Practice, Power, and Forms of Life: Sartre’s Appropriation of Hegel and Marx

181 Pages·2022·5.03 MB·English

by  Terry Pinkard

Practice, Power, and Forms of Life

Practice, Power,
and Forms of Life
Sartre’s Appropriation of Hegel and Marx
terry pinkard
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2022 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations
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Published 2022
Printed in the United States of America
31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 81324- 0 (cloth)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 81547- 3 (e- book)
doi: https:// doi .org/ 10 .7208/ chicago/ 9780226815473 .001 .0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pinkard, Terry P., author.
Title: Practice, power, and forms of life : Sartre’s appropriation of Hegel and Marx /
Terry Pinkard.
Description: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifi ers: lccn 2021021122 | isbn 9780226813240 (cloth) | isbn 9780226815473
(ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1905–1980. | Marx, Karl, 1818–1883. | Hegel, Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770–1831.
Classifi cation: lcc b2430.s34 p545 2022 | ddc 194—dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021021122
This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48- 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
To Susan

Contents
Preface ix
1 Spontaneity and Inertia 1
1. The Background: The Form of the “I” 1
2. “I” and “We,” Singular and Plural 4
3. “I,” “You,” and the “Other”: Dialectical Thought 7
4. Being Together: “We” 18
5. Alienation in Inertia 19
6. Reciprocity in Spontaneity and Reciprocity as Antagonism 25
2 Spontaneity’s Limits 31
1. Tragic Counter- Finality 31
2. Practical Identities, Singular and General:
Differing Conceptions of “We” 35
3. Spontaneity within the Revolt of the Oppressed:
The Spontaneous “We” 39
4. Actualized Freedom’s Fragility in the Myths of Self- Authorization 45
5. Violence in the Enforcement of Norms 52
3 Ethics in Politics 57
1. Rules, Groups, and Functionalist Ethics 57
2. Active, Passive, or Neither? 61
3. Humanism and Humanisms 64
4. System versus Subjective Life 67
5. Self- Knowledge in the System 71
6. Ethos 74
7. Ethos, Inequality, History 76
8. What Follows Marxism? 83
viii contents
9. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Colonialism, Racism 86
10. Morals on Holiday 89
11. Power, Practice, Practico- Inert 93
Dénouement 97
Acknowledgments 105
Notes 107
Bibliography 151
Index 159
Preface
Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason appeared in 1960 to great fanfare, had
great infl uence on a variety of people and movements—F anon supposedly
lectured to the revolutionaries fi ghting the colonial powers in Africa on some
of the topics of the Critique1— and then rapidly fell from fashion. In part,
this was because the book was seen at the outset as Sartre’s attempt to fuse
together his earlier existentialism with his later Marxism. As the appeal of
existentialism rapidly waned and as Marxism came to be displaced by other
social theories at the time, the idea of fusing two dead movements itself also
lost much of its attraction. Another blow to Sartre’s reputation was Foucault’s
dismissal of the book as a “magnifi cent” but also “pathetic” attempt to use
the nineteenth century to think about the twentieth.2 Foucault’s offhanded
dismissal of the 1960 book looked to be its epitaph before its burial, and 1989
seemed to be the funeral.
Another reason for the decline in interest in the work is Sartre’s own fault.
By anybody’s standard, even for those who regularly deal with diffi cult texts,
the Critique is an unduly obscure work. Simone de Beauvoir relates that it
was in fact the only manuscript she had ever seen Sartre—w ho normally was
a stickler for correcting, correcting again, and then correcting once more—
compose without making virtually any corrections.3 He wrote the book in
a rush helped along by a heavy use of amphetamines—e asily available over
the counter in France at the time—t o push himself each day ever harder and
to keep up his pace.4 Since he was also at the time one of the world’s most
famous intellectuals, he was therefore able to get away with producing for
publication the kind of book that an unknown philosopher in the provinces,
hoping against hope to fi nd any audience at all for his or her work, could only
hazily dream about.