Butterfield, Elisabeth C. Sartre, Jean-Paul Sartre and Posthumanist Humanism

Beyond Humanism: Trans- and Posthumanism
Jenseits des Humanismus: Trans- und Posthumanismus

Edited by / Herausgegeben von Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
Editorial Board:
H. James Birx
Irina Deretic
James J. Hughes
Andy Miah
Domna Pastourmatzi
Evi Sampanikou
Vol./Bd. 4
PETERLANG
Frankfurt am Main Berlin Bern Bruxelles New York Oxford Wien
Sartre and Posthumanist
Humanism
Elizabeth Butterfield
PETERLANG
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DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-02126-4
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For Matilda and Charlie
Contents
Acknowledgements . ......................................................................................... 9
Introduction ...................................................................................................... 11
Chapter 1: Materiality in Human Existence: The Practico-Inert, Scarcity,

and Needs . ...................................................................................... 27
Chapter 2: Reconceptualizing the Individual and the Social:

The Theory of Objective Spirit . ..................................................... 41
Chapter 3: The Co-Constitution of the Individual and the Social ................... 63
Chapter 4: Problems and Possibilities for Human Relationships . ................... 81
Chapter 5: The Posthuman Condition and Difference:

The Nature of Social Identities ....................................................... 99
Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 129
Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 133
7
Acknowledgements
Youve likely heard the proverb, it takes a village to raise a child. Well, taking
seriously the claim that the social enables individual praxis, I have come to feel
that it also takes a village to write a book. I know that I have benefited from the
support of so many people in so many different circles of life through the years,
and when I consider this, I am warmed, humbled, and incredibly grateful.
In particular, I would like to thank two of my former professors and mentors
whom I am also grateful to call friends, Tom Flynn and Cindy Willett. I have
learned so much from their work as philosophers as well as from their personal
examples, and I thank them for their great generosity. Of course, any and all
shortcomings of this work are mine alone. I would also like to thank the members
of the North American Sartre Society, who warmly welcomed me when I was
just a young graduate student, and who have provided a wonderful community
of friends and scholars in the many years since. And I thank my colleagues at
Georgia Southern University, and especially my department chair David Dudley,
who have all been consistently supportive as I have attempted to balance my life
as a professor and scholar with my life as a mother.
Though I never would have guessed that I would settle down among the cy-
press swamps and cotton fields of the rural southern U.S., my family and I have
found such a wonderful and supportive progressive community in Statesboro,
Georgia. I am so thankful for this new home and for the many friendships here
that nurture and sustain us. I am also especially grateful to the many ladies who
have volunteered to come over and play with our new baby for a little bit while
this book was in progress.
Near the conclusion of this project, my partner and co-parent, Hans-Georg Er-
ney, spent many fun but exhausting days on his own with our two young children
so that I could have the time and space I needed to write. I thank you, Hansi, with
all of my heart, for your love and support, for your editing prowess, and for your
inexhaustible wit. I am also grateful to my children for bringing me such joy, and
for reminding me every day with their grins and giggles, in the words of Pierre
Hadot, noublie pas de vivre. Though of course, when they say it, it sounds more
like weee!
Much of the initial writing of this manuscript was done in the home of Kirsten
Erney, at a window overlooking her garden below. Through her living example
she taught me a great deal about the connection of the individual and the social,
9
about the good life, and about the importance of frische Luft. This book, and my
life, bear the mark of her enduring presence.
Finally, it may seem odd, but I would like to express my indebtedness to and
gratitude for Sartres philosophy itself. For more than half of my life, I have been
inspired by Sartres call to create a meaningful life and to take responsibility for
making our world a better place. And now in my teaching, I have the great joy of
returning to these texts anew each semester as I introduce them to my students.
As my colleague Bill Eaton keeps reminding me, we have one of the best jobs in
the world!
10
Introduction
In recent years, calls for a new humanism have emerged from a variety of voices
across the spectrum of philosophy. These seem to arise from a communal sense
that philosophy today lacks a sufficient understanding of the human being. While
no one suggests a return to the problematic essentialism of Enlightenment hu-
manism, the alternative of postmodern anti-humanism turns out to be lacking as
well. There is a sense that the postmodern deconstruction of the human now
requires a reconstructive moment.
In this Introduction, I will begin by briefly outlining the essentialist claims
of Enlightenment humanism and contrasting them with the anti-essentialism of
postmodernism. I will show that while both positions have their merits, neither
offers a sufficient account of the human being. I will then explore the conditions
for the possibility today of a new posthumanist humanism, which could transcend
this impasse of essentialism vs. anti-essentialism. A new posthumanist human-
ism must take into account the mistakes of past humanisms but without abandon-
ing the project of investigating the human altogether. This will require a new
understanding of the relationship of the individual and the social, of freedom and
necessity, and of the ontology of social identities.
Finally, I will argue that the framework for understanding the human being
developed by Jean-Paul Sartre in his later Marxist-Existentialist works is well-
suited to this project of articulating a new posthumanist humanism. In his later
works, as Sartre searches for a way to reconcile Existentialisms emphasis on
the individual with Marxisms emphasis on the social, his own explicitly stated
project is to find a way to reconceptualize the human beyond the traditional di-
chotomies of essence and anti-essence, freedom and necessity, and individual
and social. The uniqueness of Sartres approach lies in the revised dialectical and
hermeneutical methods that he develops for understanding the human. Sartres
later works thus provide us with an excellent framework for describing the com-
mon human condition.
The Essentialist Account: Enlightenment Humanism

[T]he inadequacy some would say the failure of the universalist principles of modern
liberalism is not just that they have not been fully applied, but that the conception of the hu-
11
man being as an autonomous individual that serves as the normative anchor of the principles
is insufficient.
Lucius Outlaw, On Race and Philosophy1
It is without question that the philosophical conception of the human found at the
heart of Enlightenment humanism played a powerful and positive role in the po-
litical development of the West. Humanism and the values it implied were crucial
to the foundation of modern liberal democracies, promoting freedom, reason, and
respect for the inherent dignity of man. But while Enlightenment humanism can
be given credit for the political enfranchisement of many, we must also recognize
that it was implicated in the exclusion of many more. Paradoxically, this same
humanism also played a central role in the histories of exploitation and violence
that shaped the map and the distribution of power and wealth of the contemporary
world. Enlightenment thinkers both consciously and unconsciously used a par-
ticular definition of the human to provide philosophical justification for coloniza-
tion, theft of resources, and the enslavement of those who consequently came to
be defined as less-than-fully-human.2
The cultural inheritance of the West today is therefore a complicated and
ambiguous one. While we may appreciate the role of Enlightenment human-
ism in the history of democratic progress, we may also experience disillusion-
ment as we recognize the ways in which these same principles have been used
to justify violence and oppression. As postcolonial author Edward Said asks,
how [is it that] this body of humanistic ideas co-existed so comfortably with
imperialism?3 How could a philosophy grounded in the idea of the inherent
dignity of the human being also be used to justify such acts of dehumanization?
What could explain this contradiction at the heart of Enlightenment human-
ism?
One answer to this question is that the account of human nature found within
Enlightenment humanism is itself flawed. Enlightenment philosophy represented
the human being as first and foremost a rational individual. The capacity for ratio-
nal thought was considered to be a precondition for the development of autonomy,
and it was believed that this capacity for rational autonomy is what gives human
beings an inherent dignity that is worthy of respect.4 The Enlightenment ideal of
the rational, autonomous individual imagines someone who is free to make his
[sic] own choices, to determine his own course in life, and to come to his own
1 Lucius Outlaw, On Race and Philosophy, 149.

2 For more on this topic, see Lucius Outlaw, On Race and Philosophy, and Charles Mills, The
Racial Contract.
3 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, 81-82.
4 For example, consider the importance given to rationality as the source of our moral worth in
Immanuel Kants Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
12
rational conclusions. This ideal individual is also generally assumed to be free
from social dependencies.
The Enlightenment understanding of human nature was not merely a descrip-
tion; rather, it took on normative force as it came to be understood as an account
of what it means to be truly human. It both implicitly and explicitly entailed the
claim: this is what a fully human being is like, and anyone who differs from the
norm must be less than fully human. As Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri ob-
serve, this transcendent figure of Man leads quickly to the imposition of social
hierarchy and domination.5
While Enlightenment thinkers claimed to present a neutral or objective defini-
tion of human nature, it is clear that this definition actually reflected the charac-
teristics of a very particular subset of people living in very particular circum-
stances. As Lucius Outlaw observes in his book, On Race and Philosophy:
deeply submerged among the facets of the constructed self-image that became embodied in a
number of the dominant voices of Western philosophy is a generally unspoken, but nonethe-
less very much operative, key aspect of identity: male, rational male, of Greek and subse-
quently European descent! 6
In Europe at the time of the Enlightenment, who was actually capable of achiev-
ing this ideal of autonomy? Not women. The lives of women, both rich and poor,
were defined culturally, legally, economically, and morally by their situation of
dependence upon men. Women were also generally understood to possess irratio-
nal and emotional natures that prevented them from ever achieving full rational
autonomy. What about poor European men? Again, dependent on their masters
and employers, they could not hope to achieve the autonomous individuality of
full humanity. Non-whites and Jews living in Europe? Described as less than
fully rational, and defined primarily in terms of their group identities, they too
fell short of the humanist ideal. And the rest of the world population, the non-
Europeans? Under colonialism, colonized peoples came to be portrayed by En-
lightenment thinkers as irrational savage natives, defined primarily by their
group identities and social ties.
But the problems with the Enlightenment ideal of the autonomous individual
dont stop there. The definition of autonomy, understood primarily as freedom
from dependence upon others, is itself mistaken and insufficient. We do not have
to look very far to see that even the most fully human wealthy white European
men did not themselves meet the Enlightenment conditions for humanity. They,
too, lived lives that were deeply conditioned by social ties, but their privileged so-
cial status simply enabled them to take for granted and ignore the many ways that
5 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, 91.

13
they were dependent upon others. For example, their privilege enabled them to
simply assume and ignore the many concrete ways in which their autonomous
lives were supported and enabled by the care-work performed by other less than
fully human beings, such as wives, servants, and slaves.
With its emphasis on autonomy as independence from the social, Enlight-
enment humanism obscures that fact that all human beings are actually fun-
damentally socially embedded creatures, immersed in languages, cultures, and
relationships. Enlightenment humanism represented social ties as problems or
obstacles to be overcome. But as we shall see, the social elements of our being
do not function solely as negative limits on experience; the social also supports
and enables individual praxis. Clearly, what we need is an understanding of the
human that can more accurately account for the relationship of the individual
and social. We also need a new approach to understanding the complexities of
autonomy.
The Anti-Essentialist Account: Postmodern Anti-

Humanism
[T]he deconstructive phase of critical thought, which [] has provided a powerful instru-
ment for the exit from modernity, has lost its effectiveness. It is now a closed parenthesis and
leaves us faced with a new task: [] constructing ontologically new determinations of the
human, of living.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire7
The twentieth-century developments of post-structuralism, deconstruction, and

postmodernism (which I will refer to for the sake of brevity as simply post-
modern philosophy) all took on the project of deconstructing the assumptions
of Enlightenment humanism. One of the most important insights to arise from
this was a commitment to perspectivalism, the recognition that multiple epis-
temic perspectives exist and that there are no purely impartial and context-
independent criteria for justifying knowledge claims.8 Postmodern philosophy
has done a brilliant job of exposing the ways in which dominant cultural prac-
tices erect one groups point of view as normative,9 and in this way it has been
particularly helpful in bringing the false universalism of Enlightenment human-
ism to light.
7 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, 217.

8 Patricia Huntington, Fragmentation, Race, and Gender: Building Solidarity in the Postmod-
ern Era, in Existence in Black, ed. Lewis Gordon, 186.
9 Ibid., 186.
14
On the surface, postmodern philosophy appears to be very useful for libera-
tory projects in philosophy. Without question, perspectivalism has been helpful
to feminist theory, critical race theory, and postcolonial theory. For example, in
feminist philosophy a postmodern perspectivalism has led to the recognition that
there is a great deal of diversity in the experiences of women. This has led to a
move away from authorities who claim to speak for all women, and instead to-
ward an emphasis on coalitions among women with diverse experiences.
However, it is also important to acknowledge that postmodern perspectivalism
alone does not necessarily lead to a liberatory political view. As Patricia Hun-
tington explains, the minimal recognition that I cannot universalize my own
perspective does not automatically decenter my perspective. Nor does it bring me
to engage critically with and to develop a theory and praxis that is inclusive of
other voices.10 If we want to move beyond the universalization of one particular
groups perspective, it is not enough to simply assert that all groups have their
own perspective. We must go further, to take into account the real relations of
power between groups. As Martin Matustik observes, the postmodern focus on
the undecidability of texts actually risks leaving the center intact, and not chal-
lenging structures of power at all.11
A second especially helpful insight of postmodern philosophy has been its
demonstration that what was considered to be essential, such as in the En-
lightenment understanding of human nature, is actually socially constructed.
The postmodern emphasis on language, discourse, and textuality leads to an
understanding of human subjectivity as a discursive construct. Feminists have
put this account of human subjectivity to good use in arguing against the claim
that there is any sort of essence of true womanhood. For example, Judith
Butler uses a postmodern approach to question categories of gender, arguing
that since gender is a performance based in socially constructed meanings, all
gender can be best understood as drag.12 Postmodern anti-essentialism has
also been helpful in deconstructing the category of race. As bell hooks ex-
plains, the postmodern critique of essentialism counters a historically narrow,
constricting notion of blackness that has been imposed on people of color. 13
She writes, Such a critique allows us to affirm multiple black identities, var-
ied black experience. It also challenges imperialist paradigms of black identity
10 Ibid., 187, emphasis added.

11 See Martin Matustik, Ludic, Corporate, and Imperial Multiculturalism: Impostors of Democ-
racy and Cartographers of New World Order, in Theorizing Multiculturalism, Cynthia Willett,
ed.
12 See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, and Imitation
and Gender Insubordination, in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, Linda Nich-
olson, ed.
13 bell hooks, Postmodern Blackness, in Postmodern Culture Vol. 1 No. 1, 28.
15
which represent blackness one-dimensionally in ways that reinforce and sus-
tain white supremacy.14
While the postmodern deconstruction of essential identities has been help-
ful, this same anti-essentialism sometimes leads to a more problematic claim: if
social identities are no more than discursive constructions, then perhaps it would
be best to reject these categories of identity altogether. For example, in order
to overcome race- or gender-based oppression, the argument is that we should
ignore race and gender altogether and strive to recognize people simply as indi-
viduals. The problem with this claim is that it reflects the postmodern emphasis
on linguistic discourse, ignoring the concrete realities of experience. While the
meanings of social identities may be no more than fictional constructions, these
identities do also continue to play meaningful roles in our experiences, for better
and for worse.
Consider the case of race. Philosophers who recognize race as a social con-
struction sometimes call for us to stop speaking of race altogether, as if when
we refuse to recognize race as a valid category, racism itself will disappear.
But this suggestion that we should simply deny or ignore social identities runs
the risk of actually obscuring and thus reinforcing the oppressive practices it
hopes to leave behind. The refusal to recognize race can make real on-going
practices of racism harder to name. If we are no longer entitled to speak of
race as a category, how can we discuss race-based oppression? As Joy James
writes, Now, where one has racism without races, white supremacy without
whites, institutionalized oppression without oppressors, there is no one to hold
accountable for justice.15 While identity may be socially constructed and a
contingent creation, this does not mean that it does not also exist as a concrete
reality in the realm of praxis. To deconstruct an identity need not necessarily
lead to the conclusion that it should be entirely dismissed. This is why bell
hooks argues that, despite all of the problems with essentialist approaches to
understanding human identity, we cannot cavalierly dismiss a concern with
identity politics.16
A third problem of postmodern anti-essentialism is that it tends to leave us in
a position in which we are unable to generalize about human experience. Critics
accuse postmodern philosophy of becoming stranded in fragmentation, disorien-
tation, and political paralysis. For example, Cynthia Willett argues that postmod-
ern deconstruction leaves us with linguistic equivocation and moral indetermin-
ism, lacking solid justification for moral judgments and political action.17
14 Ibid., 28, emphasis added.

15 Joy James, Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race in US Culture, 45.
16 bell hooks, Postmodern Blackness, in Postmodern Culture Vol. 1 No. 1, 26.
17 Cynthia Willett, Introduction to Theorizing Multiculturalism, Cynthia Willett, ed., 2-3.
16
While postmodern anti-humanism originally presented a helpful alternative to
the humanism of the Enlightenment, ultimately it too fails to present a sufficient
account of the human. What we need today is a way to take into account the help-
ful insights of perspectivalism and the recognition of social construction, without
abandoning the possibility of describing a common human condition altogether.
We need a new understanding of social identities, as both socially constructed
and yet real elements of experience, and this will require a new understanding of
the relationship of the individual to the social, and of the experiences of freedom
and necessity.
Beyond Essence and Anti-Essence: Calls for a New

Posthumanist Humanism
There is no time for essence / anti-essence. There is so much work to be done.
Gayatri Spivak, In a Word: Interview18
From across the spectrum of contemporary philosophy, many voices recently

have echoed this same conviction, that the deconstruction of the human now re-
quires a reconstructive moment.
In Feminist Philosophy: Iris Young has argued that we need a reconstructive
step in attempting to understand human identities, as she pursued a project
reconceptualizing what it means to think of women as a social collective.19
Patricia Hill Collins has referred to Black Feminist Thought as a fundamen-
tally humanist project.20
In Critical Race Theory: Kimberle Crenshaw has argued that we need a theory
of human identity today that can transcend both vulgar essentialism and vulgar
anti-essentialism.21 Lucius Outlaw has called for the need for a reconceptualiza-
tion of the human subject in his writings on race and the politics of difference.22
In Postcolonial Theory: Gayatri Spivak has expressed frustration with the
impasse of essence vs. anti-essence, and identified the need to move beyond
18 Gayatri Spivak, In a Word: Interview, in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory,
Linda Nicholson, ed., 370.
19 Iris Young, Gender as Seriality: Thinking About Women as a Social Collective, in Feminist
Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre, Julien Murphy, ed,
20 Patricia Hill Collins, Defining Black Feminist Thought, in The Second Wave: A Reader in
Feminist Theory, Linda Nicholson, ed.
21 Kimberle Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that
Formed the Movement, Kimberle Crenshaw, ed.
22 Lucius Outlaw, On Race and Philosophy.
17
this dichotomy.23 Edward Said, while critical of the failures of Enlightenment
humanism, has argued that humanism itself continues to be relevant for our
time. Said has called for a more worldly approach to humanism, which could
recognize differences among cultural identities and avoid homogenizing them.
This new humanism, he explains, should represent identity as constantly in
process rather than as a fixed essence, and should draw attention to the mate-
rial conditions of the real lives of individuals.24
What we need, then, is a new framework for understanding the human that can
move beyond the extremes of essentialism and anti-essentialism to reconceptual-
ize the human being beyond traditional dichotomies. We must find a way to think
both individual and social together in dynamic interrelation, without privileging
one term as primary or reducing one to the other. This new understanding of the
relationship of individual and social will have important consequences for the
understanding of freedom and necessity in human experience, requiring a redefi-
nition of autonomy and ethical subjectivity. Finally, this reconceptualization must
try to understand humans in our social being, as intersectional subjects con-
stituted by our social identities. This will require a shift in our understanding of
sameness and difference, and a new approach to the ontology of social identities.
Any attempt to articulate an understanding of the human today must be an
explicitly posthumanist project. This entails four commitments. First of all, a
posthumanist humanism must pay special attention to the short-comings of past
humanisms and be vigilant not repeat the same mistakes. In this project, I consid-
er critiques of humanism presented by Sartre, postmodernism, and drawn from
multicultural perspectives including feminism, critical race theory, and postco-
lonial theory. In particular, a posthumanism must avoid falsely universalizing,
calling for assimilation to one conception of the human, or using a definition of
the human normatively in order to judge who counts as fully human and who does
not. The purpose of this articulation of a new posthumanist humanism is not to
delineate the lines of inclusion and exclusion; rather, it is to help us to more fully
understand our common condition and ethical subjectivity.
Second, unlike humanisms of the past, a new posthumanist humanism cannot
be written from the perspective of a few privileged authorities. Instead, we must
consider the human experience from many different perspectives, and as much as
possible, it should include a coalition of authors and voices. Posthumanism must
adopt a self-critical stance, maintaining an awareness of counter-narratives, and
nurturing attitudes of careful listening and wonder in an openness to and
23 Gayatri Spivak, In a Word: Interview, in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory,
Linda Nicholson, ed., 370.
24 Bill Ashcroft and Pal Ahluwalia, Edward Said: The Paradox of Identity, 25.
18
interest in learning about other people.25 In this book, while I follow Sartres later
Marxist-Existentialist framework for understanding the human as a guide, it is
without a sense of obligation to be loyal to his views as authoritative. My project
is also informed by many other perspectives, including feminism, critical race
theory, and postcolonial theory.
Third, a new posthumanist humanism cannot attempt to give an absolute or
foundational account of human nature. In fact, this project will not describe hu-
man nature at all. Instead, I follow Sartres lead in describing a common hu-
man condition. The notion of situation that was so important to Sartres early
Existentialist writings continues to play a significant role in his later writings as
well, and his description of the common human condition in his later works can
be understood as an expanded account of situation. In this project, then, I will
describe certain conditions and structures that are common to human experience
as we know it. For example, I will argue that we experience the interaction of in-
dividual and social in the process of internalizing the external and externalizing
the internal in the dialectic of personalization as a common situation. What is
unique about Sartres later Marxist-Existentialist approach, however, is that while
it describes certain common conditions that set the context for our praxis, it also
insists upon the reality of multiplicity. As we shall see, each person lives these
common conditions from a unique individual location or position in relation to the
practico-inert structures of experience. Simply put, each one of us lives this com-
mon condition in our own way. Sartres unique approach allows us to describe
commonalities while also constantly maintaining a recognition of difference.
Finally, the fourth condition of a new posthumanist humanism, and one that
is of central importance to this project, is that it will adopt an understanding
of humans as intersectional subjects, thus assuming difference as the norm.
The notion of intersectionality was first developed by Patricia Hill Collins in
her book, Black Feminist Thought, in order to describe the experience of mul-
tiple intersecting oppressions. She defined intersectionality there as a system of
interlocking race, gender, class, and sexual oppression, [in which] there are few
pure oppressors or victims.26 The term intersectionality was then adopted and
further developed by Kimberle Crenshaw in her own work in the field of Critical
Race Theory.27
25 Iris Young discusses careful listening and wonder in her articulation of asymmetrical
reciprocity in her book, Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy, and
Policy.
26 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of
Empowerment, 194.
27 Kimberle Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings
that Formed the Movement, Kimberle Crenshaw, ed., and Demarginalizing the Intersec-
tion of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist
19
For the purposes of this project, however, I will take the notion of intersection-
ality out of its original context of describing experiences of oppression, and use it
as a paradigm for understanding human subjectivity more generally. Rather than
oppressions, the focus will be upon overlapping social identities. This paradigm
of the human as an intersectional subject will assume that all humans experience
multiple intersecting social identities. Individual subjectivity will be understood
as a site of multiple intersecting axes of identity. The particular axes of identity
that are most significant in any one persons experience are contingent upon a
particular cultural and historical context, determining which identities have been
valued as most important in the distribution of power and privilege. So, for ex-
ample, in the contemporary Western context, race, class, and gender typically re-
ceive the most attention. But surely these are not the only social identities; we are
all also constituted by our age and generation, ethnicity, language group, and so
on. The intersectional understanding of the human recognizes that these elements
of personal identity are never completely separate or isolated factors, and that a
person always exists in multiple spheres and contexts at once. Identity can be un-
derstood from this perspective as multifaceted and diverse, and an interweaving
of the many different elements that make us who we are.
As we have seen, when the authors of Enlightenment humanism defined hu-
man nature, the particularity of the identity they represented as the norm was ren-
dered invisible; taking white and male as the norm of humanity, they made
the mistake of believing that only non-whites are marked by racial identity, and
that only women are marked by gender. However, in this project of articulating a
new posthumanist humanism, we assume from the very beginning that all human
beings are intersectional subjects. In this way it becomes clear that all humans
experience multiple intersecting axes of identity that condition and shape our
experience. The experience of multiple social identities is something that we all
share in the common human condition. But as we shall see, the ways in which
these identities affect us, and in which we choose to respond to them and to live
them, is always also our own.
Sartres Project of Reconceptualizing the Human

There is one question which I am posing only one: Do we have today the means to consti-
tute a structural, historical anthropology?
Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method28
Theory, and Antiracist Politics, in Feminist Legal Theory: Foundations, D. Kelly Weis-
berg, ed.
28 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, xxxiv.
20
Jean-Paul Sartre remains most well-known today for his role in the classic French
existentialism of the 1940s, as the author of Being and Nothingness (1943), and
No Exit (1944). However, what most readers dont realize is that Sartres phi-
losophy continued to develop for another thirty years after the publication of
these early masterpieces. While his later works are at least as plentiful and as
philosophically profound as his earlier texts, unfortunately they remain relatively
unknown today. But the time has come for a renewed interest in Sartres later
thought. It is in Sartres later Marxist-Existentialist philosophy, found in works
such as Search for a Method (1957), Critique of Dialectical Reason (volume one
published in 1960), and The Family Idiot (1971-1972), that he develops a frame-
work for understanding the human that is particularly well-suited to this project
of articulating a new posthumanist humanism today.
At first glance, one might assume that Existentialism and Marxism are hope-
lessly irreconcilable, as they appear to make claims about human experience that
directly contradict one another. After all, Existentialism insists upon the freedom
of the individual, while Marxism emphasizes the social whole and the role of de-
terminism in human experience. But in Sartres later works, he takes on the chal-
lenge of finding a way to reconcile the two perspectives, and in the process he cre-
ates a new Marxist-Existentialist philosophy. What he discovers in the process
is that, in order to reconcile the positions of Existentialism and Marxism, he will
need to develop a new approach to understanding the human being altogether.
In Search for a Method, Sartre claims that all previous attempts to understand
the human have failed. In particular, he criticizes American sociologies, psycho-
analysis, and Marxism. While each approach to the study of the human may have
provided a helpful depiction of one element or another of human experience, Sar-
tre argues that each one has also fundamentally misunderstood the human being.
No theory so far, he argues, has been able to represent the truth of human experi-
ence. This failure does not arise from the fact that the human itself is unknowable.
According to Sartre, it is due to a failure of method.29 His goal then becomes to
develop a method that could produce a structural, historical anthropology.30
This would enable us to understand human experience from both perspectives:
the structural, historical (Marxist, social) perspective, and the anthropological
(Existentialist, individual) perspective. As he writes, everything remains to be
done; we must find the method and constitute the science.31
Sartre claims that these past attempts to understand the human have all made
the same mistake: they have all relied upon traditional either/or dichotomies and
privileged one term over the other. For example, they have valued the individual
29 Ibid., 28.
30 Ibid., xxxiv.
31 Ibid., 35.
21
to the exclusion of the social, or the social to the exclusion of the individual. They
have become stranded in the traditional antinomies of freedom/necessity and es-
sentialism/anti-essentialism.
Therefore, Sartre argues that what we need in order to understand the hu-
man being today are mediations that can enable us to think beyond these di-
chotomies. As he writes, we need mediations which allow the individual con-
crete the particular life, the real and dated conflict, the person to emerge
from the background of the general contradictions of productive forces and
relations of production.32 In order to achieve these mediations, Sartre argues
that we must leave behind these either/or dichotomies, which he describes as
rooted in a limited analytical reason. Instead, what is required is a dialectical
approach.
In Search for a Method, Sartre first develops what he calls the progressive-
regressive method, integrating several different critical perspectives to create a
powerful tool for approaching the study of the human. As we will see in Chapter
Two, this method incorporates phenomenological description, psychoanalysis,
and structural, historical investigations into a hermeneutical interpretation of the
subject. Sartre argues that in order to understand the human, we must take a to-
talizing perspective, understanding the situation from many different particular
angles while also transcending localized accounts.
True to the hermeneutical approach, Sartre argues that we must study the
concrete against the background of the general, while being sure not to lose the
specificity of either.33 He believes that this continual cross-referencing between
the concrete individual and society will be able to reveal the profundity of the
lived.34 Sartres framework for understanding the human benefits greatly from
his adoption of a hermeneutical perspective, which enables him to reconceptual-
ize the relationship of the individual and the social, accounting for each term
individually and in relation without reducing one term to the other.
Sartres dialectical and hermeneutical approach enables him to transcend the
traditional dichotomies of essence and anti-essence, individual and social, and
freedom and necessity. Instead of antinomies, in each of these oppositions Sartre
sees a productive tension. As he explains, his method:
refuses to reduce; it follows the reverse procedure. It surpasses by conserving, but the terms
of the surpassed contradiction cannot account for either the transcending itself or the subse-
quent synthesis; on the contrary, it is the synthesis which clarifies them and which enables us
to understand them.35
32 Ibid., 57.
33 Ibid., 102.
34 Ibid., 145.
35 Ibid., 151.
22
In the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre continues to develop his method
by further considering the dialectic.36 Taking dialectical reason out of its origi-
nal Hegelian context and separating it from any idealist foundation, Sartre re-
envisions dialectical reason as grounded in concrete human praxis. He creates a
revised dialectical reason that is nominalist and non-ideal, and which is useful in
finding the mediations necessary for understanding the reality of human experi-
ence.
Sartres later Marxist-Existentialist philosophy clearly has a great deal to offer
a new posthumanist humanism. Sartre himself recognized the need for a new un-
derstanding of the human being that could move beyond the traditional dichoto-
mies of individual/social and freedom/necessity. Like postmodern philosophy,
Sartre accepted perspectivalism, and in his later Marxist-Existentialist texts he
accounted for the social construction of meanings and of identities. With his re-
vised nominalist and non-ideal dialectical method, he presaged some of the most
important insights of postmodernism. But unlike postmodern philosophy, Sartre
did not allow anti-essentialism to become stranded in indeterminism or fragmen-
tation. His account of the human remains grounded in concrete human praxis and
the relationship of the human to materiality. In this way, he is able to maintain a
position that is anti-essentialist but without abandoning the possibility of describ-
ing the human altogether.
I have argued that a new posthumanist humanism should assume an under-
standing of humans as intersectional subjects. As we will see in the following
chapters, the framework for understanding the human that Sartre develops in his
later works enables a very rich account of the relationship of the individual and
social. Sartres hermeneutical and dialectical methods allow for a nuanced ac-
count of the social constitution of the individual, as well as of the human experi-
ence of multiple and dynamic social identities, all the while without losing sight
of individual autonomy. In fact, we will emerge from Sartres articulation of the
common human condition with a rich understanding of individual autonomy as
fundamentally enabled and supported by, and ultimately inseparable from, the
social realm.
36 See Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, Book I.
23
A Posthumanist Articulation of the Common Human
Condition
The project of this book, then, will be to use Sartres later Marxist-Existentialist
framework for understanding the human to describe the common human condi-
tion. However, it is necessary to observe before beginning that this account of the
human condition is not intended to be comprehensive. There are many topics of
central importance to human experience that are not explored here in any depth,
such as embodiment, ethics, the existential craving for meaning, and the capacity
for human flourishing or happiness. Instead, this project focuses primarily upon
one particular aspect of human experience: the relationship of the individual to
the social, and the implications of this for our understanding of freedom, neces-
sity, and autonomy.
The articulation of the human condition begins in Chapter One with a discus-
sion of the human embeddedness in materiality. First, I present Sartres under-
standing of human praxis as always in relation to the material, which he defines
as the practico-inert. These two concepts, praxis and the practico-inert, are of
central importance to his later Marxist-Existentialist philosophy, and they form
the foundation upon which all of the following discussions are based. I explore
Sartres description of the human condition as the experience of needs in condi-
tions of scarcity, and I ask whether the alienation that arises from scarcity is
fundamental to human experience, or if it can ever be overcome.
After establishing the basic concepts of materiality, praxis, and the practico-
inert in Chapter One, in the rest of the book I focus my attention upon the relation-
ship of the individual and the social. In Chapter Two, I explain Sartres claim that
what we need today are mediations, and I present his search for a method that can
truly comprehend the human being. This leads to Sartres unique development of
the theory of Objective Spirit, which is the key to his reconceptualization of the
individual and the social. I argue that Sartres approach is aided by the methods
and philosophy of Wilhelm Dilthey, and I show the importance of hermeneutics
for Sartres later philosophy. Finally, I examine Objective Spirit in more detail,
exploring the role of language and ideology, and asking whether Objective Spirit
is to be understood as a monolithic unity or as a multiplicity.
In Chapter Three, I explore Sartres account of the co-constitution of the indi-
vidual and social. He describes the individuals experience in terms of an inter-
nalizing moment, in which the person takes in meanings from the world, and a
re-externalizing moment, in which the individual releases his or her own free
creations back into the world. What arises is an image of the individual and the
social in dynamic interrelation. The individual is shaped and conditioned by the
social, while the social is constructed and altered by individual praxis. To explore
24
the social constitution of the individual in more depth, I present two case studies:
Sartres own example of nineteenth-century novelist Gustave Flaubert, and my
example of Asian-American artist Maya Lin. We emerge with a richer under-
standing of freedom and necessity in human experience.
Next, I shift the investigation from the human experience of the social whole,
as in Objective Spirit, to the experience of the social in concrete relationships
with others. In Chapter Four I ask, are there any problems we should consider as
inherent to the human condition? And what are the positive possibilities for social
relationships? To answer these questions, I trace the development of Sartres so-
cial philosophy from his early emphasis on objectification and alienation, to his
later discussions of the possibilities of recognition, authentic love, and collective
agency. I argue that the theoretical framework for understanding the human that
Sartre develops in his later works actually supports a very positive account of so-
cial. In particular, Sartre emphasizes the importance of social needs to the human
condition, and he presents the fulfillment of these social needs as an enabling
condition of individual autonomy.
Sartre writes that the person lives and knows his condition more or less clear-
ly through the groups he belongs to.37 So in the final chapter, Chapter Five, I
explore the human experience of multiple and intersecting social identities. Sar-
tres notion of seriality provides us with a unique and helpful approach to un-
derstanding social identities beyond essentialism and anti-essentialism. When a
social identity is understood as membership in a series, we are able to account
for it as a contingent social construction while also recognizing the real role it
plays in concrete experience. After developing Sartres notion of seriality, I apply
this to an analysis of three social identities in particular: class, gender, and race.
Again, this exploration of the details of the individuals experience of the social,
here in terms of social identity, leaves us with a rich understanding of freedom
and necessity in the human condition.
What I aim to show, then, is that the framework for understanding the hu-
man that Sartre develops in his later Marxist-Existentialist works is an excellent
match for the project of articulating a posthumanist humanism today. In develop-
ing unique new dialectical and hermeneutical methods for investigating the hu-
man, Sartre finds a way to think beyond the traditional dichotomies of individual/
social and freedom/necessity. Instead, we emerge from his later works with a new
understanding of the individual and the social as in a dynamic, co-constituting
interrelation, and of individual autonomy as not at odds with, but rather funda-
mentally enabled by, the social. Sartres framework for understanding the human
also supports a very rich account of humans in our social being, as intersectional
subjects who are constituted by multiple social identities. Taking into account
37 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 66.
25
the mistakes of past humanisms as well as the insights of anti-humanisms, Sartre
finds what we can call a posthumanist approach to speaking meaningfully of the
human today.
26
Chapter One:
Materiality in Human Existence:
The Practico-Inert, Scarcity, and Needs
In this chapter, I explore the first element of Sartres depiction of the common hu-
man condition: the embeddedness of human experience in materiality. Any study
of Sartres later philosophy must begin with an explanation of praxis and the
practico-inert, since these are fundamental to his Marxist-Existentialist account
of the human. In defining materiality as the practico-inert, Sartre emphasizes the
fact that praxis is always in relation to material reality. This introduction to praxis
and the practico-inert provides the framework upon which the entire articulation
of the human condition in the following chapters will be built.
Sartre writes in the second volume of the Critique of Dialectical Reason
that the singularity of human praxis lies in the fact that humans experience
needs in the midst of scarcity.38 He portrays human beings as fundamentally
material beings with material needs. In the second part of this chapter, I ex-
plore Sartres understanding of the experiences of scarcity and need, address-
ing the distinction he makes between true and false needs. And I argue that
Sartre is able to successfully account for the particularity of individual experi-
ences of need while also maintaining that this is an element of the common
human condition.
Sartres depiction of the alienation that arises from the human embeddedness
in materiality is a source of much criticism. He is accused of going too far in his
description of scarcity and alienation as fundamental to the human condition, so
that it appears that we can never hope to overcome them. In the last section of the
chapter, I present and respond to these criticisms. While we may never be able to
eliminate all forms of scarcity, we can definitely eliminate some, and in a future
ideal socialism of abundance, it is possible that the types of scarcity remaining
might not result in the same level of violence that we know today.
Praxis and the Practico-Inert

