European public intellectual of the twentieth century, developed a
highly original political philosophy, influenced in part by the work
of Hegel and Marx. Although he wrote little on ethics or politics
prior to W.W. II, political themes dominated his writings from 1945
onwards. Sartre co-founded the journal 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 forth
the general thesis that oppression is a distortion of interpersonal
recognition. In the 1950's 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 earlier, more
radical view of existential freedom. His last systematic work, The
Family Idiot (1971), would express his final and most nuanced views on
the relation between individuals and social wholes.Sartre's pioneering
combination of Existentialism and Marxism yielded a political
philosophy uniquely sensitive to the tension between individual
freedom 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 as 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 made in this situation. Unlike competing
versions of Marxism, Sartre's Existentialist-Marxism was based on a
striking theory of individual agency and moral responsibility.
In addition to class analysis Sartre offered critiques of
anti-Semitism, racism, violence and colonialism. His theoretical
account of oppression re-worked Hegel's master/slave dialectic,
arguing that oppression is a concrete, historical instance of mastery.
To oppress another is to attempt to validate one's sense of self by
denying the freedom of another. The self-contradictory nature of
oppression led him to the optimistic conclusion that oppression is not
an inevitable, ontological condition, but a historical reality that
should be contested, through both self-assertion and collective
action. As a social-political thinker, Sartre defended a large number
of innovative methodological and substantive theses. He steered a
middle 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.
1. Texts
Sartre's prolific writings span multiple genres and have variously
been divided into two or three major phases (early and late; or early,
middle and late). Sartre's political writings began in earnest after
World War II. In prewar works like Nausea (La Nausée, 1938) and Being
and Nothingness (L'Etre et le Néant, 1943) Sartre wrote almost
exclusively about individual psychology, imagination and
consciousness. Sartre's primary goal in these works was to discredit
determinism and defend the creativity, contingency and freedom of
human action. While Sartre's 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" as the active term in
his analysis. Turning away from pure psychology, Sartre's central
concerns in the postwar period 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.1, 1960, and
Vol. 2, 1985) and The Family Idiot (L'Idiot de la famille, 1971). In
addition to these theoretical tomes (both over 1,000 pages), Sartre
wrote a large number of political essays, most of which were first
published in Modern Times (Les Temps modernes), the journal founded by
Sartre and others in 1945. The significant essays have been collected
in a ten volume set by Gallimard entitled Situations. Of the four
novels and nine 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's Philosophy of Right, Rousseau's On the Social Contract, or
Mill's On Liberty. His political philosophy emerges from his
situational pieces, which were reactions to contemporary political
issues, 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
work of traditional political philosophy in his corpus. The main
themes of Critique include the nature of social groups, history, and
dialectical reason. Critique only briefly addresses the canonical
themes of political philosophy, such as the theory of the state,
political obligation, citizenship, justice and rights.
2. Hegelian-Marxism
Sartre's contributions to political philosophy are best understood
from within the historical context of Hegelianism and Marxism. His
political views were influenced heavily by Hegel. In Being and
Nothingness he shows some familiarity with the work of Hegel, but this
knowledge was indirect and piecemeal. Sartre did not begin a serious
study of Hegel until the late 1940s. Between 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
developed his own political views through a dialogue with Hegel and
Marx. Above all, Sartre was concerned to rethink the master/slave
dialectic of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. In Being and Nothingness
he agreed with Hegel that humans struggle against one 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 Nothingness,pp. 471-534). However, in the Notebooks,
and in the works published beginning in the late 1940s, he
dramatically altered his thinking on master/slave relations. First, he
accepted 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's historical view of the struggle for recognition allowed him
to analyze oppression as a type of domination. Finally, he came to
agree 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 short, Sartre's 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's normative ethical assumptions
(including, by extension, his political views) were derived from Kant.
It is true that his best known work, "Existentialism is a Humanism"
("L'Existentialisme est un humanisme," 1945), presented a
universalization argument similar to Kant's categorical imperative.
However, the majority of his works speak critically of Kant. The
influence of Hegel vastly outweighs that of Kant. In the
autobiographical film 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 ethics for an extended period, he rejects Kantian ethics,
calling it a form of "slave morality" and an "ethics of demands" (pp.
