis 101
which develops a reading of Being and Time, not as an existentialist
treatise, but as an important statement of an institutional-social theory of
mind and language.
Conclusion
Over the course of Sartre's long and prolific career, we have seen an
increasing complexity appear in his treatment of intentionality, Husserl's
"fundamental idea". The interplay between human praxis and world
becomes inspired by detailed descriptions of historical events and
individuals, such as Gustave Flaubert and Jean Genet. Sartre's ontology of
praxis becomes overlaid by attempts to do full justice to the particularity
of individual freedom and the details of the individual's "exterior" and
historical situation.
It was Chomsky who wrote that a central goal of the study of language
"is to determine the meaning of a word [...] in a 'shared public' language,
a notion that remains to be formulated in some coherent terms". 38 It is
arguably just such a project Sartre may be said to have undertaken. We are
perhaps only beginning to understand the importance of Sartre's
contribution to such an endeavour. Perhaps his most important legacy in
this regard is the claim that language as public can only be understood
within the context of a more encompassing view of human action, history
and spontaneity. Although Sartre has reinterpreted Hegel's dictum that
true history is the history of freedom in Marxist terms, Sartre's conception
of freedom and praxis signals his continuing legacy as a philosopher of
freedom. "Possibility", Sartre states, "lies at the very heart of the particular
action, (it is) the presence of the future as that which is lacking and that
which, by its very absence, reveals reality." 39 But since it is an embedded
freedom that is at stake, a freedom embedded within the public world of
the practico-inert, perhaps at this point it is Nietzsche who deserves the
last word:
What does commonness really mean? Words are acoustic signs for
concepts; concepts, however, are more or less precise figurative signs for
frequently recurring and simultaneous sensations, for groups of sensations.
Using the same words is not enough to ensure mutual understanding: we
must also use the same words for the same category of inner experiences;
ultimately, we must have the same experiences in common [...] when
people have lived together for a long time under similar conditions of
Noam Chomsky, New Horizons, 148.
Sartre, Search for a Method, 94.