Sartre's Political Philosophy

SartreFrench philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), the best known European public intellectual of the twentieth century, developed a highly original political philosophy, influenced in function by the work of Hegel and Marx. Although he wrote little on ethics or politics prior to Earth War II, political themes dominated his writings from 1945 onwards. Sartre co-founded the periodical Les Temps Modernes, which would publish many seminal essays on political theory and world affairs. The most famous example is Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew, a blistering criticism of French complicity in the Holocaust which also put along the general thesis that oppression is a baloney of interpersonal recognition. In the 1950'south Sartre moved towards Marxism and eventually released Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol. 1 (1960), a massive, systematic account of history and group struggle. In addition to presenting a new critical theory of society based on a synthesis of psychology and sociology, Critique qualified Sartre's before, more than radical view of existential freedom. His last systematic work, The Family Idiot (1971), would express his final and virtually nuanced views on the relation between individuals and social wholes. Sartre'south pioneering combination of Existentialism and Marxism yielded a political philosophy uniquely sensitive to the tension between individual liberty and the forces of history. As a Marxist he believed that societies were best understood as arenas of struggle between powerful and powerless groups. But equally an Existentialist he held individuals personally responsible for vast and apparently authorless social ills. The chief existential virtue—authenticity—would require a person to lucidly examine his or her social situation and accept personal culpability for the choices fabricated in this situation. Unlike competing versions of Marxism, Sartre's Existentialist-Marxism was based on a striking theory of private agency and moral responsibility.

In addition to class analysis, Sartre offered critiques of anti-Semitism, racism, violence and colonialism. His theoretical business relationship of oppression re-worked Hegel's master/slave dialectic, arguing that oppression is a concrete, historical instance of mastery. To oppress another is to effort to validate 1'southward sense of self by denying the freedom of another. The self-contradictory nature of oppression led him to the optimistic determination that oppression is non an inevitable, ontological condition, only a historical reality that should exist contested, through both cocky-assertion and collective action. As a social-political thinker, Sartre defended a large number of innovative methodological and substantive theses. He steered a center path between reductive individualism and ontological holism. He answered the perennial question "What defines a social group?" with an ingenious re-working of Hegelian recognition. His account of the fusion and disillusion of social groups remains unique to this day. Both broad and original, Sartre's social-political theory is one of the great contributions to twentieth century philosophy.

Table of Contents

  1. Texts
  2. Hegelian-Marxism
  3. Freedom
  4. Oppression
  5. Engagement
  6. Ideal Society
  7. Decision
  8. References and Further Reading
    1. Main Sources
    2. Secondary Sources

1. Texts

Sartre's prolific writings span multiple genres and take variously been divided into two or three major phases (early on and late; or early, middle and late). Sartre's political writings began in earnest after World State of war II. In prewar works like Nausea (La Nausée, 1938) and Being and Pettiness (L'Etre et le Néant, 1943) Sartre wrote most exclusively well-nigh individual psychology, imagination and consciousness. Sartre's chief goal in these works was to discredit determinism and defend the creativity, contingency and freedom of human being action. While Sartre'south prewar works are apolitical and inward, his postwar works are politically engaged and historical. The political shift in Sartre's thinking is reflected by his adoption of the term "praxis" rather than "consciousness" equally the active term in his analysis. Turning abroad from pure psychology, Sartre'southward fundamental concerns in the postwar menses become group struggle, oppression and the nature of history.

The main theoretical texts of Sartre's post-war period are Critique of Dialectical Reason (Critique de la raison dialectique Vol.ane, 1960, and Vol. 2, 1985) and The Family Idiot (L'Idiot de la famille, 1971). In addition to these theoretical tomes (both over ane,000 pages), Sartre wrote a large number of political essays, nigh of which were first published in Modern Times (Les Temps modernes), the periodical founded by Sartre and others in 1945. The significant essays take been nerveless in a ten book set by Gallimard entitled Situations. Of the four novels and 9 major plays Sartre published, many have political content.

While writing frequently and passionately about politics and ethics, Sartre never published a systematic philosophical treatise outlining his political or ethical views. There is no Sartrean equivalent to Hegel'due south Philosophy of Right, Rousseau's On the Social Contract, or Manufactory'south On Liberty. His political philosophy emerges from his situational pieces, which were reactions to contemporary political problems, such as the Algerian and Vietnam Wars, French Anti-Semitism and Soviet communism. Critique of Dialectical Reason is the major work of Sartre's political phase, and is the closest approximation to a piece of work of traditional political philosophy in his corpus. The primary themes of Critique include the nature of social groups, history, and dialectical reason. Critique just briefly addresses the canonical themes of political philosophy, such every bit the theory of the state, political obligation, citizenship, justice and rights.

