Sartre's Second Critique (review)

Abstract

634 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 27:4 OCTOBER 198 9 Given this discussion of egoism, are we to infer that no actions have any moral worth? Just as in aesthetic consciousness transformations of subject and object occur, a transformation of egoism occurs in moral consciousness. A person will act virtuously (i.e., altruistically) towards a second person only if the first identifies himself with the second. Young claims that this identity is insured by the thesis of transcendental solipsism, which is the view that the distinction between one person and another is phenonmenal and illusory. We are all identical with a transcendental self which apparently is the pure subject of knowing that one becomes in aesthetic consciousness. In moral consciousness one is to some extent aware that another's suffering is identical to one's own suffering and acts to alleviate it. Thus, in moral consciousness, egoism is transformed into altruism. Young believes that there is more substance to Schopenhauer's arguments for pessimism than their being merely reflections of his peculiar temperament. The arguments from the negativity of happiness, people's frantic oscillation between desire and boredom, their incapacity to enjoy the moment, and that "nearly all great minds have had a pessimistic view of life" (146), Young finds quite formidable. Young presents two solutions to pessimism, both of which are found in Schopenhauer 's thought. The first solution is the otherworldly path of salvation through denial of the will (turning away from this world) and utilizing mystical consciousness. Young maintains that Schopenhauer believed that the statements of the mystics of various cultures and religions seem to say the same thing, i.e., that there is another world of boundless bliss in which there is neither plurality nor suffering. Young notes that Schopenhauer has most likely overstated the case for the similarities between the mystics' claims, but this mystical salvation is far from Hamlyn's claim that the only salvation Schopenhauer offers is the annihilation of consciousness.6 Young offers an alternative, this-worldly solution to pessimism which he has extracted from Schopenhauer's thought. In order to avoid the misery of egoism, one should act altruistically. In order to avoid the frantic oscillation between desire and boredom, one should have aesthetic communion with nature or art, and develop intellectual pleasures through creative hobbies. And finally one should cultivate a nonascetic form of stoicism in which, with detached self-sufficiency, one considers the amenities of life merely the gifts of fortune. Such a life-form represents obvious compromises and is a recipe for a good but not perfect life. RONALD HOUGH Wright State University Ronald Aronson. Sartre's Second Critique. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987. Pp. xvii + ~53- Cloth, $32.5o. Paper, $13.95. The appearance of the second volume of the Critique de la raison dialectique in 1985 was an important philosophical event for those who were anxious to see how Sartre's 6 Hamlyn, Schopenhauer, 155. BOOK REVIEWS 635 ambitious socio-historical theoretical project worked out the complex issues that were discussed, at considerable length, in the first volume. Despite a manuscript of 781 pages, Critique H is, as Aronson points out, incomplete and does not fulfll the rash promise of a justification of historical materialism in terms of Sartre's assumption of the primacy of individual praxis. Even an incomplete and occasionally meandering work by Jean-Paul Sartre has great interest, despite the fact that so much of recent French thought--post-Marxism, structuralism, post-structuralism, post-modernism--is anti-Sartrean. Although Aronson refers to a Sartre revival, there seems to be a stronger movement that seeks to surpass him or ignore him. Sartre has either been attacked with a severity that is reserved for passionate and serious thinkers or subjected to a conspiracy of silence. And, as Aronson shows in this detailed, patient, lively, and occasionally critical study of Critique II, he grapples with important questions concerning meaning in history and the counterdialectical forces and counterfinalities that are unintentionally generated by the acts of millions of individuals. Despite his abstract and technical terminology (which was introduced in the first Critique), what Sartre describes and interprets are social and historical phenomena that...