Critique Of Dialectical Reason Research Articles

Fraternity-without-Terror: A Sartrean Account of Political Solidarity

ABSTRACT This article analyses Sartre's conflicting interpretations of human relationality in Critique of Dialectical Reason and Hope Now in order to demostrate two things. First, that the social dynamics leading to the formation of what Sartre calls “fused groups” and “fraternity-terror” are still at play in current manifestations of exclusionary and antagonistic conceptions of identity politics, which we contend constitute a risk for contemporary democracy. Second, that an alternative conception of “fraternity-without-terror”, whose foundations can be found in Sartre's latest reflections upon the possibility of a normative ethics of reciprocity, can pave the ground to a fairer model of political solidarity.

Sartre’s Ontology and its implications on Education in Kenya: Critical Reflections on Bhadra’s Phenomenology and Existentialism

Jean Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, was a prolific author of over 50 literary works. Some of his Philosophical essays include; The Transcendence of the Ego (1936), Imagination: A Psychological Critique (1936), Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939), The Imaginary (1940), Being and Nothingness (1943), Existentialism and Humanism (1946), Existentialism and Human Emotions (1957), Search for a Method (1957), Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960, 1985), Notebooks for Ethics (1983) and Truth and Existence (1989). Sartre is considered to be the first Philosopher to use the term existentialism as a philosophical system. Existentialism in education is a teaching and learning philosophy that focuses on the student’s freedom and agency to choose their future (Ginny, 2012). Sartre first used it to describe his life and that of the postwar literary and philosophical output of his associates. Sartre argued for the different themes across his literary works, yet the bottom line of his thought was not only based on his ‘lived-experiences’ but also his view of reality, better considered as Sartre’s ontology. This paper therefore discussed Sartre’s ontology and its implication to educational practices and policies in Kenya.

Charisma's Birth from the Bottom Up: Lula, ABC's Metalworkers’ Strikes and the Social History of Brazilian Politics

AbstractIf David Bell in his book Men on Horseback (2020) focuses on what is political charisma, how it functions, and what it means ‘to write its history’, this article examines how Brazil's ex-President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (‘Lula’) acquired charisma during the dramatic 1978–80 metalworkers’ strikes in the industrial ABC region of São Paulo, Brazil. While generating a vast literature, scholars of the ABC strikes have evaded the question of how Lula, the gifted organiser, emerged as a recognisably charismatic figure. This article explains where, when and why this happened and how a charismatic bond was forged as 100,000 stigmatised, fearful, self-doubting ‘peons’ came to constitute themselves as a locally articulated social actor, a group in fusion, whose boldness and creativity led to extraordinary feats of organisation and mobilisation. Arguing against conflating charisma and populism, it also establishes the utility of the theorisation of group-making advanced in the Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960) by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Insurgency as Situated Invention: Jean-Paul Sartre's Materialist Theory of Struggles Against Oppression and Exploitation

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to theorize insurgent political action on the basis of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason. It reconstructs a Sartrean model of insurgency that prioritizes an insurgent group’s capacity for situated inventions. It argues that, similar to Fanon, Sartre theorized that groups that struggle against oppression and exploitation constantly invent novel conditions that steer society in unforeseeable directions. However, these inventions of insurgent action are never absolutely contingent but always take place in concrete situations which never cease to condition them. This paper analyses two concrete factors which condition the inventions of insurgent action: the seriality from which the group arises and to which it always threatens to return, and the actions of hostile groups. Taken together, this paper claims that Sartre provides a coherent and innovative account of insurgent political action.

SARTRE’S CRITIQUE OF DIALECTICAL REASON AND NEW MATERIALISM

Sartre’s late work – the Critique of Dialectical Reason – attempted to develop a new theory of praxis emphasizing themes that anticipate new materialist and biopolitical turns in the humanities. Specifically, Sartre stressed: (1) the “agentic” qualities of matter, insofar as matter reacts to human activity and alters its course; (2) the unintended and accruing consequences of human activity in the material world; (3) the fact that capitalism involves human subjects in relations of passive exigency that make them machines; and (4) the ways in which the biological matter constituting a human subject is systematically altered through practical activities performed in a particular milieu. The present article overviews new materialism and discusses affinities and divergences with Sartre’s Critique. It then presents Sartre’s social theory of ensembles, or assemblages, of human actors. This exposition demonstrates the potential of his theory to contribute to contemporary biopolitical and post-structuralist ideas about revolutionary collective action.

