The Early Sartre and Marxism
Modem French Identities Edited by Peter Collier Volume 64
PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
Sam Coombes
The Early Sartre and Marxism
PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
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ISSN 1422-9005 ISBN 978-3-03911-115-2
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Acknowledgements
I am greatly indebted to the following people whose help has been invaluable during the preparation of this book: Christina Howells, Françoise Krai, David Drake, Valeria Ingegno, Simone Rinzler, Toby Garfitt and Crystal Webster.
Contents
Acknowledgements
5
Introduction
9
Part One: Ontological Bases I. Conceptions of Concrete Reality: Sartre's Refusal of Materialism II. The Free Subject In Situation
23 25 59
Part Two: From Ontology and Ethics to Politics and History Introduction III. Inauthenticity and Ideology IV. Sartre's Search for Authenticity V. Commitment, Humanism and Left Political Thought VI. Towards a Dialectics of History VII. Authentic Ethics and Socialist Politics in Sartre's Cahiers pour une morale
83 85 89 117 137 169
Part Three: Writing and Politics Introduction VIII. Les Petits camarades: Personal, Political and Literary Issues Which Defined the Sartre-Nizan Relationship IX. Committed Writing
229 231 231 273
Bibliography
319
Index
329
191
Introduction
There are good reasons for believing that the recent resurgence of interest in Sartre is a revealing indicator of the turn which the political and cultural conjuncture has taken over the last few years. Certainly, this renewed interest seems far too apt and timely to be the consequence merely of cyclically revolving intellectual trends or of the recent centenary celebrations. It is well known that for many years previously Sartre's thought had been considered outdated or passé. The reasons why his work long suffered comparative neglect are complex and multiple but they can nevertheless be identified quite clearly in certain of their key intellectual and conjunctural dimensions. By the 1980s and 1990s, not only had Sartre's existential Marxism been supposedly eclipsed by a number of successive French intellectual tendencies from structuralism through to postmodernism, but the collapse of the Soviet bloc seemed for many in the West to mark not only the end of the Cold War but also the final demise of Marxism both as a political force and as a valid theoretical model. Indeed, by the mid 1990s, Sartre's thought, and a fortiori that of Marx, seemed something of an irrelevance to many. In the latter years of his life, Sartre had of course distanced himself from his previous existentialist Marxist positions, but he had nonetheless remained on the radical left until his death. The ultimate victory of the Western capitalist model of society over that of the Soviet Union in conjunction with the growth of an increasingly consumer-oriented postmodern cultural ambience in the 1990s appeared to be enough to seal the fate of both Marxism and Sartrean thought definitively. In postmodernist intellectual circles, truth-questioning relativism, hostility to universals, and the supposed end of grand narratives were the order of the day, and the Hegelianinspired historicising theoretical models of the Marxist philosophers and all forms of humanistic thinking had never seemed more out of date.
9
With the growth of the anti-globalisation movement during the 1990s, and subsequently the Anglo-American-led 'War on Terror' in the aftermath of the attacks of 11 September 2001, however, new forms of political resistance to post-Cold War neoliberal policies and ideology have been developing. The war against Iraq in particular laid bare the imperialist dimension of the neoliberal agenda and in many ways showed that a new, harder-nosed brand of western capitalist expansionism was afoot, one whose readiness to appropriate natural resources was barely veiled and whose ideological self-justifications were almost as wrong-headed as the Islamic fundamentalism it was claiming to combat. The force of reaction within western nations themselves to the invasion of Iraq, coupled with concerns both about pressing environmental issues and the nature of our relations with developing economies, indicate strongly that a broad questioning of the operations of the western-led globalised capitalist economy has been acquiring a new urgency. In this context, the work of radical critique undertaken by Marx and, in the twentieth century, by Sartre and his contemporaries comes once again into sharp focus. 'With the spread of capitalism across the globe and its burgeoning in once 'under-developed' economies such as Brazil and India,' observes Peter Osborne, 'Marx's writings have become more, not less relevant to the present. In particular, as what began in the early 1990s as the 'anti-globalization' movement becomes more self-consciously 'anticapitalist' (at least in its rhetoric), it is increasingly important to know precisely what capitalism is.' 1 The matter of the ways in which Sartrean thought relates to that of Marx and a range of Marxist theorists will constitute the principal focus of the present study, and I do not wish to effect some sort of easy assimilation of the one to the other in the context of these prefatory remarks. There can be little doubt, however, that in the course of his career Sartre came to represent the paradigmatic example of the committed intellectual in the twentieth century. As such, his relevance is fairly self-evident. In view of his active involvement in the protest movements at the time of the Algerian war of independence and the 1
10
Peter Osborne, How to Read Marx (London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005) p.3.