The history of man is an adventure of nature, not only because man is a material organism
with material needs, but also because worked matter, as an exteriorisation of interiority, pro-
duces man, who produces or uses this worked matter in so far as he is forced to re-interiorise
38 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 2, 384-385.
27
the exteriority of his product, in the totalising movement of the multiplicity which totalises
it.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 139
Whereas Sartres early philosophical masterpiece, Being and Nothingness, fo-

cused upon the analysis of consciousness, his later Critique of Dialectical Reason
is decidedly a philosophy of praxis. Consciousness and praxis are similar in many
ways. Like consciousness, praxis is understood to be intentional and ontologi-
cally free, and Sartre claims that praxis possesses a certain self-awareness that
parallels the pre-reflective cogito found in his earlier works. But praxis also en-
compasses much more than consciousness, as the name Sartre gives to all human
activity.40
Sartre defines praxis in the Critique as an organizing project which tran-
scends material conditions towards an end and inscribes itself, through labor,
in inorganic matter as a rearrangement of the practical field and a reunification
of means in the light of the end. 41 In this definition, note that Sartre refers to
praxis as a project, which means that it is an action or expression directed toward
achieving a certain goal. Sartre also refers to labor. He tends to use the terms
labor, work, and praxis synonymously in his later works to indicate free human
actions and expressions. Also central to this definition of praxis is the relation to
materiality, as praxis transcends the material circumstances that are present, af-
fecting, changing, or rearranging the material realm in some way. But in order to
do so, praxis must be released into the world in an action. Once praxis is released
into the world, it takes on its own materiality and is rendered past.
According to Sartre, praxis is always within the context of materiality, whether
this material is understood concretely (for example, as a stone), or more abstractly
(for example in the fixed materiality of language). As human praxis, or work,
invests the inert material world with meaning, Sartre explains that the objects
of the world become worked over. Their inertia is joined with the meanings
of human praxis to create the practico-inert, or worked matter. Simply put,
the practico-inert is material existence. In the language of Being and Nothing-
ness, the practico-inert is similar to being-in-itself. But unlike being-in-itself,
the practico-inert is not separate from free human praxis just the opposite: the
practico-inert bears the marks of praxis through and through, as it is invested
with human meanings.42
Each new action or expression builds upon the context of meanings that al-
ready exists, and contributes to this context anew. In this way, we can say that
39 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, 71.

42 See Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 93 and 104.
28
each individual praxis relies upon the whole of culture. Sartre explains that since
the structure of praxis is dialectical, dialectic and praxis are one and the same,43
and the method of dialectical reason is appropriate for comprehending human
praxis. Human praxis is both synchronic, in the present, and diachronic, existing
throughout time, in its relation to the collective context of history.44
Once an action is released into the world and sedimented in the practico-inert,
it becomes out of reach, and we cannot completely control its consequences. Thus
it is possible for an action to backfire against an agents original intentions. Sar-
tre refers to this as the counter-finality of the practico-inert, since our own past
actions and expressions can actually work counter to our own ends. He finds an
example of this in Flauberts authorship of Madame Bovary. Flaubert may have
originally intended the novel as a diatribe against the bourgeoisie, but as his ex-
pression was released into the world and took on its own material inertia, it also
took on a life of its own that transcended the intentions of the author. Flauberts
novel unexpectedly became the beloved anthem of its bourgeois audience.
Due to the counter-finality of the practico-inert, Sartre claims that anti-prax-
is is an aspect of every praxis.45 It is a part of our human condition to struggle
against the instruments that we use to act, express, and work in the world. Hazel
Barnes remarks that Sartres later notion of counter-finality represents a transi-
tion in his understanding of Hell. She writes, In his play No Exit Sartre de-
clared that Hell is other people. Now he says that Hell is the practico-inerte, for it
steals my action from me.46
While it is clear that in his later works Sartre gives a great deal more attention
to the experience of necessity, ultimately his emphasis remains on human free-
dom. Behind all of the practico-inert structures that limit human freedom and
bring necessity into our lives, Sartre finds praxis, which is, in its dialectical free-
dom, the real and permanent foundation (in human history up to the present) of all
the inhuman sentences which men have passed on men through worked matter.47
Thomas Flynn refers to Sartres continued commitment to freedom in the later
works as a three-fold primacy of praxis.48 First, praxis holds an epistemic and
methodologic primacy for Sartre, as both the measure of man and the foundation
of truth. As such, praxis serves as the standard for a new humanism.49 Second,
praxis retains an ethical primacy in Sartres continued existentialist emphasis on

44 Ibid., 55.
45 Ibid., 223.
46 Hazel Barnes, Introduction to Sartres Search for a Method, xvii.
48 Thomas Flynn, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism, 105; on the primacy of praxis, see 105-
110.
49 Ibid., 105. See also Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, 801.
29
taking responsibility for oneself. Third, praxis has an ontological primacy, due to
the indissolubility of praxis and the practico-inert. As we have seen, praxis can be
found even within the inhuman structures and processes where we might least ex-
pect to find it. This means that Sartre understands the class struggle, for example,
as fundamentally based in free human praxis, rejecting the idea that humans are
merely swept one way or another by the inhuman forces at work in the world.
Existence in the Context of Scarcity

Whatever men and events are, they certainly appear within the compass of scarcity; that is, in
a society still incapable of emancipating itself from its needs hence from nature.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method50
Although Sartres later emphasis on scarcity arises from concerns that are pro-
foundly Marxist in orientation, it is interesting to note that the notion of scar-
city itself is not to be found in Marxs own texts. Sartre explains this absence
by claiming that Marx understood primitive man and feudal man as merely
lacking the knowledge of how to best use their resources, rather than existing
within actual conditions of scarcity. For this reason, Sartre says of his notion of
scarcity, I do not owe it to Marx. 51 William McBride agrees with Sartre that
scarcity was not an important topic for Marx, but suggests instead that Marx may
have simply taken it for granted.52 Either way, one thing is clear Sartres unique
emphasis on scarcity as an integral part of the human condition exercises a pro-
found effect on his understanding of the human condition, praxis, and alienation.
In an interview given late in his life, Sartre describes the human condition as
the experience of human needs in conditions of scarcity. He explains, scarcity is
the phenomenon in which we live. It is impossible to suppress it without changing
the conditions of existence, of what is real.53 How does he define this scarcity,
which is the condition of our very human existence? Inasmuch as a cause, any
cause whatsoever, makes us need a certain substance or a certain object, [and]
that object is not given in the proportion that we need it: that is scarcity.54
According to Sartre, there is scarcity on every level and from every point
of view.55 Scarcity exists in many different forms. There is concrete material
scarcity, such as the lack of basic resources needed to live. There is also scarcity
50 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 132-133.
51 Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre in the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Schilpp, ed., 30.
52 William McBride, Sartres Political Theory, 109.
53 Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Schilpp, ed., 30.
54 Ibid., 31.
55 Ibid., 30.
30
as an element of social oppression, which Sartre believes is the most important
kind. And there are more abstract forms of scarcity, such as the scarcity of time
(experienced ultimately in our mortality), the scarcity of ideas, the scarcity of
understanding, and the scarcity of men, which Sartre defines as the fact that the
men History makes are never entirely those needed to make History.56
The human experience of scarcity is actually deeply connected to our free-
dom. As long as we are free, we are changing, and we are never satisfied, whole,
or complete. Scarcity therefore arises from the fact that in our freedom, humans
always demand more.57 In this way, we create a field of scarcity around us. Sar-
tre is not implying that scarcity does not arise from actual objective lacks in
the environment; some lacks really do exist. But it is our human projects which
interpret these lacks in terms of our needs and desires, defining the field around
us as scarce in some way. For this reason, Sartre understands scarcity to be a
contingent human fact, and not the evil of a cruel Nature.
Thomas Flynn remarks that Sartres notion of scarcity is profoundly histori-
cal in nature and yet curiously a priori in function. 58 Scarcity is a priori as an el-
ement of the common human condition. It is experienced by all, as a consequence
of our freedom and needs as material beings. But it is also profoundly histori-
cal at many levels; the actual situations that we perceive as scarce are shaped by
historical forces, and our perceptions rely upon our own context. The meaning of
scarcity, therefore, is continually constructed and never static.
Sartre writes that the iron law of scarcity conditions our freedom and brings
necessity into human history. For this reason, he refers to scarcity as a domi-
nation of man by the interiorized material environment.59 In the experience of
scarcity, the inhuman becomes part of the human. The relationship of the human
to the material, conditioned by scarcity, can also be a source of alienation and
violence.
Why does Sartre focus his attention upon scarcity rather than a more positive
notion of abundance? William McBride suggests that this is due to Sartres overly
negative view of nature, one of the less attractive or defensible aspects of his
thought from beginning to end an unfortunate inheritance from the Hegelian
tradition. 60 Perhaps Sartre shares a tendency found throughout Western philoso-
phy to understand nature, and natural human needs, as threats to true humanity
and freedom. For example, Aristotle asserts that it is a defect of human nature

58 Thomas Flynn, Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason Vol. 1, 234.
59 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, 72 and 134. See also Critique of Dia-
lectical Reason Vol. 2, 220.
31
never to be satisfied,61 and Kant condemns the heteronomy of natural desires as
irrational determinations of the will.62 However, I prefer Sartres own response to
this question. When asked why he doesnt give more attention to abundance, he
responds simply that life is not balanced like that: the human is not half-good and
half-bad, and the historical context we experience is not a balance of equal parts
scarcity and abundance. Sartre believes that scarcity plays a much more impor-
tant role in our lives today than abundance does, and that he is right to dedicate
his attention to it.63
The Experience of Needs

Everything is to be explained through need; need is the first totalising relation between the
material being, man, and the material ensemble of which he is part.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre wrote that human consciousness experiences

itself as desire. But in the later Critique of Dialectical Reason, he claims instead
that the fundamental existential structure of man is need. Hazel Barnes com-
ments that this is one change which puts all the existential structures in a new
light. She writes:
The substitution may appear trivial; actually its consequences are all-pervasive. Desire sug-
gests the possibility of unrestricted movement, of a freedom which may change the objects of
its desire at will. Need brings in something from the outside, a necessity which man cannot
ultimately escape, no matter how much he may vary his reaction to it.65
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre claimed that desires hold sway over our exis-
tence only because we allow them to, as we choose to be moved by them. If we
want to be free from these exigencies, then all we need to do is to redefine our de-
sires or projects. With his faith in an absolute noetic freedom to interpret our ex-
periences, Sartre considered it possible to redefine our projects in such a way that
what had previously been understood as a need would no longer appear as such.
However, by the time of the Critique, Sartre is willing to admit that human
lives are much more conditioned by materiality than he had realized before. He
comes to believe that there are in fact objective, concrete needs. He defines need
61 Aristotle, Politics, Book 2, Chapter 7.

62 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Section 2, on heteronomy and
hypothetical imperatives.
65 Hazel Barnes, Introduction to Search for a Method by Jean-Paul Sartre, xv.
32
in the Critique as scarcity lived in interiority, and as a determination of the hu-
man organism by the inorganic. Need, he believes, is the first relation of humans
to the material. It is a negation of lack, in that it recognizes lack and embodies
a desire for the lack to be negated. Without human projects, lack would not be
recognized as need and it would possess no exigency.66
Sartre goes so far as to claim that need can be understood as the source of
human praxis. He writes, there would be no acts without needs [...] not even
any dream of acting. The most abstract, autonomous end ultimately derives its
content and its urgency from needs. It would vanish along with them, and its au-
tonomy would vanish with it.67 Praxis, as action born of need, mediates between
the organic and the inorganic, and it is a struggle against scarcity.
Sartre portrays the experience of need as an element of the human condition,
and he claims that there is one basic, fundamental need that is the source of all
human praxis: the need to preserve life.68 He refers to other needs that all humans
possess in common as well. For example, he mentions common biological needs
in which we are dependent upon the inorganic, such as the needs for oxygen and
for food. To this extent, Sartre explains, need itself is not oppressive it is normal
and biological.69
Sartre claims that the need to preserve life underlies everyones praxis, as the
cause of all activity. Every form of labor, he claims, is concerned with securing
the resources to live. It doesnt matter how far removed that labor may be from di-
rectly fulfilling subsistence needs all labor is a means of preserving life. This is
true for candle makers, artists, the wealthy and comfortable, as much as it is true
for those who work to meet their immediate physical needs.70 In the case of the
wealthy, who have the concrete freedom to live lives of leisure, Sartre explains:
in the alienated world of exploitation, we have seen when the satisfaction of needs is as-
sured practico-inert conditionings (e.g. interest or interests) replacing organic exigencies.
Well fed, well clothed, well housed, the manufacturer pursues his interest: in other words,
he is alienated into his property (the factory with its machines) and obeys its exigencies.71
At this level, even throwing oneself into ones property, using commodities to
give ones life meaning, can be understood as a preservation of life.
66 See Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, 85, and Vol. 2, 390.
68 Ibid., 385.
69 See Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, 81, and Vol. 2, 385. See also In-
terview with Jean-Paul Sartre, 31, and Joseph Catalano, A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartres
Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume 1, 90.
70 See Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 2, 388-389.
71 Ibid., 389.
33
True and False Needs
In Sartres unpublished 1964 Rome Lecture,72 he takes the discussion of need in an
exciting new direction, claiming that need is the root of ethics itself. He explains
that when needs demand to be satisfied, they point us toward a possible future in
which a lack is filled. In this way, the experience of needs leads us to constitute
the world as a place in which something must be done or, morally speaking,
in which something ought to be done. With need, therefore, normativity enters
our lives.73 Sartre claims that true morality arises from the most fundamental
human needs, and makes progress toward an ideal future of integral humanity
in which humans will be their own products, and our true human needs will be
fulfilled. Alienated moral systems, on the other hand, limit this progress while
encouraging the pursuit of artificially created false needs, which distract us from
our true longing for a better life.
Obviously, if morality is grounded in the notion of true human needs, we
should be able to distinguish between true and false needs. But this task is more
difficult than it might at first seem. In the Critique, Sartre begins by making a
basic distinction between needs and desires. In the Rome Lecture, he takes this
a step further by identifying true needs as those we possess in common as mem-
bers of the human species, despite social and cultural differences. False needs,
on the other hand, are not actually needs at all, but arise from desire. They are
artificially created within alienated social systems, and can be used as tools of
distraction and domination.74
Sartre claims that even when we are manipulated by false needs, and lost in
distraction and mystification, we retain an awareness of our true needs in the pre-
reflective comprehension that accompanies all praxis. The ache and yearning that
accompany unfulfilled true needs provide us with a pre-reflective and sometimes
even visceral awareness. It reminds us that our true needs do exist, and that life
within the current alienated social system limits the possibilities for fulfilling these
true human needs. In this way, suffering points us toward the creation of a better
future. As Sartre explains in the Rome Lecture, the yearning of unfulfilled need
is the root of ethics itself, and the political seed of revolt, propelling us into action.
72 I had the opportunity to read the still unpublished handwritten notes of the 1964 Rome Lecture
at the Bibliothque Nationale de France Salle des Archives, Paris, in May 2002. The BNF has
titled the lecture Confrence lInstitut Gramsci, 1964. My references to this work are taken
from my own notes.
73 See Thomas Anderson, Sartres Two Ethics, 120-121.
74 See Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, 81, and Interview with Jean-Paul
Sartre, in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, ed. Schilpp, 31. See also Joseph Catalano, A
Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartres Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume 1, 90.
34
Ian Fraser has identified two distinct approaches to the theorization of human
needs. The first he calls the thin approach, which stresses the objectivity of
needs, and omits references to culture or subjectivity as much as possible. The
thin approach searches for universals, and may declare to others what their
needs are. Consequently it runs the danger of paternalism or cultural imperial-
ism. In contrast, the thick approach to the understanding of human needs em-
phasizes experiences within particular cultural contexts. It stresses the subjective
experience of needs, drawing attention to what individuals themselves identify as
their needs. The commitment to particularity in this thick approach leads to a
different problem: what if needs are so culturally specific that it is impossible to
speak of them outside of their particular contexts? What if it is impossible to give
a general account of shared human needs?75
This thick understanding of human needs shares with postmodern philoso-
phy a skepticism toward universalizing claims. From this perspective we can ask,
when Sartre refers to true human needs that all people possess in common as
part of the human condition, is he falsely universalizing? Is he perhaps arrogantly
presenting his own localized perspective as the norm of human experience? Are
his claims ethnocentric or imperialist?
In response to these objections, I will first point out that Sartres understanding
of need is not the same as the thin approach described by Fraser. While Sartre
does refer to needs that all humans experience in common, he is also committed
to the view that human needs are at once both objective and historically contin-
gent. Sartre understands needs as always singular and contingent, since they arise
within an individuals unique situation and are experienced by the individual from
a unique perspective, with the tools of a particularly located context of meanings.
And yet, while each persons experience of need is always a unique interpretation,
it is also possible to refer to a commonality underlying the experience.
For example, while all humans share nutritional needs, the particular experi-
ence of these needs, as well as what a person might consider to be the food neces-
sary to fill those needs, may vary greatly along the lines of multiple criteria, such
as location, generation, culture, religion, and the stage of development of society.
For a pioneer on the American frontier in the nineteenth century, the need for
meat might have been fundamental for survival. Today in the same location, meat
may no longer be necessary. In both cases, the human bodys need for protein is
an objectively true need, but the particular interpretation of this need is contin-
gent upon the details of the situation. To complicate the issue further isnt it
true that different people have different nutritional needs? Consider the different
needs of men and women, women at different ages, women before, during, and
after pregnancy, and so on. Does this variation prove that Sartres understand-
75 Ian Fraser, Hegel and Marx: The Concept of Need, 3, and 14-15.
35
ing of true needs must be mistaken? No, once again, what is held in common,
as a true human need, is nutrition in general. But the way the need for nutrition
manifests itself depends upon the particular details of the individuals situation.
Sartre describes scarcity as both objective and historically contingent as well.
As an element of the human condition, the experience of scarcity is an objective
reality. But this is not to say that it is always experienced in the same way. The
individuals experience of scarcity arises, again, within a particular historically
contingent and ever-changing situation.76
As Nancy Fraser remarks, To say that needs are culturally constructed and
discursively interpreted is not to say that any need interpretation is as good as any
other.77 While the thick approach to needs might claim that each individuals
experience is so unique that we are not entitled to make generalizations, Sartre
finds a way to account for the contingency of the socially constructed mean-
ings of need without losing the ability to speak of a common human experience
altogether. We can assert that need, and the way in which it conditions human
freedom, is something that all humans experience in common as an element of
the human condition. It remains not only possible, but also politically important,
to differentiate between those needs which are fundamentally human, and those
that are created and imposed by alienating social systems.
Can Scarcity Be Overcome?

All the grand sources, in short, of human suffering are in a great degree, many of them al-
most entirely, conquerable by human care and effort.
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism78
The issue of scarcity is a pressing one in the world today. Hunger is the worlds
number one health risk, killing more people than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis
combined. As of 2011, one in seven people around the world go to bed hungry
each night.79 In addition to this, hunger and material scarcity are often identified
as underlying causes of other forms of suffering and acts of violence, playing a
role in ethnic cleansings, acts of genocide, and mass deaths.80 And yet, according
to the World Food Programme, food has never before existed in such abundance
76 Joseph Catalano, A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartres Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume

1, 76-79.
77 Nancy Fraser, Talking about Needs, Ethics 99, 311-312.
78 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 286.
79 Hunger Stats, World Food Programme, accessed Sept. 2, 2011, http://www.wfp.org/hunger/
stats.
80 John Roth, Foreword to The Coming Age of Scarcity, Dobkowski and Wallimann, eds., ix.
36
[] In purely quantitative terms, there is enough food available to feed the entire
global population of 6.7 billion people.81 The problem today is no longer an ob-
jective lack of food it is merely a problem of distribution. The human role in the
creation and maintenance of material scarcity becomes more glaringly obvious
than it has ever been before. John Roth makes a very Sartrean point regarding
scarcity when he writes:
human-made mass death and genocide are not inevitable and no events related to them ever
will be. We know this because human-made mass death and genocide emerge from decisions
and institutions that depend on ordinary human beings who are responsible for their actions
and who could act differently and better than they often do.82
Sartres portrayal of scarcity in his later works has received much criticism. The
concern is with the alienation that arises from the experience of scarcity. If, as
Sartre says, alienating anti-praxis is a moment of all praxis, does this mean that
alienation is a permanent fixture in our experience, and can never be overcome?
Does he go too far when he describes scarcity as an element of the human condi-
tion?
Monika Langer criticizes Sartres emphasis on scarcity as a distortion of Marx-
ism. She claims that Marx would reject Sartres account of scarcity as an abstract
notion that risks mystifying the class struggle and obscuring real exploitation.83
She explains that for Marx, alienation results when certain people take the means
of production for themselves, seizing control of others labor power. For Sartre,
on the other hand, alienation is found in all human activities, rooted in the very
nature of human praxis itself. For this reason, she argues, Sartre loses the Marxist
economic specificity of alienation. 84
Langer also objects to Sartres account of scarcity because she believes that it
results in the conclusion that overcoming alienation is actually impossible. When
Sartre portrays scarcity as a part of the human condition itself, and when the
struggle against alienation is defined as the elimination of scarcity, Langer be-
lieves that the inherent impossibility of achieving [the elimination of scarcity]
effectively rule[s] out the attainment of a genuinely socialist society. 85
Robert Birt continues this line of criticism. He reminds us that in Sartres early
work, Being and Nothingness, alienation is represented as an ontological category
81 What causes hunger? World Food Programme, accessed Sept. 2, 2011, http://www.wfp.org/
hunger/causes.
82 John Roth, Foreword to The Coming Age of Scarcity, Dobkowski and Wallimann, eds., xiii.
83 Monika Langer, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism, in Sartre and Existentialism Vol. 6, Wil-
liam McBride, ed., 80.
84 Ibid., 81. Klaus Hartmann makes a similar argument in his Sartres Theory of Ensembles, in
The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Schilpp, ed., 636-7 and 648-9.
37
and not a social one. It is a condition of human existence that is not surpassable.
In the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Birt finds two different kinds of alienation.
First, there is the Marxist idea of alienation as historical, as a consequence of
exploitation and oppression. Second, there is an alienation which is structurally
rooted in human existence, in our relations with the world and with others, which
Birt sees as similar to the earlier classic existentialist notion of alienation.86 Like
Langer, Birt questions whether alienation could ever be overcome. He draws at-
tention to a passage in the Critique where Sartre writes:
The point must be emphasised: History is more complex than some kinds of simplistic Marx-
ism suppose; man has to struggle not only against nature, and against the social environment
which has produced him, and against other men, but also against his own action as it becomes
other. This primitive type of alienation occurs within other forms of alienation, but it is inde-
pendent of them, and, in fact, is their foundation. In other words, we shall reveal, through it,
that a permanent anti-praxis is a new and necessary moment of praxis. 87
Sartre understands the goal of Marxist revolution to be the overcoming of neces-