2. Hegelian-Marxism

Sartre's contributions to political philosophy are all-time understood from within the historical context of Hegelianism and Marxism. His political views were influenced heavily by Hegel. In Beingness and Nothingness he shows some familiarity with the work of Hegel, but this noesis was indirect and piecemeal. Sartre did not begin a serious study of Hegel until the late 1940s. Betwixt 1947 and 1948 he composed a series of notebooks outlining his plans for a major work in ethical theory. The surviving notebooks, published posthumously as Notebooks for an Ethics (Cahiers pour une morale, 1982), reveal that he adult his own political views through a dialogue with Hegel and Marx. Above all, Sartre was concerned to rethink the master/slave dialectic of Hegel'due south Phenomenology of Spirit. In Existence and Nothingness he agreed with Hegel that humans struggle confronting 1 another to win recognition, but rejected the possibility of transcending struggle through relations of reciprocal, mutual recognition. Sartre thought that all human relations were variations of the master/slave relation (see Being and Pettiness,pp. 471-534). However, in the Notebooks, and in the works published beginning in the tardily 1940s, he dramatically altered his thinking on master/slave relations. First, he accustomed the possibility that struggle could be transcended through mutual, reciprocal recognition. His best example was the collaboration between artists and their audience. Second, he located the struggle for recognition in society and history, not in ontology. Third, Sartre'south historical view of the struggle for recognition allowed him to analyze oppression as a type of domination. Finally, he came to concord that social solidarity was not, as claimed in Being and Nothingness, a mere psychological projection, but an ontological reality, based on ties of recognition. In brusk, Sartre'south main contributions in social and political philosophy were in large part due to his original adaptation and expansion on the Hegelian ideal of intersubjective recognition.

Some scholars contend that Sartre'south normative ethical assumptions (including, by extension, his political views) were derived from Kant. It is truthful that his best known work, "Existentialism is a Humanism" ("L'Existentialisme est un humanisme," 1945), presented a universalization argument similar to Kant'due south categorical imperative. However, the majority of his works speak critically of Kant. The influence of Hegel vastly outweighs that of Kant. In the autobiographical motion picture Sartre by Himself (Sartre par lui-même, 1976), Sartre admits a deep dissatisfaction with the popularity of Existentialism is a Humanism, a short lecture that was subsequently turned into a widely-distributed essay. In Notebooks, where Sartre reflects on ideals for an extended period, he rejects Kantian ethics, calling information technology a grade of "slave morality" and an "ideals of demands" (pp. 237-274). While he speaks favorably of a "kingdom of ends," this phrase refers to a socialist society, non a community governed by Kant's categorical imperative.

Marx's influence on Sartre is undeniable. While he identified with the French Left prior to the state of war, experiences during the war politicized him and motivated the plow to Marxism. Sartre's Marxism was ever accompanied by his existentialism. Overwhelmingly devoted to ontological and phenomenological explanations, he would powerfully describe social reality using Marxist structural analysis. The issue was a highly original political theory that, while recognizably Marxist, did not resemble the piece of work of structuralist contemporaries such as Louis Althusser. Sartre described himself as rescuing Marxism from lazy dogmatism (Search for a Method, pp. 21 and 27). Like his contemporaries in Germany at the Frankfurt School for Social Research, he sought to develop a general critical theory of society. While accepting the reality of economic class, he strongly criticized those who reduced all social conflicts and all personal motivations to class. In his political catamenia, Sartre deepened his psychological explanations of human beliefs past contextualizing private action inside broad social structures (class, family, nation, and so on). He held that economical class was simply one of many important structural factors that explained human activeness. Vehemently criticizing all forms of social scientific reductionism, he claimed that the human situation includes nascency, death, family unit, nationality, gender, race and torso, to proper name merely the most relevant (Anti-Semite and Jew, pp. 59-60). Like later analytic Marxists, he would claim that "objective interests" are bereft to explicate the intentions of individual agents. Class analysis must be combined with personal history.

The massive Critique of Dialectical Reason is Sartre's defense of the unity of Existentialism and Marxism. He showed that functionalist explanations of social phenomena could exist grounded in the intentional states of individual agents. Search for a Method (Question de méthode, 1967), the preface to the French Critique, formulates the "progressive-regressive" method, which melds psychological and sociological explanations of human being activity. The 2 major components of the method are a regressive assay of static social structures such as form, family and era, and a second progressive analysis where complex permutations of structures are explained from the lived perspective of individuals and groups. In his existential biographies, such as those on Grand. Flaubert, S. Mallarmé, and J. Genet, Sartre applies the progressive-regressive method, arguing that individuals "incarnate" (internalize and express) the major social events, movements and values of their era. His view should non be confused with deterministic Marxism, which holds that individuals are mere pawns in a historical game that would be the same with or without them. Individuals have the power to change history, especially through group struggle.

In addition to its methodological contributions, Critique offers a wide account of history, social groups and mass miracle. Sartre'due south dialectical theory of gild, written in the spirit of Hegel and Marx, holds that grouping struggle is the animating principle of human history. Step Hegel, Sartre rejects group minds, arguing that there is a basic ontological stardom between the action of persons (individual praxis) and the activeness of groups (group praxis) (Critique, pp. 345-8). While groups exhibit collective intentionality, no group is a literal organism. Individuals are ontologically prior to the groups they create. Sartre would characterization his unique approach to social reality "dialectical nominalism" (Critique, p. 37).

In Critique, social groups are divided into four main types: fusing groups, pledge groups, organizations, and institutions (see "Book Two: From Groups to History"). Distinct from genuine groups, social "collectives" are semi-unified gatherings of individuals where collective action and mutual recognition are absent (Critique, p. 254). Under Sartre'south pen these distinctions come to life. His analysis of the Bastille is a case in signal. Rioting citizens were transformed from a disorganized collective into a group by internalizing the perspective of regime officials who thought the rioters were a coherent motility with a single aim (Critique, pp. 351-5). Throughout Critique Sartre develops his foundational claim that social groups are unified when they internalize threatening features of their environment. A "fraternity-terror" dynamic (Critique, p. 430) exists not only in spontaneous groups, only also in oath-based groups and highly bureaucratic institutions.

