JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing
JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing
Politics331must be considered as the only truth of the subjective. Since the latter exists onlyin order to be objectified, it is on the basis of the objectification—that is, on therealization—that it must be judged in itself and in the world. An action cannot bejudged by the intention behind it. (2) That this truth will allow us to evaluate theobjectified project in the total picture. An action, such as it appears in the light ofcontemporary history and of a particular set of circumstances, may be shown tobe ill-fated from the start—for the group which supports it (or for some widerformation, a class or a fragment of a class, of which this group forms a part). Andat the same time its unique objective characteristic may reveal it to be an enterprisein good faith. When one considers an action harmful to the establishing of socialism,it may be so only in relation to this particular aim. To characterize it as harmful canin no case prejudice what the action is in itself; that is, considered on another levelof objectivity and related to particular circumstances and to the conditioning ofthe individual environment. People often set up a dangerous distinction: an actmay be objectively blameworthy (by the Party, by the Cominform, etc.) whileremaining subjectively acceptable. A person could be subjectively of good will,objectively a traitor. This distinction testifies to an advanced disintegration inStalinist thought; that is, in voluntaristic idealism. It is easy to see that it goes backto that “petit bourgeois” distinction between the good intentions with which “hellis paved,” etc., and their real consequences. In fact, the general import of the actionconsidered and its individual signification are equally objective characteristics(since they are interpreted within an objectivity), and they both engage subjectivity(since they are its objectification) whether within the total movement whichdiscovers it as it is from the point of view of the totalization or within a particularsynthesis. Furthermore, an act has many other levels of truth, and these levels donot represent a dull hierarchy, but a complex movement of contradictions whichare posited and surpassed; for example, the totalization which appraises the act inits relation to historical praxis and to the conjuncture of circumstances is itselfdenounced as an abstract, incomplete totalization (a practical totalization) insofaras it has not turned back to the action to reintegrate it also as a uniquely individualattempt. The condemnation of the insurgents at Kronstadt was perhaps inevitable;it was perhaps the judgment of history on this tragic attempt. But at the same timethis practical judgment (the only real one) will remain that of an enslaved historyso long as it does not include the free interpretation of the revolt in terms of theinsurgents themselves and of the contradictions of the moment. This freeinterpretation, someone may say, is in no way practical since the insurgents, aswell as their judges, are dead. But that is not true. The historian, by consenting to
332 Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writingsstudy facts at all levels of reality, liberates future history. This liberation can comeabout, as a visible and efficacious action, only within the compass of the generalmovement of democratization; but conversely it cannot fail to aocelerate thismovement. (3) In the world of alienation, the historical agent never entirelyrecognizes himself in his act. This does not mean that historians should notrecognize him in it precisely as an alienated man. However this may be, alienationis at the base and at the summit; and the agent never undertakes anything which isnot the negation of alienation and which does not fall back into an alienated world.But the alienation of the objectified result is not the same as the alienation at thepoint of departure. It is the passage from the one to the other which defines theperson.5 On exactly this point Engels’s thought seems to have wavered. We know theunfortunate use which he sometimes makes of this idea of a mean. His evidentpurpose is to remove from dialectic its a priori character as an unconditionedforce. But then dialectic promptly disappears. It is impossible to conceive of theappearance of systematic processes such as capitalism or colonialism if we considerthe resultants of antagonistic forces to be means. We must understand thatindividuals do not collide like molecules, but that, upon the basis of given conditionsand divergent and opposed interests, each one understands and surpasses theproject of the other. It is by these surpassings and surpassings of surpassings thata social object may be constituted which, taken as a whole, is a reality providedwith meaning and something in which nobody can completely recognize himself;in short, a human work without an author. Means, as Engels and statisticiansconceive of them, suppress the author, but by the same stroke they suppress thework and its “humanity.” We shall have the opportunity to develop this idea inPart Two of the Critique.6 When I say that the intensity of isolation expresses the degree of massification, Imean that it does this in a purely indicative way.7 It becomes perfectly rational when the stages of the entire process are reconstructed.All the same, the conflict between interchangeability and existence (as unique,lived praxis) must be lived at some level as a scandalous absurdity.8 In so far as he is the same, he is simply and formally an other.9 Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, two volumes (1939–40). English translation by L. A.Manyon, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961. [Ed.]10 Obviously it is not under a threat of mortal danger that anglers form their associationor old ladies set up a system of swopping books: but these groups, which in anycase respond to some very real exigencies and whose objective meaning relates to
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332 Jean-Paul <strong>Sartre</strong>: <strong>Basic</strong> <strong>Writing</strong>sstudy facts at all levels of reality, liberates future history. This liberation can comeabout, as a visible and efficacious action, only within the compass of the generalmovement of democratization; but conversely it cannot fail to aocelerate thismovement. (3) In the world of alienation, the historical agent never entirelyrecognizes himself in his act. This does not mean that historians should notrecognize him in it precisely as an alienated man. However this may be, alienationis at the base and at the summit; and the agent never undertakes anything which isnot the negation of alienation and which does not fall back into an alienated world.But the alienation of the objectified result is not the same as the alienation at thepoint of departure. It is the passage from the one to the other which defines theperson.5 On exactly this point Engels’s thought seems to have wavered. We know theunfortunate use which he sometimes makes of this idea of a mean. His evidentpurpose is to remove from dialectic its a priori character as an unconditionedforce. But then dialectic promptly disappears. It is impossible to conceive of theappearance of systematic processes such as capitalism or colonialism if we considerthe resultants of antagonistic forces to be means. We must understand thatindividuals do not collide like molecules, but that, upon the basis of given conditionsand divergent and opposed interests, each one understands and surpasses theproject of the other. It is by these surpassings and surpassings of surpassings thata social object may be constituted which, taken as a whole, is a reality providedwith meaning and something in which nobody can completely recognize himself;in short, a human work without an author. Means, as Engels and statisticiansconceive of them, suppress the author, but by the same stroke they suppress thework and its “humanity.” We shall have the opportunity to develop this idea inPart Two of the Critique.6 When I say that the intensity of isolation expresses the degree of massification, Imean that it does this in a purely indicative way.7 It becomes perfectly rational when the stages of the entire process are reconstructed.All the same, the conflict between interchangeability and existence (as unique,lived praxis) must be lived at some level as a scandalous absurdity.8 In so far as he is the same, he is simply and formally an other.9 Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, two volumes (1939–40). English translation by L. A.Manyon, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961. [Ed.]10 Obviously it is not under a threat of mortal danger that anglers form their associationor old ladies set up a system of swopping books: but these groups, which in anycase respond to some very real exigencies and whose objective meaning relates to
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