sity in History the necessity which results from the material and anti-human
forces in our lives.88 But given Sartres account of scarcity and alienation, is this
revolution actually possible? Is Sartres Marxist dream of an ideal socialism of
abundance attainable?
Sartres answer to this question is a multi-faceted one. First of all, we must
recall that there are different kinds of scarcity. Our needs in conditions of scarcity
range from basic biological exigencies, such as the needs for water and oxygen,
to very abstract scarcities, such as scarcity of time and scarcity of understanding.
According to Sartre, it is possible to overcome some of these forms of scarcity.
For example, it is conceivable that in an ideal socialism of abundance we could
overcome the concrete scarcity of food. We might even be able to achieve this
in the near future if we could evolve beyond the profit-motive to solve our prob-
lems of distribution. But there are also certain scarcities, and forms of alienation,
which ultimately cannot be overcome. Even if we existed within a socialism of
abundance, our lives would still be embedded in materiality. As long as our his-
tory is human history, we cannot transcend the scarcity of time or our own mor-
tality. Because of the necessary relation of praxis to materiality, there will always
be counter-finalities. Alienating elements of the practico-inert, such as the rise of
institutions, will always return.
If the total transcendence of scarcity is impossible, does this mean that it is
pointless to struggle against scarcity at all? Should we give up hope for a social-
86 Robert Birt, Alienation in the Later Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, in Sartre and Existential-
ism Vol. 6, William McBride, ed., 255- 256, and 258.
88 Jean-Paul Sartre, Materialism and Revolution, in Literary and Philosophical Essays, 229.
38
ism of abundance? Sartres answer is no. He explains that while a socialism of
abundance may not be able to eliminate all forms of scarcity, alienation, neces-
sity, and suffering, we definitely can eliminate some, and this could improve the
conditions of our existence.89 Sartres notion of an ideal socialism of abundance
is not optimistic in a Hegelian way; he does not believe that our progress towards
that ideal is in any way necessary or guaranteed. But he remains hopeful that we
can improve human existence incrementally and in taking concrete steps.90
In the Critique, Sartre gives an account of the development of violence in hu-
man history. He surmises that as scarcity was experienced through need, it took
on a Manichaean ethical aspect, so that a destructive imperative developed that
called for the destruction of evil. It is this Manichaean ethical response to need
and scarcity that resulted in violence and counter-violence among humans.91 But
Sartre claims that there is no a priori reason why scarcity had to lead to violence
and oppression as we experience them now. The human experience of scarcity,
he maintains, is a contingent fact of human history. In this respect, it would have
been possible for the response to scarcity to have been something other than vio-
lence, such as cooperation. But that is not how it happened in our human history,
and we dont know what any other humanity might be like.92 It is possible that in a
socialism of abundance, the forms of scarcity we are left with, such as the scarcity
of time, may not result in violence in the same ways in which concrete scarcities
have in the past.
In an interview late in his life, Sartre was asked to respond to the criticism
that he did not sufficiently outline what an ideal future society, or a socialism
of abundance, might be like. In his answer, he claims that it is not actually pos-
sible for us to conceive of this ideal future in detail: We can indicate the basis
and the principles, but we cannot think through such an alteration of society. We
know in what direction we are going, the direction of the freedom that must be
given to men. 93 Sartre explains that while we might someday be able to free
ourselves from the determinism of scarcity, it is our own History the history
of need which we are describing, and that the other, if it does exist one day as
a transcendence of pre-history, is as unknown to us as that of another species
living on another planet. 94
90 This is reminiscent of Simone de Beauvoirs argument in The Ethics of Ambiguity, that it is
precisely because our future well-being is not guaranteed that we must take responsibility now
ourselves for creating the future as we believe it should be.
92 Ibid., Book 2, Chapter 8.1.
94 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 2, 385, footnote.
39
Conclusion
So far in the articulation of Sartres understanding of the common human condi-
tion, we have learned that humans are fundamentally material beings, defined
by the experience of needs in conditions of scarcity. Since our human praxis is
always in relation to the material realm, it is part of our condition to struggle with
the instruments we use as we face the counter-finality of the practico-inert. Now
that the basic framework of praxis and the practico-inert has been established, in
the following chapters we will see how Sartre uses these concepts in his recon-
ceptualization of the relationship of the individual and social. In particular, we
will see how the practico-inert develops into the theory of Objective Spirit, and
how the embeddedness of human praxis in the materiality of the practico-inert is
both limiting and enabling of individual autonomy.
40
Chapter Two:
Reconceptualizing the Individual and the
Social: The Theory of Objective Spirit
In his later works, Sartre claims that others have failed to really understand the
human: Marxists, psychoanalysts, and sociologists, while contributing important
insights, have all missed the mark. In particular, Sartre is opposed to what he sees
as a false dichotomy of the individual and the social. While it has been common
for philosophers to focus on either the individual or the social, overemphasizing
one to the exclusion of the other, Sartre argues in his later works that privileging
one term over the other is fundamentally mistaken. In his own attempt to articu-
late an understanding of the human that could be called Marxist-Existentialist,
he arrives at the conclusion that the individual and the social exist in a dialectical
relationship, in which neither is independent from or reducible to the other.
In this chapter, I explore Sartres reconceptualization of the relationship of
individual and social. I begin by examining his objections to other accounts, and
his claim that the failures to truly understand this aspect of the human condition
can largely be attributed to failures of method. I then present the alternative meth-
ods Sartre creates, which he believes can reveal the truth of the human condition.
We will find that the notion of Objective Spirit plays a pivotal role in Sartres
reconceptualization of the relation of individual and social. Although Sartre refers
to Objective Spirit in each of his most important later works, including Search for
a Method, Critique of Dialectical Reason, and The Family Idiot, this theory has
not received the attention it deserves in the scholarly literature. Objective Spirit is
not often listed by scholars as among the most important themes of Sartres later
philosophy, but I contend that it is actually one of Sartres greatest innovations, as
it enables a creative rethinking of the relation of individual and social.
Though Sartre does not explicitly acknowledge the influence of Wilhelm Dil-
they upon his later thought, I argue that it is clear that he draws upon Diltheys
own theory of Objective Spirit. I demonstrate that Sartre adopts Diltheys no-
tion of Objective Spirit with one crucial difference: he takes what Dilthey had
called expressions and objectifications of spirit, and redefines these as work,
thereby locating the notion of Objective Spirit within his own context of Marxist-
Existentialism. This enables Sartre to portray work (or praxis) as a mediation
between the individual and the outer socio-historical reality, and in this way, his
unique theory of Objective Spirit becomes central to his depiction of the social
constitution of the individual as well as to his account of freedom and necessity
in human experience.
41
Finally, I consider the suitability of Sartres account of Objective Spirit for a
posthumanist humanism, which assumes the intersectionality of the human sub-
ject. I ask, must the Objective Spirit of a particular time and place be understood
as a monolithic whole? Or is there a way in which the notion of Objective Spirit
could also account for the diversity of human experiences? I argue that Sartres
materialist and nominalist framework for understanding Objective Spirit, as
grounded in concrete human praxis and the practico-inert, is flexible enough to
provide a totalizing account of unity within the context of multiplicity, without
losing sight of or reducing the reality of difference.
Problems with Privileging One Term

The classic existentialism of Sartres early thought, found in works such as
Being and Nothingness and No Exit, is often criticized for overemphasizing the
individual over and against the social. In these texts, Sartre accepts the traditional
dichotomy of individual and social, and represents them as in an antagonistic re-
lation with each other. When Sartre addresses the social, it is typically portrayed
as a threat to individual freedom and as a source of alienation. An example of this
can be found in the well-known line from No Exit, Hell is other people.95 But
too few critics have acknowledged that Sartre himself, in his later works, comes
to criticize his own exaggeration of individual freedom. In later chapters, I will
trace the development of Sartres social philosophy from the initial claim that
Hell is other people to later considerations of recognition, authentic love, and
cooperative group praxis. For the purposes of this chapter, the important point is
that Sartre himself makes and corrects the mistake of privileging the individual
over the social.
After the end of the Second World War, Sartre criticizes the French Marxists
of his day for making the opposite mistake, privileging the social whole to the
exclusion of the individual. It is important to keep in mind that Sartres attacks
are not intended for Marx himself, but rather for the ossified version of Marxist
theory he encounters in his peers at this time. Sartre believes that within Marxs
thought there is actually room for an account of human freedom, whereas the
French Marxists had mistakenly gone to the extreme of determinism. He claims
that they have lost sight of free human praxis in their exclusive privileging of the
unity of class being. This entails consequences for the understanding of freedom
and necessity: the person is represented as overdetermined by his or her position
in the social, and the theoretical possibility of human freedom and individuality is
95 Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays, 45.
42
lost. Sartre argues that the Marxists are so entrenched in their own certainty and
ideology that they are no longer capable of understanding any thought but their
own. He goes so far as to claim that they are in bad faith, lying to themselves
when they sacrifice the particular details of situations for the sake of preserving
an orthodox teleological interpretation of events. In this respect, contemporary
Marxists can understand events only as confirming their own theory; they cant
grasp the particularity of an event. As Sartre writes, the Marxist will find in his
interpretation only what he has put there.96
When Marxists adhere too closely to their teleological interpretations, and
when they totalize too quickly, Sartre claims that they lose the real. Reducing
particulars to the universal, they see the universal as the truly concrete. To trans-
late this into the terms of individual and social, this means that they reduce the in-
dividual to the social, and understand only the social to be true. In doing so, they
lose the individual concretes along the way. For example, from this perspective,
the grand abstraction of alienated society as a whole is portrayed as concrete
reality, while the real individuals, the workers, lose their concrete particularity
and fall into abstraction. Sartre sees this as a failure of method, since they lack a
theory that could provide mediations to account for individual concretes.
The Need for Mediations: Sartres Search for a Method

It is in Sartres Search for a Method that he claims that scholars have so far failed
to really understand the human, and that this can largely be attributed to failures
of method. In particular, Sartre criticizes what he calls an approach of analytical
reason as unfit to investigate human reality. Analytical reason, he asserts, can
only understand the atomistic individual and the social whole as in irreconcil-
able opposition. It insists that either the individual or the social must be primary,
and it tends to reduce one to the other. From this perspective, Sartres position of
Marxist-Existentialism appears schizophrenic, since Marxism and Existential-
ism appear to be irreconcilable opposites themselves.
Analytical reason, Sartre explains, is actually unable to grasp the reality that
the individual and the social do exist together, and that we experience both as
central elements of the human condition. As Sartre writes, The truth is that
subjectivity [of the individual] is neither everything nor nothing; it represents a
moment in the objective process (that in which externality is internalized), and
this moment is perpetually eliminated only to be perpetually reborn.97 Funda-
96 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 56. See also 38 and 48.
97 Ibid., 33, note 9.
43
mentally, this is a question of mediation, and what analytical reason lacks is a
way to mediate, or to understand the connection between, concrete individuals
and larger social wholes.
In his later works, Sartre attempts to reconceptualize the individual and the
social together in such a way as to arrive at a socialist biography or a struc-
tural historical anthropology.98 He wants to answer the question, How are we to
understand that man makes History if at the same time it is History which makes
him?99 He wants to account for the fact that man in a period of exploitation is
at once both the product of his own product and a historical agent who can under
no circumstances be taken as a product.100 In particular, the challenge of under-
standing a social entity like class makes it clear that we need a new framework
for understanding the relation of the individual and social. Sartre hoped to find
mediations which allow the individual concrete the particular life, the real and
dated conflict, the person to emerge from the background of the general contra-
dictions of productive forces and relations of production.101
In the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre describes the dilemma involved
in attempting to understand social classes and individual class-being. If the
human order were like the molecular order, if it were just exis (just material),
then there would be no intelligibility in history, and we couldnt make any sense
of it. If this were true, the Marxist position would be rendered irrelevant, and
the only appropriate approach to history would be a positivist one, presenting
mathematical calculations of cause and effect. But if, on the other hand, we were
to understand the class struggle and the human order as entirely free praxis, then
the human universe would disappear into a Hegelian idealism.102 Sartre believes
that there must be another way to understand the moving, changing, fleeting,
ungraspable yet real unity of social classes.103 And in order to understand the
reality of social classes, Sartre must first find a new way to conceptualize the
relationship of individual and social.
In order to find these mediations, Sartre argues that we need a new method that
can move beyond local perspectives to one that is totalizing. It should study the
concrete against the background of the general without losing specificity, and it
should be able to comprehend historical periods in their complexity and richness,
without reducing them to mere abstract meanings or impersonal attitudes. At the
same time, it must be able to understand the individual in rich detail as well in
98 Ibid., xxxiv.
99 Ibid., 85.
100 Ibid., 87.
101 Ibid., 57.
103 Ibid., 794.
44
relation to the milieu of life, including institutions, monuments, instruments, cul-
tural infinites, fetishes, social temporality what Sartre refers to as the collec-
tive landscape.104 As he explains:
The object of [this study] is the particular man in the social field, in his class, in an environ-
ment of collective objects and of other particular men. It is the individual, alienated, rei-
fied, mystified, as he has been made to be by the division of labor and by exploitation, but
struggling against alienation with the help of distorting instruments and, despite everything,
patiently gaining ground. The dialectical totalization must include acts, passions, work, and
need as well as economic categories; it must at once place the agent or the event back into the
historical setting, define him in relation to the orientation of becoming, and determine exactly
the meaning of the present as such.105
In order to rethink the relationship of individual and social, Sartre explores the
possibilities of a revised, non-ideal dialectic in the two volumes of the Critique
of Dialectical Reason. The revised dialectical reason he develops there is bet-
ter suited to an investigation of the human than analytical reason. In particular,
Sartre develops what he calls the progressive-regressive method in order to
investigate the individual and the social in both their separate particularity and
their interrelatedness. As he explains, this approach:
wants to remain heuristic. It will have no other method than a continuous cross-reference;
it will progressively determine a biography (for example) by examining the period, and the
period by studying the biography. Far from seeking immediately to integrate one into the
other, it will hold them separate until the reciprocal involvement comes to pass of itself.106
Sartre believed that we need a method which is both progressive and regressive,
looking both to the social whole (history) and to individual experience (biogra-
phy), with a continual cross-reference between the two. Anything less could not
possibly provide an accurate portrayal of the human.
Sartres development of the progressive-regressive method owes a debt to
two important influences. The first is Henri Lefebvre, a French sociologist and
Marxist and Sartres contemporary. In Search for a Method, Sartre acknowledges
Lefebvres own attempts to understand the present in connection with its past.
Lefebvres approach moves through three phases. The first, which Sartre refers to
as phenomenological description, involves observation and scrutiny. The second
phase is analytico-regressive, an analysis of reality and an attempt to date
this reality precisely. The third phase is historical-genetic, and attempts to re-
discover the present. As in a hermeneutical circle, when we return to the present
after having completed the first two steps, we understand it differently. The pres-
ent is thus elucidated and explained.107
104 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 79. See also 88, 102, and 137.
105 Ibid., 133.
106 Ibid.,, 135.
107 Ibid., 52, note 8.
45
Sartre does not explicitly acknowledge the second potential influence upon
his development of the progressive-regressive method, but the similarities are so
striking that it seems clear that Sartre owes a debt to the work of Wilhelm Dilthey,
a nineteenth-century German philosopher who made significant contributions to
the field of hermeneutics. Sartre does not explicitly cite Dilthey in his later works,
though he does briefly mention Dilthey by name in his early Being and Nothing-
ness, and it is very likely that he was familiar with Diltheys work.108
One crucial similarity between Dilthey and Sartre can be found in their use of
the concept of comprehension. Sartre uses this term in French as comprhen-
sion, while Dilthey writes in German of Verstehen. For both authors, compre-
hension has two separate meanings. It can be used in the context of a particular
individuals experience, to refer to the pre-reflective self-awareness that accom-
panies all human praxis, in which we may comprehend more than we reflec-
tively know. Or comprehension can refer to a method for the interpretation of
history.
Dilthey originally developed the Verstehen method for the interpretation of
history. Taking a hermeneutical approach, it is an interpretive method that in-
vestigates both individual details and social wholes, in order to understand them
better in relation to one another. This requires attempting to comprehend both
the praxis and the comprehension of others. Since someone may pre-reflectively
comprehend more than he or she knows, it is possible for the interpreter to know
someone better than the subject knows him or herself.
Diltheys method takes the form of a hermeneutical circle, beginning with a
vague understanding of a whole (such as a historical era), proceeding to inves-
tigate the individual parts (for example, the biography of a particular individual
living during this era), and finally returning to the whole with an enriched under-
standing. Dilthey explains that a complete hermeneutical interpretation requires
both Verstehen and Nacherleben. Verstehen contributes a framework and context
within which we can understand particular human expressions (works of art, lit-
erature, politics, history, etc.) Nacherleben, on the other hand, provides the per-
spective of the specific individual who lives this context. When the two of these
are brought together, the hermeneutical circle can proceed from the social to the
individual and back to the social, without dissolving either term. It provides a
very rich understanding of both.109
Sartres progressive-regressive method is strikingly similar to Diltheys
hermeneutical approach. In Sartres method, the progressive moment of the in-
vestigation examines the details of the historical period and the social wholes,
108 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 306.

109 Rudolf Makkreel, introduction to Diltheys Descriptive Psychology and Historical Under-
standing, 18.
46
asking how they have influenced individual experience. The regressive moment
then examines the individual biography, and may also integrate psychoanaly-
sis.110 Whereas the Marxists analysis can only situate an event in its socio-
economic context, Sartres use of psychoanalysis provides the historian with a
means of achieving comprehension of the unique group-defining project which
explains the historical event to a degree that mere structural analysis cannot
attain.111
Sartres progressive-regressive method results in very rich insights into both
individual biographies and cultural histories. One stunning example of the meth-
od at work is Sartres study of Gustave Flaubert, The Family Idiot. In this massive
text, Sartre moves beyond the individual details of an ordinary biography to study
the political climate of Flauberts era, the literary tradition he inherited both as
reader and writer, and the Objective Spirit of his time. Sartre also explores
a psychoanalysis of the young Gustave and his family relationships, as well as
the way in which this family situation intersected with issues of Flauberts class
status. The reader of The Family Idiot emerges with a rich understanding of both
the author and the historical period. We will examine the progressive-regressive
study of Flaubert in more detail in Chapter Three.
Objective Spirit: Sartres Key to Reconceptualizing

the Relationship of Individual and Social
In The Family Idiot, Sartre writes that if we want to understand the strange reci-
procity of the singular and the collective, we must first define what we call Objec-
tive Spirit.112 As we have seen, in his later works Sartre places a new emphasis on
the importance of the social situation in defining a persons facticity. He believes
that any account of the human condition must include the social constitution of
the individual, and to this end, Sartre directs his investigation toward topics such
as the family, experiences of class being, and the general Objective Spirit of a
particular group, place, and time. In Sartres use of Objective Spirit, again it
seems clear that he is drawing upon the work of Wilhelm Dilthey.
110 Sartre comes to appreciate the value of psychoanalysis especially because of the special insight
it can provide into an individuals experience of the family context. As we will see in the next
chapter, Sartre recognizes the family as a crucial site of mediation, where the child is first in-
serted into, and comes to understand, his or her position in the greater social hierarchy and web
of relations. See Sartre, Search for a Method, 60 and 62.
111 Thomas Flynn, Mediated Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third, in The Philosophy of
Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Schilpp, ed., 361.
112 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot Vol. 5, 32.
47
Diltheys work was motivated by a dissatisfaction with the way the study of
human history had been approached by his contemporaries. In particular, he be-
lieved that it was inappropriate to study human subjects with the methods and
assumptions of the natural sciences. Therefore he took it upon himself to redefine
and re-conceptualize the Human Studies, the Geisteswissenschaften, in order
to create a new approach to understanding human history. Dilthey believed that
the job of the Human Studies should be to find a way to relate the life of the indi-
vidual to the social and cultural systems that form the historical context of these
individual lives. He referred to this project as the Critique of Historical Reason.
Dilthey was committed to the idea that the individual and social exist together
in a unity, yet he also retained a privileged position for the individual and believed
that the individual is ultimately ineffable in the social. He asserted that the study
of history is difficult precisely because these two the individual and the social
cannot be separated. The job of the Human Studies, as he defined them, should
be to find a way to relate the life of individuals to the social and cultural systems
that form their historical context. As Dilthey wrote, Objective Spirit and the
power of the individual determine together the human world. History rests on the
understanding of both.113
Here we already find many similarities with Sartres own project. Sartre, in his
Critique of Dialectical Reason, is troubled by other approaches to the study of
history for example, those of analytical reason, positivism, dogmatic Marxism
and Hegelian idealism. Sartre, like Dilthey, argues that we need a new approach to
the understanding of history, and a way to mediate the individual and the social.
How did Dilthey arrive at the notion of Objective Spirit? In Diltheys earlier
works, he had emphasized the study of the inner life of the individual, as he tried
to develop a descriptive psychology. But then he came to doubt the validity of
this method, as he came to believe that we are actually too close to our own inner
experiences to be able to describe them in any determinate and neutral way. So
Dilthey shifted his focus to what we actually can describe in a determinate way
the expressions of this inner life in the world. He referred to these expressions as
objectifications of spirit, and to the collection of these expressions as Objective
Spirit itself.
Dilthey adopted the term Objective Spirit from its original Hegelian context,
but altered its meaning in order to make it a viable concept for use within the Hu-
man Studies. He freed the term from its associations with idealism and from its
place in Hegels constructionist project. Dilthey was critical of all constructionist
approaches, from Comtes sociology to Hegels philosophy of history, because he
was opposed to the project of imposing an inhuman order onto human history
113 Wilhelm Dilthey, The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Expressions of Life, in
Descriptive Psychology and Historical Understanding, 131.
48
by means of artificial constructions. In order to remove its idealist connotations,
Dilthey redefined Objective Spirit in terms of concrete human expressions. Ob-
jective Spirit, he claimed, is constituted by both simple expressions, like the wink
of an eye, and expressions that exist on a larger scale, such as language, customs,
styles of life, the state, law, morality, economic systems, and science. In Diltheys
work, Objective Spirit also includes those human expressions that Hegel had in-
cluded in Absolute Spirit: philosophy, art, and religion.
When Dilthey used the term Objective Spirit, it did not designate any sort of
ideal collective consciousness of a people; rather, he used the term to refer to the
concrete collection of expressions that form a unity of context, like a community
of ideas. All of these expressions together form the Objective Spirit, which is
the meaningful context of our lives. Objective Spirit therefore can be understood
as a common context of shared meanings. By reference to this context of shared
meanings, we are able to understand the meaning of expressions and to relate
these back to the spiritual lives of the humans who produced them. Objective
Spirit contains the collection of all past expressions, which have shaped the devel-
opment of the current Objective Spirit. In this way, the past exists as a continuing
presence for us. As Dilthey explained:
Every single expression of life represents a common feature in the realm of this Objective
Spirit. Every word... every gesture... every work of art and every historical deed is intelligible
because the people who express themselves through them and those who understand them
have something in common; the individual always experiences, thinks, and acts in a common
sphere and only there does he understand.114
In great part, Sartres use of Objective Spirit in his later works mirrors Diltheys.
Sartre, too, describes Objective Spirit as the unity of the collection of all hu-
man expressions in the world. Like Dilthey, Sartre explains that Objective Spirit
functions as a shared context that all people in a particular socio-historical set-
ting hold in common. Sartre refers to this as a medium for the circulation of
significations.115 Sartre concurs with Dilthey that all of the practices and struc-
tures that form the Objective Spirit of a particular time and place serve as in-
dices of recurrence to which every Other refers.116 Objective Spirit can also be
understood as the totality of texts whether they be written, oral, or in memory
as well as the totality of institutionalized discourses, including ideologies, truths,
and mystifications.117 In terms of literature, Sartre explains, The Objective Spirit
114 From Wilhelm Diltheys Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften,
translated and quoted in Rudolf Makkreels Dilthey, 308-309.
116 Ibid., 776.
117 Steve Martinot, LEsprit objectif as a Theory of Language, in Sartre and Existentialism Vol.
6, William McBride, ed., 342.
49
of an age is at once the sum of works published during a specific period and the
multiplicity of totalizations effected by contemporary readers.118
However, there is one crucial distinction that sets Sartres own theory of Ob-
jective Spirit apart. This difference arises as Sartre redefines Objective Spirit
within the terms of his own project. While Dilthey had written that the notion of
Objective Spirit could prove useful in finding a new understanding of social being
and of social entities such as generations, he didnt explore this topic in any great
depth himself. For Sartre, on the other hand, the search for a new understanding
of social being (and ultimately of social classes) is central to the project of his
later works.
Recall that Dilthey came to believe that an understanding of history should be
based in a study of expressions in the world, which are objectifications of human
spirit. These expressions are mediations between the individual who expresses
them and the socio-historical reality that forms the context of each expression.
Sartres innovation is that he takes what Dilthey had called expressions and ob-
jectifications of spirit, and redefines them in terms of human praxis. As we have
seen, Sartre understands praxis as work, and this places the discussion within a
Marxist context. So Sartre begins with Diltheys achievements namely, locating
Objective Spirit in the concrete and identifying the mediation between individual
and social. Then he goes on to use the notion of work to build upon these insights
and to prepare the way for a discussion of social being and social entities like
class. As Sartre writes:
the Objective Spirit in a defined society, in a given era is nothing more than culture as
practico-inert. Let us understand, first of all, that at the origin of culture is work, lived, actual
work insofar as it surpasses and retains nature in itself by definition.119
In this passage, we encounter the uniqueness of Sartres appropriation of the no-

tion of Objective Spirit. What Dilthey had called expressions and objectifications
of spirit, Sartre redefines as praxis, as work. Sartre goes on to explain that work is
the internalization of the external and the re-externalization of the internal.120
Here we find that Sartre is defining the terms work and praxis in the same
way, as general names for human activity and expression. As praxis, work is a
surpassing of being toward an end, and a surpassing of raw material in order to
bring about some change. It is also central to our lived experience.
In the passage cited above, Sartre also redefines materiality and culture in
terms of the practico-inert. Culture as Objective Spirit is formed as a collection
of human objectifications in the world. As praxis invests inert matter with human

119 Ibid., 35.
120 Ibid., 36.
50
meanings, work brings human meaning to culture. Sartre explains that the person
gives [his situation] meaning by making his choices within it and by it.121 Past
praxes are crystallized in Objective Spirit as practico-inert structures, and in this
way, the worked matter that is the context for our actions reflects human mean-
ings. As Sartre explains, Because we are men and because we live in the world
of men, or work, and of conflicts, all the objects which surround us are signs.122
In this way, past, present, and future exist in a living interconnection in the
practico-inert of Objective Spirit. This context of meanings for our present ac-
tions acts a medium through which past praxes continue to exercise influence.
Since all past meanings are inscribed in the material world of our present exis-
tence, and set the stage for our own praxis, we share a being with those who have
come before us. And because our present praxis will shape the practico-inert
that will be involved in future existence, we share a being with the future. Sartre
writes, we are always both those who come before and those who come after.123
As Steve Martinot has explained, Lesprit objectif constitutes a sense of the pres-
ent as history, the present as a sense of history.124 And Yirmiahu Yovel adds,
The historic materiality through which I operate already embodies the praxis
of the past [] The matter of history is the inert crystallization of the past which
limits the future, while being transcended towards this future as the formative
overcoming of the past.125
As the collection of human expressions in the world, Objective Spirit can be
understood as a human creation. It constantly develops and changes, further en-
riched everyday by new expressions and creations of meaning. Each new action,
when added to the collection, alters it slightly. Language, as well as non-discur-
sive practices, can always be situated in new circumstances and understood in
different ways. Each socio-historical age understands itself in a new way, just
as every stage of literature defines its own subject and discovers a new use of
language. The meaning and function of literature is constantly changing, both
for the individual and for the society. The Objective Spirit itself is altered by the
writing of each new author, as seen in Sartres example of Flaubert, in which the
Objective Spirit of the time adapted itself in order to assimilate Flauberts unique
and innovative texts.126
121 This is from Sartres Rflexions sur la question juive, translated and quoted in William Mc-
Bride, Sartres Political Theory, 50.
123 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, 234
124 Steve Martinot, LEsprit objectif as a Theory of Language, in Sartre and Existentialism Vol.
125 Yirmiahu Yovel, Existentialism and Historical Discourse, in Sartre and Existentialism Vol.
126 See Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot Vol. 5, 13, 28, 33, and 47.
51
While it may be understood as a human creation, Objective Spirit also manag-
es to escape human control. It can surpass the intentions of individuals, seeming
to exercise an agency of its own. How can this happen? For example, how can the
interpretation and appropriation of Madame Bovary stray so far from the original
intentions of its author? The answer lies in the counter-finality of the practico-
inert. The products of our work surpass us precisely because they are objects in
the world. Expressions take on materiality they become worked matter and
this materiality makes them Other; it renders them things, out in the world. This
independent materiality of the expression means that we cant completely control
the meaning that it conveys. In the case of literature, the text transcends the au-
thor who produces it because it contains within itself the structures of Objective
Spirit. Sartre explains that it is a fundamental experience of the human condition
to struggle against the instruments we use to act, express, and work in the world.
In the case of language, we struggle against the limits of the words and ideas we
use to convey meaning.127
Language, Ideology, and Imperatives

As we have seen, both Dilthey and Sartre agree that human actions and expres-
sions are always accompanied by an agents purposes or intentions. Within the
context of Sartres particular project, we can translate this to say that human in-
tentions are addressed to us via worked matter.128 Sartre claims that the meaning-
ful objects which surround us, as well as the practico-inert existence of Objective
Spirit, scarcely mask the real project of those who have made [these objects of
worked matter] as such for us and who address us through them.129
But worked matter expresses more than past meanings according to Sar-
tre, worked matter also addresses us in the form of a command. In Being and
Nothingness, Sartre had already begun to explore the ways in which objects can
indicate their use to us, for example in his discussions of the bottle opener and
of the underground metro tunnel. In both cases, the material objects tell us what
to do with them. However, in his later works, when Sartre writes that matter
demands to be worked in certain ways, it is within the context of his Marxist
interests. Sartre explains that when an intention is frozen into matter, it can be
127 See Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot Vol. 5, 28, 36, and 41-2; Search for a Method, 115; and
Notebooks for an Ethics, 92-3. See also Thomas Flynn, Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Rea-
son, 187, and Sartre and Marxist Existentialism, 134.
128 Thomas Flynn, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism, 134.
52
addressed to us only as an obligation. So the way that worked matter is related to
the agent is always as a command.130
In this sense, Sartre understands Objective Spirit not only as a collection of
past expressions, but also as the collection of imperatives imposed on a person
within a given time and place. The imperatives of Objective Spirit include the
totality of institutionalized discourses and ideologies. As he explains:
The Objective Spirit represents culture as practico-inert, as the totality to this day (in any
day) of the imperatives imposed on man by any given society. [] For the Objective Spirit
tells us, contradictorily but imperatively, who we are: in other words, what we have to do.131
Therefore, in the pre-reflective awareness that accompanies praxis, we under-

stand Objective Spirit not only as the context of our actions, but also as a set of
imperatives addressed to us.132 This comprehension is an immediate condition of
praxis, and it provides us with a knowledge of what to do that is implicit, non-
verbal, and intuitive. This pre-reflective comprehension includes an awareness of
the praxis of the moment as well as of the entire context of social relations that
surround the praxis and condition it. With this knowledge, praxis is situated in
the social world. Praxis is accompanied by an intuition of ones lived relations to
others, including not only personal encounters but also broader social elements of
experience such as class-being and socio-economic status.133
As we have seen, Sartre believes that all praxis is accompanied by a pre-reflec-
tive awareness in which thought is simply given, and is not yet posed for itself.
This pre-reflective awareness is described by Sartre as an intuitive, implicit and
nonverbal knowledge, a certain direct and totalizing yet wordless understanding
of contemporary man among men and in the world. 134 At this pre-reflective level,
the individuals awareness is already enmeshed in a system of values. Here we
find the individuals intuitive, affective awareness of class-being, ones objective
class spirit, as well as implicit ideologies which are not articulated or of which
the agent is not reflectively aware.
When reflection isolates moments from our stream of lived experience and
poses them for itself, language comes into play. Sartre understands language as
an instrument humans use within Objective Spirit. Language names our experi-
130 For more on imperatives in worked matter, see Sartre, Search for a Method, 155, and The Fam-
ily Idiot Vol. 5, 39 and 45.
131 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot Vol. 5, 39 and 48.
132 Sartres notion of Objective Spirit, as a source of imperatives and limits on actions, sometimes
resembles Emile Durkheims collective consciousness, as the pressure we feel to conform to
groups or to social norms. See Thomas Flynn, Sartre, Foucault and Historical Reason, 186.
133 See also Steve Martinot, LEsprit objectif as a Theory of Language, in Sartre and Existen-
tialism Vol. 6, William McBride, ed., 341, and 353, note 9. Martinot notes that it is in this pre-
reflective awareness that we may find the first germ of a political act of refusal.
53
ences, and hardens them into a definite form, which belongs to the set of already
defined things. In this way, language limits thought, and determines it to an
extent. But language also preserves our thought and this preservation allows
for the possibility of also transcending past thought. Sartre explains that when
we want to speak, the elements we have to express ourselves are both too many
and too few:
Too few: words, types of reasoning, methods, exist only in limited quantity; among them
there are empty spaces, lacunae, and his growing thought cannot find its appropriate expres-
sion. Too rich: each vocable brings along with it the profound signification which the whole
epoch has given to it.135
The individual can understand his or her experiences linguistically only in rela-
tion to the whole of Objective Spirit. Language always refers to the entire context
of meaning, and for this reason, Sartre claims that when we read words we are
actually swallowing society whole. In this way, language is always already en-
meshed in the codes of meanings related to practico-inert structures of class. And
the individual, who thinks and expresses him or herself in this language, is inside
this system, as within a special field of instruments.136
Sartre understands ideologies as institutional discourses that operate when the
pre-reflective awareness of them is articulated in language. Language provides
us with a translation of the non-verbalized awareness of what was first only an
implicit ideology. Once the ideology is articulated in language, it takes on mate-
riality and inertia. Elaborated ideologies belong to the realm of the practico-inert,
and when they are named, they are perpetuated. These ideologies and value sys-
tems remain in the mind and in the memory. As Sartre writes:
Written words are stones. Learning them, internalizing their combinations, we introduce into
ourselves a mineralized thought that will subsist in us by virtue of its very minerality, until
such time as some kind of material labor, acting on it from outside, might come to relieve us
of it.137
Consequences for Freedom and Necessity