The social theory of Critique is a far cry from Being and Pettiness, which had asserted that social groups were mere psychological projections (Existence and Pettiness, p.536). Critique introduces a new technical concept, that of "mediating third parties," to explain the nature of groups higher up and beyond I-thousand relations (pp. 100-9). Mediating third parties are members of groups who temporarily human activity as external threats (for example, when giving orders) but who subsequently re-enter the group (Critique, p.373). The concept of the mediating 3rd party allows Sartre to extend his theory of interpersonal recognition across the fictionalized, abstract encounter betwixt self and other, and better explain the fundamentals of group solidarity.

The direct political implications of Critique's group theory are ambiguous. 1 pop, plausible interpretation holds that spontaneous groups (for example, fusing and pledge groups) promote human liberty, while bureaucratic groups (such as organizations and institutions) engender alienation. Characteristically, Sartre uses moral terminology to describe groups, only after distances himself from moral conclusions. Institutions, for example, are "degraded forms of customs" where "liberty . . . becomes alienated and subconscious from its ain optics." (Critique, pp. 615 and 591). Withal, whatever politics consistent with Critique would take to favor spontaneous, decentralized social groups.

The concept of alienation also plays an important role in Sartre'south thinking. In Notebooks he defines alienation as existence an "other" to oneself (p. 382). In Critique he uses the terms "serialized" and "atomized" to describe persons who are alienated from one another. Different Being and Nothingness, where alienation is depicted as an unavoidable ontological condition, in the subsequently political works breach is rooted in material scarcity. If material scarcity can be eliminated, then we might savor "a margin of real freedom, beyond the production of life" (Search for a Method, p. 34).

For most of his life, Sartre remained at a distance from party politics and articulated his political principles without reference to any existing parties. In 1948, all the same, he co-founded a short-lived non-Communist leftist party, the Rassemblement Démocratique Révolutionnaire. From 1952 to 1956 Sartre supported merely did not bring together the French Communist Political party. Later he became disillusioned by the soviet invasion of Republic of hungary and distanced his vision of socialism from Soviet-style communism. In the last years of his life, Sartre associated himself with Maoist groups and took as a personal secretary the young Jewish-Egyptian Maoist Benny Lévy.

On the whole, Sartre's contributions to Hegelian-Marxism are substantial. He forcefully argued confronting deterministic, structuralist versions of Marxism, inserting human being subjectivity dorsum into the equation. With a keen eye towards interpersonal relations, he showed that social struggle, whether among classes, races or interest groups, must be understood simultaneously at the psychological and the systemic level. Sartre, more any Marxist of his generation, exposed the limits of classical Marxism and paved the way for a general critical theory of society.

3. Freedom

The concept of freedom, cardinal to Sartre's system as a whole, is a dominant theme in his political works. Sartre's view of freedom changed essentially throughout his lifetime. Scholars disagree whether there is a fundamental continuity or a radical break between Sartre's early view of liberty and his late view of freedom. There is a potent consensus, though, that afterward Earth War II Sartre shifted to a material view of freedom, in contrast to the ontological view of his early on period. According to the arguments of Beingness and Nothingness homo liberty consists in the ability of consciousness to transcend its material situation (p. 563). Later, specially in Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre shifts to the view that humans are just free if their bones needs equally practical organisms are met (p. 327). Permit u.s.a. look at these two dissimilar notions of freedom in more than depth.

Early Sartre views freedom equally synonymous with man consciousness. Consciousness ("being-for-itself") is marked past its not-coincidence with itself. In simple terms, consciousness escapes itself both because information technology is intentional (consciousness ever targets an object other than itself) and temporal (consciousness is necessarily future oriented) (Being and Nothingness, pp. 573-iv and 568). Sartre's view that human freedom consists in consciousness' power to escape the present is "ontological" in the sense that no normal human being can fail to be gratuitous. The subtitle of Being and Nothingness, "An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology," reveals Sartre'south aim of describing the fundamental structures of human existence and answering the question "What does information technology mean to be homo?" His answer is that humans, unlike inert matter, are conscious and therefore costless.

The notion of ontological freedom is controversial and has often been rejected because information technology implies that humans are free in all situations. In his early work Sartre embraced this implication unflinchingly. Famously, Sartre claimed the French public was as free every bit ever during the Nazi occupation. In Being and Nothingness, he passionately argued that even prisoners are costless because they have the power of consciousness (p. 622). A prisoner, though coerced, can choose how to react to his imprisonment. The prisoner is gratis because he controls his reaction to imprisonment: he may resist or acquiesce. Since at that place are no objective barriers to the will, the prison bars restrain me only if I grade the will to escape. In a similar example, Sartre notes that a mountain is just a barrier if the individual wants to get on the other side but cannot (Being and Nothingness, p. 628).

Sartre'south ontological notion of freedom has been widely criticized, from both political and ontological standpoints. An of import contemporary critic of Sartre'south piece of work was his colleague Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose essay "Sartre and Ultrabolshevism" directly attacked Sartre'due south Cartesianism and his ontological conception of freedom (Merleau-Ponty, Adventures of the Dialectic, 1955).

