{"id":951,"date":"2020-03-01T11:40:57","date_gmt":"2020-03-01T16:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/?p=951"},"modified":"2020-03-02T14:19:32","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T19:19:32","slug":"maximilian-ringleb-existentialist-praxis-beyond-idealist-marxism-or-how-can-sartre-help-us-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/maximilian-ringleb-existentialist-praxis-beyond-idealist-marxism-or-how-can-sartre-help-us-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Maximilian Ringleb | Existentialist Praxis Beyond Idealist Marxism, or: How can Sartre help us today?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maximilian Ringleb*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two decades after the publication of his existentialist masterpiece Being and Nothingness<\/em>, Jean-Paul Sartre returned to contemporary philosophical thought with the publication of Critique of Dialectic Reason <\/em>in 1960. Having previously proposed \u201cthe most radical view of human freedom \u2026 since the Epicureans,\u201d[1]<\/a> Sartre\u2019s second major contribution to contemporary philosophy was an on-going project to find meaningful ways for the radically liberated individual to engage with society and the world.<\/p>\n

For Sartre, to be meaningful, this praxis had to follow Marxist philosophy: \u201c[w]e cannot go beyond it because we have not gone beyond the circumstances which engendered it.\u201d[2]<\/a> Writing in the 1950s, Sartre traced the social structures governing his time back to Kantian and Hegelian thought. Due to the dominating reality of these structures for the last two centuries, Sartre believed that \u201cMarxism is still very young,\u201d as it expresses the original critique of a historical moment that is not yet overcome.[3]<\/a> Comparing Marx\u2019s and Kierkegaard\u2019s critiques of Hegel, Sartre concludes that \u201cMarx \u2026 was right, since he asserts with Kierkegaard the specificity of human existence<\/em> and, along with Hegel, takes the concrete man in his objective reality.\u201d[4]<\/a> In other words, Sartre interpreted Marxist philosophy dialectically as the theoretical but not yet practical synthesis of Hegelian substantiality and Kierkegaardian existentialism, and therefore as the single horizon for meaningful contemporary praxis. However, in disregarding Schopenhauer as the third \u201cpost-Hegelian anti-philosophical break\u201d[5]<\/a> it becomes clear that Sartre\u2019s famous proposition remains only an interpretation<\/em> of history, and a rather doubtful one at that, as Bernard Harcourt noted in the discussion of Critique 10\/13.<\/p>\n

Sartre\u2019s interpretation of Marx as the synthesis of Kierkegaard and Hegel, of existentialism and objective reality, sheds further light on his overarching project in Critique of Dialectical Reason<\/em>. Rather than attempting to unite Marxism and existentialism as two previously isolated philosophies, Sartre aims to reclaim <\/em>an existentialist Marxism that he sees first expressed in Marx himself. In the conclusion of his Search for a Method<\/em>, Sartre reiterates unambiguously: \u201cMarx\u2019s own Marxism, while indicating the dialectical opposition between knowing and being, contained implicitly the demand for an existential foundation for the theory.\u201d[6]<\/a> In our discussion, Noreen Khawaja presented an illustrative methodological analogy of Sartre\u2019s project as an attempt to unite dialectic thought and phenomenology. Indeed, one might argue that such an approach was first introduced by Hegel, which further supports the interpretation of Sartre\u2019s project as a reclamation rather than an original claim.<\/p>\n