Vietnam war, to name just two of the collective struggles to which he lent his support publically, it is fair to suppose that had he been alive today he would have found plenty to be voluble and vocal about since 2001. Sartre's relevance today is not due solely to his role as a public intellectual, however. It is also owing, in key respects, to the nature of the theoretical claims on which his committed radical left stance was founded. Postmodern thinking has often shown itself to be sceptical of overarching explanatory systems, the possibility of absolute truths and, like certain strands of post-structuralist theory before it, of a belief in the unity of theory and practice. For all that postmodernism, and perhaps postmodern art above all, has been willing to ironise and deflate prominent tendencies of mainstream western culture, the underlying scepticism inherent in postmodernism, in either its theoretical or artistic expressions, does not render it a particularly suitable mode of thought for those seeking to initiate concerted action in the name of political resistance. Sartre on the other hand believed it not only possible but necessary to account theoretically for our condition as historically situated human beings, and in the idea that our theoretical explanations of the world and our place in it should form a coherent unity with our ethical conduct and political practice. His theoretical world-view underpinned a belief in showing solidarity with the dispossessed and in siding with them in their opposition to the hegemonic powers that were oppressing them. It is well known that ethics constituted a central preoccupation for Sartre throughout his career. But from around 1947 onwards, what he understood ethics to involve did not correspond with that of traditional morality, nor with that which the flourish in ethical thinking of recent years has foregrounded. Ethical reflection in the latter case, as with the traditional variety, often becomes, as Emmanuel Renault has indicated,2 a way of sidelining discussion of political questions. For the postwar Sartre, as for Marx and Trotsky before him, ethical questions were by their very nature historicised and politicised. The right course of action on the part of individual subjects could only be ascertained in 2
Emmanuel Renault, Mépris social: éthique et politique de la reconnaissance (Bègles : Editions du Passant, 2000) pp. 19-20.
11
the light of a conception of the common good, and this was not just an ethical question in the narrow sense of the term but also a political question. As protesting against the operations of powerful political, military, and ideological forces has come to the fore in western nations once again in recent years, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the anti-Vietnam War protests, so the work of committed radical left intellectuals such as Marx and Sartre has gained a new currency. There are of course many different varieties of radical left commitment and it is not my intention to suggest indirectly that the numerous important contributors to reflection on the contemporary geopolitical and cultural conjuncture active today have necessarily been taking their lead directly from Marx or Sartre.3 My point is rather to suggest that whether or not contemporary radical theorists choose to draw on the theories and example of such seminal figures explicitly, there is an important sense in which the presence of these predecessors is inescapable. This is particularly the case in periods of acute political and cultural tension and discontentedness. And if, as Terry Eagleton argues,4 cultural theory is in need of a new direction in our post-2001 era, postmodernist thinking proving less and less relevant to a world in which the real has made a sudden and decisive reappearance in the form of terrorist attacks, then the radical theoretical and political tradition may prove vital to our critical thinking in the years ahead. Turning to the particular orientation and focus of the present study, there are a number of points which I would like to touch upon in these introductory remarks, relating to both the general aims and orientation of my enquiry and the methodological approach I have adopted. In the light of the preceding reflections I think it important to make explicit that what is contained in these pages is first and foremost a critical réévaluation of Sartre's thought up until the close of the 1940s. That is to say that although this is a committed study it is committed principally at the level of seeking to reassert the lasting 3
4
12
In this regard, I have in mind such theorists as Pierre Bourdieu, Terry Eagleton, Antonio Negri, Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Zizek who have all made significant contributions to radical critique over the last decade. Eagleton, After Theory (London: Penguin, 2003) pp. 221-2.
