Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume 2: The Intelligibility of History

Critique de la Raison dialectique #2

by Jean-Paul Sartre, Quintin Hoare (Translator), Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre (Editor)

At the height of the Algerian war, Jean-Paul Sartre embarked on a fundamental reappraisal of his philosophical and political thought. The result was the Critique of Dialectical Reason , an intellectual masterpiece of the twentieth century, now published as a two-volume set with a major new introduction by Fredric Jameson. In it, Sartre set out the basic categories for the renovated theory of history that he believed was necessary for post-war Marxism.

Sartre’s formal aim was to establish the dialectical intelligibility of history itself, as what he called ‘a totalisation without a totaliser’. But, at the same time, his substantive concern was the structure of class struggle and the fate of mass movements of popular revolt, from the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century to the Russian and Chinese revolutions in the their ascent, stabilisation, petrification and decline, in a world still overwhelmingly dominated by scarcity.

The second volume of Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason was drafted in 1958 and published in France in 1985, first appearing in English in 1991. As in Volume One, Sartre proceeds by moving from the simple to the from individual combat (through a perceptive study of boxing) to the struggle of subgroups within an organized group form and, finally, to social struggle, with an extended analysis of the Bolshevik Revolution. The book concludes with a forceful reaffirmation of dialectical of the dialectic as ‘that which is truly irreducible in action’.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, History

cloth

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