237-274). While he speaks favorably of a "kingdom of ends," this
phrase refers to a socialist society, not 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 war, experiences during the war politicized
him and motivated the turn to Marxism. Sartre's Marxism was always
accompanied by his existentialism. Overwhelmingly devoted to
ontological and phenomenological explanations, he would powerfully
describe social reality using Marxist structural analysis. The result
was a highly original political theory that, while recognizably
Marxist, did not resemble the 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 period, Sartre deepened his psychological
explanations of human behavior by contextualizing individual action
within wide social structures (class, family, nation, and so on). He
held that economic class was only one of many important structural
factors that explained human action. Vehemently criticizing all forms
of social scientific reductionism, he claimed that the human situation
includes birth, death, family, nationality, gender, race and body, to
name only the most relevant (Anti-Semite and Jew, pp. 59-60). Like
later analytic Marxists, he would claim that "objective interests" are
insufficient to explain 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 be 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 action. The two major components of
the method are a regressive analysis of static social structures such
as class, 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 G. 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 not 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
broad account of history, social groups and mass phenomenon. Sartre's
dialectical theory of society, written in the spirit of Hegel and
Marx, holds that group struggle is the animating principle of human
history. Pace Hegel, Sartre rejects group minds, arguing that there is
a basic ontological distinction between the action of persons
(individual praxis) and the action 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 label 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 II:
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's pen these distinctions come to life. His analysis
of the Bastille is a case in point. Rioting citizens were transformed
from a disorganized collective into a group by internalizing the
perspective of government officials who thought the rioters were a
coherent movement 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, but also in oath-based groups and
highly bureaucratic institutions.
The social theory of Critique is a far cry from Being and Nothingness,
which had asserted that social groups were mere psychological
projections (Being and Nothingness, p.536). Critique introduces a new
technical concept, that of "mediating third parties," to explain the
nature of groups above and beyond I-thou relations (pp. 100-9).
Mediating third parties are members of groups who temporarily act as
external threats (for example, when giving orders) but who
subsequently re-enter the group (Critique, p.373). The concept of the
mediating third party allows Sartre to extend his theory of
interpersonal recognition beyond the fictionalized, abstract encounter
between self and other, and better explain the fundamentals of group
solidarity.
The direct political implications of Critique's group theory are
ambiguous. One popular, plausible interpretation holds that
spontaneous groups (for example, fusing and pledge groups) promote
human freedom, while bureaucratic groups (such as organizations and
institutions) engender alienation. Characteristically, Sartre uses
moral terminology to describe groups, but subsequently distances
himself from moral conclusions. Institutions, for example, are
"degraded forms of community" where "freedom . . . becomes alienated
and hidden from its own eyes." (Critique, pp. 615 and 591).
Nonetheless, any politics consistent with Critique would have to favor
spontaneous, decentralized social groups.
The concept of alienation also plays an important role in Sartre's
thinking. In Notebooks he defines alienation as being an "other" to
oneself (p. 382). In Critique he uses the terms "serialized" and
"atomized" to describe persons who are alienated from one another.
Unlike Being and Nothingness, where alienation is depicted as an
unavoidable ontological condition, in the later political works
alienation is rooted in material scarcity. If material scarcity can be
eliminated, then we might enjoy "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, however, he co-founded a short-lived
non-Communist leftist party, the Rassemblement Démocratique
Révolutionnaire. From 1952 to 1956 Sartre supported but did not join
the French Communist Party. Later he became disillusioned by the
soviet invasion 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 against deterministic, structuralist
versions of Marxism, inserting human subjectivity back 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 than 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, central to Sartre's system as a whole, is a
dominant theme in his political works. Sartre's view of freedom
changed substantially throughout his lifetime. Scholars disagree
whether there is a fundamental continuity or a radical break between
Sartre's early view of freedom and his late view of freedom. There is
a strong consensus, though, that after World War II Sartre shifted to
a material view of freedom, in contrast to the ontological view of his
early period. According to the arguments of Being and Nothingness
human freedom consists in the ability of consciousness to transcend
its material situation (p. 563). Later, especially in Critique of
Dialectical Reason, Sartre shifts to the view that humans are only
free if their basic needs as practical organisms are met (p. 327). Let
us look at these two different notions of freedom in more depth.