The Role of the Third in the Genesis of a We-perspective

ABSTRACT According to a recent and prominent view, a ‘we-perspective’ arises out of a dyadic I-you relation involving a special form of reciprocity in which I relate to another as a you – as somebody who is also attending and addressing me. As important as this argument might be, one obvious limitation lies in that it typically applies to dyadic forms of ‘we’ which are bound to the here and now of face-to-face interactions between ‘ad hoc pairs of individuals’. Drawing inspiration from Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason and Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, I will argue that in order to trace a way out of this impasse, one needs to shift the theoretical focus from dyadic face-to-face (immediate) relations of reciprocity between I and You, self and other to ternary relations of ‘mediated reciprocity’ involving the figure and the functions of a third party (le tiers).

Freedom and domination through time: Jean-Paul Sartre’s theory of the plurality of temporalities

The plural, impure or discordant nature of time has become an important theme in recent critical social and political theory. Against Althusser’s dismissal of Sartre’s presumedly Hegelian understanding of time and history, this article establishes Jean-Paul Sartre as a key figure in this debate on the plurality of temporalities. Especially in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre understands history and the social in terms of a multiplicity of uneven and non-synchronous temporalisations, rejecting an notion of time as a universal container within which events take place. The originality of Sartre’s approach is that it establishes a link between the notion of the plurality of temporalities and the problem of freedom and domination. His mature social and political theory allows us to understand temporalisation as a strategy for domination, and objective social temporality (e.g. the time of the economy or of machine systems) as key to a form of anonymous or structural domination. A reconstruction of this highly complex and sophisticated approach to thinking domination through time can also shed an original light on the temporal dimension of democracy and totalitarianism.

Sixty years of Sartre’sCritique: RevisitingThe Critique of Dialectical Reasontoday

Despite being the work of one of the 20th-century’s most famous philosophers, Jean-Paul Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason has never been fully integrated into our collective philosophical consciousness. None of the book’s key concepts, from seriality to the group, have come to play an important role in other philosophers’, sociologists’, or political theorists’ work. Amongst Sartre scholars, while work on the Critique has increased steadily in recent years, in particular in France and Belgium, no critical consensus exists about the book’s overall meaning or value. On the occasion of the Critique’s 60th birthday, in this article I provide a summary of its main aims and concepts with a view to establishing a new basis for reading and discussing the book. I will argue that the Critique is a coherent and unique work of social theory that speaks to a world suffering an overwhelming wave of what Sartre calls ‘counter-finality’ in the form of climate change.

De kracht van inertie

Abstract The force of inertia. A Sartrean perspective on resistance Although Sartre’s philosophy of freedom is often considered as a philosophy of resistance, rooted in the experience of the Second World War, Sartre did not formulate a full-blown theory of resistance. However, his Critique of Dialectical Reason contains a wealth of material that allows a rethinking of the notion of resistance. In much of the literature, this notion is inflated so as to include action, opposition, struggle, exodus and a range of other phenomena. In order to acquire a sharper sense of the specific meaning of resistance, this paper argues, this notion has to be reconnected with its origins in mechanical physics. Sartre’s key concept of inertia provides a starting point for such a theoretical strategy. Although human beings are fundamentally free, they can live their relation to others and to themselves as if they were inert things. From a Sartrean perspective, resistance means making oneself inert in order to be able to persevere and to hold the line in the face of a threat. Resistance occurs at both sides of a struggle, and can take different, asymmetrical forms. The two fundamental modes of sociality Sartre distinguishes, namely the group and the series, offer different types of resistance to opponents.

Love and Violence

Beginning with a study of need and its relationship to violence in Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason, this paper argues that need, in the midst of scarcity, can both be a catalyst for violence and a force in the service of love. It warns against an antagonistic view of need and of ethics that emerges in Sartre’s Critique, drawing on Sartre’s own ongoing commitments to existentialism and also on the work of Primo Levi. In particular, it warns against the danger of reducing an ethics of need to one of Manichean violence. It also introduces the concept of ‘second-person needs’, which include (but are not limited to) needs of one’s own for the needs of others to be met. This concept is resonant with the idea of authentic love introduced in Sartre’s earlier, unfinished Notebooks for an Ethics, with the suggestions concerning a concrete, material ethics offered in Sartre’s Rome Lecture of 1964, as well as with Sartre’s concept of the fused group in the Critique itself.