To reintroduce Marx into Marxism or, in Sartre\u2019s slightly confusing terminology, to (re-)establish Marxism as a structural-historical anthropology, he provides two main arguments. First, Sartre aims to identify the main flaws of contemporary Marxist traditions, particularly \u201cStalinized Marxism, French Communists\u2026, mechanical Marxists, and sterile Marxists,\u201d\u2014all forms of what Luk\u00e1cs called a voluntarist idealism<\/em>.[7]<\/a> In regard to such idealist Marxisms, Sartre explicitly rejects their absolutization of the a priori<\/em>, which leaves no room for indeterminateness on behalf of the particular and which goes so far as to\u2014quite literally\u2014\u201dliquidate the particularity\u201d on behalf of the whole. In Sartre\u2019s own words: \u201cMarxism possesses theoretical bases, it embraces all human activity; but it no longer knows <\/em>anything. Its concepts are dictates<\/em>; but its goal is no longer to increase what it knows but to be itself constituted a priori<\/em> as an absolute Knowledge.\u201d[8]<\/a> Sartre\u2019s rigorous diagnosis of the mechanistic flaws of contemporary Marxism presents probably one of the most profound attacks on the dominating traditions of idealist Marxism and is a decisive attempt to highlight human capacities to construct our own future: \u201c[T]he field of possibilities is the goal toward which the agent surpasses his objective situation. And this field in turn depends strictly on the social, historical reality.\u201d[9]<\/a> By asserting the individual\u2019s ability to surpass her structural conditions, Sartre emphasizes the relevance of subjective praxis as \u201ca passage from objective to objective through internalization.\u201d[10]<\/a> For Marxism as a structural-historical anthropology, this means nothing less than the establishment of \u201ca dimension of rational non-knowledge <\/em>at the heart of knowledge\u201d[11]<\/a> or, in metaphorical terms, the revitalization of Marxism with an existentialist heart.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

In order to provide an argumentative basis for the legitimacy and correctness of his alternative, existentialist interpretation of Marxism, Sartre\u2019s second line of argument traces existentialism back to Marx himself. Sartre could have simplified the matter by referring to the early texts of Marx\u2014which are generally interpreted as humanist or existentialist; however, as he aimed to remove any legitimate basis for an idealist interpretation of Marx, Sartre tried to define Marx\u2019s complete oeuvre as an existentialist project. Consequently, Sartre refers to the late Marx, with whom he \u201cunreservedly\u201d agrees that \u201c[t]he mode of production of material life generally dominates the development of social, political, and intellectual life.\u201d[13]<\/a> He leaves it quite unclear, however, to what extent such a statement must<\/em> be understood in an existentialist, non-mechanistic way; and thus he seems to be offering an interpretation<\/em> of Marx\u2019s thought rather than an unambiguous argument about it. In comparison, several Marxist theoreticians have presented more profound mechanistic interpretations of the late Marx and particularly of Capital<\/em>. Luk\u00e1cs, for instance, seems right in observing \u201cthe primacy of existence over consciousness\u201d in the previous quote from Marx. The gravest critique of Sartre\u2019s and several other forms of humanist or historical interpretations of Capital<\/em>, however, was probably presented by Althusser in his essay \u201cMarxism Is Not a Historicism,\u201d which was discussed in Critique 5\/13.[14]<\/a> Althusser, who was drawn to a closer study of Marx by Sartre\u2019s Critique of Dialectic Reason<\/em>, employs a Spinozian, mechanistic interpretation of Capital<\/em>. These contradictory interpretations of Marx\u2019s Capital<\/em> prove that Sartre\u2019s attempt to claim Marx\u2019s complete oeuvre for existentialism \u201crelated precisely to his peculiar philosophical origins,\u201d as Althusser put it, and were therefore ambiguously ideological rather than objective[15]<\/a>: the unaffiliated reader can see the tensions between idealist and existentialist Marxism reflected in Marx\u2019s own thinking.<\/p>\n

Due to Sartre\u2019s undifferentiated existentialist interpretation of Marx\u2019s oeuvre, the subsequent and central project of Critique of Dialectic Reason<\/em>\u2014namely, to identify \u201cthe means [i.e. a method, the progressive-regressive method, as summarized in Professor Harcourt\u2019s introductory remarks] to constitute a structural, historical anthropology\u201d[16]<\/a>\u2014can never dislodge the fundamental ambiguity that characterizes Marx\u2019s oeuvre itself. Sartre became conscious of this issue at the beginning of his chapter on the progressive-regressive method, admitting that \u201c[i]f one wants to grant to Marxist thought its full complexity, one would have to say that man in a period of exploitation is at once both<\/em> the product of his own product and a historical agent who can under no circumstances be taken as a product.\u201d Sartre aims for a dialectical sublation of this contradiction through the movement of praxis, since it \u201cgoes beyond them [the real, prior conditions] while conserving them.\u201d[17]<\/a> However, since Sartre later admitted that he never found this sublation, his conception of existentialist Marxist praxis seems in its ambiguity almost indistinguishable from his existentialist definition of individual freedom in Being and Nothingness<\/em>, which was similarly constrained by the situation.<\/p>\n