Early Sartre views freedom as synonymous with human consciousness.
Consciousness ("being-for-itself") is marked by its non-coincidence
with itself. In simple terms, consciousness escapes itself both
because it is intentional (consciousness always targets an object
other than itself) and temporal (consciousness is necessarily future
oriented) (Being and Nothingness, pp. 573-4 and 568). Sartre's view
that human freedom consists in consciousness' ability to escape the
present is "ontological" in the sense that no normal human being can
fail to be free. The subtitle of Being and Nothingness, "An Essay in
Phenomenological Ontology," reveals Sartre's aim of describing the
fundamental structures of human existence and answering the question
"What does it mean to be human?" His answer is that humans, unlike
inert matter, are conscious and therefore free.
The notion of ontological freedom is controversial and has often been
rejected because it 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 as ever during
the Nazi occupation. In Being and Nothingness, he passionately argued
that even prisoners are free because they have the power of
consciousness (p. 622). A prisoner, though coerced, can choose how to
react to his imprisonment. The prisoner is free because he controls
his reaction to imprisonment: he may resist or acquiesce. Since there
are no objective barriers to the will, the prison bars restrain me
only if I form the will to escape. In a similar example, Sartre notes
that a mountain is only a barrier if the individual wants to get on
the other side but cannot (Being and Nothingness, p. 628).
Sartre's ontological notion of freedom has been widely criticized,
from both political and ontological standpoints. An important
contemporary critic of Sartre's work was his colleague Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, whose essay "Sartre and Ultrabolshevism" directly
attacked Sartre's 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
works he became critical of what he then called the "stoical" and
"Cartesian" view that freedom consists in the ability to change one's
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, ontological conception of freedom with the
late, material conception of freedom. However, it 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 again
used the notion of consciousness to characterize human existence,
preferring instead the Marxist notion of praxis. Further, he came to
emphasize the "situation" (i.e. structural influences) in explaining
individual choice and psychology (Anti-Semite and Jew, pp. 59-60).
Finally, he criticized all "inward" notions of freedom, claiming that
a change of attitude is insufficient for real freedom.
Sartre's shift to a material conception of freedom was motivated
directly by the holocaust and World War II. Anti-Semite and Jew
(Réflexions sur la question juive, 1946), published just after the
war, was the first of many works analyzing moral responsibility for
oppression. The fact that Sartre's view in Being and Nothingness
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 same dialectical tools
as those in the section on "concrete relations with others" in Being
and Nothingness. Anti-Semite and Jew argues that oppression is a
master/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 look" by arguing that only some,
not all, interpersonal relations result in alienation and loss of
freedom.
Sartre's new appreciation of oppression as a concrete loss of human
freedom forced him to alter his view that humans are free in any
situation. He did not explicitly discuss such alterations, though
clearly abandoning the view that humans are free in all situations.
"[I]t is important not to conclude that one can be free in chains,"
and "It would be quite wrong to interpret me as saying that man is
free in all situations as the Stoics claimed" (Critique, pp. 578 and
332). Sartre's basic 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 freedom in question
must be of a different 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, freedom
is synonymous with choice. But there is no qualitative distinction
between types of choices. If freedom is the existence of choice, then
even a bad choice is freedom promoting. As he will put it later, an
attacker who gives me the choice of "what sauce to be eaten in" could
hardly be said to meaningfully promote my freedom (Notebooks, p. 331).
The early view is subject to the charge that if there are no
qualitative distinctions between types of choices, then the phenomena
of oppression and coercion cannot be recognized.
In Anti-Semite and Jew and Notebooks Sartre implicitly addresses the
above 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 example,
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 choice is not synonymous with freedom (Critique, pp. 721-2). An
impoverished person who accepts a degrading, low wage job for the sake
of meeting her basic needs has a choice—she may starve or accept a
degrading job—but her choice is inhumane. He does not claim that
diffuse social structures like poverty have the literal agency of
individual human beings, but that class structure is a "destiny" and
we can speak cogently of social forces which exert causality and turn
us into "slaves" (Critique, p. 332).