The Cause of the People: Sartre's Encounter with Lacan in Badiou's Theory of the Subject

In one of his late interviews, Alain Badiou acknowledges that his concept of the event can be traced back to Jean-Paul Sartre's notion of the group-in-fusion, presented in the Critique of Dialectical Reason as a momentous historical irruption that dissolves the serial existence of the masses. Given the lack of engagement with Sartre in Being and Event, the present essay attempts to account for this unexpected admission by arguing that Sartre figures as Badiou's silent partner in Theory of the Subject. The centrality of Sartre to Badiou's first major philosophical work is evident in the mobilization of the category of destruction to supplement the structural dialectic developed by Badiou's other master, Jacques Lacan. In so far as the mass movement is said to effectively destroy the space of placement by forcing the evental presentation of the real, Theory of the Subject pre-emptively contradicts Badiou's subsequent attempts to deny political status to the group-in-fusion. The present article thus concludes that the Sartrean group functions as a veritable cause that commences the subject-process constitutive of politics itself.

Does the City of Ends Correspond to a Classless Society?

In the Critique of Dialectical Reason and in many interviews, Sartre upheld the proletariat’s attempts at emancipation in Western societies and their revolts in the developing world. In these texts, counter-violence is considered the only way to exercise concrete engagement, and a classless society is presented as the only possibility of reducing social inequalities. However, this radical point of view was not the only perspective he tried to develop. He also sought to elaborate an existentialist ethics, which does not correspond to the Marxist theory. This article aims to show that Sartre evoked Notebooks’ ideas in his last interview, Hope Now, in which he envisaged a different typology of democracy and society. This article will examine this new and last direction of Sartre’s political thought.

Questões de método

Jean-Paul Sartre, materialista em sua última e mais radical fase, desenvolveu tanto em Questões de método quanto em Crítica da razão dialética, pressupostos teóricos de elaborada pertinência para uma crítica literária marxista. Trata-se de acompanhar as consequências formais do processo social em sua amplitude e profundidade geométricas, lançando mão de uma “hierarquia de mediações”, só passível de reconstrução a partir de “disciplinas auxiliares” modernas, tais quais a sociologia e a psicanálise. A proposição do diálogo, heterodoxa, renova a sondagem marxista das superestruturas, conquanto também conserve traços da filosofia existencial sartriana pregressa. Veremos os dilemas e limites de tal itinerário.

Materialidad y violencia a partir de la estructura original de la rareté en la Crítica de la razón dialéctica

El presente estudio tiene por objetivo exponer la articulación entre violencia y materialidad a partir del fenómeno de larareté como elemento original de la historia humana en la Crítica dela razón dialéctica. Con esta finalidad, el trabajo abordará la manera en que Jean Paul Sartre considera la institución de la historia humana desde una perspectiva dialéctica donde el hombre «hace» y «es hecho» por la historia. Desde esta perspectiva, la materia aparece como aquello que el hombre transforma a partir de su libre praxis pero también como aquello que transforma al hombre. En este sentido, es fundamental la forma en que la imposición de la materia es interiorizada por cada uno generando lazos intersubjetivos que se enmarcan en una lógica del conflicto en la que la que cada uno vive la presencia del otro como peligro de eliminación.

Sartre and Heidegger on Social Deformation and the Anthropocene

The age of the Anthropocene is arguably upon us. Heidegger’s famous discussion of technology helps us understand the attitude that put us in this crisis. Although Sartre’s work in the Critique of Dialectical Reason seems to be distinct from Heidegger’s, I show how his concern with the socially alienating phenomenon of seriality explains why this technological attitude is so persistent. And by studying Heidegger and Sartre together, we get a better sense of how our environmental destitution is correlated to a social-political one. Relational respect is offered as an existential norm that helps us move beyond our violent tendency to objectify beings, both human and other than human.

From In-Itself to Practico-Inert

This article focuses on Sartre’s concept of the practicoinert in his major work A Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol. 1 (CDR). I first show the progression from Sartre’s previous conception of in-itself to his concept of practico-inert. I identify five different layers of the practico-inert: human-made objects, language, ideas, social objects and class being. I show how these practico-inert layers form the possibilities for our subjectivity and how this represents a change from Sartre’s view of in-itself in Being and Nothingness. I then explore the relationship of freedom to the practico-inert and how Sartre argues that the practico-inert places limits on our freedom. Lastly, I argue that despite the pessimistic picture Sartre paints in CDR, the practico-inert has the potential to both limit and enhance our freedom. I appeal to Sartre’s post-CDR essay ‘A Plea for Intellectuals’ to argue that a Sartrean account of progress requires the utilisation of the practico-inert.