As the contradictions between existentialism and Marxism\u2014and therefore between the early and the late Marx himself\u2014were never resolved in Sartre\u2019s project, one might ask to what extent the reference to a Marxist political philosophy was even essential to the development of a meaningful praxis for existentialist metaphysics. Once the mechanistic determinism of Marxism was rejected and the conditioned or situated freedom of the personal project was accepted, this question became vital.[18]<\/a> For Sartre, the answer was clear: Marxism was the horizon of contemporary praxis: as long as the world is governed by needs and scarcity, or, in Marx\u2019s own terms, as long as society hasn\u2019t transitioned from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom, Marxism is the only philosophy that pushes our praxis toward the implementation of this realm of freedom.[19]<\/a> The reality of this realm of freedom, however, is based on a short-sighted interpretation of Hegel\u2019s master-slave-relationship that neglects the unsurpassable natural conditionality of consciousness in its relation to being.[20]<\/a> Consequently, as the goal of Marxist praxis seems illusory, Sartre\u2019s interpretation of Marxism as the only horizon of praxis is\u2014as mentioned\u2014only an interpretation<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Realistic existentialist praxis can and should therefore do without the guidance of idealistic Marxist principles (which does not include Marx\u2019s early works). Sartre\u2019s notion of seriality\u2014a rather individualist, i.e. existentialist, rather than idealist Marxist idea of organization and praxis\u2014might be the key to an effective existentialist praxis. Sartre shows how a common situation can serially connect individuals, create a group-in-fusion, and result in an effective surpassing of the situation. These groups can then form standing organizations that use the momentum to call for broader change, or they can dissolve again into forms of seriality. Guenther rightfully notes that \u201cin the absence of an external threat, the standing organization may produce and exacerbate internal divisions among its members \u2026 [and] become an institution that constrains and eventually undermines \u2026 agency.\u201d[21]<\/a> As long as the formation of groups and standing organizations is connected to clearly defined goals, however, Sartre\u2019s conception of existentialist praxis seems to provide an effective basis for change while providing a maximum sphere of freedom to the individual. Guenther\u2019s analysis of the 2013 California Prison Hunger Strikes\u2014a remarkable success story of existentialist praxis\u2014suggests that the most effective path to meaningful change might still be a form of non-violent resistance rather than idealist-dogmatic action. In a highly individualistic world, Sartre\u2019s conception of seriality as a form of existentialist praxis might well provide the framework to overcome our dogmatic age and help establish a realistic, natural realm of freedom in which self-consciousness find itself in its proper relation to being.<\/p>\n