Objective Spirit, as the milieu of human praxis, serves as a crucial enabling con-
dition of human freedom. This milieu is not only the context for all meaning it
also makes human exchanges of meaning possible, as it preserves past expres-
sions and definitions, and provides us with a frame of reference. In this way,
135 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 113

136 See Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot Vol. 5, 37, 40, and 43.
137 Ibid., 38.
54
Objective Spirit also functions as the means for our own self-understanding. Rec-
ognizing ourselves in relation to the totalization that is this collection of expres-
sions, we encounter ourselves as a product of history and in relation to the past,
as living our circumstances in the present moment, and as the future that we are
now preparing.138 As Sartre explains, Objective Spirit tells us contradictorily but
imperatively who we are.139
However, Objective Spirit is not only enabling; it also acts as a constraint and
a limit on our actions. As the practico-inert structures of Objective Spirit provide
orientation for concrete actions and give them content, they shape free human
praxis. In the individuals experience of Objective Spirit as context, free praxis
encounters worked matter. This is a point at which necessity enters human experi-
ence, limiting, constraining, and conditioning the field of action. In the dialectical
interactions of praxis and the practico-inert, people may produce and use material
objects, but worked matter also produces people.140 In the Critique, Sartre writes:
There are no material objects which do not communicate among themselves through the me-
diation of men; and there is no man who is not born into a world of humanised materialities
and materialised institutions, and who does not see a general future prescribed for him at the
heart of the movement of History.141
In an interview, he explains further:

In a certain sense, all our lives are predestined from the moment we are born. We are destined
for a certain type of action from the beginning by the situation of the family and the society at
any given moment. [] Predestination is what replaces determinism for me.142
The existentialist of Being and Nothingness is now claiming that the situation
prescribes a future for the individual, and that our lives are predestined. However,
Sartre goes on to explain that this sort of predestination does not preclude free
choice altogether. He explains that options still exist, but they must be understood
as conditioned options. The practico-inert structures of Objective Spirit do not
absolutely determine actions, nor do they completely define individuals. Individ-
uals may still take up attitudes in response to these structures, and choose among
the available options. Here is the paradox of experience that Sartre is presenting:
in our subjectivity, freely and through ourselves, we carry out the sentence that
developing society has given us, which defines our being a priori.143
As a site of materiality, Objective Spirit can also affect human freedom via the
counter-finality of the practico-inert. Sartre claims that in some cases Objective
138 Ibid., 40.
139 Ibid., 48.
141 Ibid., 169.
142 Jean-Paul Sartre, On the Idiot of the Family, in Life/Situations, 116-117.
143 See Jean-Paul Sartre, The Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, 71.
55
Spirit can actually seem to take on an agency of its own, which transcends the in-
dividuals who create it, and which operates through us. For example, he describes
Flauberts situation as one in which the Objective Spirit of the time transformed
the individual Flaubert, creating him as the chosen vehicle it needed at the time
for its development. Sartre explains:
a teleological and normative system [was] organized in and through Flauberts mental trou-
bles without, however, leaving the realm of the anonymous and without being defined other
than as the surpassing required by the objective contradictions of literature.144
If we are to accurately understand Sartres claims regarding freedom and neces-

sity, as well as the counter-finality of the practico-inert, it is important to keep
in mind the primacy of praxis in Sartres philosophy, as described in Chapter
One. When Sartre describes moments when Objective Spirit seems to take on an
agency of its own, we must remember that it only does so through the free choices
of individuals.145 Sartres theory of Objective Spirit is removed from any sort of
Hegelian idealism, so that there is no ideal Spirit to move history from behind the
scenes. Rather, Sartres philosophy aims to remain grounded in the concrete. In
the case of Flaubert, there were concrete material contradictions in his cultural
context that influenced his experience and set the context for his praxis.
Objective Spirit as a Unity within Multiplicity

Sartre dedicates a great amount of thought in both volumes of the Critique to an
investigation of the ontology of social groups, addressing the question: do these
groups possess a unified existence of their own, or are they simply temporary
loose conglomerations of atomistic individuals? Sartre, as a dialectician who is
interested in the topic of history and class-being, argues for the former. What
sets his social ontology apart from the Hegelian, sociological, and Marxist social
ontologies that have come before is that in his exploration of exactly how it is that
humans exist in unity, he attempts to maintain both a dialectic and a nominal-
ism. Dialectically, he attempts to account for the real internal cohesions of social
wholes, but all the while refusing idealism and insisting on nominalism, remain-
ing grounded in concrete human praxis. This means that while he maintains that
all persons are ultimately held together by bonds of interiority, these bonds are
not to be understood as idealized, inhuman, or spiritual, but rather as grounded in
real human praxis and the practico-inert. Sartres nominalism also leads him to
144 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Idiot of the Family Vol. 5, 30-31.

145 Ibid., 41.
56
claim that while we exist together in unities, these unities must be understood as
multiplicities and as totalizations that are always in progress.
As Sartre explores the ways in which we are bound together in social uni-
ties, he turns to his theory of internalization and re-externalization. This will be
discussed in more depth in Chapter Three, in the co-constitution of individual
and social. But for now, suffice it to say that Sartre claims that each individual
internalizes his or her relations with every other person, establishing a bond of
interiority that links every individual to the whole of cultural totalizations. In-
dividuals are cultured, in that they are dialectically conditioned by the past of
human development. An individual then totalizes him or herself on the basis
of centuries of history, and does so in accord with his or her own history. Each
individual praxis, then, relies upon the whole of culture.146 As Sartre writes, this
means that my life itself is centuries old.147
Since Sartre claims that we are all bound together by relations of interiority,148
this means that there is a synthetic bond of reciprocity that is the foundation of
all human relations. Sartre describes this as a relational milieu (like geometri-
cal space) in which the act, by its very movement, creates thoroughfares.149 He
goes on to explain that Nothing could be produced anywhere without provoking
everywhere ... an inner modification of all human facts.150 Every act or modifi-
cation therefore affects all the occupants of the field. For this reason, he claims
that any human life can be understood as an expression of the whole and of all
human lives. Or to put it another way, one life can be understood as dissolved in
the whole of history, and the whole of history can be understood as concentrated
in one life.
However, it is important to remember that Sartres commitment to nominalism
has several implications for the understanding of social unity. First of all, this
unity must be understood as a totalization rather than as a totality. Sartre differ-
entiates between these two terms, defining totality as a sort of whole that is static
and finished, such as a completed painting. A totalization, on the other hand, pos-
sesses a synthesis that mediates parts and whole, to hold them together in a unity,
but this unity is an open-ended and developing activity that is always in progress.
Sartre also insists that this is a totalization without a totalizer there is no divine
eye outside of the collection to unify it. We can only know a totalization from
our own perspective within it.
146 See Jean-Paul Sartre, The Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol.1, 55, and The Critique of Dialec-
tical Reason Vol. 2, 189.
147 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, 54.
148 Ibid., 111.
149 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 2, 247-248.
150 Ibid., 247-248. Italics are in the original.
57
A second characteristic of this unity is that it is also a multiplicity. While every
element of the field is interior to everything else, each also remains exterior to
all. In this way, Sartre writes, the relations of immanence in a social whole can be
understood as a wandering unity of the diverse.151 It is possible for there to be
disorder and difference integrated within the whole, without ultimately destroy-
ing the unity or reducing it to a mere pluralism.
Third, Sartre insists that these relations of immanence exist on the level of
praxis. This means that the bonds are practical and not substantial. Praxis estab-
lishes the bond and is the medium of the bond. As Sartre writes, when the bond is
established via praxis without being foreseen or projected or perhaps even known
by it, praxis nevertheless remains the conducting medium of interiority.152
Finally, the bond of immanence, which is a producer of events and objects,
is also itself a product. Humans create the bonds of immanence. This can be
compared to scarcity. Just as scarcity is a contingent fact of human history and
not a necessary structure, the relations of interiority are contingent human cre-
ations. But just as scarcity is always present in human history as we know and
experience it, as an element of the human condition, these interior bonds are
also always present, and we couldnt conceive of our particularly human history
without them.
We may conclude, then, that Sartres understanding of Objective Spirit is able
to account for the unity of a social whole while avoiding Hegelian rsonances
spiritualistes. Objective Spirit exists only in and through the work of real people,
as they act in the world. Individuals are connected by the fact that they share and
internalize the common externality. In this way, the individual is related not only
to all other people, but also to the history of human meanings that has produced
this current moment. This means that we are united by something human, and not
by absolutely alien matter.153 As Flynn suggests, according to Sartre, conscious-
ness exists within Objective Spirit in a way that is similar to Heideggers Dasein
in-the-world we are within the collective spirit by being in relationships with
other people.154
151 Ibid., 343.

152 Ibid., 343.
153 For more on this topic, see also: Jean-Paul Sartre, Notebooks for an Ethics, 92-93, and The
Family Idiot Vol. 5, 41; Thomas Flynn, Mediated Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third, in
The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Schilpp, ed., 367 note 18, and Sartre, Foucault, and
Historical Reason Vol. 1, 187.
154 Thomas Flynn, Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason Vol. 1, 187.
58
Sartres Theory of Objective Spirit and
Intersectionality
So far, the presentation of Sartres theory of Objective Spirit has emphasized its
unity as a totalization and a social whole. It appears as if the Objective Spirit of
a particular time and place unifies the multiplicity of persons, as each person
internalizes the same cultural whole. But is there ever simply one cultural whole,
or one Objective Spirit to be internalized by all? As I explained in the Introduc-
tion, the articulation of the human condition that I am undertaking here begins
from an assumption of intersectionality, the claim that each humans identity is
multiple, composed of a myriad of intersecting identities, perspectives, and influ-
ences. While this experience of multiple identities might be most obvious in the
lives of those whom Western culture has traditionally labeled as different from
the norm for example, in the multiple identities of an African-American woman
the paradigm of intersectionality contends that this diversity of identities is
actually a reality for all human beings. In the life of any particular person in any
particular time and place, there exists a multiplicity of cultures, perspectives, and
identities.
To gain a better understanding of the diversity that can exist within the Ob-
jective Spirit of a particular era, let us consider the example of the contempo-
rary French mentality. In everyday conversation, we regularly speak without
hesitation of entities such as the French attitude, a French sense of style, or a
particularly French mannerism, as if these were obviously real. We may speak
of a French sense of humor, or a particularly French political orientation in
European politics. We may even identify moments of unity in the countrys spirit,
such as in the excitement before a World Cup championship game, or in the ex-
perience of comradery in mourning a common tragedy. When we speak of these
cultural unities, we are referring to the Objective Spirit of the French people in
a particular time and place.
Yet, there is clearly a wide range of diversity within the so-called unity of the
French mentality. Who are the French people we are describing? Let us as-
sume that we are speaking only of those who are currently French citizens this
would already significantly and artificially limit the field. Within the group of
French citizens, are we speaking of those who live in Paris, Parisian suburbs,
other cities, or rural villages? This clearly makes a difference in ones perspec-
tive and mentality. Are we speaking of north or south, Bretagne, Alsace, or
Provence? Of families who have lived in France for generations, or those who
have arrived more recently? Are we speaking perhaps of French citizens of Af-
rican descent, and if so, of North African families from Algeria, or sub-Saharan
African families from Senegal? Is this the mentality of French Catholics, Protes-
59
tants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, or atheists? And of what generation? Of what
social class, and what level of education? Of men or women?
Each of these particular positions in a society possesses a unique perspec-
tive on the world, along with unique cultural assumptions, social expectations,
value systems, tastes, and even slang and in-jokes. And given the intersectional
nature of human identities, no person occupies only one of these positions at a
time we each inhabit multiple locations within a culture at once. Sometimes
the experience of multiple perspectives flows smoothly, and sometimes it does
not. As we move from context to context throughout our days, we frequently also
move from emphasizing one aspect of our identities to another. Maria Lugones
has described this experience of moving between different cultural settings and
contexts of meanings, or between what we might refer to as different Objective
Spirits, as world traveling.155 Lugones points out that those who occupy privi-
leged positions in society tend to have more freedom of choice when it comes to
the social circles they move within, and when and how they shift to others. Those
with less social privilege, on the other hand, may be forced to move in and out of
these various contexts for the purpose of their own survival. As a person moves
from one context to another, he or she may experience differing levels of comfort,
inclusion, or exclusion. While inhabiting a particular context, one may receive
positive recognition and affirmation, or one may experience alienation.
Consider, for example, a black female French citizen of Senegalese descent
from a working-class background. Imagine that she has been trained as a lawyer
and hired in a law firm. Within the space of one day, as she wakes at home, travels
to the office, works in court, eats in a restaurant, does some shopping, listens to
the radio or reads the news, she may move between multiple contexts of language,
accent, cultural references, and social expectations. She may experience both the
Muslim values of her family life and the assimilationist values of the professional
legal environment. She may encounter multiple understandings of what it means
to live as a woman. She may experience privilege as a well-employed lawyer as
well as disadvantage as someone perceived as an immigrant or outsider. In this
case, it may be to her advantage to know how to pass in multiple settings, with
multiple proficiencies in the languages and expectations of several different en-
vironments.
The presence of this extreme multiplicity within the social unity we call the
French people raises serious questions for the notion of one unified French Ob-
jective Spirit. Above we saw that Sartre himself acknowledges a certain level
of diversity and believes that Objective Spirit should be understood as a unity
within multiplicity. But when we emphasize the realities of intersectionality, can
155 Maria Lugones, Playfulness, World-Traveling, and Loving Perception, in Making Face,
Making Soul, Gloria Anzaldua, ed.
60
the theory of Objective Spirit, in the form it takes in Sartres later texts, account
for the realities of diversity within human experience? Can Sartres assertions of
unity, totalization, and relations of immanence be maintained? Is it pos-
sible to theorize real social wholes and acknowledge diversity at the same time?
While Sartre does not address this problem in exactly the form it is presented
here, I do believe that the goal of his project in the Critique of Dialectical Reason
shares similar concerns. After all, his hope there is to find a way to account for
social wholes as totalizations that are multiple and in progress, without appealing
to idealist or foundational principles. He emphasizes that the unity of Objective
Spirit must be understood as grounded in concrete human praxes, and that as a
product that is constantly in flux, Objective Spirit changes and develops with
each new addition. For all of these reasons, I believe that Sartre would agree that
Objective Spirit should not be understood as a monolithic whole.
There is also evidence that Sartre himself recognizes the experience of mul-
tiple identities. For example, in his own discussions of Objective Spirit, he usually
locates this Objective Spirit within a particular context. He describes the ob-
jective class spirit of the nineteenth-century French bourgeoisie, the particular
Objective Spirit of the literary tradition which Flaubert inherits, and in his writ-
ings on colonialism, the differing perspectives and experiences of colonizer and
colonized. In many different texts, Sartre addresses the different perspectives and
needs of particular racial, ethnic, and class-based groups.
For these reasons, I believe that Sartres theory of Objective Spirit is not incon-
sistent with an intersectional understanding of the human. However, it is helpful
to supplement Sartres own account of Objective Spirit with the caveat that it must
not be understood as monolithic, but rather as multi-layered and multiple. Within
any one cultural moment, multiple Objective Spirits from the very local to the
very general may be operating and overlapping simultaneously. For example,
we may refer to the Objective Spirit, or unified context of meanings, at the very
local level of a particular family as well as on a larger scale, of cultures, Zeitgeist,
and historical eras. Objective Spirit emerges as a unity in multiplicity that is shift-
ing and dynamic.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have taken the first step towards establishing Sartres unique
reconceptualization of the relationship of the individual and the social. In his
search for mediations, we have seen how Sartre develops new methods for inves-
tigating the human. Sartres revised dialectical reason, the method of comprehen-
61
sion, and the progressive-regressive method all help us to begin to construct an
understanding of the individual and social in which both terms are given their
due, and neither term is reduced to the other, as the two exist together dialectical-
ly in a dynamic interrelation. In particular, we have seen how Sartres theory of
Objective Spirit, grounded in concrete human praxis, enables us to speak mean-
ingfully of social wholes as unities within multiplicity.
In the following chapter, we will take this one step further, to investigate the
human beings personal experience of the relation of individual and social in
more detail. In two case studies, we will trace the individuals experience of inter-
relationship with Objective Spirit, in the processes of internalizing the external
and re-externalizing the internal in the dialectic of personalization. This will
have important consequences for a new posthumanist understanding of freedom
and necessity in human experience, and we will emerge with a richer understand-
ing of the co-constitution of the individual and social.
62
Chapter Three:
The Co-Constitution of the Individual and the
Social
In The Family Idiot, Sartre defines human praxis as the internalization of the ex-
ternal and the re-externalization of the internal.156 According to this definition,
individual praxis must always involve an element of give-and-take in relation
with the social. In fact, it appears that there could be no individual praxis without
the social. In this chapter, I explore the particular details of the individuals dy-
namic interrelation with the social.
Sartres description of the dialectic of personalization can be understood as an
element of the common human condition. There are two moments in this dialectic.
First, in the moment of internalization, we see how an individual takes in the
surrounding context of values and meanings in Objective Spirit, which shape and
condition whom the individual becomes. As Sartre gives an account of internal-
ization, we see that he comes to recognize the particular importance of childhood
experiences in shaping our adult selves. Second, in the moment of re-external-
ization, we follow the individual as he or she releases intentions, expressions, and
objectifications of spirit via praxis back into the world. Since Objective Spirit is
always changing based upon new human expressions that appear, we witness the
ways in which the individuals re-externalizations can shape Objective Spirit in
turn. We will emerge from this articulation of the dialectic of personalization with
a rich account of the co-constitution of the individual and the social.
In order to gain a better understanding of the dialectic of personalization at
work, I will present two case studies. The first example is Sartres analysis of the
nineteenth-century French novelist, Gustave Flaubert. We will follow the young
Gustave as he is socially constituted within his particular family setting, in rela-
tion to the larger class conflicts of his historical moment, and in relation to the
literary tradition of which he became a part. The second example is that of the
Asian-American artist and designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Maya
Lin. The case of Lin is especially interesting since, as the child of Chinese im-
migrants and as an artist, we can trace the influences of family and multiple
cultures in her social constitution. We will witness these influences as they are
re-externalized in her artistic expressions. Lins experience of multiple overlap-
ping identities provides us with an opportunity to consider the social constitution
of the individual in the context of intersectional subjectivity.
63
I contend that Sartres theory of the co-constitution of individual and social
reveals to us the genius of his later dialectical understanding of freedom and
necessity. It also leads to a radically new understanding of subjectivity. As we
shall find, in Sartres account, subjectivity becomes neither everything nor
nothing.157 Rather, subjectivity is understood as one moment in this dialectical
process of internalizing and re-externalizing.
The Internalizing Moment: The Social Constitution of

the Individual
In Sartres later works, he portrays childhood as a crucial moment in the social
constitution of the individual. He explains that as children, we begin to learn
about ourselves individually as well as in relation to the larger social whole. In
the first years of life, he writes, the internalization of the external is an irreduc-
ible fact.158 Within his or her environment, the child internalizes the values and
expectations that he or she encounters. But the child also takes in more than the
details of his or her particular situation. It is from within this particular situation
that the child first encounters the greater cultural whole social hierarchies, ab-
stract meanings, and the Objective Spirit of the time and place. Sartre explains,
The child experiences more than just his family. He lives also in part through
the family the collective landscape which surrounds him.159 In this way, child-
hood is a site of mediation between the universal and the individual. In childhood,
the person is first inserted into his or her position in the greater social hierarchy
and web of relations.160 In this moment of internalizing the external, the past lives
on as a continuing presence, and the individual becomes rooted in history.
In his depiction of the social constitution of the individual, Sartre even be-
gins to speak of character, by which he means all of those things inscribed in
the person in childhood. For example, according to Sartre, ones class-being
is shaped during childhood, and as such, it is an element of a persons character.
Sartre defines class-being as a particular set of habits, expectations, assumptions,
dispositions, and attitudes, internalized from the outer situation.161
157 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 33, note 9.

158 Ibid., 63.
159 Ibid., 79.
160 Ibid., 60 and 62. The importance of childhood in the social constitution of the individual is one
of reasons why Sartre values psychoanalysis in his later work. As he writes on page 60, Psy-
choanalysis alone allows us to discover the whole man in the adult; that is, not only his present
determinations but also the weight of his history.
64
Dilthey, too, recognized the importance of childhood, and he described this
moment of internalization in the following way:
Before he learns to speak, the child is already immersed in the medium of common con-
texts. And he learns to understand gestures and facial expressions, motions and exclama-
tions, words and sentences [] In this way, the individual becomes oriented in the world of
Objective Spirit.162
Hazel Barnes describes Sartres understanding of the influence of the social on

an individuals development as a life program and an inheritance.163 She ex-
plains that every individual experiences two kinds of social conditioning one
from the more general conditioning of Objective Spirit, and one which takes place
in the particular situation, for example in the particular family setting.
While Sartre is able to portray social wholes such as the external culture or
the general Objective Spirit of an era as possessing some sort of unity, he also
emphasizes the fact that each individual person internalizes these social wholes
in his or her own way, and from his or her own particular position. Located within
a specific and unique situation, Sartre claims that each child lives the universal
as particular.164 As he explains, as children we experience the fact of our be-
longing to our environment as a unique event.165
There is both similarity and difference in the way individuals internalize the
external. The external practico-inert structures which are internalized are stable
enough to allow the use of concepts such as the spirit of the generation, a cer-
tain French attitude, or the Catholic mindset, for example. Yet, at the same
time, each individual internalizes these entities from his or her unique position,
and an individuals perspective on the greater Objective Spirit cannot be replicat-
ed. Even in a case in which two individuals have very similar environments, they
will each experience the world uniquely. Consider, for example, twins who are
born into exactly the same family situation, social class, geographic and cultural
location, and generation. Even though the two exist within almost exactly the
same situation, separated temporally at birth by perhaps mere minutes, each child
has his or her own unique set of experiences. Each of the twins possesses a unique
perspective on the external whole, and each will develop his or her own particular
understanding of self, of the world, and of the selfs relation to the world.
162 Wilhelm Dilthey, The Understanding of Other Persons and their Expressions of Life, in De-
scriptive Psychology and Historical Understanding, 126-127.
163 Hazel Barnes, Sartre and Flaubert, 292.
164 Ibid., 58.
165 Ibid., 60.
65
The Externalizing Moment: The Differential and
the Individuals Free Creations
Valry is a petit bourgeois intellectual, no doubt about it. But not every petit bourgeois intel-
lectual is Valry.166
Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method
Sartre claims that while the individual is conditioned in childhood by the family
group and by Objective Spirit, he or she also always goes beyond this situation.
The moment of internalization provides only half of the story. Even as children,
Sartre explains, in our free praxis we attempt to wrench ourselves away from
the destinies prescribed for us in the values and meanings we internalize, even
though we may act without clear awareness, blindly and awkwardly.167
Thus we return to a recurring theme of Sartres later philosophy, to what
Thomas Flynn has called the primacy of praxis. Flynn writes that, despite the
realities of social conditioning:
We may speak of the primacy of individual praxis as a basic principle of Sartres social
thought, indeed as part of his existentialist legacy. Individual human work, even if enriched
by group membership or absorbed and deflected by the practico-inert (and note the implicit
reference to praxis in the latter term), is the ultimate active source of change in the social
sphere.168
Sartre and Dilthey agree once again on this point. Both retain a central place of
importance for the individual within history. Dilthey argues that the individual
is not completely determined by Objective Spirit; rather, the individual is dif-
ferentiated and develops a unique identity in relation to Objective Spirit. This
development takes place as the person interacts with the outer world, and as he or
she lives through experiences. In Sartres account as well, individual freedom is
not lost but rather understood as conditioned in relation to the social world. Sartre
recognizes this as a dialectical process, in which the individual not only internal-
izes the outer world, but also re-externalizes the internal.
The moment of re-externalization is the moment of action, of praxis, in which
the individual externalizes something from within. As praxis acts in the world,
an internal state of the individual is given an external concrete existence. For
example, in the utterance of a word, the individuals expression takes on practico-
inert form. Note that Sartre calls this praxis re-externalizing, and not merely
externalizing. This is because each re-externalization is grounded in and en-
166 Ibid., 56.

167 Ibid., 100.
168 Thomas Flynn, Mediated Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third, in The Philosophy of
Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Schilpp, ed., 352.
66
abled by meanings that have already been internalized. Since all human praxis
relies upon the social context of Objective Spirit that has already been taken in,
the meanings we express do not spring from nothingness.
Sartre explains that when an individual understands a meaning, he or she plac-
es it within two frames of reference. We can separate the two intellectually for the
sake of description, but in reality they are more likely experienced as intermin-
gled and difficult to distinguish. Within the first frame of reference, the individual
understands a meaning in relation to the shared language and culture of Objective
Spirit, which everyone within the social collective shares. To this extent, we can
suppose that the individuals understanding of a certain meaning is similar to
everyone elses. Second, the individual also understands the meaning in relation
to his or her own particular set of experiences. Because of the unique nature of
every persons experience, the individuals understanding of meanings is also
highly particularized, and each persons frame of reference is radically unique.169
The praxis of re-externalization is not a simple mimicking of social meanings
that have been absorbed. In every re-externalization, the individual necessarily
re-expresses common social meanings in a unique way, and the meanings emerge
as altered. An individuals expression always reflects the particular spin of his
or her unique understanding and perspective. Sartre refers to this particularity
found in each individuals appropriation of Objective Spirit as the differential.
As Flynn explains, in Sartres account, the child does not merely internalize the
values and expectations of his or her milieu; the child both assumes and tran-
scends this network of relationships that are likewise sustained and surpassed
by others. The ontological space in which the Sartrean agent operates is one of
givens, sustainings, and surpassings.170
To illustrate this differential, Sartre provides the example of the praxis of
reading. In order to understand a text, the reader must rely on common social
meanings such as language, grammar, and contexts. But each reader also total-
izes the reading of a work in his or her own unique way. In this respect, a readers
understanding of a text is both similar to every other readers, and at the same
time radically different and unique.
We can refer to Sartres account of the social constitution of the individual, in
which we find the processes of internalization and re-externalization, as a dialec-
tic of personalization.171 Sartre emphasizes the role of the social in this process,
and claims that rather than the term individual, it would be more fitting to refer
to the person as a singular universal.172 The person is universal as an incarna-
169 See Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 137, and The Family Idiot Vol. 5, 41.
170 Thomas Flynn, Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason, 180.
172 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot Vol. 1, ix.
67
tion of the greater social context, but the person is also singular in his or her own
particularity and differential. As Thomas Anderson explains, a person is both
conditioned by the general cultural patterns and structures of his time and also a
unique internalization of, and response to, these givens through his free projects
by which he creates himself.173
The degree to which one is able to differentiate oneself from the prescribed
destiny one internalizes can vary. In Sartres earlier works, he had claimed that
man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.174 This motto expresses
a faith in the permanence of human freedom and in the ever-present possibility
of creating oneself. However, in Sartres later works, this motto comes to be re-
written, and the slight change in wording has implications of crucial importance
for the understanding of freedom. In The Family Idiot, Sartre writes that the
structures of this family are internalized in attitudes and re-externalized in prac-
tices by which the child makes himself be what others have made of him.175 In
this passage, it appears as if a person freely fulfills the destiny which the social
(via the family and society) has prescribed for him.
As we have seen, Sartre understands the relation of the individual to the so-
cio-historical reality dialectically. It would be a mistake to reduce the individual
merely to his or her meaning in the collective, and it would be equally false to
reduce the collective to a mere compilation of individual acts. As Sartre explains,
the individual is both receptive and active, and the social is both a producer of
people and the product of the acts of these same individuals. In The Family Idiot,
he writes:
The important point here, however, is proportion [] We can hope, at the end of an extended
quest, to achieve that reciprocity of position (the object defining us to the same degree that we
define the object) which is the truth of the human condition.176
We see, then, that in Sartres later works, subjectivity becomes a moment in the
interchange between individual and social. It is the exercise of freedom within
necessity.
Sartres Case Study: Gustave Flaubert

Consider the statement, Gustave Flaubert embodied the spirit of his time.
Sweeping claims such as these are commonplace and clichd; we often take their
173 Thomas Anderson, Sartres Two Ethics, 137.