In the political period as a whole Sartre developed his material view
of freedom by contrasting the free person with the slave. Though his
notion of slavery is derived from Hegel, Sartre, unlike Hegel,
diagnosed literal cases like American chattel slavery. Sartre follows
Hegel in portraying slavery as a form of "non-mutual recognition"
where one 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 self-conception of the victim and perpetrator are
intertwined and distorted; both parties are in "bad faith"; both fail
to fully understand their own freedom. Though both perpetrator and
victim are in bad faith, only the slave is coerced physically
(Notebooks, p. 331).
Sartre's view of material freedom is independent of any notion of
human nature. He consistently rejects the existence of a pre-social
human essence or a set of natural human desires ("Existentialism is a
Humanism"; Anti-Semite and Jew, p. 49; Search for a Method, pp.
167-181). The material view of freedom assumes a thin set of universal
human goods, including positive human goods (food, water, shelter and
education) and negative goods (freedom from all of the following:
slavery, poverty, discrimination, domination and persecution). While
Critique elaborates an economic understanding of human goods (the
essential needs are those of the physical organism), elsewhere Sartre
defends a wider spectrum of human needs including cultural goods and
access to shared values (Notebooks pp. 329-331). In sum, we can say
that a person is materially free in Sartre's 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 as an ally of political
liberalism, and suggests that material freedom is a version of liberal
autonomy. Liberals who defend the primacy of autonomy typically claim
that positive notions of freedom assume substantive, controversial
conceptions of the good life. Indeed, Sartre's rejection of human
nature and his thin conception of universal human goods are consistent
with liberalism. However, Sartre criticizes classical liberalism,
especially in Critique, arguing against asocial, atomistic notions of
selfhood (p. 311). Further, like civic republican philosophers (such
as Aristotle and Rousseau), Sartre contends that controlling the
social forces to which one is subject is a valuable type of human
freedom. Republican philosophers variously call such freedom
"self-government" or "non-domination." Whether Sartre's view of
freedom is a better fit with contemporary liberalism or civic
republicanism is a matter of speculation. Sartre's discussion of
freedom in Critique is highly abstract and does not translate simply
into one public policy or another. However, his preference for mass
movements and bottom-up social organization suggest that he would
favor radical participatory democracy. After the student revolts of
May 1968 Sartre told an interviewer: "For me the movement in May was
the first large-scale social movement which temporarily brought about
something akin to freedom and which then tried to conceive of what
freedom in action is" (Life/Situations, p. 52).
4. Oppression
The analysis of oppression is one of Sartre's most original
contributions to political philosophy. Adapting the master/slave
dialectic of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Sartre developed a
general theory of oppression that yielded moral critiques of
anti-Semitism, colonialism, class bigotry and anti-black racism.
Consistent with his general methodology, Sartre denied that oppression
reduces to either individual 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 by Sartre as the "exploitation of man
by man . . . characterized by the fact that one class deprives the
members of another class of their freedom" (Notebooks, p. 562). On the
interpersonal level, oppression is a master/slave relationship; the
oppressor tries to gain a robust sense of selfhood by dominating
others. Sartre, like Hegel, showed that domination is a self-defeating
practical attitude. The dominator tries to force others to recognize
him as superior; but ironically, the dominator receives little
confirmation of his superiority as he has ruled out in advance the
weight of others' judgments (Anti-Semite and Jew, p. 27; see also
Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity, 1947, especially pp. 60-63).
Sartre's analysis works particularly well at diagnosing attitudes of
racial superiority. An anti-Semite bases his self-image on the fact
that he is not-a-Jew, but in so doing, he becomes depended upon the
Jewish other from whom he claims total independence. Ultimately, the
racist receives no satisfaction from domination because he solicits
recognition from someone he denigrates.