While Sartre never renounced the ontological view of freedom, in later on works he became critical of what he then called the "stoical" and "Cartesian" view that liberty consists in the power to change 1's mental attitude no matter what the situation (Notebooks, pp. 331 and 387; Critique, pp. 332 and 578 fn). It is an open question whether and how to reconcile the early on, ontological formulation of liberty with the belatedly, textile conception of freedom. However, information technology is undeniable that in his political phase Sartre adopted a new, material view of freedom. Several points stand out in particular. In later works he never once more used the notion of consciousness to characterize human being, preferring instead the Marxist notion of praxis. Farther, he came to emphasize the "situation" (i.due east. structural influences) in explaining individual selection and psychology (Anti-Semite and Jew, pp. 59-threescore). Finally, he criticized all "inward" notions of freedom, challenge that a modify of attitude is insufficient for existent liberty.

Sartre's shift to a cloth formulation of freedom was motivated directly past the holocaust and World War II. Anti-Semite and Jew (Réflexions sur la question juive, 1946), published simply after the war, was the first of many works analyzing moral responsibility for oppression. The fact that Sartre's view in Existence and Pettiness seemed to leave little room for diagnosing oppression did not stop him from articulating a forceful normative critique of Anti-Semitism. His analysis of oppression would, in fact, use the aforementioned dialectical tools every bit those in the section on "concrete relations with others" in Being and Nothingness. Anti-Semite and Jew argues that oppression is a main/slave relationship, where the master denies the freedom of the slave and yet becomes dependent on the slave (pp. 27, 39 and 135). Sartre modified his notion of "the expect" past arguing that simply some, not all, interpersonal relations effect in alienation and loss of liberty.

Sartre'due south new appreciation of oppression as a concrete loss of human being freedom forced him to change his view that humans are gratuitous in whatever situation. He did not explicitly hash out such alterations, though clearly abandoning the view that humans are free in all situations. "[I]t is of import not to conclude that one tin can exist costless in bondage," and "It would exist quite wrong to interpret me as saying that homo is free in all situations equally the Stoics claimed" (Critique, pp. 578 and 332). Sartre's bones assumption in his political writings is that oppression is a loss of freedom (Critique, p. 332). Since humans can never lose their ontological freedom, the loss of liberty in question must exist of a dissimilar sort: oppression must compromise material freedom.

Take the case of the prisoner. The prisoner is ontologically free because she controls whether to attempt escape. On this view, liberty is synonymous with choice. Merely there is no qualitative stardom between types of choices. If freedom is the beingness of choice, and then fifty-fifty a bad choice is freedom promoting. As he will put information technology afterwards, an assailant who gives me the pick of "what sauce to be eaten in" could hardly be said to meaningfully promote my freedom (Notebooks, p. 331). The early view is bailiwick to the charge that if there are no qualitative distinctions between types of choices, then the phenomena of oppression and coercion cannot exist recognized.

In Anti-Semite and Jew and Notebooks Sartre implicitly addresses the higher up criticism, arguing that oppression consists not in the absence of choice, but in being forced to choose between bad, inhumane options (Notebooks, pp. 334-5). Jews in anti-Semitic societies, for case, are forced to choose between self-effacement or caricatured self-identities (Anti-Semite and Jew, pp. 135 and 148). In Critique Sartre uses the example of a labor contract to illustrate the claim that option is non synonymous with freedom (Critique, pp. 721-2). An impoverished person who accepts a degrading, low wage job for the sake of coming together her basic needs has a option—she may starve or take a degrading job—but her choice is inhumane. He does not claim that diffuse social structures like poverty have the literal agency of individual man beings, simply that class construction is a "destiny" and we can speak cogently of social forces which exert causality and turn united states into "slaves" (Critique, p. 332).

In the political period as a whole Sartre developed his material view of freedom by contrasting the costless person with the slave. Though his notion of slavery is derived from Hegel, Sartre, unlike Hegel, diagnosed literal cases similar American chattel slavery. Sartre follows Hegel in portraying slavery equally a form of "non-mutual recognition" where i person dominates the other psychologically and physically. A slave, he argues, is un-free because he is dominated by a master (Notebooks pp. 325-411). Material freedom requires, therefore, non-domination, or freedom from coercion. He adds that in master/slave relations, the cocky-conception of the victim and perpetrator are intertwined and distorted; both parties are in "bad religion"; both fail to fully sympathise their ain liberty. Though both perpetrator and victim are in bad religion, only the slave is coerced physically (Notebooks, p. 331).

Sartre'due south view of material freedom is independent of whatsoever notion of human nature. He consistently rejects the existence of a pre-social man essence or a ready of natural man desires ("Existentialism is a Humanism"; Anti-Semite and Jew, p. 49; Search for a Method, pp. 167-181). The fabric view of liberty assumes a thin set of universal human being appurtenances, including positive human goods (food, water, shelter and instruction) and negative appurtenances (freedom from all of the following: slavery, poverty, discrimination, domination and persecution). While Critique elaborates an economic understanding of human being appurtenances (the essential needs are those of the physical organism), elsewhere Sartre defends a wider spectrum of human needs including cultural goods and admission to shared values (Notebooks pp. 329-331). In sum, we tin say that a person is materially free in Sartre'south sense if (a) she enjoys basic material security; (b) she is un-coerced; and (c) she has access to cultural and social goods necessary for pursuing her chosen projects.