174 Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, in Existentialism, Robert Solomon, ed., 207.
175 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot Vol. 2, 3. (emphasis added)
68
meaningfulness for granted. But what do statements like this really mean? How
can an author embody the spirit of an era? Is the author, perhaps, nothing more
than a vessel, as the spirit of the time flows seamlessly through him or her
onto the page? Does history move the agent? Or on the contrary, is there no
such thing as the spirit of the time at all? Could it be the case that entities such
as the spirit of the time are simply creations of the imagination of the author,
critic, historian, or sociologist? For Sartre, the importance of questions such as
these lies in their relevance to understanding the human experiences of freedom
and necessity, as well as to the interpretation of history.
Sartres framework for understanding the interactions between, and the co-
constitution of, the individual and the social provides us with great insight into
these issues. In particular, in The Family Idiot Sartre addresses the organic bond
of interiority that is essential for claiming that a writer expresses his times. 177
In this monumental (and unfinished) three-volume work, Sartre puts the methods
he has developed for understanding both individual and social to work. Here we
see the progressive-regressive method, dialectical reason, the theory of Objective
Spirit, and the dialectic of personalization, brought together in an effort to com-
prehend the praxis of Gustave Flaubert.
As weve seen in Search for a Method, Sartres goal is to find mediations of in-
dividual and social that could serve as conditions for the possibility of a socialist
biography and a structural, historical anthropology. In The Family Idiot, he pres-
ents a concrete example of just such a socialist biography. The text can be read not
only as a biography of the author Flaubert, but also as a biography of the entire
cultural spirit and literary tradition of nineteenth century France. Indeed, because
of the indissoluble connection of individual and social, Sartre would consider it
a mistake to tell the story of one without the other. Recall that the progressive-
regressive method requires a continual cross-reference between the individual
biography and the social and historical period. To comprehend Flaubert, we must
look to the social wholes; to comprehend the historical period, we must look to
examples of individual experience. In this work, Sartre portrays a connection
between the deepest and most intimate conditioning of the individual, and the
historical praxis of this person as a member of a class (or other social group.)178
The reader of The Family Idiot comes to comprehend Flaubert both in his inti-
mate particularity and in his historical status as a writer of his time.
Sartre identifies the family as a site of mediation between the individual and
the social. It is within the childs unique experience of the family situation that he
or she internalizes Objective Spirit. In the family, then, Gustave comes to learn
177 Thomas Flynn, Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason, 180, paraphrasing from Jean-Paul
Sartre, The Family Idiot Vol. 5, 391.
178 Ibid., 179, paraphrasing from Jean-Paul Sartre, Between Existentialism and Marxism.
69
not only who he or she is in relation to other family members, but also what space
he occupies in relation to the outside world. These early family experiences shape
his understanding of self and world, as well as his own projects, desires, and ex-
pectations from life.
In the first two of the three volumes of the French edition of The Family Idiot,179
Sartre applies his methods to the interpretation of Flauberts particular experience
and to the details of the young authors family situation. Gustaves father was
a distinguished doctor with high expectations for the professional development
of his two sons. While Gustaves older brother followed in their fathers foot-
steps, becoming a well-respected doctor himself, Gustave experienced feelings of
competition and struggled to attain his fathers approval. Their father pressured
Gustave to pursue a law degree and to continue on the professional path as his
brother had done, discounting Gustaves forays into the theater and poetry. Psy-
chologically, in Gustaves subjective experience of his family, there is evidence
of feelings of anxiety, inadequacy, and even fratricidal desires. Throughout his
life, Gustave would continue to act on the emotional scars created in his youth.
As Sartre explains, it is within the family that the child also first encounters
the meanings of the outside world, and becomes inserted into the Objective Spirit
of the time. The Flaubert family thus served as the site of mediation in which the
young Gustave internalized the values of his society. Sartre writes that he was
forged by the fundamental contradictions of the period, but at a certain social
level the family in which they are masked in the form of ambivalences and
ironic twists.180
For example, Sartre explains, in the first half of the nineteenth century two
ideologies competed within French culture. The first can be described as a bour-
geois faith in science and technological progress, with a pragmatic and utilitarian
outlook. The second was an ideology of hierarchy and tradition and an ethic of
duty. When the young Gustave experienced these competing ideologies, it was
not as abstract principles. Rather, he encountered and internalized these values as
they were embodied in the particular members of his family. This struggle mani-
fested itself, and was experienced intimately by Gustave, as the conflict between
the skeptical worldview of his father and the religious worldview of his mother.
At the same time, within this experience, Gustave internalized a pre-reflective
understanding of his class status within the greater social hierarchy, and of the
particular class conflicts of his time, since this conflict of ideologies can also be
understood in terms of class conflict and the evolution of the bourgeoisie. As Sar-
tre writes, It is, then, inside the particularity of a history, through the peculiar
179 Note that the French edition has three volumes, while the English translation is published in five
volumes.
70
contradictions of this family, that Gustave Flaubert unwittingly served his class
apprenticeship.181
This example clearly demonstrates that the reality a child internalizes must be
understood as a complex and multifaceted web. The internalization of Objective
Spirit, and of the values and expectations of society, influences the childs under-
standing and sense of identity. But, as we have seen in the primacy of praxis,
Sartre also always maintains that this internalization does not overdetermine the
person. A person is always more than his or her social conditioning. As Sartre
writes, No one can be alive without creating himself, that is, without going be-
yond what others have made of him in the direction of the concrete.182 So what
form did Flauberts re-externalization take? How did he appropriate these cul-
tural meanings and values from his own position, and how did they both enable
and limit his understanding of himself, as well as his artistic creations? In short,
what were Flauberts reactions and free choices? And how did his choices shape
the social whole?
Sartre claims Flaubert actively chose the life of an invalid, beginning with a
psychosomatic seizure in 1844. From this perspective, the neurosis that brought
Flaubert to the life of an invalid can be regarded as a solution rather than a prob-
lem. This illness freed him from the pressure to study law, and provided him with
the time he needed to write, and all without having to explicitly rebel against his
family. But Flauberts neurosis can also be understood as more than a reaction
to his particular family situation. Sartre claims that it can also be interpreted as
embodying a manifestation of the objective neurosis of the collective conscious-
ness of Second Empire France. In the third volume of The Family Idiot,183 Sartre
explores the literary Objective Spirit that Flaubert inherited and internalized, and
he claims that the Objective Spirit of Second Empire France itself embodied a
collective neurosis. Just as any new age must, the culture of the Second Empire
made new demands on its potential artists but this time these demands re-
flected the objective neurosis. The artist was obliged to break with psychological
normalcy in order to produce artwork that would be embraced as fitting with
the spirit of the times.184 The Objective Spirit was of course shaped by the events
of the period, and as such, it reflected the societys experiences of the massacres
of 1848 and the resulting feelings of anger, guilt, and hatred. Thomas Flynn ob-
serves that the class conflicts and historical events of the time had prepared a
reading public for a literature of hatred.185

183 The third and final volume of the French edition.
185 Ibid., 194.
71
Sartre claims that in the process of writing, Flaubert found the new aes-
thetic principles of the era inside of him as already adopted, because they
were a part of the Objective Spirit and collective meanings he had already
internalized. These aesthetic principles were then manifested in his writing in
a unique way. Sartre claims that in Flauberts turn to the unreal in his fiction,
he was working out the real lived contradictions of his society on the plane of
the imaginary.
The Family Idiot, as an example of the progressive-regressive method at work,
brings together multiple critical perspectives in an effort to portray the individual
and the historical period together, and to account for the mediations between the
two. For example, we find a Marxist inquiry into the class conflicts of the period,
a structuralist account of Second Empire France, a psychoanalytical description
of Flauberts subjective experience, and even a work of literary criticism, as Sar-
tre explores the literary tradition and Flauberts contributions to it. The result of
Sartres study is that we come to see Flaubert as a singular universal, under-
stood in his distinct particularity, as well as in his incarnation of the spirit of the
time. We learn how Flaubert was conditioned by his family situation as well as
by the conflicts of his era. But true to the primacy of praxis, we come to un-
derstand Flaubert as also freely responding to his conditioning, re-externalizing
these values with his unique differential. Flauberts literary contributions served
to alter and grow the Objective Spirit, sustaining meanings found there while
adding new and unique creations. At the end of Sartres account, we recognize
two interdependent moments: the social constitution of Flaubert, and Flauberts
role in the constitution of the social whole.
A Contemporary Example: Maya Lin

In 2003, artist and architect Maya Lin filmed an interview with Bill Moyers for
the series Becoming American: The Chinese Experience.186 In this interview,
she addresses her childhood, the influences on her artistic development, and her
own understanding of her artistic process. Lins descriptions of her experience
present us with an intriguing example of the dialectic of personalization and the
processes of internalizing and re-externalizing as fundamental structures of the
human condition. Using Sartres framework for understanding the relation of the
individual and social, I will offer an interpretation of Lins account of unexpected
influences that surface in her artwork.
186 Interview with Maya Lin, for the Bill Moyers series entitled, Becoming American: The
Chinese Experience. Public Affairs Television, 2003.
72
Maya Lin describes her childhood as living a boundary experience, and as
growing up between different worlds. This is especially interesting for the proj-
ect of articulating a posthumanist humanism, because it takes the notion of the
dialectic of personalization beyond the unities and sameness of one culture or the
experiences of dominant social groups. It leads us to consider the social constitu-
tion of the individual within the context of intersectionality. Lins experience of
multiple cultural identities opens the discussion of Objective Spirit to an entirely
new field of questions, addressing the reality of overlapping, multiple, and dis-
continuous identities.
Maya Lin was born in 1959 to Chinese parents living in Athens, Ohio. Her
father had come from a wealthy and politically active family in China, and he
had worked as an academic administrator in China before he immigrated to the
United States, fearing for his own safety, during the Communist takeover. Lins
mother left China during the takeover as well, in very dangerous circumstances,
in order to study at Smith College. Both parents left behind more comfortable
lifestyles in China, and Lins father knew that in the U.S. he would likely have
to take a less prestigious position. In Ohio, he took up the study of pottery and
ceramics, eventually becoming a professor of ceramics and later Dean of Fine
Arts at Ohio University. Lins mother became a professor of literature at Ohio
University.
As children, Maya and her brother Tan grew up in a household steeped in art
and academia. She points out that her father was an excellent craftsman, and
made many of the pots and dishes as well as some of the furniture in their house.
She describes afternoons after school, when she and her brother would play with
the clay in her fathers workshop. The parenting style of their household was very
relaxed. The children were not pressured to study and were not given direction.
Lins parents made it clear that they wanted their children to be happy, and
that the children should choose a life path with their own happiness, rather than
financial success, in mind.
Significantly, Lins mother and father never told the children much about their
pasts. In fact, Lin didnt learn about her fathers family history until after she
had designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. She refers to her upbringing as
unusual because, unlike many other children of Chinese immigrants, she and her
brother were not immersed in Chinese culture, and they were not taught to speak
their parents language. She explains:
I think [my parents] were definitely wanting us to assimilate. I think they were dealing with
having left a past and it was probably painful for them to talk about. And then my brother and
I being the only Chinese Americans in a small mid-western community, I mean all I wanted
to do was fit in.
73
Lins experience of racial and ethnic identity was in some sense a non-experience.
She connects this to the academic setting of her childhood:
I was brought up in a very rarified world where what mattered was what you thought. Its
academia; its what youre thinking. Your gender didnt matter, your age didnt matter, your
race didnt matter. So I actually was so happily nave I didnt realize that people would have
a problem with me.
And yet, at some (possibly pre-reflective) level of awareness, she did experience
the fact that she was different from the others in her primarily white community.
This awareness can be found in her attempts as a girl to hide or deny some of
these differences. She explains that in high school she felt extremely out of place,
and she says that while today it may seem obvious that her racial and ethnic back-
ground differentiated her from her peers, in the situation she didnt have a clue.
Lin recalls that for the first twenty years of her life, she wanted only to fit in
and to be American. Of course, growing up in Ohio in the 1960s and 70s, to
be truly American also meant to be white. She explains that her experience
growing up as the only Chinese American in a primarily white setting actually
led her to feel more comfortable within white culture than with other Chinese
Americans. For example, Lin was recruited to attend Yale by the universitys
Asian American Society, but once she arrived, she declined to join the society
herself because of this discomfort with Asian identity. She explains:
I was the only Chinese American growing up, so I looked out at everyone and everyone [was]
white. So, what would make me more uncomfortable was hanging out with a group of Chi-
nese Americans. And I knew that this was bad, like what is wrong with you, youre Chinese
American? [] Its taken me the next twenty years to really understand.
At Yale, Lin studied art and architecture, and in her senior year her design was
chosen as the winner in a competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to be
built in Washington, D. C. As reviews of her piece began to appear in the media,
Lin was shocked. She was surprised by the fact that many articles emphasized the
Asian influences in her work, and describing the particularly Taoist elements of
the design. After all, she had never knowingly studied anything about Chinese or
Taoist art. She had always avoided identifying with Chinese culture, and she had
never conceived of her own artistic expressions within these terms. She recalls:
The Washington Post had a great headline, An Asian Memorial for an Asian War. It was
written by a journalist who happened to really know Taoism. And he was going crazy because
he was looking at this work and going, It is so Taoist. Hes talking to me and Im going, I
dont know anything about that.
In retrospect, Lin agrees that her memorial is a very Taoist piece. First of all,
she recognizes Taoist influence in the works acknowledgement of death. She
explains that while Americans seem to be afraid of dying and are tempted to pre-
74
tend that death doesnt exist, her monument taps into a Taoist ancient need to
acknowledge death as a part of the living. Second, Lin recognizes Taoism in the
style of the monument. She explains that while Americans are used to monuments
that are loud super-statements that preach to the audience, her design takes
a very different approach and is much more subdued. Of course, it was precisely
this departure from the bombastic war memorials of the past that also brought Lin
so much public criticism. As she describes her creation of the memorial, It goes
against every grain in my body to preach. [] If you think about it, [the approach
of the memorial] is a much more Taoist belief. You offer it up. And they will get
it. You will find your way to it.
Once again, we are reminded of the complexity of the childhood experience of
internalization. Using Sartres framework of the dialectic of personalization, we
can explore the possible range of influences that Maya Lin may have internalized.
As we have seen, Sartre believes that it is within the particular family setting that
the child first encounters the meanings of society. Growing up with her family
in Ohio, it is likely that Lin internalized the values and expectations of white
culture, as these were presented as generic American values. It is also likely
that she internalized, if only pre-reflectively, an understanding of what it means
to be other-than-white in the U.S. Her pre-reflective understanding of American
society likely included an awareness of the meanings attached to social class and
to race, as well as a general sense of the conflicts within American culture at
the time. Just imagine the complex web of values, expectations, and meanings a
young person encounters in the simple experience of pop culture. This general
sense of the American mentality of the day is part of the childs internalization
and conditioning.
In her particular family setting, Lin and her brother also internalized certain
values and contexts of meanings arising from their parents interests and work.
This could include an appreciation of literature and an implicit familiarity with
English literary traditions, as the children encountered their mothers work as
a professor of literature. (Incidentally, Mayas brother Tan became a poet.) The
children also may have internalized an appreciation for artistic creation, as they
witnessed their father as a potter and worked with his clay themselves. The values
the children internalized could even be found even in the artifacts of their physi-
cal environment, for example, as they ate off of plates created by their fathers
own hands. These values could include more than an appreciation for art they
could also impart their fathers own artistic style and background.
Even if only implicitly, the young Maya likely internalized the values and
meanings that arose from the experience of parents who had left their familiar
homes behind, and who must work very hard in a new country to provide for their
children. Lin believes that her parents wish for her happiness is related to their
75
own experiences of immigration. She explains that in China her father was not
allowed to pursue his interest in art, and he was forced into a profession he didnt
want. Consequently, when he moved to the U.S. and changed professions, tak-
ing up ceramics, he may have brought with him the conviction that his children
should not be forced to study something they didnt enjoy for the sake of financial
success.
But what about the Asian or Taoist influences in Lins artwork? How is it that
she internalized the aesthetic principles of a Taoist Objective Spirit, when her par-
ents taught her very little (explicitly) about their past and their culture, when she
grew up in a rather assimilated environment, when she had never read or studied
anything about Taoism, and most of all, when she had even made a conscious ef-
fort to avoid identifying with Chinese culture?
As we have seen, Lin did not learn to speak Chinese as a child, and was not
exposed (explicitly) to Chinese culture. But the Taoist influences in her work sug-
gest that some of the values of her parents cultural background must have entered
her understanding beyond her conscious awareness. Is there a place where we can
identify this encounter? Lin suggests that one way in which she was exposed to
Taoist values was in the parenting style of her family. As she explains:
Lin: The one thing that my parents did give me as far as an Eastern thought and again, never
trained but if you look at any of the works that I do, Im very much against a didactic teach-
ing method where you come in and I tell you exactly what you should be getting out of this
piece. Everything that I do will be about: I will put this out here and its up to you to come to
your own conclusions.
Moyers: Thats very Taoist

L: Thats so Taoist, never trained. [] But of course its all there because of my parents and
the way we lived. Think about it: they never told us what to do. They never tried to ever say,
You cant do this. I mean, it was a very unusual upbringing.
M: So, even though they didnt set you down and talk about your Chinese heritage or Asian
heritage, they lived their heritage in such a way that it was naturally imparted?
L: Absolutely. Thats the only way I can reason it. Its no coincidence.
Moyers phrasing is intriguing: they lived their heritage in such a way that it was
naturally imparted. Here we have a description of the concrete ways in which the
meanings of Objective Spirit can permeate our lives, understandings, and expres-
sions. As the context of meanings, Objective Spirit enables our understanding
and our expression, and it limits them by giving them concrete form. Lin was not
consciously aware of the transfer of Taoist values, and her parents may not have
consciously realized this exchange themselves. Yet, in simply living their values
on a daily basis, they presented their children with a context of meanings to be
internalized. Lin explains, my work is inspired as much by an Eastern sensibility
76
coming from my father and probably my mother. Its there, but Ive only recently
become really aware of how in a strange way it percolated up. I think identity
percolated up. In this metaphor of percolation, we see how the internalized
influences of her parents cultures influenced Lins own artistic sensibilities, giv-
ing context and form to her own free praxis. In Sartres terms, this percolation
becomes apparent in the moment of re-externalization, when Lin takes what was
internalized, and re-externalizes it into the Objective Spirit, although this time
with her own particular spin on things, in the differential.
After her experience with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, as Lin became
more aware of the Asian influences in her own creations, she discovered some-
thing unusual about her own preferences and style in design. She found that she
was actually drawn more to a Japanese than a Chinese aesthetic in her work. As
she recalls:
Ive always felt my aesthetic is almost at times closer to the Japanese sensibility than the
Chinese sensibility. [] I always felt a little guilty that I loved Japanese architecture and
Im Chinese. The Japanese had blown up my grandfather. There wasnt much love between
the Chinese and the Japanese at that time. And there I was, like what is wrong with me? Im
inspired by Asian [culture], but its sort of the wrong [culture].
Lin was puzzled by what she understood to be a stylistic quirk, until years later
when she visited her fathers hometown, Fukien. There she was surprised to find
that her fathers childhood home was actually designed in the style of a very tradi-
tional vernacular Japanese house. She learned that her grandmother, her fathers
mother, had loved Japanese architecture. Lin describes this experience of learn-
ing about the influences on her own sense of style:
My mouth, my jaw was open as I walked through my fathers house [] And there I was,
in that house, realizing the circle was closed for me. I got it. I got where this aesthetic was
formed by, and what my dad had given to me in a way. And that was quite strong [] You
could say that what he brought with him, and was making for us, is how I began to see the
world.
So it appears that Lin was influenced not only by her parents, but also by the
tastes and values of generations of her family she had never known. Her father
before her had internalized a Japanese aesthetic from the surroundings his mother
created, and Lin internalized this same Japanese aesthetic from him.
Such is the complexity of the social constitution of the individual. In the case
of an artist and an artwork, it may be easier to identify and to trace the influences
which are internalized when we find them re-externalized in concrete artifacts.
In Lins case, the outsider perspective of a critic brought these influences to her
attention. But the reality is that this multiplicity of influences and contexts exists
for each individual, and for all human praxis. Each individual inhabits multiple
contexts and identities at once, and these many different relationships, with other
77
people and with the world, bring along a myriad of influences and contexts for
understanding ones identity. Lin describes this with a very profound statement:
Everything you make is being made by every single experience youve ever had
in your whole life, and on top of that, things you were born with.
In Sartrean terms, we can say that the unexpected influences identified in Lins
artwork are traceable to her process of internalization, and that the values she
internalized were then re-externalized in her artistic creations. We can use this
example to support the claim that Sartres framework of the dialectic of person-
alization is a fundamental structure of the human condition. The process of in-
ternalizing and re-externalizing is a common experience all humans share but
always within a highly particularized context, and with unique content. However,
we must also remember that the individual, in this case Maya Lin, is not overde-
termined by the conditioning of internalization. If Lin were to read the descrip-
tion of her experience as it has been represented here, she might protest that her
own free choices and individual creativity, which played an important role as
well, have been forgotten. The goal of presenting her example in this chapter is
to demonstrate the power of internalization but that does not mean that human
freedom and choice is lost or forgotten. A creative understanding of freedom and
necessity emerges from Sartres later works, and this will be discussed in more
depth in the following chapters.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have explored Sartres creative approach to understanding
the relationship of the individual and the social, and the consequences of this for
freedom and necessity. As we have seen, Sartre believes that the individual and
the social must be comprehended together. It would be false to tell the story of
one without accounting for the other, and it is a mistake of analytical reason to un-
derstand the two as opposed in an either/or dichotomy. Therefore, the individual
portrayed in Sartres later works must be understood as a social individual, or a
singular universal. Subjectivity comes to be represented in this account as one
moment in the dialectical interaction of individual and social.
The social constitution of the individual, in the dialectic of personalization,
can be considered an element of our common human condition. If this is so, what
exactly are the experiences that we share? The processes of internalization and
re-externalization, in the interactions of individual and social, are fundamental.
But we must also keep in mind that the actual experiences of concrete individuals
are infinitely variable, as each person internalizes the social differently and from
78
a unique position. Each persons re-externalizations enter the world as particu-
larly his or her own.
In the example of Maya Lin, we are reminded that human identities, and the
influences which condition them, are not monolithic. There is always more than
one context of meaning within an individuals experience. Maya Lins discus-
sion of her childhood brings into high relief and makes explicit what is actually
the case for all human beings: we are all intersectional subjects, existing and
re-externalizing our free praxis at the intersection of multiple different contexts
and identities.
79
Chapter Four:
Problems and Possibilities for Human
Relationships
One of the most commonly held assumptions about Jean-Paul Sartre is that he
portrays the social realm of human existence in an entirely negative light. He
has come to be characterized, in what might be called the coffee table book
version187 of his philosophy, as the individualist philosopher par excellence. Jus-
tification for this view is easy enough to find in Sartres early and best-known
philosophical work, Being and Nothingness. There he describes human relation-
ships in terms of objectification, alienation, sadism and masochism, and con-
cludes that all relationships are fundamentally grounded in conflict. He portrays
the freedom of the individual as constantly threatened by the objectifying look
of the Other, and the social realm as primarily a limit upon individual autonomy.
But as we have seen, if one looks beyond Sartres early works to consider his
corpus of philosophical writings as a whole, it is clear that his thought continued to
develop for at least thirty years after the initial publication of Being and Nothing-
ness in 1943. In fact, considering the sheer volume of Sartres later texts, as well
as the extent of the development of his thought, the early individualistic works
begin to appear as initial experiments with themes and concepts that only later
blossom into a mature social philosophy. In later works such as the Critique of
Dialectical Reason, in which Sartres early existentialist individualism becomes
infused with Marxist social philosophy, he arrives at a new understanding of the
social that is quite different from the common stereotypes of his thought. Sartres
early descriptions of conflict and objectification give way in the later works to the
themes of mutual recognition, cooperative group praxis, and even authentic love.
In this chapter, I trace the development of Sartres social philosophy from the
extreme individualism of Being and Nothingness to the Marxist-Existentialism of
the Critique of Dialectical Reason. I then present the little known next step in the
evolution of Sartres social philosophy: the depiction of our fundamental human
needs for the social in The Family Idiot. I argue that, according to Sartre, the ex-
perience of social needs is an element of the common human condition, and that
the fulfillment of these social needs should be understood as a necessary enabling
condition for individual autonomy.
187 A phrase that I have heard used by Thomas Flynn.
81
Sartres Early Social Thought Relations of Conflict
And what more fitting epitaph for the tomb of a social theory than [Sartres] menacing judg-
ment, Hell is other people? Thomas Flynn, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism188
It is understandable, though unfortunate, that the most familiar images of Sartres

philosophy stem from his works of the 1940s. This was, of course, the period of
his initial fame, in which he published great works of philosophy as well as fic-
tion and drama, and it is these works which have led to the characterization of
Sartres philosophy as extreme in its individualism and its negative portrayal of
the social. Evidence to support this negative account is easy enough to find in his
texts. However, I contend that even in these early works, hints and traces of the
potential for a more positive account of the social can be found.
Consider, for example, Sartres phenomenological description of our con-
crete relations with others in his early work, Being and Nothingness. Here the
analysis of the social is based upon the framework of the look, in which it
appears as if my only options in a relationship are to look at the Other and
objectify him with my gaze, or to be objectified by the Others gaze in return.
According to Sartre, when I am trapped within the objectifying look of the
Other, I am stripped of my freedom. This is because when I am perceived by
another consciousness, I am no longer completely in control of who I am or
how I am perceived. A struggle for power ensues between the self and Other,
in which we may take up attitudes of sadistic dominance toward the Other, or
masochistic submission to the power of the Other.189 Sartre concludes from
this that our concrete relations with others exist fundamentally in the mode
of conflict.190
However, Sartre goes on in Being and Nothingness to explain that the above
description of the relation of self and Other is necessarily only an abstraction,
since our relationship to an Other is never within a reality that contains only two
people; rather, the relationship with the Other always appears upon the infinite
background of our relationship to all the others. In order to understand concrete
relations, we must examine what happens when a third person comes onto the
scene.191 This person is known as the Third, or le tiers. When this happens, what
was a duo now becomes a triangle of relations, and many possible configurations
could arise. For example, the Third could look at you and me, unifying us in the
process and making an object out of us. If we are objectified together by the
188 Thomas Flynn, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism, xi.

189 See The Look and Concrete Relations with Others in Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothing-
ness, 340-400, and 471-558.
190 Ibid., 475.
191 For the appearance of the Third, see Concrete Relations with Others, ibid., 538.
82
Third, we experience being-with-others as a shared alienation. Or you and the
Third could gang up on me, so that I become an object for the two of you. Or the
Third and I could together objectify you, and turn you into our object. As human
relations are still represented at this stage of Sartres thought as fundamentally
rooted in conflict, we see that the appearance of the Third brings with it opportu-
nities for alliance and betrayal.
Sartre explains that when we two are perceived by the Third, I experience
my own possibilities as alienated and dead, just as I did when I was looked
upon by the Other, but now I realize that the possibilities of the Other are
dead as well. In this way, the third persons appearance steals the world from
me, since the Other whom I could have objectified and possessed is no longer
entirely mine. The Other flees my world, and becomes an object for another
person, so that the situation is no longer within my control or mine to define.
When the Third witnesses the situation you and I were sharing, what was once
our situation becomes seen, judged, objectified, and transcended in the third
persons world.
Consider the following example from Being and Nothingness: imagine that
you and I are alone in a train compartment, and that we are having an argument.192
Suddenly, the door to the compartment opens, and a third person looks in upon
us. At that moment, my power to define the situation is stolen away. We experi-
ence in one blow the presence of the Third and the resulting theft of our worlds
and our possibilities. The meaning of our situation will be given by the Third
according to how we appear to him. In order to take back my world, I would have
to attempt to objectify the Third in turn. However, Sartre explains that this at-
tempt at re-appropriation is ultimately doomed to fail, because there will always
be other Thirds in life, indefinitely.
In Being and Nothingness, then, the only sort of solidarity that Sartre consid-
ers to be possible is that of shared objectification. When you and I are objectified
together under the gaze of a Third, we are brought into the unity of an us-
object, or nous-objet.193 While Sartre considers the us-object to be an ontologi-
cally real unity, it is obviously not a positive form of solidarity. As we are fixed
into place by the Third, he explains, we are rendered powerless. Membership
in this unity is experienced as a radical alienation, and there is an equivalency
among members of the us-object, such that any member could be substituted for
any other. In his early works, Sartre uses this notion of the us-object to under-
stand membership in a social class. In class relations, he explains, the oppres-
sors act as Third for the oppressed, unifying the working class into a collective
experience of alienation.
192 Ibid., 539-542.

193 Ibid., 537.
83
At this stage in his work, Sartre also allows for the possibility of a very limited
social agency. Individuals can choose to work together, forming what he calls a
we-subject, or nous-sujet.194 But this collective agency does not have the on-
tological reality of the us-object. Once the group shifts in status from object to
subject, the ontological unity is lost, and there is only an individual psychological
experience of unity. In other words, I may choose to take up a common goal and
to act in rhythm with others, but since each person must choose this on his or her
own, ultimately the members of the collective remain separate. It is impossible
to guarantee that all of the people acting in rhythm are experiencing this group
identity in the same way as I am. The unity of the group is not stable, since at any
moment someone could pull away, stop, or change their actions. So we find that
in Sartres early social philosophy, real solidarity is something that may happen
to you, but it is not something that you can make happen.
Sartre concludes his study of human relationships in Being and Nothingness by
asserting that conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others.195 He writes,
It is thus in vain that we attempt to escape from this dilemma: to transcend the
other or to let oneself be transcended by him. The essence of relationships among
consciousnesses is not Mitsein, it is conflict.196 Any relationship that doesnt ap-
pear to be conflictual, then, is really no more than a temporary appeasement, a
mask on the surface, hiding the true conflict that lies beneath. In the end, Sartre
believes, we remain out of reach and radically separated.197
Hints of a More Positive Account of the Social

But even as Sartre concludes his monumental depiction of the social by claim-
ing that we exist primarily in relations of conflict, he opens the possibility for
something more. In a crucial but often overlooked footnote, Sartre qualifies his
entire previous analysis of social relations. He writes: These considerations do
not exclude the possibility of an ethics of deliverance and salvation. But this can
be achieved only after a radical conversion which we cannot discuss here.198
In this footnote, Sartre claims that his account of concrete relations with others
is not actually intended to represent all of human relations. Rather, he explains
that his descriptions are intended to apply only to human relations that exist in
194 Ibid., 547.

195 Ibid., 475.
196 Jean-Paul Sartre, Ltre et le Nant , 470, my own translation.
197 Ibid., 466, my own translation.
198 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 534.
84
bad faith. He then goes on to suggest that it might be possible to escape this
alienation and to achieve more fulfilling social interactions if we could exist in
relations of good faith. As William McBride observes, Sartre is not denying
[]that such phenomena as love or friendship or social solidarity are real and
really possible, but only that they can never be permanent and entirely without
the potentiality of violent conflict.199 According to McBride, Sartres critics have
mistaken the function of Sartres descriptions of mostly alienated concrete rela-
tions with Others in Being and Nothingness by treating them as if he had intend-
ed them to be comprehensive of human social relations.200 Even within Sartres
well-known account of alienation and conflict, he also leaves open the possibility
for a more positive experience of the social.
Sartre puts his philosophical analysis of social relations into action on the stage
in his play, No Exit, in which three strangers arrive in the afterlife to find that
they must share a room. The first to arrive, Garcin, is tortured by his concern for
his reputation among the living, which is now outside of his control, as well as
by the nagging need of another in the room for his attention. The second, Ins,
finds herself in the position of desiring another but repeatedly being rejected. The
third, Estelle, desperately needs to be seen by someone else, which renders her
vulnerable to the others. Throughout the play, the three characters form alliances
only to cruelly break them, constantly pairing up to torture the third. Eventually,
they come to realize that this place they inhabit is actually Hell, and that simply
having to co-exist with one another in their never-ending relationships of conflict
will be their eternal punishment. Upon realizing this, Garcin exclaims, lenfer,
cest les autres Hell is other people.201 Within the world of No Exit, it seems
clear that relationships are grounded in conflict and doomed to failure, existing
primarily in the modes of sadism and masochism.
Yet, even at his most extreme, as Sartre emphasizes the inescapable and hell-
ish torture of simply having to coexist with other people, I believe that we can
find a trace of a more positive social philosophy. There is an implicit assumption
here, underlying Sartres account of social relations, which No Exit brings to the
fore: the radical importance of our basic human need for the Other. Sartre creates
characters who need each other; they desire connection, they need desperately for
others to see them, and they care about what others think. It is precisely because
their fundamental social needs for connection are unmet and frustrated that so-
cial existence becomes a torture.
In No Exit, Sartre portrays our vulnerability towards one another solely as a
potential for alienation and abuse. However, I believe that it is crucial to also rec-

200 Ibid., 20.
201 Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays, 45.
85
ognize the simple fact that even in his early work, he acknowledges and gives
center-stage to this vulnerability, which is the individuals radical need for the
Other. The fact that we suffer so intensely when the social goes wrong shows
how incredibly important it is for us that the social goes right, and that our needs
are met in positive experiences. The human beings portrayed in No Exit do not
appear to be the atomistic individuals idealized in simplistic accounts of early
Existentialism. Even at this early stage, it is clear that Sartre recognizes human
beings as profoundly social creatures, and that our social needs are fundamental
to who we are.
The negative account of the social in Being and Nothingness implies that the
individual must break with the social in order to be free. If we are necessarily
doomed to relations of bad faith, in which the only possibilities are conflict
and alienation, then the drive to break with the social might make sense. But
how might our understanding of the situation change if we take Sartres crucial
footnote from Being and Nothingness seriously? What if relations of good faith
are also possible? If our existence is actually conditioned by a radical and ines-
capable need for others, to break with the social would be both impossible and
self-defeating.
Sartres Transition Recognition and Authentic Love

Not long after the publication of Being and Nothingness in 1943, Sartre begins
to rethink his problematic earlier paradigm of the look. While he continues to
believe that objectification is a basic element of how we perceive and understand
the world, his position changes as he comes to see that objectification does not
necessarily have to result in alienation and conflict. To be an object for an Others
understanding, he writes, is in no way a fall or a threat in itself. It only becomes
so if the Other refuses to see a freedom in me too.202 At this point, Sartre begins
to shift from an emphasis on alienation in social relationships to a hope for the
possibilities of recognition. In his reflections on recognition, we have a glimpse of
what is possible when our basic human social needs are not frustrated, but rather
fulfilled.
In an essay entitled Materialism and Revolution,203 written in 1946, Sartre
uses the notion of recognition in his discussion of the class struggle. He describes
mutual recognition as giving testimony to the humanity of the Other, and he
claims that the goal of revolution should be to transition to a state of affairs in
202 Jean-Paul Sartre, Notebooks for an Ethics, 500.