Sartre’s Dialectical Methodology

ABSTRACTSartre’s intention in the Critique of Dialectical Reason is to establish the heuristic value of the dialectical method when applied to the social sciences. Toward this end, he furnishes an account of how, on the basis of natural needs, rational choices, burgeoning social ensembles, natural and social contingencies and unintended consequences, human beings make their history. I shall argue that his dialectical method, especially when modified, opens up interesting possibilities for clarifying the two most important and enduring meta-issues in the philosophy of social science: (1) whether social phenomena should be explained in terms of the beliefs, desires and actions of individuals or the rules and practices of social institutions (“Methodological Individualism” or “Methodological Holism”) and (2) whether social phenomena should be explained in terms of causes, as in the natural sciences, or in terms of what they mean in their social contexts, as in hermeneutics and other interpretive approaches (“Explanation” or “Understanding”).

Sartre, The Condemned of Altona and the Critique of Dialectical Reason-to-come: Insanity or Bad Faith Running Away with Itself?

ABSTRACTWhat for Sartre happens when bad faith goes so deep that one is no longer master of it? In The Condemned of Altona, Franz Gerlach, after an initial show of resistance, joins the Nazi cause and tortures prisoners of war in his charge. Fleeing home from Russia at the war’s end, he sequesters himself in the attic of the family mansion and attempts to absorb the guilt of the twentieth century by frantically arguing his case before a tribunal of scuttling crabs.What does Sartre’s portrayal of hallucination tell us about the human condition and is it the result of insanity? As a harbinger for the Critique of Dialectical Reason (CDR), Sartre’s ontology has shifted away from an emphasis on human isolation and absolute freedom to a concern with how behaviour, even of an irrational kind, is a profound reflection of one’s place in a social hierarchy. Also a reflection of a CDR-type approach, Sartre’s views change regarding the status of truth and interpersonal relations. For while someone like Nausea’s Roquentin exhibits a redemptive value through introspection, fantasy and private experience, Franz’s behaviour points to a repeated failure to deal with social reality and the associated attempt to redeem his own existence by acting authentically towards others.

Ontología, acción y verdad. De El ser y la nada a Verdad y existencia

In this article we will discuss the manner in which the concept of truth that Sartre explains in his post- humous text Truth and Existence is supported by the fundamental premises of Being and Nothingness, while presenting topics that can be found in The Critique of Dialectical Reason and that put into question one of the fundamental premises of the 1943 text; the impossibility of an in-itself-for-itself.

Crime, Governance, and Existential Predicaments. By J. Hardie-Bick and R. Lippens (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2011, v–vi, 1–213pp. £ 60.00 hb)

The questionable intellectual standing of Marxism as the bastion of radically minded humanistic reform is traceable to (at least) two, mostly overlapping transitions in continental philosophy that occurred during the pre-to-post World War II era. One of these shifts is the existentialist movement, championed principally by philosopher–playwright–novelist Jean-Paul Sartre. The other pivot is the phenomenological movement, heralded most prominently by Edmund Husserl through his eidetic formulations on consciousness and intentionality and Martin Heidegger through his temporal ontology regarding the dasein analytic (i.e. the meaning of being-in-the-world). What is significant here is that Sartre’s view of dialectical materialism (Marx’s response to Hegel’s historical idealism and, thus, Sartre’s fluctuating allegiances to Marxism) is inconsistent if not contradictory. It is this paradox that helps to account for continental philosophy’s divergent landscape during a war-torn period of increasing political dissent and economic decline. Consider the following. On the one hand, Sartre’s Being and Nothingness(1943/1948) followed by his Materialism and Revolution (Sartre 1946/1962) represent an homage to phenomenology’s re-engagement with the human subject not as alienated and oppressed; not as a by-product of extant forces beyond the conscious, intending, choice-making, responsible and condemned to-be-free individual. After all, ‘existence precedes essence’ in the Sartrean canon that posits an alternative philosophy to Marxist class consciousness, collectivist struggle and cooperative overcoming. On the other hand, Sartre’s phenomenology of existence (of being-in-the-world) looses traction in his work, The Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960/1976). Here, a version of Marxist existentialism is put forth whose objects of inquiry are the historically contingent, co-determining forces or lived social conditions against which the unfettered being that is ‘for itself’ (Sartre’s pour soi) makes choice and undertakes action. These choices and actions consist of navigating stratification and scarcity dynamics. This is being-in-the-world as sociological embeddedness (Granovetter 1985) in which the ongoing networks of social relations between and among people co-produce and structurate (Giddens 1984) the existential (human agent) phenomenological (social structure) project, including its tendencies, limits and potentialities.