The foregoing definition casts Sartre every bit an marry of political liberalism, and suggests that material liberty is a version of liberal autonomy. Liberals who defend the primacy of autonomy typically claim that positive notions of freedom presume substantive, controversial conceptions of the good life. Indeed, Sartre's rejection of human nature and his thin conception of universal human being goods are consistent with liberalism. Notwithstanding, Sartre criticizes classical liberalism, especially in Critique, arguing confronting asocial, atomistic notions of selfhood (p. 311). Further, like borough republican philosophers (such as Aristotle and Rousseau), Sartre contends that decision-making the social forces to which ane is field of study is a valuable type of homo liberty. Republican philosophers variously call such freedom "self-authorities" or "non-domination." Whether Sartre's view of freedom is a ameliorate fit with contemporary liberalism or civic republicanism is a thing of speculation. Sartre's discussion of liberty in Critique is highly abstract and does not translate simply into one public policy or another. Yet, his preference for mass movements and lesser-up social organization suggest that he would favor radical participatory democracy. After the educatee revolts of May 1968 Sartre told an interviewer: "For me the movement in May was the first large-scale social movement which temporarily brought nigh something alike to freedom and which then tried to conceive of what freedom in action is" (Life/Situations, p. 52).

4. Oppression

The assay of oppression is one of Sartre's most original contributions to political philosophy. Adapting the chief/slave dialectic of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Sartre developed a general theory of oppression that yielded moral critiques of anti-Semitism, colonialism, form discrimination and anti-black racism.

Consistent with his general methodology, Sartre denied that oppression reduces to either private attitudes or impersonal social structures. Oppression is simultaneously "praxis" (the result of intentional acts) and "process" (a supra-individual phenomenon, irreducible to intentional states of individuals) (Critique,pp. 716-735). Oppression is defined past Sartre as the "exploitation of human being by human . . . characterized by the fact that i class deprives the members of some other course of their liberty" (Notebooks, p. 562). On the interpersonal level, oppression is a master/slave relationship; the oppressor tries to proceeds a robust sense of selfhood by dominating others. Sartre, like Hegel, showed that domination is a self-defeating applied attitude. The dominator tries to force others to recognize him every bit superior; but ironically, the dominator receives little confirmation of his superiority as he has ruled out in accelerate the weight of others' judgments (Anti-Semite and Jew, p. 27; see also Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity, 1947, specially pp. 60-63). Sartre's analysis works specially well at diagnosing attitudes of racial superiority. An anti-Semite bases his self-paradigm on the fact that he is not-a-Jew, only in then doing, he becomes depended upon the Jewish other from whom he claims total independence. Ultimately, the racist receives no satisfaction from domination considering he solicits recognition from someone he denigrates.

The concept of bad faith also plays an of import role in Sartre'south analysis of oppression. Bad religion is an original notion developed past Sartre, first in Being and Nothingness, and later in Anti-Semite and Jew, Saint Genet and Situations. Despite his quip that bad faith does not imply moral blame, Sartre'southward discussions of bad religion are heavily moralistic. Bad faith is a deep confusion well-nigh ane'south ain basic projects, attitudes, desires and deportment. Bad faith is self-deception (See Beingness and Nothingness, pp. 86-119). And only as freedom is the primary value of existentialism, bad religion—misrecognizing one'south freedom—is the chief existential vice. In detail, racists are in bad organized religion if they believe humans accept racial "essences" or "natures" (Anti-Semite and Jew, pp. 17, xx, 27 and 53). Race, Sartre claims, is socially constructed. The biological view of race, which says there are innate racial character traits, causes a host of distortions and misinterpretations of homo activeness. Nigh fundamentally, the entreatment to essences causes u.s. to abdicate responsibility and blame our freely chosen deportment on fictitious inner drives and motives. In Notebooks Sartre expanded his analysis of racist bad faith by arguing that all oppression, non just racist oppression, requires bad faith: "I oppresses just if ane oppresses himself" (Notebooks, p.325).

Controversially, Sartre claimed that both perpetrators and victims of oppression exhibit bad faith. In Anti-Semite and Jew Sartre distinguished "accurate" from "non-accurate" Jews, arguing that inauthentic Jews (those who either ignore racism or internalize negative stereotypes) are in bad faith (pp. 44, 93, 96, 109 and 136). Existential authenticity, the ethical virtue that opposes bad religion, does not corporeality to embracing one's biology or heritage. Rather, authenticity consists in properly affirming one'southward own freedom through clarified reflection and responsible activity. In Anti-Semite and Jew Sartre defines authenticity equally follows:

If it is agreed that man may exist defined as a being having freedom within the limits of a situation, and then it is easy to see that the exercise of this liberty may be considered as authentic or inauthentic co-ordinate to the choices made in the situation. Actuality, it is almost needless to say, consists in having a true and lucid consciousness of the situation, in bold the responsibilities and risks that it involves, in accepting it in pride or humiliation, sometimes in horror and hate. (p. 90)

While Sartre emphasized the alone, individualistic aspect of affirming one's liberty, (especially in early fiction like The Flies [Les Mouches, 1943]), he likewise explored the intersubjective conditions of authenticity. At times Sartre endorsed the view, held by fellow existentialist Simone de Beauvoir, that a proper relation to 1's ain freedom requires affirming the freedom of others (de Beauvoir, The Ideals of Ambiguity, p. 67; Sartre Notebooks, pp. 475–79). In "Existentialism is a Humanism," Sartre gestured towards the interconnection of human freedoms, challenge that to will one's own freedom required willing the liberty of others. Only merely later, in his unpublished writings on ethics did he fully explain his view: "If I grasp my liberty in a fulfilled intuition as both the source of all my projects and requiring universal freedom, I cannot think of destroying the liberty of others" (Notebooks, p. 328). His belief that each person's freedom is connected to the freedom of others pervades his discussion of oppression in Notebooks.