203 Jean-Paul Sartre, Materialism and Revolution, in Literary and Philosophical Essays.
86
which there is mutual recognition in all human relations. Here we also find a
significant change in his understanding of political solidarity. Whereas in Being
and Nothingness, he had described solidarity as merely a shared experience of
alienation, in Materialism and Revolution, he begins to explore the possibility
of a different sort of solidarity, made possible by mutual recognition.
Sartre continues to reflect upon recognition in his Notebooks for an Ethics,
written primarily in 1947-48, but published posthumously in 1983. He explains
that in recognition, a mutual enrichment takes place. He writes, if, on the con-
trary, [the Other] makes me exist as an existing freedom as well as a Being/object
he enriches the world and me, he gives a meaning to my existence in addition
to the subjective meaning that I myself give to it.204 The possibility of recogni-
tion also opens the way for authentic love. As Sartre explains, Here is an original
structure of authentic love to unveil the Others being-within-the-world to
rejoice in it without appropriating it; to shelter it in my freedom and to surpass it
only in the direction of the Others ends.205
The Critique of Dialectical Reason The Group-in-

Fusion
By the publication of the first volume of the Critique of Dialectical Reason in
1960, Sartres interests are firmly grounded in Marxist political concerns. Where-
as in his earlier writings, the possibility for a salvation of social relations was
in the individuals conversion to authenticity or good faith, in his later Marxist-
Existentialist works, he believes this salvation must be a social project. The hope
for a better future lies in the cooperative praxis of the group, since the revolu-
tionary goal of a future socialism of abundance cant be achieved individually,
but only socially.206 Sartre now understands the social realm as a site of both
alienation and emancipation.
In the Critique, Sartre turns his attention to issues of materiality. As Hazel
Barnes writes, In his play No Exit Sartre declared that Hell is other people. Now
he says that Hell is the practico-inerte, for it steals my action from me.207 In
Chapter One, we explored the alienation that arises from our human embedded-
ness in materiality. In the Critique, we see that materiality affects our social rela-
204 Jean-Paul Sartre, Notebooks for an Ethics, 500.

205 Ibid., 508.
206 Robert Stone and Elizabeth Bowman, Dialectical Ethics: A First Look at Sartres Unpublished
1964 Rome Lecture Notes, in Social Texts nos. 13/14, 210 and 212.
207 Hazel Barnes, Introduction to Jean-Paul Sartres Search for a Method, xvii.
87
tionships as well. When our relations with one another are mediated by elements
of the practico-inert, such as language, the imperatives of materiality enter our
social experiences and may hinder reciprocity.
However, Sartres understanding of social agency becomes much more posi-
tive in the Critique. Here, the us-object and we-subject of Being and Noth-
ingness are replaced by the series and the group. The series will be discussed
in greater detail in Chapter Five, so for now a brief definition will suffice. Mem-
bership in the series and in the us-object are similar in that both are given from
without. But what members of a series share is a certain position in relation to the
material structures of the world. For example, consider a series of people waiting
at a bus stop, who share a position in relation to the system of public transporta-
tion. Members of the series know that they are united, but it is a passive unity.
They are not concerned with interacting with one another. And membership in
the series does not reflect anything in particular about the individuals involved
it reflects only their position. In this way, there is an equivalency among the
members, who are both anonymous and interchangeable.
The group, on the other hand, is a consciously chosen unity. When individuals
recognize that they share certain goals, and that their chances of achieving these
goals could be improved if they work together, they may come together to form
a group, perhaps even making their unity explicit in an oath or a pledge.208 The
group experiences a type of reciprocity that is based on mutual recognition.209
Maintaining his nominalist approach, Sartre understands the unity of the group
as a practical unity it exists in their common praxis, at the level of action. Group
unity is never complete; rather, it must be understood as always in progress.210
When individuals take up a common goal and come together to form the
group-in-fusion, they struggle together as freedoms and transcend alienation.
However, even the group cannot escape the counter-finality of the practico-inert.
The group-in-fusion cant remain together for long without sealing its together-
ness in some sort of oath or pledge. As the group takes steps to become more con-
crete, and more like an institution, it is constantly in danger of the re-emergence
of inertia. For this reason, it is possible for concretized groups or institutions to
function with extreme amounts of alienation.211
Obviously, Sartre comes a long way from his early emphasis on conflict and
objectification. In his later Marxist-Existentialist works, we find an understand-

209 See Thomas Flynn, Mediated Reciprocity and the Genius of the Third, in The Philosophy of
Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Schilpp, ed., 350-353.
211 Klaus Hartmann, Sartres Theory of ensembles, in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul
Schilpp, ed., 639-641.
88
ing of the social in which real reciprocity can and does exist. While alienation
continues to enter our relationships due to the materiality that mediates our in-
teractions with others, we also have the means to respond to this alienation with-
out violence, and to achieve positive and fulfilling social experiences. While the
human experience of the social may not be wholly ideal, Sartre does believe it
is possible to build real and authentic relationships of respect, recognition, reci-
procity, and love.
The Family Idiot Social Needs and the Experience of

Childhood
The child gains her first sense of her own existence from the mothers responsive gestures
and expressions. Its as if, in the mothers eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first
reads the message: You are there! Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born212
In The Family Idiot (1971-1972), Sartre explores social relationships in the life of
Gustave Flaubert, which are described as experiences of alienation, frustration,
and hurt. In the young Gustave, we find someone whose social needs are unmet,
and the debilitating consequences that follow. However, while Sartre focuses his
attention on these situations of the social-gone-wrong, once again I contend that
his account in this work relies upon an underlying framework that assumes a far
more positive understanding of the social. Here Sartre describes social needs as
central to the human experience, and he now explicitly asserts that their fulfill-
ment is necessary for individual development and flourishing.
While social needs are present in a human being throughout an entire lifetime,
there is no question that the experience of these needs, and their fulfillment or
frustration, takes on a special importance during infancy and childhood. In The
Family Idiot, Sartre actually dedicates a great deal of attention to the figure of the
mother and the crucial role she plays in a childs early development. He writes,
through the very person of the mother [] the child is made manifest to himself
[] he will be fashioned in his irreducible singularity by what she is.213 Sartre
also goes on in this text to explore the infants need for love in particular. He
writes that love is needed from the first day in caring for the child, in handling the
childs body, and in meeting the childs physical needs. These early experiences
of love, Sartre believes, help the child to develop a sense of worth and value that
will later enable his or her autonomous praxis. Sartre writes:
212 Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, 36.
213 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot Vol. 1, 47 and 50.
89
It is fitting in these moments that the child [] should apprehend himself in an external and
internal ambience of kindness [] the first interest he attaches to his person is derived from
the care whose object he is. If the mother loves him, in other words, he gradually discov-
ers his being-an-object as his being-loved [] he becomes a value in his own eyes [] The
valorization of the infant through care will touch him more deeply the more this tenderness
is manifest.214
Obviously Sartre is not the first to make claims such as these as he wrote these
lines, he was familiar with the importance afforded childhood experiences in the
field of psychoanalysis. What is worth noting here is the transition to be found in
his philosophical account of the social. We have Sartre typically assumed to be
the individualist philosopher par excellence, the one who claimed that all rela-
tions are grounded in conflict, and the author of Hell is other people claiming
not only that authentic love is possible, but also that it is necessary. In The Fam-
ily Idiot, it becomes clear that Sartre understands human beings as possessing
fundamental social needs, and that the fulfillment of these needs is an enabling
condition for our individual autonomous praxis.
In The Family Idiot, Sartre explains that when the childs social needs are met
in affirming ways, especially in receiving a mothers love, this enables the childs
present and future autonomous praxis in at least three ways. First of all, Sartre
claims, parents give a child what he calls a mandate to live, and he asserts that
a child must have this mandate in order to survive.215 Second, for a child to recog-
nize him or herself as an agent, Sartre claims that the child needs to be affirmed
as an agent by the care-givers in the social context. The love the child receives
enables the child to develop a sense that he or she has a reason for being, is needed
by others, has something worth doing, and that his or her actions are significant.
Finally, Sartre explains, the love of the Other is the foundation and guarantee of
the objectivity of the individuals value and his mission; this mission becomes a
sovereign choice, permitted and evoked in the subjective person by the presence of
self-worth.216 As Thomas Anderson observes, Sartre arrives at the conclusion that:
the experience of being loved and, therefore, being of value is crucial, not only for ones self-
esteem, but also for the broader experience that existence has a purpose and that life is worth
living. [] A human being is from the beginning radically dependent on others and on their
conditioning. Thus, he or she will achieve human fulfillment [] precisely to the extent that
others, especially his or her parents, constitute or condition him or her in a positive way.217
So, according to Sartre, if the childs needs are met in affirming ways, this can
serve as an enabling factor for autonomous praxis. However, since childhood is a

215 Ibid., 133.
216 Ibid., 135.
217 Thomas Anderson, Sartres Two Ethics, 138 and 140.
90
time in which a persons comprehension of self and world are formed, if problems
arise in the childs experience of the social, or if the childs social needs are not
adequately met, it is also possible for a person to come to radically misunderstand
him or herself, as well as the world. With a lack of love, recognition, or appropri-
ate limits and boundaries, extreme forms of alienation may occur. A person may
have difficulty developing a sense of self, understanding reality, or acting as an
autonomous agent.
In the case of Flaubert, Sartre tells us that the young Gustaves mother per-
formed the basic work of caring for him, but she did not love him. The childs
physical needs were met, but his social need to be loved remained unfulfilled.
Sartre concludes that this was an impoverishment of life at the core of Flau-
berts experience.218 He sees this as connected to the fact that Flaubert experi-
enced a lack of self-worth and a belief that he didnt have anything of value to
contribute to the world. Consequently, Flaubert came to develop a hatred for hu-
manity, which Sartre sees reflected in his fiction and in his choice of the imagi-
nary over the real.
We find that the fulfillment of social needs experienced during childhood is
crucially important for an individuals later development, but again we must keep
in mind Sartres basic commitment to the idea that people are also creative and
not entirely bound by their conditioning and situation. Individuals sometimes dis-
cover creative ways to transcend the limits of painful and limiting circumstances,
and to find fulfillment in social interactions in spite of problems. In extraordinary
cases, for example, children may creatively find ways to parent themselves and to
temporarily meet their own social needs for love in order to survive.
Social Needs and Freedom

In earlier chapters, we have seen that in Sartres later works he emphasizes the
interconnectedness of the individual and the social. In defining the person as a
singular universal, Sartre reminds us that it would be inaccurate to represent
either the individual or the social in isolation to truly understand them, we must
understand the two together, in their relation. Sartre comes to recognize the social
embeddedness of individuals, and as his understanding of freedom and necessity
develops, he draws attention to the many ways in which humans are dependent
upon their relationships with others.
Now, from his work in The Family Idiot we see that Sartre also understands
the individual as embedded in the social by the experience of needs. We learn
218 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot Vol. 1, 129-130.
91
that it is not just material but also social needs that condition human freedom.
Humans experience a need to be loved, a need for recognition, and a need to be
affirmed and treated as an end. Just as with material needs, the experience of
social needs is on-going throughout a lifetime, though these needs may grow
and change as we do. There is no moment at which our being-for-others could be
considered complete or finished; as long as we continue to exist as outer-directed
humans, situated in a world of others, our fundamental sociality guarantees that
the experience of social needs continues.
When our social needs are met, their fulfillment enables experiences that
are crucial to human flourishing. For this reason, Anderson explains, it is fair
to say that Sartre represents the person as a thoroughly incarnate self whose
self-awareness comes, to the extent that it does, only over time and because of
others.219
Finally, based upon Sartres framework for understanding the human, we come
to see that the fulfillment of social needs is also a necessary enabling condition
for individual autonomy. Sartres unique hermeneutical approach to understand-
ing the interrelation of the individual and social leads to an ingenious theory of
autonomy, one which understands the relation of individual and social as positive.
This sets Sartre apart from the more common traditions of Western philosophy.
Feminist critical theorist Cynthia Willett characterizes modern European phi-
losophy as possessing a notion of autonomy that requires a break with the so-
cial. Autonomy has traditionally been understood, she explains, as independence
from the need for social sustenance. In modern philosophy and in psychoana-
lytic theory, maturation and the development of subjectivity is said to require a
separation from the mother, or an ontological break with family and community
involvement.220 As she explains:
The standard view frames issues of existential meaning and moral development around the
paradox of freedom. Infancy is understood as an experience of submersion, while maturity
is defined in terms of self-control or autonomy. Man is most free when he is most empty.221
However, Willett argues that it is mistaken to understand the social embedded-

ness of the individual as at odds with the development of autonomy, claiming that
an individuals separation from the social sphere is not freedoms reward. It is
freedoms deprivation.222 And the same could be said from the perspective of
Sartres later social philosophy. If we understand that the human being is actually
a social individual or a singular universal, to use Sartres terms, then a break
with the social sphere would be impossible. And if the experience of social needs
219 Ibid., 141.
220 Cynthia Willett, The Soul of Justice, 59.
221 Ibid., 207.
222 Ibid., 211.
92
is fundamental to who we are, and the fulfillment of social needs enables our
individual autonomous praxis, the traditional opposition of individual vs. social,
or of freedom vs. dependency, dissolves. The social is not a limit upon freedom;
the social enables individual freedom.
Common Objections to Sartres Social Philosophy

Despite these developments in his later works, Sartres social theory still remains
the most criticized aspect of his philosophy. First, critics claim that even though
Sartre focuses attention on topics such as cooperative group praxis and reciproc-
ity in his later works, his account of the social remains an excessively negative
one, in which relationships are doomed to failure. Monika Langer argues that
Sartres attempt to create a Marxist-Existentialism ultimately fails because he
distorts the positive awareness of social existence that was so essential to Marxs
philosophy.223 She claims that Sartre never really escaped the emphasis on con-
flict found in his early writings, and she locates the source of the problem in his
emphasis on scarcity experienced as need, as the situation in which all social
relationships must be rooted. She writes, In a field of scarcity, each individu-
al regards all others as rivals whose presence prevents there being enough for
oneself.224 Social life, then, is represented primarily in terms of rivalry, conflict,
mutual robbery, and repulsion.225
George Allan offers a similar criticism of Sartres social philosophy. He claims
that Sartre could never overcome his fundamental individualism, and that he
failed to generate a true dialectic of history. The reason Sartre could not achieve a
dialectic of history, Allan argues, is that he roots antagonism so deeply in human
relationships. This antagonism comes from the scarcity that permeates the situa-
tion and can never be completely overcome. According to Allan, the notion that
scarcity is an element of the human condition dooms Sartres social philosophy
to failure.226
Ronald Aronson continues the attack, representing Sartre as possessing a fun-
damentally negative view of the social. He writes, The problem was that he
saw dependence and society as fundamentally negative and oppressive dimen-
224 Ibid., 76.
225 Ibid., 77-78.
226 George Allan, Sartres Constriction of the Marxist Dialectic, in Sartre and Existentialism
Vol. 6, William McBride, ed.
93
sions of life and fought against them theoretically even while proclaiming them
politically.227
These criticisms raise important questions for Sartres later social philosophy.
Does Sartres understanding of scarcity as a permanent element of the human
condition, rather than as a contingent problem that could be corrected by socialist
revolution, doom our relationships to permanent alienation? Recall the discus-
sion of scarcity and alienation from Chapter One. There we learned that Sartre
believes that scarcity results in violence. But we also learned that Sartre differ-
entiates between various kinds of scarcity. He claims that it is conceivable that
some forms of scarcity could someday be overcome, such as the concrete scarcity
of food, while other forms of scarcity are more permanent elements of the human
condition. For example, it is not conceivable that we could overcome the scarcities
of time or of our own mortality; or, if this occurred, it would no longer be within
a human history. But as we saw in Chapter One, Sartre claims that not all forms
of scarcity must necessarily result in violence as we know it today. It is possible
that the elimination of certain contingent scarcities of material resources could
eliminate great amounts of violence, since competition for resources would dis-
appear to a great extent. The scarcities which would remain, such as scarcity of
time, might not stand as obstacles to relationships in the same way.
These critics represent Sartres understanding of the social as fundamentally
negative. It is true that Sartres descriptions of relationships often depict very
violent and alienating interactions. However, I assert that when Sartre dedicates
so much attention to alienating social situations, it is precisely because his over-
arching political goal is to eradicate them. Sartres discussion of the social in his
later works is not a mere apolitical description he is no longer writing impartial
phenomenological ontology. His later Marxist-Existentialist project is fundamen-
tally a political one. It is therefore logical to assume that Sartres hope for socialist
revolution is grounded in a belief that we ought to create a world in which these
negative social interactions are no longer the norm. This suggests a much more
positive understanding of the possibilities for social life than Sartres critics ac-
knowledge. If Sartres depiction of the social tends to be a negative one, this does
not necessarily stem from an internal flaw in his social philosophy. I believe that
the theoretical framework found in Sartres later works can actually support a
very positive understanding of the social.
The second criticism of Sartres social philosophy that I will address is perhaps
the most devastating. This is the claim that Sartre cannot account for real inter-
subjectivity. Maurice Merleau-Ponty first made this criticism in Adventures of the
227 Ronald Aronson, Sartres Turning Point: The Abandoned Critique de la raison dialectique,
Volume Two, in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Schilpp, ed., 706.
94
Dialectic,228 in which he claims that there may be a plurality of subjects in Sartres
philosophy, but not real intersubjectivity. Instead of common praxis, there is only
an encounter of individuals. Aronson also makes this criticism, in his discussion
of the second volume of Sartres Critique of Dialectical Reason. This volume was
not published in Sartres lifetime, and Aronson claims that this is due to Sartres
ultimate failure in the project of writing a social philosophy. He argues that Sar-
tres failure lies in his belief that the praxis of two individuals must always remain
separate. Sartre lacks an understanding of sociality that is prior and that could
really unite individuals. Aronsons criticism is worth quoting at length:
Cooperation within struggle remains unintelligible without appealing to a commonly shared
social layer at the heart of these radically separated individuals or groups. But in saying this
let us also be clear that Sartres question itself stems from his vision of their fundamental sep-
aration and Sartres rejection of any hyperorganicism society to explain their interaction.
Society is in fact the missing term of the entire project, whether it is regarded as standing
outside the individuals / classes or at their core.229
Juliette Simont has written an interesting and helpful response to Aronsons criti-
cisms. She argues that Aronsons critique is paradoxical, because he criticizes
Sartres project for what is actually at stake in the project. While Aronson argues
that society is the missing term of the Critique, Simont does not see the lack of a
notion of society as a sign of failure. In fact, the goal of the Critique is to under-
stand social unity without appealing to any such hyperorganic notion of society.
One of the crucial projects in Sartres Critique is to show that his revised dialectic
cant be accused of idealism. He thus refuses to accept an understanding of the
social in terms of hyperorganicism, which he sees as an idealistic illusion. The
rejection of an idealist understanding of society is precisely the reason why Sartre
must find an innovative new way to account for the social. Simont argues that
Sartres dismissal of this idealist notion does not represent a lack of understand-
ing; rather, it grounds the purpose of his project.230 Aronsons criticism, on the
other hand, appears as a reaffirmation of the necessity of a hyperorganicism,231
as he seems to call for a social infrastructure that could serve as a prior and indis-
soluble community.
Ultimately, Simont argues in favor of Sartres portrayal of the social, explain-
ing that while we cannot achieve an ideal realm of pure recognition, this does
not mean that we cannot pursue real relationships of recognition and reciprocity.
While the human experience of the social may not be ideal, it does remain pos-
228 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Adventures of the Dialectic.

229 Ibid., 704-705.
230 Juliette Simont, The Critique of Dialectical Reason: From Need to Need, Circularly, in Sartre
and Existentialism Vol. 6, William McBride, ed., 238-253.
231 Ibid., 240. See also 241.
95
sible to build authentic relationships of respect, recognition, reciprocity, and love.
As she explains, we can infinitely pursue the broken relation of totalization.232
There may be no trans-historical essence 233 of social reciprocity, unifying hu-
mans in a hyperorganic unity. But real reciprocity can and does exist in singular-
ized experiences, in specific times and places. As William McBride reminds us,
Sartre understands that while love and solidarity may never be permanent, they
are nonetheless possible and real.234
We have also seen that cooperation is possible in the real collective agency
of the group. Many questions regarding the group remain. We have not found
answers for questions such as: did Sartre intend his description of the group to be
that of an ideal relationship? Is this experience intended to represent a foretaste of
the socialism of abundance? Could there be an inauthentic group? But the unre-
solved nature of these questions does not jeopardize the conclusion that collective
agency itself is possible. In his later works, Sartre presents this collective agency
as a reason for hope.
Conclusion
In Sartres Marxist-Existentialist depiction of the common human condition, we
find that sociality is fundamental to our humanity. We experience social needs,
which render us vulnerable to others. It is this vulnerability that makes alienation,
oppression, and violence possible. But in his later works, Sartre also makes it
clear that we are not doomed to relations of conflict. It is possible to experience
real cooperation, care, friendship, solidarity, and authentic love as well. In his
later writings, while Sartre may continue to focus his attention on cases of the
social-gone-wrong, for example in his analyses of racism or colonial violence,
this negativity does not stem from any fatal flaw in his philosophy. Sartre focuses
attention on these cases of harm with the ultimate goal of creating a future in
which there is less oppression and suffering. And as we have found, the Marxist-
Existentialist framework he develops for understanding the human can actually
support a positive account of the social realm of existence.
In the framework for understanding the human that Sartre develops in his later
works, positive social experiences, in which our social needs are fulfilled, are pre-
sented as enabling and enriching for human flourishing. This is particularly true
with the case of individual autonomy. From Sartres unique dialectical account of
232 Ibid., 253.

234 Ibid., 20.
96
the relationship of the individual and the social emerges a new understanding of
individual autonomy, which is no longer at odds with the social. Rather, we see
that the individuals freedom fundamentally depends upon, and arises from, the
social. The social enables individual autonomous praxis in two ways. First, as we
saw in Chapters Two and Three, our autonomy is enabled by our relation to Ob-
jective Spirit, which provides us with the means for understanding both self and
world, and with the tools for self-expression. Second, as we have seen in Chap-
ter Four, our autonomous praxis is enabled by the fulfillment of concrete social
needs in relationships, especially in childhood experience and in the relationship
of mother and child.
97
Chapter Five:
The Posthuman Condition and Difference:
The Nature of Social Identities
The person lives and knows his condition more or less clearly through the groups he belongs
to.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method 235
In this chapter, I will explore one final element of the common human condition:
our experience of social identities. Sartre claims that we live and know our condi-
tion through the groups to which we belong, and in this chapter we will examine
the ways in which social identities impact our understanding and experience.
As we have seen, within the paradigm of intersectionality, it becomes clear
that no one possesses just one primary social identity all humans are constituted
by multiple, intersecting, and diverse identities. I have chosen to focus upon the
axes of class, gender, and race, but I do not mean to imply that they are the only,
or even the most important, social identities in human experience. Each of these
represents only a fraction of the complex and multiple influences involved in the
formation of each person. I also do not mean to imply that class, gender, and race
are necessary or essential to what it means to be human. In this articulation of the
human condition, the commonality to be addressed here is not that we are all gen-
dered, for example, but rather that as humans, we all live and know our condition
through the positions of social identities. Class, gender, and race, as the primary
identities around which modern Western society has structured the distribution of
power and privilege, simply provide us with a helpful starting point for exploring
the experience of social identities.
What does it mean to be a particular social class, gender, or race? Are these
identities actually real, or are they merely fictitious social constructions? In the
analysis of each of these axes of identity, I will argue for the need to transcend the
extremes of essentialism and anti-essentialism in order to find a new understand-
ing of the ontology of social identities. The advantage of Sartres framework for
understanding the human is that it provides us with a way to recognize that the
meanings of class, gender, and race are contingent social constructions, while
also accounting for the ways in which they play real roles in our concrete experi-
ence.
Perhaps the most important contribution of this chapter will be to further our
understanding of the dynamic human experience of freedom in necessity and
99
necessity in freedom. In investigating our experience of social identities, we
will gain a more detailed understanding of the ways in which the individual is
shaped, influenced, and conditioned by his or her position in relation to practico-
inert structures and the meanings of Objective Spirit. We will find that human
freedom is externally conditioned by limits in the world, as well as internally
conditioned by limits on comprehension. However, returning again to Sartres
primacy of praxis,236 we will witness how in the midst of the social constitution
of the individual, the individual also freely chooses how to respond to this condi-
tioning, adopting, maintaining, refusing, or challenging these identities.
I. The Series
As we have seen in Chapter Four, the us-object and we-subject of Sartres
early Being and Nothingness later develop into the series and the group of
the Critique of Dialectical Reason. In the analysis of the possibilities for human
relationships in Chapter Four, we were primarily interested in the group, as a type
of collectivity with others that we consciously choose in order to pursue common
goals. However, as we now move to an investigation of the nature of social identi-
ties, we shift our focus to the series. In contrast to the group, the series is a type
of social collectivity that is not actively chosen or consciously formed. Members
of the series are only passively unified by elements of their situation in the world.
What they share is a common relationship to the practico-inert, whether in the
form of the concrete material environment, or in the structures and systems of
Objective Spirit.
To describe the being of seriality, Sartre provides an example of commuters
waiting together at a bus stop.237 Imagine a typical situation in which a set of
individuals at a bus stop stand and wait, interacting with each other very lit-
tle and going about their own business. Sartre explains that they are united by
their shared relationship to the bus system and to the social practices of public
transportation.238 They share the desire to ride the bus, and they follow the im-
plicit cultural rules of waiting for the bus. But they dont consciously identify with
one another, and they dont see themselves as working together toward a common
goal. These people belong to the series of bus users. Their membership in the
236 Thomas Flynn, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism, 105-112.

237 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, 256-266. See section titled, Series: the
queue.
238 Iris Young, Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective, in Feminist
Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre, Julien Murphy, ed., 213.
100
series does not reflect anything of their individual identities; rather, membership
in this collective is based upon their common relationship to the practico-inert in
the form of particular structures and systems. Insofar as the serialized activity of
waiting for the bus is concerned, the individual characteristics and talents of the
bus users dont matter; any individual could replace another. In this way, each
individual experiences him or herself as anonymous in the series, as the same as
all the others present. Sartre writes, Everyone [in the series] is the same as the
Other insofar as he is other than himself.239
And yet the individual bus users do not experience themselves as alone; they
understand all the while, in the pre-reflective comprehension of praxis, that they
are currently part of the serialized collectivity of people at a bus stop. The mem-
bers of the series are not alone, but rather isolated. To rise out of this isolation,
they could organize themselves into a group. For example, if the bus doesnt ar-
rive, they may come together in their common need for transportation and discuss
how they could work together and pool resources to achieve a common goal. They
could, for example, decide to share a taxi. But as long as they are simply waiting
together without a common project to unite them, they are unified in the series
only by a shared relationship to the material situation.
Sartre presents a second example in his description of the series of radio
listeners.240 Like the people waiting at the bus stop, the members of the ra-
dio audience are brought together by a shared relationship towards objects and
systems in this case, it is a relationship to the radio and to the programs it
broadcasts. As individual listeners in different locations, they are isolated from
one another. But as the individual listener sits alone in his or her apartment, lis-
tening to the radio, this activity is accompanied by the pre-reflective awareness
of being part of the collective of radio listeners. He or she is aware of sharing
the experience with others. Again we see that in the series individuals are not
alone, but isolated.
Sartre explains that we experience seriality often in our daily lives, especially
in those areas of existence that are socially structured, rule-bound, and that we
often experience as routine. And there is nothing inherently wrong with this it is
merely a fact of social existence. In these situations, we experience both ourselves
and others as impersonal, anonymous, and interchangeable. Sartre explains that
[t]here are serial behaviors, serial feelings, and serial thoughts; in other words
a series is a mode of being for individuals both in relation to one another and
in relation to their common being and this mode of being transforms all their
structures.241

240 Ibid., 270-276. See section titled Indirect Gatherings: the radio broadcast.
241 Ibid., 266.
101
It is important to note that membership in a series does not reflect anything
about the particular or chosen individuality of a person; rather, it refers to no
more than a shared relationship to practico-inert structures in the world. To be
a commuter or radio listener simply defines an individual as interchange-
able with others who are similarly positioned in relation to social structures of
public transportation or of radio broadcasts. Similarly, to be working class, a
woman, or white, defines an individual as interchangeable with others who
are similarly positioned to the practico-inert structures and meanings of social
class, gender, or race. As we will see, since seriality is about position rather than
essence, it can be a helpful concept when trying to make sense of our social iden-
tities. In the words of Iris Young:
the concept of seriality provides a useful way of thinking about the relationship of race, class,
gender, and other collective structures, to the individual person. If these are each forms of
seriality, then they do not necessarily define the identity of individuals and do not necessarily
name attributes they share with others. They are material structures arising from peoples
historically congealed institutionalized actions and expectations that position and limit indi-
viduals in determinate ways that they must deal with.242
II. Sartre on Class-Being
Social Class as Membership in a Series

In the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre writes that membership in a social
class is a material condition of everyones situation,243 and that [a]t the origin
of this membership, there are passive syntheses of materiality. [They] already
exist; they are simply the crystallised practice of previous generations.244 Class-
being, as seriality, is a shared relation to structures of the practico-inert which
have been established by the actions of those who came before us. These condi-
tion the world we inherit, in the concrete material environment, in the resources
available to us, and also in the meanings and values of Objective Spirit.
Sartre explains that membership in the series of a particular social class, such
as the working class or the bourgeoisie, conditions the lives of individuals by
determining a strictly limited field of possibilities245 for individual praxis. Sar-
tre describes this as a pre-destiny, and quoting Marx, he writes that, individuals
244 Ibid., 232.
245 Ibid., 232.
102
find an existence already sketched out for them at birth; they have their position
in life and their personal development assigned to them by their class.246
What exactly does class-being assign to the individual? First, and perhaps
most obviously in the conventional understanding of social class, class assigns
a particular material situation. This includes a certain standard of living, an
amount of wealth and resources, and access to particular types of work and hous-
ing. In this way, class is an external conditioning, placing concrete limits on an
individuals possibilities in the world.
But the conditionings which accompany class membership reach far beyond
material resources. In Chapters Two and Three we explored the internal condition-
ings that arise from the individuals relationship to Objective Spirit, as the context
of meanings of a particular time and place. As we have seen, the language and
concepts we inherit from Objective Spirit give us the means to understand both
ourselves and the world, and these means vary according to the social positions
we occupy and the particular Objective Spirit(s) in which we exist. In this way, our
experience of class-being involves not only external but also internal conditioning.
Our position determines the language and concepts available for our use as we in-
terpret and understand our situation. Sartre explains that in this way an individuals
social class position assigns a determinate provision of [] intellectual tools.247
According to Sartre, then, class-being can also be understood as a limit of [an
individuals] practical comprehension.248 Recall that he uses the term compre-
hension to describe the pre-reflective self-awareness that accompanies all prax-
is. In our relation to a particular Objective Spirit, our comprehension becomes
class-ed. We acquire an intuitive, implicit and nonverbal knowledge, a certain
direct and totalizing yet wordless understanding of contemporary man among
men and in the world. 249
In addition to shaping and limiting our comprehension, Sartre explains that
class membership also assigns us a fundamental attitude,250 or an objective
class spirit. This attitude is an inner feeling, located in comprehension, and it is
a part of the pre-reflective awareness that accompanies every praxis. Sartre refers
to it as an affective a priori,251 an emotional disposition that precedes each
experience, and that accompanies all new experience. This class attitude can be
understood as the real way we live our social position in relation to other people;
it is our being-in-class itself.
246 Ibid., 232. Sartre is quoting Marxs The German Ideology.

