JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing
JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing
Politics301merchantile, professional and capital-owning parliamentary class. Thiscapitalist class or bourgeoisie will eventually be overthrown by the proletariator working class whose labour they exploit for profit. After a short but severe‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in which the capitalist class and its state isdestroyed a classless communist society is established. This historicistaccount and the socio-economic models it entails are essential to Marxismbut existentialism contains nothing like it.Marxism is a social theory. Existentialism is an extreme form ofindividualism. If we ask the question ‘who acts?’ existentialism and Marxismprovide radically different answers. For the Marxist it is the group,paradigmatically the socio-economic class, that acts. Individuals only actas members of a class. For the existentialist it is quite the reverse: groupsonly act is so far as their individual members act. The agent is the individualhuman being.If we draw a distinction between self and other, between being a humanbeing, (the one that is), and human beings as observed (all those one isnot), then existentialism is a philosophy of the self. Marxism is a philosophyof the other. Sartre’s existentialism contains a phenomenological obsessionwith what it is like to be someone. Marxism depicts people in the abstractwith an almost Newtonian anonymity. To understand existentialism it isnecessary to think of a human being on the model of oneself. To understandMarxism it is necessary to think of human beings on the model of others.Finally, if despite all his disavowals Sartre’s existentialism is a pessimisticphilosophy, then Marxism is its opposite in this sense too. Even though Marxcriticised nineteenth-century socialists, for example the French anarchistPierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–65), for what he saw as their unrealisticutopianism, Marxism remains profoundly optimistic. History concludes withthe revolutionary overthrow of exploitation and unfair inequality and itsreplacement with an ideal classless society without the state. Sartre’sexistentialism, on the other hand, includes no political solution to humananxiety in the face of loneliness, freedom and death. Humanity is condemnedto the impossible project of being both in-itself and for-itself. Man wants tobe God, but in Sartre’s existentialism there is no metaphysical heaven andno heaven on earth either.It follows that existentialism is an individualistic libertarian philosophy ofconsciousness, subjectivity and the present which offers mankind nogrounds for political or metaphysical optimism. Marxism, on the other hand,
302 Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writingsis a deterministic social and historical theory that is essentially materialistin content and holds out the promise of a future utopia in which scarcity andexploitation will be overcome. It seems that Sartre faces an insurmountabletask in reconciling these two philosophies into a homogeneous worldpicture.The problems Sartre faces are some of the central problems ofphilosophy: freedom and determinism, the mind–body problem, theexistence of past, present and future, relations between individual and social,self and other. Metaphysics is an obstacle to politics. How is this synthesisto be effected?Sartre’s existentialist thesis that an individual freely chooses in a situationis now located in the Marxist doctrine that humanity is self-determining inhistory. ‘Situation’ now conspicuously includes class location. In a dialecticalunity of freedom and necessity humans constitute their environment andthe constituted environment constitutes humanity. This is a fusion ofexistentialist being-in-the-world and Marxist praxis.‘Praxis’ is the Greek word for ‘action’ used in Marxist theory to denote thetransformation of the natural material world by human beings. It subsumesSartre’s idea of the project because the future-orientated choice of theindividual is included in the historical praxis of the class. Marxist dialecticwithout the Sartrean project is not thoroughly dialectical because it does notrecognise the historical role of the individual. For example, Sartre says thatalthough Paul Valéry is a petty bourgeois intellectual, not every petty bourgeoisintellectual is Paul Valéry. The originality and spontaneity of Valéry the poetare not entailed by his being ‘bourgeois’ even though his being Valéry entailshis being ‘bourgeois’. According to Sartre’s ‘progressive–regressive’ methodit is necessary to refer to society to understand the individual and to theindividual to understand the society.Sartre thinks there are three fundamental forms of social organisation:the series, the group, and the class. A series is based on competition, agroup on cooperation and a class on economics. A class may be a series ora group or exhibit features of both. A series or a group is not necessarily aclass.The members of a series have no common, internal or collective purposeas members of that series. A series is, as Sartre puts it, a plurality of solitudes.Nor does an individual have to be conscious of being in competition withother individuals to belong to the same series as those individuals. Being in
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302 Jean-Paul <strong>Sartre</strong>: <strong>Basic</strong> <strong>Writing</strong>sis a deterministic social and historical theory that is essentially materialistin content and holds out the promise of a future utopia in which scarcity andexploitation will be overcome. It seems that <strong>Sartre</strong> faces an insurmountabletask in reconciling these two philosophies into a homogeneous worldpicture.The problems <strong>Sartre</strong> faces are some of the central problems ofphilosophy: freedom and determinism, the mind–body problem, theexistence of past, present and future, relations between individual and social,self and other. Metaphysics is an obstacle to politics. How is this synthesisto be effected?<strong>Sartre</strong>’s existentialist thesis that an individual freely chooses in a situationis now located in the Marxist doctrine that humanity is self-determining inhistory. ‘Situation’ now conspicuously includes class location. In a dialecticalunity of freedom and necessity humans constitute their environment andthe constituted environment constitutes humanity. This is a fusion ofexistentialist being-in-the-world and Marxist praxis.‘Praxis’ is the Greek word for ‘action’ used in Marxist theory to denote thetransformation of the natural material world by human beings. It subsumes<strong>Sartre</strong>’s idea of the project because the future-orientated choice of theindividual is included in the historical praxis of the class. Marxist dialecticwithout the <strong>Sartre</strong>an project is not thoroughly dialectical because it does notrecognise the historical role of the individual. For example, <strong>Sartre</strong> says thatalthough Paul Valéry is a petty bourgeois intellectual, not every petty bourgeoisintellectual is Paul Valéry. The originality and spontaneity of Valéry the poetare not entailed by his being ‘bourgeois’ even though his being Valéry entailshis being ‘bourgeois’. According to <strong>Sartre</strong>’s ‘progressive–regressive’ methodit is necessary to refer to society to understand the individual and to theindividual to understand the society.<strong>Sartre</strong> thinks there are three fundamental forms of social organisation:the series, the group, and the class. A series is based on competition, agroup on cooperation and a class on economics. A class may be a series ora group or exhibit features of both. A series or a group is not necessarily aclass.The members of a series have no common, internal or collective purposeas members of that series. A series is, as <strong>Sartre</strong> puts it, a plurality of solitudes.Nor does an individual have to be conscious of being in competition withother individuals to belong to the same series as those individuals. Being in