Critique of Dialectical Reason offers a macro-social phenomenology of oppression. Oppression "serializes" (i.e. disperses and alienates) members of underprivileged collectives (Critique, pp. 721–three). Sartre'due south view, while indebted to Marx's notion of alienation, reflects his own unique blend of Marxism and Existentialism. "By alienation we mean a sure type of relations that homo has with himself, with others and with the world, where he posits the ontological priority of the Other" (Notebooks, p. 382). The architecture of Critique equally a whole depends on the stardom betwixt alienating ("serial") and non-alienating ("group praxis") social relationships. Social relations range from utterly non-unified social "collectives" to groups that exhibit various levels of awareness and reciprocity. Written during the Algerian war, Critique oftentimes cites French colonialism in Africa as an example of series, alienating activeness. Colonialism creates a climate of hostility where each person is alien to himself and alien to other members of his collective (Critique, pp. 716-721). Serialized collectives tend not to organize themselves into resistance groups and tend to lack awareness of their potential grouping ability. For case, desperately impoverished Algerians compete against each other for low wage jobs and unintentionally harm the entire collective by driving downwardly wages for everyone.

Sartre shows, then, that oppression is both an interpersonal dynamic and a social-institutional phenomenon. Adopting Hegel's primary/slave dialectic, he claims that oppressors try to validate their own sense of superiority by dominating others. Like Hegel, Sartre sees domination equally ultimately self-defeating. To oppress requires implicitly acknowledging the victim's humanity in gild to subsequently revoke it. On the psychological level, the oppressor lives in bad organized religion, misunderstanding his own liberty and the freedom of his victim. In later works, particularly Critique, the psychological portrait of oppression is mapped onto a macro-social analysis of grouping struggle. Institutionalized racism is seen as a special example of bureaucratic dehumanization. Victims of racist oppression get alienated, both from themselves and from one another, making organized resistance unlikely. Sartre's lasting contribution to the politics of oppression consists in persuasively combining interpersonal and institutional explanations of oppression.

5. Appointment

Appointment is a specialized term in the Sartrean vocabulary and refers to the process of accepting responsibility for the political consequences of i'southward actions. Sartre, more than than any other philosopher of the menstruation, defended the notion of socially responsible writing (littérature engagée). Like Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, Sartre argued that intellectuals, as well as ordinary citizens, are responsible for taking a stand on the major political conflicts of their era (What is Literature? p. 38). Somewhat idealistically, he hoped that literature might be a vehicle through which oppressed minorities could proceeds group consciousness, and through which members of the aristocracy would be provoked into activity.

Sartre was famous for writing scathing essays condemning French policies. While he intervened in near major French political issues in his lifetime, his critique of French colonialism in Algeria is the most striking instance of Sartrean engagement. He wrote dozens of essays attacking French colonialism in Algeria, and introduced to the French public works of bottom known political writers. Sartre wrote prefaces for F. Fanon'southward report of psychic pathologies caused under French colonialism, Wretched of the Earth (Les damnés de la terre, 1961), H. Alleg's volume on torture in Algeria, The Question (La question, 1958), and A. Memmi's Colonized and Colonizer (Portrait du colonisé, 1957). His preface to an anthology of black, anti-colonialist poets, A. Césaire and Fifty. Senghor's "Black Orpheus" ("Orphée Noir," 1948), extended his theory of engaged literature and contributed to the Negritude movement.

The inaugural consequence of Les Temps modernes (October, 1945) first articulated the vision of social responsibleness which would become the authentication of political existentialism. A socially responsible writer must address the major events of the era, take a stance against injustice and piece of work to convalesce oppression. What is Literature? (Qu'est-ce que la literature?, 1947) bases the argument for responsible writing on a phenomenological description of the relationship between reader and author. Writing is necessarily a dialogical, intersubjective process, where author and reader mutually recognize each other (What is Literature?, p. 58). Mutual respect, Sartre claims, is inherent in the relationship between artist and audience. What is Literature? is a landmark essay because it provides the social-ontological basis for Sartre'south view of common recognition and grounds his claim that authentic, engaged activity must respect the needs of others.

Sartre'due south merits that engagement is an ethical and political virtue begins with the premise that humans are necessarily situated in particular places and times. It is incommunicable to be politically neutral, he insists (What is Literature?, p. 38). The merely honest class is to openly admit and defend i's political commitments. Appointment is the political version of existential authenticity, which requires affirming one's liberty within a social context. Authenticity is a wider notion than appointment, since actuality requires awareness and responsibility with respect to the totality of one's being, and overcoming bad organized religion globally. Existential engagement, on the other hand, requires political awareness and responsibility, and overcoming bad faith with respect to political issues.