247 Ibid., 232.
248 Ibid., 699.
103
The norms of social class are also materially inscribed in the world around
us. The codes of meaning that prescribe these norms are found in the practico-
inert artifacts that class-ify our lives. For example, class differences are often
obvious in the taste that determines which artifacts we choose to surround
ourselves with, such as clothing, music, and food. These choices reflect more than
simply what one might be able to afford. A classed sense of taste and comfort is
also at play in what we choose. The affective a priori that is shaped by class mem-
bership also determines an individuals level of comfort in particular situations.
It affects the extent to which an individual may feel welcome, or may understand
what kind of behavior is expected in any given situation.
Political scientist Donna Langston provides a helpful description of this in
her article, Tired of Playing Monopoly? Langston explains that class-being en-
tails much more than an amount of money or economic security; belonging to a
class involves belonging to a culture. Class-being shapes our understanding of the
world and where we fit in. It influences our attitudes, values, and language, and
the way we feel, think, act, look, dress, talk, and move. It conditions the range
of stores, restaurants, schools and jobs we go to. It can even influence whom we
marry and when, and the kind of health care we receive. Class conditions what we
perceive to be our choices, and what is possible for us.252
The Example of Bourgeois Respectability

In the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre presents an example of social class
from nineteenth-century France in the case of the bourgeois value of respect-
ability and its accompanying practices. His analysis is helpful, as it shows how
classed values are formed and develop through generations. In Chapter Two, we
explored Sartres claim that the meanings of the past are recorded and preserved
in worked matter in the form of Objective Spirit. The same is true for respectabil-
ity. Sartre explains that the value of bourgeois respectability was first intention-
ally created by the fathers generation, the original factory owners, as a response
to a particular situation. It then came to be preserved in the practico-inert as
a standard of practice. What the first generation of owners achieved became a
practico-inert object or structure for the next generation to inherit and internalize.
As we have seen, Sartre understands each generation as a product of the previ-
ous one, but a product which also separates and differentiates itself from the past.
As the being of the previous generation becomes an inert object, the new genera-
252 Donna Langston, Tired of Playing Monopoly? in Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology,
Collins and Andersen, eds., 112-3.
104
tion transcends this objectification of past praxis, which is also the very condition
of its own present praxis. As Sartre explains, [p]roduced by the praxis of their
parents, children reinteriorise their praxis, divert it, transcend it and make it other
through its new results: they appropriate it.253
In the case of bourgeois respectability, the next generation, that of the sons,
inherited the value of respectability. To them, bourgeois respectability appeared
not as an individual choice or a practice, but as a fixed or inert element of their
class-being. This younger generation acquired their class-being from memory,
social training, and everyday experience. Their class interests were theirs, not
because they were chosen, but because they were assigned to them even before
their births. The younger generation, as all generations do, found themselves en-
meshed in a process that began before them and that would continue after them.254
They understood this organized class identity as solidified and untranscendable,
and the value of respectability became a reference point. Sartre refers to it as an
inert and ancient shadow, a sort of Platonic Idea (though an inert one) of all the
tasks that respectability demands be performed. 255
As the value of respectability became practico-inert and a concrete limit in
the daily praxis of every member of the bourgeoisie, they began to understand
their class-being differently. Practices that were initially only individual actions
in recurrence were transformed into unified actions of the entire class. The bour-
geoisie came to understand respectability in terms of its fixed class identity.256 As
Sartre writes:
a general practice like respectability which is simultaneously exis and praxis is compre-
hended by everyone in the movement which actually produces it [] [It] exists as everyones
inert beyond and its untranscendability appears in everyone as common.257
Once the bourgeoisie developed this fixed sense of identity, to be a member of this
series meant to possess a particularly bourgeois comprehension. The bourgeoisie
came to comprehend all class practices, as well as artifacts such as clothes and
books, in relation to its organized class practice. The fact that everyone can un-
derstand the practices of the time that every bourgeois implicitly understands
the practices of the bourgeoisie is due to the individuals pre-reflective compre-
hension of Objective Spirit. Every action and expression relies upon and moves
within the whole of culture, in that it depends upon the totality of past meanings.

254 Ibid., 767-768, 774.
255 Ibid., 777-780.
256 Ibid., 774.
257 Ibid., 776.
105
Internalizing Ideologies
According to Sartre, when elements of ideology are elaborated in language or
representation, they enter the realm of the practico-inert and are perpetuated in
Objective Spirit.258 In this way, ideology becomes an element of the set of limits
that class-being places on an individuals comprehension. As individuals inter-
nalize the collective context of Objective Spirit, they also internalize these ideolo-
gies, and especially those of the dominant groups within society.
Sartre draws attention to an important difference between the ideologies of
the ruling class and of the working class. The ruling classs conception of the
world, itself, and its own exercise of power, is contained within an elaborate ide-
ology, and as it is articulated, it is integrated into the Objective Spirit of the time.
While the ruling class has many opportunities to express its own ideology in a
concrete fashion, Sartre observes that concrete articulations of working class
ideology occur less frequently. Instead of being expressed verbally, the working
class ideology often issues communally, like a myth, from [the workers] hopes,
his despairs, the refusal to accept his condition as an inevitable destiny.259 Be-
cause the ideology of the ruling class is named and repeated more often, it takes
on more inertia than that of the working class, and weighs more heavily in the
context of meanings that is Objective Spirit. When the working classes internal-
ize the Objective Spirit of the culture in which they are situated, they internalize
the ruling class ideologies as well. The ruling class ideology may appear as if
it were a universal system of values. In this way, Sartre explains, members of
the working class may internalize the very values that attempt to justify their
exploitation.260
For example, the ideology of American culture proclaims that the United
States is a land of equal opportunity. Here there are two particular ideological
claims at work. The first is the myth of the classless society. Americans are
hesitant to recognize the existence of social classes, because they are taught to
believe that all Americans are equal, and that when differences in wealth do ex-
ist, they are minimal and unimportant. The second is the myth of meritocracy,
which teaches Americans to believe that the differences in wealth which do exist
have been earned, and that ones wealth is directly proportional to ones ambition,
intelligence, and hard work. The slogans of this ideological myth include if you
just work hard enough, anything is possible. Hard workers can pull themselves
up by their bootstraps, and rise up the chain to reach the upper class.
258 Jean-Paul Sartre, LIdiot de la Famille Vol. 3, 222. See also Steve Martinot, LEsprit objectif
as a Theory of Language, in Sartre and Existentialism Vol. 6, William McBride, ed., 353.
260 Ibid., 37.
106
But these claims of ideology do not reflect the truth of the class situation in
the United States. The separation between those who live in wealth and those
who live in poverty does not actually reflect the amount of work or laziness of
individuals. For example, a disproportionate number of those who live in poverty
are female heads-of-household who often work long hours and multiple jobs for
minimum wage in a struggle to remain at least minimally housed and fed. If hard
work were the sole determining factor of someones ability to support him or
herself, society might be structured very differently.261
These myths hide the reality of what are actually very well-defined social
classes in American society, and they serve to perpetuate status quo power rela-
tions. They reinforce the beliefs of the middle and upper classes that they have
earned all of their advantages, and that they really are superior. These myths also
create a false sense of hope for the working class, who in many ways are actu-
ally locked into their class position, but who are taught to believe that if they just
continue to work hard enough, they can someday join the ranks of the wealthier
classes themselves. The system allows just enough token successes to exist, so
as to perpetuate this false hope.
When the working class is taught not to recognize the existence of social class-
es, and encouraged to identify with the middle and upper classes that they hope to
someday be able to join, they are prevented from seeing themselves as unified in
a collective. They are hindered from recognizing both their unity as the work-
ing class and the structures that position them as such. If they cannot clearly
recognize class structures, then it is unlikely that they will be able to consciously
claim this identity and come together to form a group and work cooperatively.262
This example emphasizes how complex our experiences of social identities
can be. Contradictory messages can and do co-exist within Objective Spirit, and
individuals internalize these contradictions. It is possible, for example, that one
may know oneself as a member of the working class, as different from those in
the middle-class, as welcome or unwelcome in certain spaces according to this
difference and at the same time, possess the ideological belief that classes dont
really exist. Pre-reflectively, we immediately recognize codes of class difference,
yet this comprehension of the reality of class differences is obscured by the ide-
ologies we internalize and reflectively know. The truth of the situation is lost
in mystification.
Class-being as it exists in our contemporary multicultural reality does not pos-
sess the unity that may have been assumed within traditional Marxist accounts.
Surely social classes were never as simple or monolithic as originally portrayed
261 Donna Langston, Tired of Playing Monopoly? in Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology,
Collins and Andersen, eds., 110-111.
262 Ibid., 111.
107
in early Marxist accounts; there has always been a diverse range of experiences
within any class series. But this diversity of experience is even more pronounced
today, in a world of travel, immigration, and the globalized economy. Within
social classes, there are always also differences of race and gender. As Johnetta
Cole has pointed out, 263 privilege can and does co-exist with oppression. It is pos-
sible for someone to be both oppressed and oppressor at the same time.
This is precisely why Sartres paradigm of seriality is so helpful for under-
standing the being of social classes, and social identities more generally. It gives
us a way to account for the classs common position in relation to the practico-
inert, without forcing us to also assume anything about the individuality of the
members of the series themselves. It allows us to speak of unity within a social
class without ignoring or obscuring the actual diversity present within the collec-
tion of members.
Freedom and Necessity in the Experience of Class-Being

For each of us [class-being] is our being-outside-ourselves in matter, in so far as this pro-
duces us and awaits us from birth, and in so far as it constitutes itself through us as a future-
fatality, that is to say as a future which will necessarily realise itself through us, through the
otherwise arbitrary actions which we choose.
It is quite easy to identify the many ways that social class brings necessity into
human experience. Sartre describes membership in a social class as a sort of
pre-destiny that assigns an individual a certain position in the social hierarchy.
Externally, the meanings of class are built into the environment we encounter.
And even more directly, our class position and amount of wealth concretely influ-
ence our access to resources: housing, food, transportation, education, etc. But
class-being also brings with it multiple internal conditionings. We have seen how
class position functions as a limit on comprehension, shaping a persons under-
standing of self and world, and conditioning the individual to have a particular
class attitude and affective a priori.
It is possible for individuals to move from one class position to another, but
taking into account all that we have learned about the internal conditionings of
class-being, it is clear that class mobility involves a great deal more than an in-
crease or decrease in wealth. This may change a persons standard of living and
income bracket, but it does not magically cause a change in classed comprehen-
263 Johnetta B. Cole, Commonalities and Differences, in Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthol-
ogy, Collins and Andersen, eds., 133.
264 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. I, 238-239.
108
sion. Does a person from an upper-class background who finds him or herself
penniless instantly become working class? Probably not, since this person will
likely retain the language, behavior, and comprehension of his or her original
class background. And what about a working-class person who suddenly acquires
a great deal of money? Again, this person does not instantly adopt the language,
behavior, or the comprehension that comes with a new class position. Someone
who comes into wealth may even go so far as to take a course in order to learn
how to fit into his or her new class surroundings. It is possible to find language
coaching, education in table manners, and even training in the details of unspo-
ken classed social practices, such as the distance it is appropriate to stand from
someone in conversation, etc.265
If Sartres account of class-being stopped here, it would seem as if he had
left behind his early Existentialist emphasis on individual freedom entirely, to
move to the opposite extreme of a Marxist view of hard class determinism. But
Sartre does not stop there. As we have seen, in his later Marxist-Existentialist
works, Sartre seeks to transcend what he understands to be the false dichotomy
of freedom and necessity. The reality of human experience, he claims, is more
accurately represented in the dialectical formulation, freedom in necessity and
necessity in freedom. According to Sartre, we never experience one extreme
or the other in isolation at every moment we experience both freedom and ne-
cessity. This means that any individuals experience of class-being must include
both determinism and freedom. Where, then, can we find free praxis in Sartres
account of class-being?
Ever the Existentialist, Sartre claims that the individual plays an active role in
constituting his or her own class-being. In the Critique he writes:
should I not now say that one makes oneself a bourgeois or a proletarian? There can be no
doubt that one makes oneself a bourgeois. In this case, every moment of activity is embour-
geoisement. But in order to make oneself bourgeois, one must be bourgeois.266
Why does Sartre claim that in order to make oneself bourgeois, one must be
bourgeois? What does it mean to be bourgeois in this sense? To understand this
it is helpful to recall the basic definition of membership in a series, which is that
seriality is based upon a shared relationship to the practico-inert. Class-being, as
a particular position in relation to practico-inert structures, exists at the level of
265 See for example, People Like Us: Social Class in America. (Film) Directed by Louis Alvarez
and Andrew Kolker. WETA-TV, 2001. Or consider a reality television series that aired on the
American network ABC for one season in 2003 called The Family, in which ten members of
a family with a working-class background moved into a mansion. The winner of the competi-
tion would be the one person who was best able to fit into the new surroundings, successfully
adopting, or at least passing as, a new class identity.
266 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. I, 231.
109
materiality. We are born into a particular position, and we form our comprehen-
sion from that perspective. In this way, one is bourgeois in the sense of the mate-
rial reality of our position in relation to the practico-inert.
And yet, from this position, we also actively make ourselves into a particularly
classed identity. Within the structured field of possibilities267 determined by
our class position, we are the ones who make the choices that create who we are.
Sartre explains that class-being does not prevent us from realising an individual
destiny (each life is individual).268 Each of the choices we make is only one of
many possible ways of living from this class position. Sartre the Existentialist
believes that it is a fact of the human condition that the individual is something in
the way of surpassing it. This is true for class-being as well. He writes, Class-
consciousness is not the simple lived contradiction which objectively character-
izes the class considered; it is that contradiction already surpassed by praxis and
thereby preserved and denied all at once.269
There are many ways in which we exercise freedom in our experience of class-
being. First of all, it is common to the human condition that we take up attitudes
toward our situation, and in this case, that means toward our conditioning and
class identity. The conditionings of class that limit comprehension may predis-
pose a person to a certain sort of attitude, but this is not fixed in a hard and fast
way. It is possible within any one class to find a wide spectrum of levels of self-
knowledge in relation to class identity, and of awareness of the conditionings tak-
ing place. It is up to the individual to take the identity of class-being and to give
it his or her own particular spin, so that the way in which an individual lives
class-being will be a product of his or her own choices. For example, one might
embrace the meanings and values associated with ones class position, or subtly
subvert the expectations of class, or even actively rebel against them and all
within the period of one day.
Sartre claims that when a person possesses a classed comprehension, he or she
also possesses an implicit awareness of his or her own class interests, and under-
stands his or her own actions in relation to these interests.270 There is a liberatory
potential in this. It is possible for members of the series the working class to
recognize that they share certain common needs, and to see that if they work
together, their chances of achieving their ends improve. These people can unify
consciously as a group, based upon the common project they share. Individuals
267 Ibid., 238-239.

268 Ibid., 238-239.
269 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 33, note 9.
270 See Thomas Flynn, Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason, 186, and Sartre and Marxist Exis-
tentialism, 134. Sartre also describes a liberatory potential in the experience of unmet needs in
the third chapter of his yet unpublished Rome Lecture, Confrence lInstitut Gramsci, 1964.
110
can exercise freedom against the necessity of class-being in the formation of the
group. For Sartre, this is an ideal act of freedom, as separate individuals come
together to change something about the pre-determined situation. Neither the ex-
ternal material realities of social classes nor the meanings and values of class
collected in Objective Spirit are permanent or natural. Both are contingent, and
working together in groups, humans can consciously change the realities of social
class. This is, of course, the utopian dream of Sartres Marxism.
III. Rethinking Gender
Why Is a Reconceptualization of Gender Necessary?

What does it mean to have a gender, to be a woman, a man, or transgender? Is
gender identity grounded in nature as a true essence, or is it nothing more than
social construction and fiction? Though we often take the meanings of gender for
granted in everyday life, the answer to this question is not at all an obvious one.
In this section, I will survey three of the most common approaches to understand-
ing gender-being that fall short of fully accounting for the human experience of
gender. Then, following the lead of Iris Young, I will argue that Sartres notion of
seriality provides a unique and helpful framework for reconceptualizing gender.
First let us consider the traditional liberal approach to gender difference. Lib-
eralism, in its emphasis on the equality of all individuals, tends to argue that
to recognize the differences that distinguish us from one another is a mistake,
because it often leads to conflict and oppression. Therefore, they proclaim the
importance of equality and focus upon our sameness. However, one problem that
arises from this is that liberalism often unknowingly promotes one particular
identity as the norm that all others should aspire to in order to be the same
as everyone else. The effect of liberalism tends to be a drive toward assimilation.
In the case of gender, then, liberalism has often perhaps unknowingly promoted
masculine identity as the norm, so that for women to enter into participation in
civil society, they were pressured to be more like men.
But the simple act of denying the importance of gender differences does not
in itself erase the realities of sexism that continue to affect the experiences of
women, from both individual agents and impersonal social structures. Iris Young
articulates this objection, arguing that if we are not entitled to speak of gender
differences, there is no way to complain of real situations of sexist oppression.
In this way, the liberal denial of difference often obscures systematic and institu-
tional oppressions. Young goes on to argue that it is important to maintain a sense
111
of women as united in a social collective for the sake of those who are suffering
due to sexism. If isolated from other women, these individuals might understand
their suffering as unique, rather than as one instance in a consistent pattern of
sexist practices. Without a notion of women, there would be no basis for femi-
nism as a distinct political position.271
The liberal denial of the real importance of gender differences is problematic.
But how, then, ought we to conceptualize gender-being? Few women today would
accept essentialist accounts of womans true nature that we find in the history
of the Western tradition. Simplistic theories of gendered essences and reduction-
ary biological accounts have largely been rejected. But in recent years there has
been a new feminist assertion of essentialism, which can be called cultural femi-
nism. Cultural feminists argue that there is nothing inherently wrong with of-
fering an account of the essence of woman, as long as it is the women themselves
who articulate the definition of womanhood. In rebelling against sexist essential-
ist definitions of woman, they reappropriate a notion of the female nature. In
this camp we might find Mary Daly and Luce Irigaray.272
Though the move toward self-definition is laudable, there are many problems
even with this feminist articulation of an essentialist position. The first and most
obvious is that, reminiscent of Enlightenment definitions of the human, cultural
feminism reinforces a notion of womanhood to which one must adhere or else
not be a true woman. Any theory of female nature is likely to become norma-
tive, privileging one experience and excluding others. Essentialist claims regard-
ing a female nature ignore the fact that the meanings of gender are socially
constructed, constantly in progress and never fixed.
Feminist essentialisms also make the mistake of obscuring the intersectional-
ity of multiple social identities, and the real diversity that exists within the cate-
gory of woman. As Elizabeth Spelman argues in her book, Inessential Woman,
gender cannot be isolated from other axes of identity, such as race, class, age,
sexuality, and ethnicity, and it would be impossible to articulate a true essence
of womanhood that could transcend all of these other differences.273 Feminist es-
sentialisms may also mistakenly regard all women as equally oppressed victims.
Chandra Mohanty observes that feminists who offer a concept of woman that is
universal and cross-cultural often assume the experience of oppression a priori.
This ignores not only the presence of real freedoms and struggle, but also the
Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre, Julien Murphy, ed., 206-207.
272 Linda Alcoff, Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist
Theory, in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, Linda Nicholson, ed., 331-332,
336.
273 Elizabeth Spelman, Inessential Woman.
112
differences in power between particular women.274 Johnetta Cole makes a similar
point when she argues that the oppression of all women is not identical. Experi-
ences vary from group to group as well as from individual to individual. It is also
possible for privilege and oppression to co-exist one woman can occupy the
position of both oppressed and oppressor at the same time.275
Clearly, then, even a feminist essentialism does not provide a satisfactory
account of gender-being. An attractive alternative can be found in the extreme
anti-essentialism of post-structuralism. Post-structural feminists offer another
powerful critique of essentialism, rejecting the possibility of any definition of
woman at all. They deconstruct the female subject, arguing that gendered sub-
jectivity is a construction of social discourse. For example, in Gender Trouble,
Judith Butler argues against the category of woman and the normalizing power
it exercises in excluding and devaluing certain bodies and certain practices. She
claims that the attempt to define woman obscures the discursive production of
identities. In her article, Imitation and Gender Insubordination, she argues that
we should understand all gender as drag. This has the advantage of recognizing
that gender identities are performances.276 Post-structural feminists often oppose
a feminist identity politics grounded in gender difference, arguing instead that
gender definitions should remain open and flexible, and that we should aim for a
future in which a plurality of differences is the norm, and in which gender loses
its significance.277
Post-structuralism is right to emphasize the need for increased freedom in self-
definition, and it is right in drawing attention to the social construction of gender
identities. But if we do abandon the concept of woman altogether in favor of a
nominalism, we risk replicating the same problems created by liberal individual-
ism. Without a concept of woman, how are we to articulate real experiences
of sexism, or to identify real structural limitations that are formed around this
particular gendered axis of identity?
What we need is an account that can transcend the impasse of essentialism vs.
anti-essentialism, making sense of the ways that gender is both real and unreal.
Moving beyond liberalism, essentialism, and post-structuralism, what feminism
(and the philosophy of social identities more generally) needs now is to take a
274 Chandra Mohanty, Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse, in
Boundary 2, 12.3 / 13.1, Fall 1984.
275 Johnetta B. Cole, Commonalities and Differences. in Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthol-
ogy, Collins and Andersen, eds.
276 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, and Imitation and Gender Insubordination, in The Second
Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, Linda Nicholson, ed.
Theory, in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, Linda Nicholson, ed., 331, 337,
339-340.
113
reconstructive step. While gender may be a mere human creation and a fiction,
we must recognize that it also plays a concrete role in the world, and that it would
be not only false but also harmful to simply ignore it.
It is interesting to note that Simone de Beauvoir actually addresses a very
similar issue herself in the Introduction to The Second Sex, where she claims
that while it may be true that there is no essence of woman, this does not mean
that real women dont exist. She acknowledges that the differences between
men and women may be primarily superficial social constructions and contingent
developments. But her crucial argument is that these gender differences do exist
in concrete ways in the world and in human experience today, and for this reason
they are also meaningful categories.278
The later Marxist-Existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre is well-
suited to help us to reconceptualize the meaning of gender-being. As we have
seen, a central element of his project in the later works is to find a way to
understand the human that transcends the false dichotomy of essentialism and
anti-essentialism. Iris Young, in her article Gender as Seriality: Thinking
about Women as a Social Collective, draws on Sartres later works in order to
account for the processes of gendering in the world. She argues that Sartres
notion of seriality can help feminism to move beyond the dilemma she sees
in feminist theory, in which we are forced to choose between a definition of
woman that turns out to be exclusionary, and the abandonment of any defini-
tion of woman at all, thus losing the basis for feminist politics.279 In particular,
Young appreciates Sartres notion of seriality because it provides a way of
thinking about women [that] allows us to see women as a collective without
identifying common attributes that all women have or implying that all wom-
en have a common identity.280
Gender Identity as Membership in a Series

Recall that Sartre defines membership in a series as a shared relationship to the
practico-inert, including the material environment, social structures, and the
meanings and values of Objective Spirit. By this definition, to belong to the series
of women or men means to share a certain position in relation to the particu-
lar material conditions of a place and time. To belong to the series of women
is to be positioned in a certain way. Women are people who exist in a particular
278 Simone de Beauvoir, Introduction to The Second Sex.

279 Iris Young, Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy, and Policy, 6.
114
relation to the set of structural constraints and relations to practico-inert objects
that condition action and its meanings.281 As Young explains:
as a series woman is the name of a structural relation to material objects as they have been
produced and organized by a prior history. [] Gender, like class, is a vast, multifaceted,
layered, complex, and overlapping set of structures and objects. Women are the individuals
who are positioned as feminine by the activities surrounding those structures and objects.282
This understanding of gender is similar to Linda Alcoffs concept of positional-

ity. To understand woman in terms of positionality, Alcoff explains, is to recog-
nize that the category woman is not defined by personal internal attributes, but
rather by the particular position that women hold in the external context. Alcoff
compares this to the positioning of pieces on a chessboard, so that the identity of
women is not innate, but rather relative. Since it is rooted in concrete positional-
ity, Alcoffs account does not lead to the conclusion that gender itself is undefin-
able, as post-structuralists might argue.283
But what about the concrete differences in anatomy that we typical assume are
at the core of what it means to belong to one gender or another? As we humans are
materially embedded creatures, with real material limits and material needs, our
bodies (in the form of anatomical arrangements and hormonal composition) do
exert influence on our experiences. They delimit and give shape to our physical
sensations, and determine what is possible within our experience for example,
whether or not it will be possible to experience pregnancy. But before we take
anatomical differences too seriously in the understanding of gender, several ca-
veats are in order.
First, there is a great deal more diversity in anatomical arrangements than we
typically realize, and human bodies are not always so clearly divided into male
and female. Even human bodies that do fit typical gender expectations change
through time and experience, and vary from woman to woman. It is also possible
for us to intentionally alter our bodies and thus to alter our gendered experiences.
So while bodies play a role in how we live our genders, it is clear that anatomical
differences do not provide a simple causal explanation of gender difference.
Second, the way that we understand our bodies as gendered is itself not
straightforward or natural. From the perspective of Sartres Marxist-Existentialist
account of the human, bodies, like all material things, do not possess intrinsic
meaning. Sartres framework helps us to understand that bodies are invested with
human meaning, and we know them as practico-inert. Bodies become social ob-
281 Ibid., 226.

282 Ibid., 217.
Theory, in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, Linda Nicholson, ed., 349-350.
115
jects, inscribed by and the products of past practices.284 This is why it has be-
come common to speak of gender rather than sex. As Judith Lorber explains
in her book, Paradoxes of Gender, gender is not natural or fixed, and it cannot
be biologically explained. While people may be born sexed, in the sense of pos-
sessing certain organs arranged in certain ways, we are not born gendered. The
meanings and values associated with gender identity are social constructions, the
product of human praxis. We find evidence of this in the wide cultural diversity of
understandings of how many genders exist (two? three? five?), as well as what is
expected of us in performing our gendered roles. The meanings of masculine and
feminine, to take the Western understanding of two genders as our example, are
flexible social constructions, and as such they must be learned.285 In the words of
Simone de Beauvoir, one is not born, but becomes, a woman. 286
One of the reasons why Iris Young believes Sartres notion of seriality is so
helpful in conceptualizing woman is its flexibility. Serial identity doesnt refer
to any attributes that individual women themselves actually possess, but rather it
describes only their social position. Seriality defines the collective of women in
terms of a common relationship to the practico-inert structures of culture. This
move away from any sort of feminine essence to focus instead on positionality
enables us to recognize the real ambiguities of gender. It also leaves room for the
recognition of intersectionality in our identities, since within the collective of
women there will always also be differences of race, class, age, and ethnicity, to
name just a few.
Since Sartre claims that membership in a series is only passive, this means
that to belong to the series women is not originally a choice. Rather, a person is
positioned as a woman in relation to external practico-inert structures. The expe-
rience of belonging to the series of women is depersonalized and anonymous, and
doesnt reflect anything about the actual individuality of the person. As Young
explains, belonging to the series of women means that I check one box rather
than another.287
285 Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender, 1-25.
286 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex.
116
Freedom and Necessity in the Experience of Gender
No individual womans identity, then, will escape the markings of gender, but how gender
marks her life is her own.
Iris Young, Gender as Seriality 288
Gender, as one of the primary axes of identity in the world as we know it, con-
ditions our existence both externally and internally. Externally, the meanings
of gender shape the world that individuals encounter, and concretely limit the
options, resources, and possibilities available. The structures, expectations, and
practico-inert objects of gender identity are materially inscribed in the world
around us. As Young explains:
A vast complex of other objects and materialized historical products condition womens
lives as gendered. Pronouns locate individual people, along with animals and other objects,
in a gender system. Verbal and visual representations more generally create and reproduce
gender meanings that condition a persons action and her interpretation of the actions of oth-
ers. A multitude of artifacts and social spaces in which people act are flooded with gender
codes.289
A wide range of artifacts express codes of gender meanings. In our pre-reflective

comprehension of the objects around us, we recognize gendered norms and ex-
pectations. Consider, for example, the almost automatic understanding at work
when we recognize gendered meanings and expectations in clothing (bikini vs.
swimming trunks), tools (kitchen utensil vs. power saw), furniture (light flowery
sofa vs. black leather recliner), and spaces (the kitchen vs. the garage). Some
other examples of the practico-inert realities that construct gender identity can
be found in the gendered division of labor, and in the meanings, rules, practices,
and assumptions of institutionalized heterosexuality, which define the series
women, as in a relation of potential appropriation by men.290
The meanings of gender also condition our existence internally. The gendered
meanings we internalize from Objective Spirit provide us with the tools for un-
derstanding ourselves and the world. In this way, gendering imposes a limit on
comprehension, and in conditioning our attitudes and affective a priori, it exer-
cises an influence on our free responses to the world. We understand the mean-
ings of gender at the level of pre-reflective comprehension. As Judith Lorber
points out, individuals tend to do gender without reflectively thinking about it.
It often takes a disruption of gendered norms, such as drag, androgyny, or cross-
dressing, to jolt us into recognizing that these norms exist.291
288 Ibid., 223.