Notes<\/h1>\n

* M.A. Global Thought, Columbia University 2020; B.S. Sustainable Management, Technische Universitaet Berlin 2019<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Hazel E. Barnes, \u201cIntroduction,\u201d in Search for a Method<\/em>, by Jean-Paul Sartre (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), vii.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method<\/em> (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 30.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Sartre, Search for a Method<\/em>, 30.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Sartre, Search for a Method<\/em>, 14.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Slavoj Zizek, \u201cIs It Still Possible To Be A Hegelian Today?,\u201d 2010, 13.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Sartre, Search for a Method<\/em>, 177.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Bernard Harcourt, \u201cIntroduction to Sartre\u2019s Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960) \u2013 Critique 13\/13,\u201d accessed February 21, 2020, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-sartres-critique-of-dialectical-reason-1960\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Sartre, Search for a Method<\/em>, 28.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Sartre, Search for a Method<\/em>, 93.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Sartre, Search for a Method<\/em>, 97.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Sartre, Search for a Method<\/em>, 174.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Sartre\u2019s attempt to claim Marx for existentialism proves once more that the Critique of Dialectical Reason<\/em> is a continuance of his previous existentialist thought, adding a social dimension to it. While it is true that existentialism would be taken up in Marxism according to Sartre\u2019s theory, one should keep in mind that Sartre attempts to (re)establish existentialism as the true core of Marxism. In this regard, Flynn\u2019s interpretation of Sartre\u2019s theory as a Marxist existentialism seems not too far off. See Thomas R. Flynn, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism\u202f: The Test Case of Collective Responsibility<\/em> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Sartre, Search for a Method<\/em>, 33-4.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> See Louis Althusser, \u00c9tienne Balibar, and David Fernbach, Reading Capital: The Complete Edition<\/em> (London\u202f; New York: Verso, the imprint of New Left Books, 2015), pp. 286-295.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Althusser, Balibar, and Fernbach, Reading Capital<\/em>, 287.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Sartre, Search for a Method<\/em>, xxxiv.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> Sartre, Search for a Method<\/em>, 87. This idea reminds of the Balzacian concept of decision-making\u2014to choose one while conserving the other\u2014as exemplified in P\u00e8re Goriot. I do not want to comment on the extent to which this conception can transcend the realm of fiction.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> Sartre, Search for a Method<\/em>, 170.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> Karl Marx, Capital<\/em>, vol. III (New York: International Publishers, 1977), 820.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> \u201cFor just as life is the natural location of consciousness, self-sufficiency without absolute negativity, death is the natural negation of this same consciousness, negation without self-sufficiency, which thus endures without the significance of the recognition which was demanded.\u201d Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit<\/em>, ed. Terry Pinkard and Michael Baur, 1st ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2018), https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/9781139050494.006<\/a>, 112.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> Lisa Guenther, \u201cA Critical Phenomenology of Solidarity and Resistance in the 2013 California Prison Hunger Strikes,\u201d in Body\/Self\/Other: The Phenomenology of Social Encounters<\/em>, ed. Luna Dolezal (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2017), 57.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/h1>\n

Althusser, Louis, \u00c9tienne Balibar, and David Fernbach. Reading Capital: The Complete Edition<\/em>. London\u202f; New York: Verso, the imprint of New Left Books, 2015.<\/p>\n

Barnes, Hazel E. \u201cIntroduction.\u201d In Search for a Method<\/em>, by Jean-Paul Sartre, vii\u2013xxxi. New York: Vintage Books, 1968.<\/p>\n

Flynn, Thomas R. Sartre and Marxist Existentialism\u202f: The Test Case of Collective Responsibility<\/em>. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.<\/p>\n

Guenther, Lisa. \u201cA Critical Phenomenology of Solidarity and Resistance in the 2013 California Prison Hunger Strikes.\u201d In Body\/Self\/Other: The Phenomenology of Social Encounters<\/em>, edited by Luna Dolezal, 47\u201373. Albany, NY: SUNY, 2017.<\/p>\n

Harcourt, Bernard. \u201cIntroduction to Sartre\u2019s Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960) \u2013 Critique 13\/13.\u201d Accessed February 21, 2020. https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-sartres-critique-of-dialectical-reason-1960\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Fredrich. Phenomenology of Spirit<\/em>. Edited by Terry Pinkard and Michael Baur. 1st ed. Cambridge University Press, 2018. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/9781139050494.006<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Marx, Karl. Capital<\/em>. Vol. III. New York: International Publishers, 1977.<\/p>\n

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Search for a Method<\/em>. New York: Vintage Books, 1968.<\/p>\n

Schweikart, David. \u201cSartre, Camus and a Marxism for the 21st Century.\u201d Sartre Studies International<\/em> 24, no. 2 (December 1, 2018): 1\u201324. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3167\/ssi.2018.240202<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zizek, Slavoj. \u201cIs It Still Possible To Be A Hegelian Today?,\u201d 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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