Sartrean engagement can exist usefully compared to common conceptions of moral responsibleness. Sartre accepts the notion that a person should be held morally responsible for an action that she intentionally causes. The distinguishing mark of Sartre'southward view is his broad extension of the notion of causal responsibility. Sartre holds an extremely demanding view of negative responsibility (responsibleness for omissions). Passivity, Sartre claims, is equivalent to activity (Being and Nothingness, p. 707; What is Literature?, pp. 38, 232 and 234; Notebooks, p. 490). Whatever omitted action is an activeness for which an agent is culpable. In a diversity of works, Sartre uses the case of war to illustrate his view. If I am the denizen of a nation at war and so the war is "mine" and I bear a direct, personal responsibility for the action of my regime. Sartre's essay "We Are All Assassins" ("Nous sommes tous des assassins," 1958) epitomizes his view: boilerplate French citizens are all equally culpable for the French authorities's action of enforcing the decease punishment.

In late works similar Critique Sartre combines a demanding account of personal responsibleness with the functionalist view that individuals incarnate their environment. The event is a portrait of social responsibleness that holds boilerplate citizens responsible for diffuse social ills similar racism, poverty, colonialism and sexism. Despite the fact that Sartre savage short of offering a detailed analysis of negative responsibility which would vindicate his sometimes exaggerated ascription of individual moral liability for collective harms, his portrait of political responsibility remains i of the about powerful of the twentieth century.

6. Ideal Social club

While never presenting a complete portrait of his ideal order (whether in fiction or non-fiction), Sartre was a lifelong advocate of socialism. In interviews tardily in life Sartre allowed himself to be called an "anarchist" and a "libertarian socialist" (See "Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre" in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, ed. P.A. Schilpp, p. 21.). Sartre hoped for a club based on ii principles: private liberty and the elimination of material scarcity.

In Notebooks Sartre described himself equally developing a "concrete ethics" which would combine normative ethics and political theory (p. 104). The closest equivalent is Hegel'south notion of Sittlichkeit (ethical life), every bit described in Philosophy of Right. Like Hegel, Sartre claimed that ethics is more than a matter of social convention than abstract rule post-obit. Ethics must be lived in the everyday institutions of boilerplate citizens. The natural law approach to ethics, Kantianism in particular, is of limited value because of its universal, abstract character. Sartre accustomed the Kantian injunction "always care for others as ends" but he vehemently rejected the being of a single set up of inflexible moral commandments governing all ethical situations (Notebooks, p. 258).

By contrast, Sartre wrote favorably of Hegelian ethics. Mirroring Hegel in Philosophy of Right, Sartre claimed that genuinely ethical relations arise from mutual recognition (Notebooks, pp. 274-279). Kant's formulaic humanism, Sartre claimed, would strip individuals of their particularity. The real source of ethical injunctions—namely, other people—would be obscured behind notions of transcendental human nature and natural police force.

In the late 1940'due south Sartre coined the term "concrete liberalism" to describe the type of society he favored (Anti-Semite and Jew, p. 147). The chief feature of concrete liberalism is that the fundamental regulative ideal of lodge—mutual respect—would be based on an individual'southward particular projects, not on her abstruse human nature (Notebooks, p. 140). Rights, for instance, would be guaranteed because of a person's "agile participation in the life of society" not by appealing to a "problematical and abstract 'human nature'" (Anti-Semite and Jew, p. 146). Sartre'south view anticipates the postmodern critique of Enlightenment values such as universal respect.

In Critique Sartre developed a group theory that is consistent with anarchistic-socialism, although he did non explicitly endorse chaos in that work. The land, Sartre claimed, cannot correspond the people because the people are a collective not a group (Critique, pp. 635-42). Just genuine groups can be represented. (Remember, for instance, of a labor union which has explicit mechanisms for forming policies and collective views). Modern industrialized societies consist of alienated, serially dispersed citizens. In Critique Sartre recommended, implicitly at least, a loose federation of democratically self-organized groups.

In brusk, ideal society for Sartre would likely consist of an anarchistic-socialist lodge where individuals would accept the resources to pursue their own authentically called projects, with little interference from the country or other entrenched powers. Special accent would be placed on local, democratic groups which would support the freely called projects of authentic individuals.

vii. Conclusion

Sartre'due south contributions to twentieth century political philosophy are substantial. Sartre adult a unique political vocabulary that combined the personal redemption of existential authenticity with a phone call for systematic social modify. Like Hegel, Sartre argued that freedom is the most fundamental normative value and sought to reconcile the pursuit of individual freedom with the need for social institutions. Sartre'southward assay of colonialism, racism and anti-Semitism eloquently bridged the gap betwixt theory and practice, and significantly enriched the categories of traditional Marxism. Justifiably, Sartre will be long remembered equally both a systematic political philosopher and a trenchant social critic.

viii. References and Further Reading

a. Primary Sources

The following is a shortlist of Sartre'southward most important political works which have been translated into English.