289 Ibid., 219.
290 Ibid., 218.
117
As Sartre would say, we know and live the world through our gendered iden-
tity. Gendered conditioning affects where and when a person will feel comfort-
able, and influences a persons taste and choice of artifacts, forms of speech, tone
of voice, and even sense of entitlement and possibility in the world. It is on the
basis of these gendered attitudes and comfort levels that the language, gestures,
and rituals of exclusion or inclusion in society function.292
In all of these ways, the practico-inert structures of gender limit freedom.
Young describes these practico-inert structures as material social facts that each
individual must relate to and deal with.293 But keeping with Sartres dialectical
account of freedom in necessity and necessity in freedom, it is clear that the
conditionings that accompany the experience of gendered seriality do not pre-
clude the individuals exercise of freedom. Where, then, can we locate freedom in
gendered experience? To begin, it is helpful to recall Sartres claim about class-
being: There can be no doubt that one makes oneself a bourgeois. In this case,
every moment of activity is embourgeoisement.294 In similar fashion, we can
now say of gender: there can be no doubt that one makes oneself a woman. Gen-
der identity is something that we learn. As we grow and develop, we encounter
and internalize strongly gendered norms and expectations. People often tend to
cooperate with these expectations because the weight of both morality and social
pressure is behind them.295
And yet, as Beauvoir reminds us from the Existentialist perspective, every
concrete human being is always a singular, separate individual.296 Thus we each
experience the structures of gender from our own unique perspectives. Recall the
discussion of the social constitution of the individual in Chapters Two and Three,
in which we learned that the individual internalizes the general Objective Spirit
of the time and place, the common social whole, from his or her own perspec-
tive. From this particular location, the individual will understand the meanings
of Objective Spirit in his or her own way giving them a particular spin, or dif-
ferential. The same is true of gender. As Young explains, [t]he subjective expe-
riential relations that each person has, and sometimes groups have, to the gender
structure, are infinitely variable.297
The individuals freedom also lies in the fact that each person freely takes up
attitudes toward gender conditioning and the practico-inert structures of gender.
293 Ibid., 220.
294 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol, 1, 231.
296 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 12.
118
The range of possible responses is infinitely variable. We may unquestioningly
play along, never reflectively considering why we behave in the ways we do. We
may embrace the roles that gendering prescribes for us. We may recognize that
these roles are nothing more than performances, and play with them at our will.
We may consciously choose to subvert traditionally gendered categories and ex-
pectations. And we might move between many of these positions in the space of
a lifetime or the space of one day!
Finally, women may also exercise their freedom in face of the conditionings
of the practico-inert in the formation of a group. While membership in the se-
ries women is passive and anonymous, when women realize that they share
common needs, and that working together they can achieve their goals more ef-
fectively, women can come together to form a group with a common project.
For example, at the level of seriality, some women may realize that they share a
common vulnerability to sexual assault, and in response to this awareness, they
may decide to form a group with the purpose of raising awareness of the problem
and taking measures to increase safety. They may host events like Take Back the
Night, or organize escort services in the evenings, etc.298 Since the meanings and
values associated with gender identity are contingent social constructions, there
is an exciting liberatory potential in the collaborative praxis of the group, with the
real potential to change the meanings of gender for the future.
IV. Rethinking Race
Why Is a Reconceptualization of Race Necessary?

Race, along with class and gender, exists as one of the most prominent axes of
social identity in Western cultures today. The distribution of power and privilege
has been structured around racial differences since at least the sixteenth century.
But what is the ontological status of race, and how real or unreal are racial differ-
ences? Are they no more than social constructions, to be discarded as fictions? Is
it conceivable that someday we could live in a society without races or rather,
without any attention to what we today understand as racial difference? In this
section, I will discuss the short-comings of some of the most common approaches
to understanding race, and I will argue that Sartres notion of seriality provides a
helpful way to reconceptualize racial identity.
298 However, not all groups of women who work together are feminist, and in fact, some are ex-
plicitly anti-feminist. See Iris Young, Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social
Collective, in Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre, Julien Murphy, ed., 224-225.
119
In the discussion of gender, we encountered the position of liberal individual-
ism and its understanding of difference as a hindrance to democracy. When it
comes to race, liberalism again emphasizes equality and argues that we should
strive to create a color-blind society. The liberal urges us to overlook differ-
ences and to focus only upon individual achievements. From the perspective of
liberalism, to draw attention to racial identity is divisive, potentially oppressive,
and a hindrance to achieving a truly democratic society.
In Sartres 1946 book titled Anti-Semite and Jew, he too is critical of the lib-
eral approach, which he analyzes in the character of the democrat.299 Adopting
the values of the French revolution, the democrat tries to focus upon individuals
alone and to disregard social identities. He recognizes neither Jew, nor Arab,
nor Negro, nor bourgeois, nor worker, but only man man always the same in all
times and all places. 300 He sees each individual as the incarnation in a single
example of the universal traits which make up human nature.301 Believing that he
is helping to integrate the Jew into civil society, the democrat attempts to ignore
the existence of Jewish identity and to see the Jew purely as man. But Sartre
sees a problem in this denial of the reality of racial identity. He writes:
I agree therefore with the democrat that the Jew is a man like other men, but this tells me
nothing in particular except that he is free, that he is at the same time in bondage, that he
is born, enjoys life, suffers, and dies, that he loves and hates, just as do all men. [] If I wish
to know who the Jew is, I must first inquire into the situation surrounding him, since he is a
being in a situation.302
There are several problems with the democrats denial of racial difference. First
of all, as we have seen in the discussion of gender, what begins as a well-inten-
tioned effort to end oppression may actually serve to make it worse. In the liberal
call for color-blindness, the denial of racial identities obscures and reinforces
systematic racist oppression because, as Joy James writes, where one has racism
without races, white supremacy without whites, and institutionalized oppression
without oppressors, there is no one to hold accountable for justice.303
Second, the liberal push for assimilation may be not only impossible but also
psychologically damaging. Consider, for example, Frantz Fanons depiction of the
experience of assimilation in the colonial context. As the colonized individual
attempts to erase his own identity and remake himself as a French citizen, Fanon
recounts the resulting harm to the psyche.304 Consequently, Sartre himself argues
299 Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, 55-58. The democrat is discussed in Chapter Two.
300 Ibid., 55.
301 Ibid., 55.
302 Ibid., 60.
303 Joy James, Resisting State Violence, 45.
304 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks.
120
for the importance of the recognition of social identities, and the need for a re-
affirmation of identity in the face of oppression. For example, Sartre is supportive
of the reclaiming of African identity in the Ngritude movement.305
While the position of the liberal democrat is clearly insufficient, the alterna-
tive of a Marxist approach to race proves to be inadequate as well. First of all,
since Marxism considers class to be the most important social category, it tends
to understand race in terms of class. But the harms suffered due to racism are
more than economic, and they cannot be understood completely within Marxist
categories. As Nancy Fraser explains, the problems of race require more than
redistribution they also require recognition.306 Second, since Marxist social
revolution is supposed to develop out of the unity of the working class, Marxism
tends to understand racial identity as a danger that divides the working class.
Marxism thus calls for racial differences to be overcome so that we can achieve a
true brotherhood [sic] of class unity.307
In response to the suggestion that we should eventually eliminate racial identi-
ties altogether, Lucius Outlaw argues that to lose racial identity would actually
be to lose a meaningful part of the self. The problem with liberal individualisms
understanding of man is that it ignores the fact that we are socially connected
beings, and our social identities can and do play positive roles in our lives. Outlaw
explains that the concrete person is intimately and inextricably related to others
by substantive factors, among them raciality and/or ethnicity, that are themselves
essential (not accidental) aspects of who we are.308 Racial identity need not be
understood purely in terms of racist oppression. Groups that form around shared
racial identities can become cultural identities and supportive communities with
distinct histories, informing a sense of self.
Clearly, calls for assimilation, color-blindness, and the erasure of racial iden-
tities are misguided, and it is important to preserve a notion of race. But the
question becomes, which notion of race should be preserved? How should we
understand the being of race?
Scientific research has conclusively shown that racial essences do not exist.
Reductionist accounts of biological races have been debunked, and historical re-
search can now trace the development of race as a cultural category. For ex-
ample, David Goldberg has demonstrated that the racism that developed in early
modern Europe was a distinct creation, different from all of the forms of ethno-
305 Jean-Paul Sartre, Orphe Noir, first published in Anthologie de la nouvelle posie ngre et
malgache, Leopold Sedar Senghor, ed., 1948, then in Situations III, 1949.
306 Nancy Fraser, From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a Post-Socialist
Age, in Theorizing Multiculturalism: a Guide to the Current Debate. Cynthia Willett, editor.
307 See Lucius Outlaws discussion of Marxism in Toward a Critical Theory of Race, in Anato-
my of Racism, David Goldberg, ed., 59, 74-76.
121
centrism that had come before.309 Lucius Outlaw has elucidated the connections
between the development of the notion of race and the European projects of liber-
alism and modernity more generally.310 And Charles Mills has traced the history
of the modern Western concept of race to its roots in European conquest in Africa
and the Americas. Europes accumulation of wealth in these conquests depended
upon the exploitation of African and Native American peoples, and the develop-
ment of the notion of racial differences during this period served to justify or to
excuse that exploitation.311
Steve Martinot has also demonstrated how the identity of whiteness was cre-
ated as a normative concept in order to differentiate from, and to justify the exploi-
tation of, those who were consequently defined as non-white. Martinot describes
racialization as that process through which white society has constructed and
co-opted differences in bodily characteristics and made them the marks of hierar-
chical social categorizations.312 In this way, he explains, there were no real races
that existed to precede racism. He writes, [r]ace does not stand in a cause-and-
effect relation to racism (as prejudice). Instead, racism produces race (as social
categorization) through a process of racialization.313 Martinots history of racial-
ization echoes Sartres own sentiment, in his preface to Fanons Wretched of the
Earth: there is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism since the European
has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters.314
Race, then, appears to be a social construction with an easily identifiable his-
tory. From the perspective of post-structuralism, the next step might be to simply
admit that racial identities are fictional and to reject them in favor of a plurality of
self-created individuals. This approach surely has its merits. But as we have seen,
post-structuralist calls to abandon social identities risk repeating the mistakes
of liberal individualism. To decide that we will now simply ignore the existence
of racial identities until they go away does not in itself eliminate the real cases
of racism, both personal and structural, that continue to exist. If we ignore the
reality of racial identities, then we risk not being able to name racism when it oc-
curs, and not being able to join together in solidarity with others who experience
a common oppression.315
309 David Goldberg, The Social Formation of Racist Discourse, in Anatomy of Racism, David
Goldberg, ed.
310 Lucius Outlaw, On Race and Philosophy, and Toward a Critical Theory of Race, in Anatomy
of Racism, David Goldberg, ed.
311 Charles Mills, The Racial Contract.
312 Steve Martinot, The Rule of Racialization, 180.
313 Ibid., 75-76. Italics have been added.
314 Jean-Paul Sartre, Preface to Frantz Fanons Wretched of the Earth.
315 Patricia Huntington makes a similar argument in Fragmentation, Race, and Gender: Building
Solidarity in the Postmodern Era, in Existence in Black, Lewis Gordon, ed.
122
What we need, then, is a way to conceive of race that is beyond the opposing par-
adigms of essentialism and anti-essentialism, in order to account for racial identity
in both its reality and unreality. To that end, I will offer a rethinking of race using
the framework provided by Sartres Marxist-Existentialist approach to understand-
ing the human. In my attempt to articulate race as seriality, I will also draw upon
many other helpful sources, including Lucius Outlaws critical theory of race, Shan-
non Sullivans phenomenology of race, and Patricia Hill Collinss black feminism.
Race as Membership in a Series

Seriality is an especially helpful concept for understanding race since member-
ship in a serial collective reflects nothing about the actual individuality of the
members. Membership in a racial series merely reflects a persons position in
relation to social structures. Race, then, names a set of relations to practico-inert
objects that have been produced and organized historically. It is a vast, multi-
faceted, layered, complex, and overlapping set of structures and objects.316 As
Thomas Flynn explains:
It is one of [Sartres] contributions to social theory to have located racism in the practico-
inert. It gains in intelligibility if we enlist such concepts as seriality, otherness, passive
activity, and powerlessness in its comprehension. In particular, racism should be seen as
Other-thought (Pense-Autre), the kind of thought without a thinker that Sartre associates
with the alienated state of serialized individuals.317
When people are defined as members of a racial series, this is based upon their
position in relation to racialized structures and objects, and these relations are
shared with other members of the series. At this level, any member could easily
be replaced by another. Members of a racial series are anonymous and inter-
changeable. This description fits the phenomenon of racial prejudice well. For
example, in a case in which a white racist identifies another individual as black,
the racist sees nothing about the individuality of the other person. The racist sees
only the stereotype of his own definition of what it means to be black, and at this
level, any member of the series could replace another. The black persons identity
is fixed as an object. Sartre describes race in this sense as a primary reputation
which precedes an individual.318 In this case, the reputation is a black identity
which is imposed on the black man.
317 Flynn, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism, 99.
318 Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, 74.
123
Within this framework for understanding race, the color of ones skin is under-
stood as more than a simple physical fact it is an element of the practico-inert,
which means that it is invested with the meanings of past praxis. Raced bodies are
social bodies, existing within a context of norms and expectations. The structures
of race are re-created and maintained in the practico-inert artifacts of the world.
Language, gestures, music all of these can reproduce raced assumptions and
meanings.
In reality, what it means to belong to a racial group is a complex and shifting
phenomenon. Ones racial identification can vary depending on the context, and
the lines between white and black, for example, are not always so clearly
drawn. It is an advantage of the notion of seriality that it can accommodate this
multiplicity in racial identity. Since race is understood as based upon a relation to
social structures, rather than actual attributes possessed by individuals, seriality
can account for the shifting lines of racial difference.
Freedom and Necessity in the Experience of Race

The meanings and values of race-being are inscribed into the practico-inert world
we encounter. Shannon Sullivan presents an insightful depiction of the ways in
which racial structures shape the world in her phenomenology of the racializa-
tion of space. Using Merleau-Pontys vocabulary for articulating the spatiality of
bodies, she connects the particularity of certain spaces to the racing of bodies.
Sullivan argues that race and space are co-constituting. In our cultures, space
is not a racially neutral entity the racialization of space often acts to enforce
racism and white privilege. Spaces can be racially demarcated as inside and
outside, or as spaces that separate us from them. In this way, the meanings
of race are inscribed onto the spaces of the world we encounter. Sullivans depic-
tion of the racialization of space shows how white people have a freedom, or an
entitlement, to occupy spaces in a way that black people do not. Consequently,
an individuals racial position will affect how he or she experiences particular
spaces. She explains:
lived space is inhabited differently by white and black people due to the different ways they
are situated in a racist society. The polarizing of objective space into inside and outside that
racism effects curtails black peoples inhabiting of space. White existence is allowed an ex-
pansiveness when transacting with its world that is not equally available to nonwhite peo-
ple.319
319 Shannon Sullivan, The Racialization of Space: Toward a Phenomenological Account of Raced
and Antiracist Spatiality, in Problems of Resistance: Studies in Alternate Political Cultures,
Martinot and James, eds., 91.
124
Racism can be a problem that is hard to name,320 because in its contemporary
manifestations it often (though not always) surfaces structurally and systemati-
cally rather than in individual acts of malice, and this can make it more difficult
to recognize. But racial structures do place limits on the concrete options and
possibilities for individuals, and racial inequalities are manifested in concrete
material differences.
The meanings and values of race-being also bring with them internal condi-
tionings. Just as with class and gender, ones position in relation to the practico-
inert structures of race imposes a limit upon ones comprehension. As an indi-
vidual internalizes Objective Spirit from a particular location in relation to the
practico-inert, this influences ones understanding of self, of the world, and of
what is possible. It creates within the person an affective a priori, or in this case,
a raced attitude, that accompanies all experience. This process of racialization
is a part of the social constitution of the individual in contemporary Western
societies.
It is important to keep in mind that while Western society often makes the mis-
take of assuming that non-whites are the only people who possess racial identity,
the racial conditioning of consciousness is experienced by whites and non-whites
alike. The meanings of race are collected in Objective Spirit for all to internalize.
Steve Martinot reminds us that whiteness, too, is a social structure, and that it
affects the way most white people in the United States think of themselves. One
example of a racialized limit on comprehension in white experience is in the lack
of awareness of unearned white privilege, assuming that what is actually a privi-
lege is something natural or deserved.321 In this way, it is not just disadvantage but
also privilege that can condition a persons comprehension.
Sartres framework for understanding the social constitution of the individual
is helpful in that it also provides us with a vocabulary for articulating the phenom-
enon of internalized oppression. When a non-white individual internalizes the
dominant racist values that are collected in the Objective Spirit of the time, this
can also condition ones comprehension. A person who occupies an oppressed po-
sition could potentially come to accept this oppression as natural or deserved.322
Sartre describes an example of internalized oppression in Jewish experience in
Anti-Semite and Jew, in which a Jewish person internalizes the anti-Semites defi-
nition of Jewishness. And Homi Bhabha describes an instance of internalized op-
320 Gloria Yamato, Something About the Subject Makes It Hard to Name, in Race, Class, and
Gender: An Anthology, Collins and Andersen, eds.
321 Peggy McIntosh, White Privilege and Male Privilege, in Race, Class, and Gender: An An-
thology, Collins and Andersen, eds.
322 Gloria Yamato, Something About the Subject Makes It Hard to Name, in Race, Class, and
Gender: An Anthology, Collins and Andersen, eds.
125
pression in the postcolonial setting, referring to a colonial residue that is often
left over after the end of colonialism, in which the colonized accept the idea that
the colonizers culture and values really were better than his own.323
We have seen that the practico-inert structures of race introduce necessity into
human experience by shaping the world that individuals experience, as well as the
individuals understanding of self, world, and what is possible. Racialized struc-
tures condition individual attitudes and limit comprehension. But we must also
remember that each person experiences these structures of race from his or her
own particular position, understanding the situation in his or her own unique way.
Racialized structures condition and restrain action, but they do not determine
action. Individuals remain free to take up attitudes in response to these condition-
ings. To rephrase Youngs earlier statement about gender,324 we can now say that
no persons identity will escape the markings of race, but how race marks his or
her life is his or her own. We exercise freedom in our experience of race-being
when we take up attitudes toward our social identities. From Sartres perspective,
we are the ones who ultimately decide what our identities will mean to us, and
how we will choose to live them, despite how they are viewed from outside.
It is also possible to collectively assert freedom against racist structures in the
formation of groups. While people remain in a racial series, individuals are isolat-
ed from one another, and the relationships are alienated. Being white or black
at the level of seriality is anonymous and depersonalized. But when people in the
series recognize that they share certain needs with other members of the series,
they can arise from the alienation of the series and come together with others to
form a group and to work together for a common project. As we have seen, there
is a liberatory potential in the cooperative praxis of the group, which can bring
about change in both concrete social structures and contingent meanings in the
present and the future.
Conclusion
What have we learned about the human condition? We are individuals who live
and know ourselves and the world through our social identities, and this is intri-
cately tied to issues of freedom and necessity. Our experience of social identities
could be understood negatively, as a conditioning of comprehension and a limit
323 Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, 9-11. For additional examples, see
works of Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, and Ngugi Wa Thiongo.
126
upon the free praxis of the individual. But the experience of social identities can
also be understood positively, as enabling of the individuals free praxis. Objec-
tive Spirit is not only the context for all meaning, but also what makes meaning
itself possible. The practico-inert structures of Objective Spirit enable action, and
our goals can only be realized through them.325
Through the class struggle, sexism, and racism, some may get the idea that the
social identities of class, gender, and race are nothing but obstacles to collectively
living in peace. For this reason, it is often suggested that the best approach would
be to ignore or reject these differences, in hopes that someday these differences
will simply no longer exist. But as we have seen, it is neither possible nor desir-
able to eliminate social identities. Identities such as class, gender, and race are not
exclusively sources of exclusion or oppression; these identities can and do also
play positive roles in our experience. In our free praxis, we may take up these
identities and define them in meaningful ways for ourselves, consciously preserv-
ing, maintaining, and re-creating them.
325 See Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot Vol. 5, 40. See also Iris Young, Gender as Seriality:
Thinking about Women as a Social Collective, in Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sar-
tre, Julien Murphy, ed., 215, 219.
127
Conclusion
Several years ago, I presented a paper at a Philosophy colloquium in Evian in

which I described Sartres dialectical account of the dynamic interrelation of in-
dividual and social. When I finished and it was time for discussion, the first per-
son who raised his hand had this to say: But you cant have your cake and eat
it too! For Sartre, which is it? Which is ultimately primary the individual, or
the social? But as we have seen, this is precisely Sartres point: it is a failure of
analytical reason to perceive the individual and the social as two distinct entities
in opposition, and to assume that one must be primary over the other. Analytical
reason cannot adequately comprehend the human individual in his or her social
being, and it is this failure that has led to dissatisfaction with the available models
for understanding the human, and to the many recent calls for a new humanism
one that can give a richer account of the social.
As we have seen, the uniqueness of Sartres approach to understanding the hu-
man can be found in the revised dialectical and hermeneutical methods he devel-
ops, which enable us to think beyond traditional dichotomies. Dialectical think-
ing does not always come easily for Western philosophers. Perhaps we are simply
too settled in the habits and assumptions of analytical reason, so that it just seems
natural that the individual and social should exist in irresolvable opposition. Or
perhaps, as Simone de Beauvoir suggests, when we are faced with the ambiguities
of our existence, we experience anxiety, and we attempt to flee towards what of-
ten turns out to be an oversimplified (and ultimately false) easy answer.326 Either
way, it is clear that when Sartre asks us to reconceptualize the human being as
the social individual, his dialectical Marxist-Existentialist account challenges
traditional assumptions and requires us to think in new and different ways.
The goal of this book has been to use the framework for understanding the
human that Sartre develops in his later Marxist-Existentialist works in order to
write a posthumanist humanism. I have attempted to develop a paradigm for un-
derstanding the human being that can help us to think beyond the traditional
dichotomies of individual/social, freedom/necessity, and essence/anti-essence.
Adopting an explicitly posthumanist approach, I have taken into account critiques
of past humanisms, building upon a coalition of voices and rejecting absolute or
foundational accounts of human nature in favor of concrete descriptions of the
326 Simone de Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity.
129
human condition, as the situation common to all human experience that sets the
context for our praxis.
As I come to the end of this project, I feel the need to repeat that this articula-
tion of the human condition was never intended to be comprehensive. And in-
deed, I find it to be lacking in attention to some of the most important elements
of human experience, such as morality, the existential drive for meaning, and the
possibilities for human flourishing and happiness. I intentionally focused my in-
vestigations upon one particular aspect of the human experience: the relationship
of the individual and the social. The reconceptualization of the individual and
social developed here had two important consequences. First, it required a new
approach to understanding freedom and necessity in human experience. Leav-
ing behind the traditional Western assumption that the social must be a threat to
individual freedom, I argued that the social should also be understood to be an
enabling condition of autonomous individual praxis.
Second, this new approach to understanding the individual and social led to a
recognition of human beings as intersectional subjects, individuals constituted
by multiple and overlapping social identities. One of the important contributions
of this project was to take the notion of intersectionality out of the specific context
of oppression, and to develop it into a paradigm for understanding the human
itself. This exploration of intersectionality contributes to a deeper understanding
of what it means to be a social individual. When we understand all humans as
intersectional subjects, it becomes clear that diversity is not an aberration from
the norm, but rather a constant of human experience; difference is the norm. It
may be necessary, then, in a new posthumanist political vision, to reconsider the
premises of democracy itself, to consider how we might create democracies that
flourish in this context of the recognition of differences.
In order to summarize what we have learned about the human condition in this
project, I would like to examine a passage from Salman Rushdies 1981 novel,
Midnights Children. The first-person narrator of the novel, Saleem Sinai, finds
that since he was born at the very moment of Indian independence in 1947, he
and the 1,000 other midnights children find themselves magically handcuffed
to history.327 As the story unfolds, the events of their lives allegorically mirror
the history of the newly independent nation. Near the end of the novel, Saleem
asks, who what am I?328 [sic] The answer that he gives to this question can be
understood as a description not only of the midnights children, but also of all
human social individuals. Note in particular how Saleem must experiment with
language in order to accommodate a way of thinking about the human that is
beyond traditional dichotomies:
327 Salman Rushdie, Midnights Children, 3.

328 Ibid., 440.
130
Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I
have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-
the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after Ive gone which
would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter;
each I, every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I
repeat for the last time: to understand me, youll have to swallow a world.329
In Saleems first claim, that I am the sum total of everything that went before
me, we find the human relationship to the social in the form of Objective Spir-
it. As we have seen, Objective Spirit is the collective context of meanings in
which all past praxis is recorded and transmitted from generation to generation
throughout history. As the young child comes to awareness within the context
of a particular language, culture, and set of material (practico-inert) conditions,
Objective Spirit provides the child with the tools for understanding both self and
world, passing along identities, value systems, and ideologies. In this and many
other ways, the social exercises an agency of its own, conditioning individuals
and guiding their actions.
But as we have seen, in order to properly understand the human, we must tran-
scend not only the traditional dichotomy of individual and social, but also that of
freedom and necessity. I have joined with Sartre in arguing that freedom and ne-
cessity are not irreconcilable opposites. As Sartre explains, it is more accurate to
speak of the freedom of necessity and the necessity of freedom. While it may
be helpful to temporarily examine one term in isolation, in the reality of human
experience the two exist together. What this means is that the individual and the
social are in a co-constituting relationship. The two moments of internalizing the
external and externalizing the internal exist in a constant on-going give-and-take.
As Saleem writes, I am the sum total [] of all I have been seen done, of every-
thing done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected
was affected by mine. Notice how he bends the language here his unusual sen-
tences emphasize the fact that these two moments of done and done-to-me, of
affected was affected, are not actually distinct or neatly separable. The reality
is that these moments are always already intermingled, and can be separated only
in abstraction.
We have explored the ways in which determinism enters individual experi-
ence from both external and internal sources. For example, determinism may
arise from concrete material limitations on our praxis as well as from limits upon
comprehension, such as the affective a priori of a classed attitude. But as we have
seen, ever the Existentialist, Sartre maintains that while we are determined and
shaped by the world, there is always also a role for freedom. In his later works,
the individual emerges as alienated, reified, mystified, as he has been made to
329 Ibid., 440-441.
131
be by the division of labor and by exploitation, but struggling against alienation
with the help of distorting instruments and, despite everything, patiently gaining
ground.330
As Saleem writes, I am anything that happens after Ive gone which would
not have happened if I had not come. Freedom can be found in the externalizing
moment of praxis, in going beyond a situation and beyond need, as the individual
makes something out of what he or she has been made into.331 As we take up at-
titudes in response to our conditioning, we play an active role in the creation of
our own identities. In this way, freedom can also be understood as a process of
self-definition. On the basis of given conditions, human praxis can indeed trans-
form both self and world.
While this project has focused upon the common human condition, it is impor-
tant to keep in mind that Sartres account of the human also insists upon the real-
ity of multiplicity. Each person lives these common conditions from a unique in-
dividual location in relation to the practico-inert structures of experience. Simply
put, each one of us lives this common condition in our own way. Sartres unique
approach allows us to describe commonalities while also constantly maintaining
a recognition of difference.
We emerge from Sartres later works with a new understanding of the indi-
vidual and the social as in a dynamic, co-constituting interrelation. In the words
of Saleem, each I, every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, con-
tains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, youll have
to swallow a world. Using the dialectical and hermeneutical methods of his later
Marxist-Existentialist philosophy, Sartre found a way to truly think the individ-
ual and social together, accounting for the interdependence and co-constitution
of the two without losing the particularity of either term. We arrive at a rich un-
derstanding of the human in our social being, which can form the basis for a new
posthumanist humanism.
330 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 133. Emphasis added.

331 Ibid., 91.
132
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Chapter 1: Materiality in Human Existence: The Practico-Inert, Scarcity,

Chapter 2: Reconceptualizing the Individual and the Social:

Chapter 3: The Co-Constitution of the Individual and the Social ................... 63

Chapter 4: Problems and Possibilities for Human Relationships . ................... 81

Chapter 5: The Posthuman Condition and Difference:

Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 129

Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 133

The Essentialist Account: Enlightenment Humanism

1 Lucius Outlaw, On Race and Philosophy, 149.

5 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, 91.

The Anti-Essentialist Account: Postmodern Anti-

The twentieth-century developments of post-structuralism, deconstruction, and

7 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, 217.

10 Ibid., 187, emphasis added.

14 Ibid., 28, emphasis added.

Beyond Essence and Anti-Essence: Calls for a New

From across the spectrum of contemporary philosophy, many voices recently

Sartres Project of Reconceptualizing the Human

36 See Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, Book I.

Praxis and the Practico-Inert

38 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 2, 384-385.

Whereas Sartres early philosophical masterpiece, Being and Nothingness, fo-

39 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, 71.

43 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1, 802.

Existence in the Context of Scarcity

56 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 2, 221.

The Experience of Needs

In Being and Nothingness, Sartre wrote that human consciousness experiences

61 Aristotle, Politics, Book 2, Chapter 7.

Can Scarcity Be Overcome?

76 Joseph Catalano, A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartres Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume

Sartre understands the goal of Marxist revolution to be the overcoming of neces-

Problems with Privileging One Term

95 Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays, 45.

The Need for Mediations: Sartres Search for a Method

108 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 306.

Objective Spirit: Sartres Key to Reconceptualizing

In this passage, we encounter the uniqueness of Sartres appropriation of the no-

118 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot Vol. 5, 47.

Language, Ideology, and Imperatives

Therefore, in the pre-reflective awareness that accompanies praxis, we under-

Consequences for Freedom and Necessity

135 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 113

In an interview, he explains further:

If we are to accurately understand Sartres claims regarding freedom and neces-

Objective Spirit as a Unity within Multiplicity

144 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Idiot of the Family Vol. 5, 30-31.

151 Ibid., 343.

156 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot Vol. 5, 36.

The Internalizing Moment: The Social Constitution of

157 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 33, note 9.

Hazel Barnes describes Sartres understanding of the influence of the social on

166 Ibid., 56.

Sartres Case Study: Gustave Flaubert

173 Thomas Anderson, Sartres Two Ethics, 137.

181 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 58.

A Contemporary Example: Maya Lin

Moyers: Thats very Taoist

187 A phrase that I have heard used by Thomas Flynn.

It is understandable, though unfortunate, that the most familiar images of Sartres

Chapter 1: Materiality in Human Existence: The Practico-Inert, Scarcity,

Chapter 2: Reconceptualizing the Individual and the Social:

Chapter 5: The Posthuman Condition and Difference: