Critique de la Raison dialectique Tome 2: l'intelligibilité de l'histoire

Critique de la Raison dialectique #2

by Jean-Paul Sartre

Sartre présentait ainsi lui-même cette Critique de la Raison dialectique : "Y a-t-il une Vérité de l'homme ? Personne - pas même les empiristes - n'a jamais nommé Raison la simple ordonnance - quelle qu'elle soit - de nos pensées. Il faut, pour un "rationaliste", que cette ordonnance reproduise ou constitue l'ordre de l'Être. Ainsi la Raison est un certain rapport de la connaissance et de l'Être. De ce point de vue, si le rapport de la totalisation historique et de la Vérité totalisante doit pouvoir exister et si ce rapport est un double mouvement dans la connaissance et dans l'Être, il sera légitime d'appeler cette relation mouvante une Raison ; le but de ma recherche sera donc d'établir si la Raison positiviste des sciences naturelles est bien celle que nous retrouvons dans le développement de l'anthropologie ou si la connaissance et la compréhension de l'homme par l'homme impliquent non seulement des méthodes spécifiques mais une Raison nouvelle, c'est-à-dire une relation nouvelle entre la pensée et son objet. En d'autres mots, y a-t-il une Raison dialectique ?"

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, History

470 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology). His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."
Sartre held an open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyles and thought. The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, 'bad faith') and an "authentic" way of "being" became the dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work Being and Nothingness (L'Être et le Néant, 1943). Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism Is a Humanism (L'existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946), originally presented as a lecture.

Reviews

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vol.2 of the Critique is much more lucidly written and enjoyable, although it really requires the reader to have read vol. 1. Here he picks up from where he left of without a note of review or summary and plunges into the problems of history, structuralism, and social structure with an astounding sense of purpose and incredible intellectual verve.

Many readers of Sartre's other works, plays, novels, will be outright shocked at the density and convoluted nature of this 2 part book. Many will be upset the he has given in to the inaccessibility of traditional philosophical language.

The truth is that the Critique stretched Sartre's mental capacity as far as it could go, while he was at home reading Heidegger's being and time, or working with Hegel, or adjusting Fanon's works he completely outstripped himself in the Critique.

It demonstrates the pinnacle effort of arguably the pinnacle mind of the 20th Century, not a work to be taken lightly, but one that is as rewarding to the committed reader as anything in the philosophical canon. The Critique manages walk the razor's edge of modern theory avoiding the relativism of post-modernism, the rigidity and dehumanism of Marxism, the irrelevance of idealism, and the arrogance of structuralism while examining some of the most meaningful events in recent history.

[Hippie Shawn]

I will be reading this after finishing the first volume, of which I am currently reading alongside his Notebooks for an Ethics.

I have started reading volume 1 a few weeks ago, and I am absolutely loving it!

I am surprised that this book has not gotten the limited attention of the first volume.

Volume 2 came out in 1985, five years after Sartre passed away, although 25 years after the first volume (1960), yet remains incomplete nonetheless lol.

You should read the first volume before reading the second volume, as well as the smaller book that goes with it, titled either “Search for a Method” or “Problem of a Method”, depending on the translation.

If you read all three books, you are getting almost 1500 pages worth, which is by far his most expansive and elaborate project — unless his Roads to Freedom TETRALOGY counts lol :D