  • Anti-Semite and Jew. New York: Schocken, 1988.
    • Sartre'south classic assay of anti-Semitism and his longest give-and-take of existential authenticity.
  • Between Existentialism and Marxism. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1974.
    • Includes several pivotal political essays including "A Plea for Intellectuals."
  • Colonialism and Neocolonialism. London: Routledge, 2001.
    • A collection of anti-Colonial writings. Includes Sartre's preface to F. Fanon's Wretched of the Earth.
  • Communists and the Peace. New York: George Braziller, 1968.
    • Statement of Sartre'south brief alignment with the French Communist Party.
  • "The Condemned of Altona." New York: Knopf, 1961.
    • Explores collective responsibleness for the holocaust.
  • Critique of Dialectical Reason, Book 1. London: Verso, 2004.
    • The principle theoretical text of Sartrean Existentialist-Marxism. Articulates Sartre's theory of groups and history.
  • Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume 2. London: Verso, 1991.
    • Unfinished volume devoted to the question of whether history tin exist understood equally the result of group struggle.
  • "Existentialism is a Humanism" in Existentialism. New York: Philosophical Library, 1947.
    • Famous speech in which Sartre suggests that existentialism has an ethics, not unlike Kant'due south categorical imperative.
  • Ghost of Stalin. New York: George Braziller, 1968.
    • Published in 1956, announces Sartre's break with the French Communist Party over the Soviet invasion of Hungary.
  • Hope Now: The 1980 Interviews. Chicago: Academy of Chicago, 1996.
    • Interviews conducted past young Maoist Beny Lévy in the concluding year of Sartre's life, suggesting a new Sartrean ethics.
  • Life/Situations: Essays Written and Spoken. New York: Pantheon, 1977.
    • Contains several important political essays including "Elections: A Trap for Fools."
  • "Materialism and Revolution" in Literary and Philosophical Essays. New York: Crowell-Collier, 1962.
    • Describes the liberating potential of man work.
  • Notebooks for an Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992.
    • Posthumously published set of notebooks exploring existential ethics and politics. Includes long discussions of oppression, slavery, Hegel's main/slave dialectic and Marxism.
  • No Exit and Iii Other Plays. New York: Vintage Books, 1946.
    • Contains "The Flies," which is a parable about freedom, and "Dirty Hands," which deals with the ethics of revolutionary violence.
  • On Genocide. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.
    • Short article on the American war in Vietnam and the legacy of French colonialism.
  • Saint Genet: Player and Martyr. New York: George Braziller, 1971.
    • Sartre's existential biography of French author and thief Jean Genet.
  • Sartre On Republic of cuba. New York: Ballantine Books, 1961.
    • Study of Sartre'due south visit to post-revolution Cuba.
  • Search for a Method. New York: Vintage Books, 1963.
    • Introduction to the longer Critique. Best succinct statement of Sartrean Existentialist-Marxism.
  • What Is Literature? and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard Academy Press, 1988.
    • The canonical argument of Sartrean engaged literature. Contains "Black Orpheus," a defence of the "negritude" poetry of Césaire and Senghor, also as the inaugural essay for Sartre's journal Les Temps modernes.

b. Secondary Sources

The following secondary sources on Sartre'south political and ethical thinking are too recommended.

  • Anderson, Thomas C., 1993, Sartre's Two Ideals: From Authenticity to Integral Humanity, Chicago: Open up Courtroom.
  • Anderson, Thomas C., 1979, The Foundation and Structure of Sartrean Ethics, Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas.
  • Aron, Raymond, 1975, History and The Dialectic of Violence: An Analysis of Sartre's Critique de la Raison Dialectique, New York: Harper and Row.
  • Aronson, Ronald, 1987, Sartre'southward 2nd Critique, Chicago: University of Chicago Printing.
  • Bong, Linda A., 1989, Sartre'southward Ethics of Authenticity, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
  • Catalano, Joseph, 1986, A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre'southward Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol. 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Printing.
  • Charmé, Stuart Zane, 1991, Vulgarity and Authenticity: Dimensions of Otherness in the Earth of Jean-Paul Sartre, Amherst: University of Mass Printing.
  • Chiodi, Pietro, 1978, Sartre and Marxism, Sussex: Harvester.
  • Detmer, David, 1988, Liberty as a Value: A Critique of the Ethical Theory of Jean-Paul Sartre, La Salle: Open Court.
  • Dobson, Andrew, 1993, Jean-Paul Sartre and the Politics of Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Flynn, Thomas R., 1984, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism: The Exam Case of Collective Responsibleness, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Flynn, Thomas R., 1997, Sartre, Foucault and Historical Reason, vol. one: Toward an Existentialist Theory of History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Heter, T. Storm, 2006, Sartre's Ethics of Appointment: Authenticity and Civic Virtue, London: Continuum.
  • Jeanson, Francis, 1981, Sartre and the Problem of Morality, tr. Robert Stone, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Martin, Thomas, 2002, Oppression and the Human Condition: An Introduction to Sartrean Existentialism, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
  • McBride, William Leon, 1991, Sartre's Political Theory, Bloomington: Indiana University Printing.
  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1973, Adventures of the Dialectic, trans. Joseph Bien, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
  • Murphy, Julien S. (ed), 1999, Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre, Academy Park: Pennsylvania Land University Press.
  • Santoni, Ronald E., 2003, Sartre on Violence: Curiously Ambivalent, University Park: Pennsylvania Land University Press.
  • Stone, Robert and Elizabeth Bowman, 1986, "Dialectical Ideals: A Outset Expect at Sartre's unpublished 1964 Rome Lecture Notes," Social Text nos. thirteen-xiv (Winter-Bound, 1986), 195-215.
  • Rock, Robert and Elizabeth Bowman, 1991, "Sartre'south 'Morality and History': A Beginning Look at the Notes for the unpublished 1965 Cornell Lectures" in Sartre Alive, ed. Ronald Aronson and Adrian van den Hoven, Detroit: Wayne Country University Printing, 53-82.

Writer Data

Storm Heter
E-mail: sheter@po-box.esu.edu
East Stroudsburg University
U. S. A.