The concept of bad faith also plays an important role in Sartre's
analysis of oppression. Bad faith is an original notion developed by
Sartre, first in Being and Nothingness, and subsequently in
Anti-Semite and Jew, Saint Genet and Situations. Despite his quip that
bad faith does not imply moral blame, Sartre's discussions of bad
faith are heavily moralistic. Bad faith is a deep confusion about
one's own basic projects, attitudes, desires and actions. Bad faith is
self-deception (See Being and Nothingness, pp. 86-119). And just as
freedom is the chief value of existentialism, bad faith—misrecognizing
one's freedom—is the chief existential vice. In particular, racists
are in bad faith if they believe humans have racial "essences" or
"natures" (Anti-Semite and Jew, pp. 17, 20, 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 human action. Most
fundamentally, the appeal to essences causes us to abdicate
responsibility and blame our freely chosen actions on fictitious inner
drives and motives. In Notebooks Sartre expanded his analysis of
racist bad faith by arguing that all oppression, not just racist
oppression, requires bad faith: "One oppresses only if one 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 "authentic" from "non-authentic" 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 faith,
does not amount to embracing one's biology or heritage. Rather,
authenticity consists in properly affirming one's own freedom through
clarified reflection and responsible action. In Anti-Semite and Jew
Sartre defines authenticity as follows:
If it is agreed that man may be defined as a being having freedom
within the limits of a situation, then it is easy to see that the
exercise of this freedom may be considered as authentic or inauthentic
according to the choices made in the situation. Authenticity, it is
almost needless to say, consists in having a true and lucid
consciousness of the situation, in assuming 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 lonely, individualistic aspect of
affirming one's freedom, (especially in early fiction like The Flies
[Les Mouches, 1943]), he also explored the intersubjective conditions
of authenticity. At times Sartre endorsed the view, held by fellow
existentialist Simone de Beauvoir, that a proper relation to one's own
freedom requires affirming the freedom of others (de Beauvoir, The
Ethics of Ambiguity, p. 67; Sartre Notebooks, pp. 475–79). In
"Existentialism is a Humanism," Sartre gestured towards the
interconnection of human freedoms, claiming that to will one's own
freedom required willing the freedom of others. But only later, in his
unpublished writings on ethics did he fully explain his view: "If I
grasp my freedom in a fulfilled intuition as both the source of all my
projects and requiring universal freedom, I cannot think of destroying
the freedom 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. 721–3). Sartre's
view, while indebted to Marx's notion of alienation, reflects his own
unique blend of Marxism and Existentialism. "By alienation we mean a
certain type of relations that man 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 as a whole depends
on the distinction between 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 frequently cites French colonialism in Africa
as an example of serial, alienating action. 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 group power. For example,
desperately impoverished Algerians compete against each other for low
wage jobs and unintentionally harm the entire collective by driving
down wages for everyone.
Sartre shows, then, that oppression is both an interpersonal dynamic
and a social-institutional phenomenon. Adopting Hegel's master/slave
dialectic, he claims that oppressors attempt to validate their own
sense of superiority by dominating others. Like Hegel, Sartre sees
domination as ultimately self-defeating. To oppress requires
implicitly acknowledging the victim's humanity in order to
subsequently revoke it. On the psychological level, the oppressor
lives in bad faith, misunderstanding his own freedom and the freedom
of his victim. In later works, especially Critique, the psychological
portrait of oppression is mapped onto a macro-social analysis of group
struggle. Institutionalized racism is seen as a special case of
bureaucratic dehumanization. Victims of racist oppression become
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. Engagement
Engagement is a specialized term in the Sartrean vocabulary and refers
to the process of accepting responsibility for the political
consequences of one's actions. Sartre, more than any other philosopher
of the period, 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 gain group consciousness, and through which members
of the elite would be provoked into action.
Sartre was famous for writing scathing essays condemning French
policies. While he intervened in most 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 lesser known political writers. Sartre wrote
prefaces for F. Fanon's study of psychic pathologies caused under
French colonialism, Wretched of the Earth (Les damnés de la terre,
1961), H. Alleg's book 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 L. Senghor's "Black Orpheus"
("Orphée Noir," 1948), extended his theory of engaged literature and
contributed to the Negritude movement.
The inaugural issue of Les Temps modernes (October, 1945) first
articulated the vision of social responsibility which would become the
hallmark of political existentialism. A socially responsible writer
must address the major events of the era, take a stance against
injustice and work to alleviate 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 writer. 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's view of mutual recognition
and grounds his claim that authentic, engaged action must respect the
needs of others.
Sartre's claim that engagement is an ethical and political virtue
begins with the premise that humans are necessarily situated in
particular places and times. It is impossible to be politically
neutral, he insists (What is Literature?, p. 38). The only honest
course is to openly admit and defend one's political commitments.
Engagement is the political version of existential authenticity, which
requires affirming one's freedom within a social context. Authenticity
is a wider notion than engagement, since authenticity requires
awareness and responsibility with respect to the totality of one's
being, and overcoming bad faith globally. Existential engagement, on
the other hand, requires political awareness and responsibility, and
overcoming bad faith with respect to political issues.
Sartrean engagement can be usefully compared to common conceptions of
moral responsibility. Sartre accepts the notion that a person should
be held morally responsible for an action that she intentionally
causes. The distinguishing mark of Sartre's view is his broad
extension of the notion of causal responsibility. Sartre holds an
extremely demanding view of negative responsibility (responsibility
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). Any omitted action is an action for which an
agent is culpable. In a variety of works, Sartre uses the case of war
to illustrate his view. If I am the citizen of a nation at war then
the war is "mine" and I bear a direct, personal responsibility for the
action of my government. Sartre's essay "We Are All Assassins" ("Nous
sommes tous des assassins," 1958) epitomizes his view: average French
citizens are all equally culpable for the French government's action
of enforcing the death penalty.
In late works like Critique Sartre combines a demanding account of
personal responsibility with the functionalist view that individuals
incarnate their environment. The result is a portrait of social
responsibility that holds average citizens responsible for diffuse
social ills like racism, poverty, colonialism and sexism. Despite the
fact that Sartre fell 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 one of the
most powerful of the twentieth century.
6. Ideal Society
While never presenting a complete portrait of his ideal society
(whether in fiction or non-fiction), Sartre was a lifelong advocate of
socialism. In interviews late 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 society based on two principles:
individual freedom and the elimination of material scarcity.
In Notebooks Sartre described himself as developing a "concrete
ethics" which would combine normative ethics and political theory (p.
104). The closest equivalent is Hegel's notion of Sittlichkeit
(ethical life), as described in Philosophy of Right. Like Hegel,
Sartre claimed that ethics is more a matter of social convention than
abstract rule following. Ethics must be lived in the everyday
institutions of average citizens. The natural law approach to ethics,
Kantianism in particular, is of limited value because of its
universal, abstract character. Sartre accepted the Kantian injunction
"always treat others as ends" but he vehemently rejected the existence
of a single set 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 law.
In the late 1940's Sartre coined the term "concrete liberalism" to
describe the type of society he favored (Anti-Semite and Jew, p. 147).
The main feature of concrete liberalism is that the fundamental
regulative ideal of society—mutual respect—would be based on an
individual's particular projects, not on her abstract human nature
(Notebooks, p. 140). Rights, for example, would be guaranteed because
of a person's "active participation in the life of society" not by
appealing to a "problematical and abstract 'human nature'"
(Anti-Semite and Jew, p. 146). Sartre's 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 not explicitly endorse anarchy
in that work. The state, Sartre claimed, cannot represent the people
because the people are a collective not a group (Critique, pp.
635-42). Only genuine groups can be represented. (Think, for example,
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 short, ideal society for Sartre would likely consist of an
anarchistic-socialist order where individuals would have the resources
to pursue their own authentically chosen projects, with little
interference from the state or other entrenched powers. Special
emphasis would be placed on local, democratic groups which would
support the freely chosen projects of authentic individuals.
7. Conclusion
Sartre's contributions to twentieth century political philosophy are
substantial. Sartre developed a unique political vocabulary that
combined the personal redemption of existential authenticity with a
call for systematic social change. Like Hegel, Sartre argued that
freedom is the most central normative value and sought to reconcile
the pursuit of individual freedom with the need for social
institutions. Sartre's analysis of colonialism, racism and
anti-Semitism eloquently bridged the gap between theory and practice,
and significantly enriched the categories of traditional Marxism.
Justifiably, Sartre will be long remembered as both a systematic
political philosopher and a trenchant social critic.
8. References and Further Reading
a. Primary Sources
The following is a shortlist of Sartre's most important political
works which have been translated into English.
* Anti-Semite and Jew. New York: Schocken, 1988.
o Sartre's classic analysis of anti-Semitism and his longest
discussion of existential authenticity.
* Between Existentialism and Marxism. New York: William Morrow and
Company, 1974.
o Includes several pivotal political essays including "A
Plea for Intellectuals."
* Colonialism and Neocolonialism. London: Routledge, 2001.
o 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.
o Statement of Sartre's brief alignment with the French
Communist Party.
* "The Condemned of Altona." New York: Knopf, 1961.
o Explores collective responsibility for the holocaust.
* Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume 1. London: Verso, 2004.
o 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.
o Unfinished volume devoted to the question of whether
history can be understood as the result of group struggle.
* "Existentialism is a Humanism" in Existentialism. New York:
Philosophical Library, 1947.
o Famous speech in which Sartre suggests that existentialism
has an ethics, not unlike Kant's categorical imperative.
* Ghost of Stalin. New York: George Braziller, 1968.
o Published in 1956, announces Sartre's break with the
French Communist Party over the Soviet invasion of Hungary.
* Hope Now: The 1980 Interviews. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1996.
o Interviews conducted by young Maoist Beny Lévy in the last
year of Sartre's life, suggesting a new Sartrean ethics.
* Life/Situations: Essays Written and Spoken. New York: Pantheon, 1977.
o Contains several important political essays including
"Elections: A Trap for Fools."
* "Materialism and Revolution" in Literary and Philosophical
Essays. New York: Crowell-Collier, 1962.
o Describes the liberating potential of human work.
* Notebooks for an Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992.
o Posthumously published set of notebooks exploring
existential ethics and politics. Includes long discussions of
oppression, slavery, Hegel's master/slave dialectic and Marxism.
* No Exit and Three Other Plays. New York: Vintage Books, 1946.
o 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.
o Short article on the American war in Vietnam and the
legacy of French colonialism.
* Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr. New York: George Braziller, 1971.
o Sartre's existential biography of French writer and thief
Jean Genet.
* Sartre On Cuba. New York: Ballantine Books, 1961.
o Report of Sartre's visit to post-revolution Cuba.
* Search for a Method. New York: Vintage Books, 1963.
o Introduction to the longer Critique. Best succinct
statement of Sartrean Existentialist-Marxism.
* What Is Literature? and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1988.
o The canonical statement of Sartrean engaged literature.
Contains "Black Orpheus," a defense of the "negritude" poetry of
Césaire and Senghor, as well as the inaugural essay for Sartre's
journal Les Temps modernes.
b. Secondary Sources
The following secondary sources on Sartre's political and ethical
thinking are also recommended.
* Anderson, Thomas C., 1993, Sartre's Two Ethics: From
Authenticity to Integral Humanity, Chicago: Open Court.
* 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's Second Critique, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
* Bell, Linda A., 1989, Sartre's Ethics of Authenticity,
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
* Catalano, Joseph, 1986, A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's
Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol. 1, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
* Charmé, Stuart Zane, 1991, Vulgarity and Authenticity:
Dimensions of Otherness in the World of Jean-Paul Sartre, Amherst:
University of Mass Press.
* Chiodi, Pietro, 1978, Sartre and Marxism, Sussex: Harvester.
* Detmer, David, 1988, Freedom 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
Test Case of Collective Responsibility, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
* Flynn, Thomas R., 1997, Sartre, Foucault and Historical Reason,
vol. 1: Toward an Existentialist Theory of History, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
* Heter, T. Storm, 2006, Sartre's Ethics of Engagement:
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 Press.
* 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, University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press.
* Santoni, Ronald E., 2003, Sartre on Violence: Curiously
Ambivalent, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
* Stone, Robert and Elizabeth Bowman, 1986, "Dialectical Ethics: A
First Look at Sartre's unpublished 1964 Rome Lecture Notes," Social
Text nos. 13-14 (Winter-Spring, 1986), 195-215.
* Stone, Robert and Elizabeth Bowman, 1991, "Sartre's 'Morality
and History': A First Look at the Notes for the unpublished 1965
Cornell Lectures" in Sartre Alive, ed. Ronald Aronson and Adrian van
den Hoven, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 53-82.
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