Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol. 1At the height of the Algerian war, Jean-Paul Sartre embarked on a fundamental reappraisal of his philosophical and political thought. The result was the Critique of Dialectical Reason, an intellectual masterpiece of the twentieth century, now republished with a major original introduction by Fredric Jameson. In it, Sartre set out the basic categories for the renovated theory of history that he believed was necessary for post-war Marxism. Sartre’s formal aim was to establish the dialectical intelligibility of history itself, as what he called ‘a totalisation without a totaliser’. But, at the same time, his substantive concern was the structure of class struggle and the fate of mass movements of popular revolt, from the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century to the Russian and Chinese revolutions in the twentieth: their ascent, stabilisation, petrification and decline, in a world still overwhelmingly dominated by scarcity. |
Contents
| xi | |
| 15 | |
| 21 | |
| 32 | |
| 42 | |
INDIVIDUAL PRAXIS AS TOTALISATION | 79 |
Labour | 89 |
HUMAN RELATIONS AS A MEDIATION | 95 |
The Storming of the Bastille | 351 |
The Third Party and the Group | 363 |
The Intelligibility of the Fused Group | 382 |
THE STATUTORY GROUP | 405 |
THE ORGANISATION | 445 |
THE CONSTITUTED DIALECTIC | 505 |
THE INSTITUTION | 576 |
Racism and Antisemitism | 642 |
Reciprocity Exploitation and Repression | 109 |
Worked Matter as the Alienated Objectification | 153 |
ii Interest | 197 |
Necessity as a New Structure of Dialectical | 220 |
Class Being | 228 |
COLLECTIVES | 256 |
THE FUSED GROUP | 345 |
THE PLACE OF HISTORY | 664 |
CLASS STRUGGLE AND DIALECTICAL REASON | 735 |
ANNEXE | 821 |
GLOSSARY | 827 |
COMPARATIVE PAGINATION CHART 836 | |
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Common terms and phrases
abstract action activity alienation already alterity appears basis becomes circumstances collective common completely concrete constituted contradiction course created defined determination dialectical direct effect ensemble example exigency existence exploitation expressed extent exteriority fact field force freedom function future gathering given hand History human immediate impossibility impotence individual inert inertia institutional integration intelligibility interest interiorised interiority labour laws limit lived machine Marxism material matter means mediation milieu movement multiplicity nature necessity negation negative object oppression organised organism original particular passive pledge point of view positive possible practical practico-inert praxis precisely present produced pure realises reality Reason reciprocity relation remains result reveals scarcity seen sense separation seriality simply situation social society sovereign statute structure struggle synthetic thing third party tion totalisation transcendence transformation unity violence whole workers
Popular passages
Page 171 - My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, ie, the process of thinking, which, under the name of 'the Idea,' he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of 'the Idea.
Page 308 - To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.
Page 144 - The separation of society into an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed class, was the necessary consequence of the deficient and restricted development of production in former times.
Page 308 - In the form of society now under consideration, the behaviour of men in the social process of production is purely atomic. Hence their relations to each other in production assume a material character independent of their control and conscious individual action.
Page 307 - No matter, then, what we may think of the parts played by the different classes of people themselves in this society, the social relations between individuals in the performance of their labour, appear at all events as their own mutual personal relations, and are not disguised under the shape of social relations between the products of labour.
Page 475 - It seems to be correct to begin with the real and the concrete, with the real precondition, thus to begin, in economics, with eg the population, which is the foundation and the subject of the entire social act of production. However, on closer examination this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest. Eg wage labour, capital, etc.
Page 146 - In production, men not only act on nature but also on one another. They produce only by cooperating in a certain way and mutually exchanging their activities.
Page 31 - The law of the transformation of quantity into quality, and vice versa; The law of the interpenetration of opposites; The law of the negation of the negation.
Page 140 - ... peasants, each cultivating his own piece of land on his own account. In the course of Roman history they were expropriated. The same movement which divorced them from their means of production and subsistence involved the formation not only of big landed property but also of big money capital. And so one fine morning there were to be found on the one hand free men, stripped of everything except their...
Page 142 - Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and by and by village communities were found to be, or to have been the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland.
References to this book
The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration Anthony Giddens Limited preview - 1986 |
Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning David Theo Goldberg No preview available - 1993 |