value of Sartre's thought, and notably in so far as the latter shares common ground with classic Marxist philosophy. Contemporary theoretical debates about the political and cultural dynamics of today's world are absent from my discussion and I have in no sense attempted to draw a critical enquiry into early Sartrean thought into those debates. This study is hence committed in only an indirect way, despite my conviction that Sartre's thought and example as a committed intellectual remain vital to the trajectory of contemporary cultural theory. Sartre's Marxism has received a good deal of critical attention but the scope of studies devoted to it has invariably been limited to the postwar years and most commonly to the 1950s and 1960s, with a particular focus on the Critique de la raison dialectique.5 Although the interest stimulated by the later period of Sartre's work is entirely appropriate in this regard, the special attention bestowed on the Critique has reinforced the long-held view that Sartre's early thought and literary output, by contrast, had little to do with Marxism, or indeed with any type of political commitment. Moreover, studies of later Sartrean thought and politics have rarely included critical analysis of the theories of other Marxist thinkers, commentators often seeming to bypass or overlook the numerous and diverse antecedents to many of Sartre's positions in the canon of Marxist theorising. The key premise of this study is that the relationship between Sartre's thought and the Marxist theoretical tradition merits detailed attention. Most commentators concur in the view that from the latter half of the 1940s through to the early 1970s - the large part of his career Sartre's thought was significantly influenced by Marxism. Yet Marxism has all too often remained a rather unspecific and ill-defined phenomenon in critical appraisals of Sartre, attempts to relate his ideas to those of specific Marxist theorists being rare.6 Sartre's later work in 5
6
Wilfred Desan's The Marxism of Jean-Paul Sartre (New York: Doubleday, 1965), Pietro Chiodi's Sartre and Marxism (Hassocks: Harvester, 1976), and Mark Poster's Sartre's Marxism (London: Pluto Press, 1979) are representative of this critical tendency. Thomas Flynn's valuable study Sartre and Marxist Existentialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) is one of the few critical works in the field that does examine the claims of certain Marxist theorists, although the large
13
particular clearly lends itself to critical comparison with Marxist philosophy and at numerous points in this study I highlight areas of reciprocity which merit further examination. The central contention of this study, however, is that such common ground can also be identified, albeit to a lesser extent, between Marxist philosophy and the writings comprising Sartre's early period. From 1940 onwards, Sartre's writings reveal a tendency on his part to seek to integrate the different areas of his thought - ontology, ethics, politics, historiography and aesthetics - into a coherent whole, ie. a synthetic totality. This is also a defining characteristic of much Marxist philosophy. Moreover, at the level of each specific area of enquiry, numerous conceptual overlaps and reciprocities can be identified between Sartre's positions from the late 1930s onwards and those of different Marxist thinkers. The story of the early Sartre is well known and it is not my intention to recount the particular events and intellectual positions which comprise it except in so far as they inform my project to elucidate the particular development of Sartre's left-wing sympathies and the conceptual relationships which can be identified between his theoretical positions and those of Marxist thinkers. It is for this reason that the methodological approach I have adopted is primarily a thematic rather than a chronological one. Each chapter focuses on a specific thematic area or a given phase in Sartre's development rather than the principal criterion for the organisation of the material being the desire to progress from one set of events and developments to the next in their order of occurrence. Moreover, where Part One is devoted to questions of ontology, in Part Two the focus turns primarily to Sartre's ethical and political thought, and Part Three is devoted to his aesthetics. These divisions are by no means rigid, however, and are inevitably artificial to some extent, being established primarily for the purposes of clear exposition. Sartre was such a synthetic thinker that the attempt to discuss his ontological, ethical, aesthetic and political claims in isolation from each other, though necessary in a critical study, is in reality distorting. I have attempted to circumvent this difpart of Flynn's discussion of Sartre's ideas in relation to Marxist concepts is devoted to Sartre's postwar and, in particular, later writings.
14
ficulty by frequently pointing the reader to chapters elsewhere in the book where the other implications of the issues being discussed are examined. The chronological scope of this study is limited to the 1930s and 1940s but the account of Sartre's thought during those years which is offered nevertheless lays no claim to absolute comprehensiveness. Indeed, important areas of critical reflection on Sartre, though acknowledged in passing, have been bypassed entirely, such as the ways in which Sartre's philosophy relates to that of Kant, or to psychoanalysis. My enquiry has been restricted on the whole to examination of the ways in which Sartre's positions intersect with those of Marxist theorists, and to analysis of lesser or badly known aspects of Sartre's thought, a guiding aim being to cast the story of the early Sartre in a new light. My adoption of a primarily thematic expository approach, however, by no means implies a disregard for the chronological order in which events and intellectual developments unfolded in Sartre's life. Indeed, it is only by presenting Sartre's trajectory precisely as a process of development through time that one can hope to offer an accurate account of his increasing involvement with politics, and with Marxism more specifically. Within each chapter, the chronological order of developments is hence respected by and large except when there is a good reason to transgress it for the purposes of better elucidating the given theme(s) under scrutiny. Moreover, in both Parts Two and Three respectively, I have maintained a largely consistent chronological progression from each chapter to the next thereby uniting the thematic and chronological expository approaches throughout much of the book in an attempt to obtain the advantages of both. Part Two begins with Sartre's reflections on inauthentic conduct in the Carnets de la drôle de guerre and concludes with his formulation of an integral conception of authenticity in the Cahiers pour une morale, examining along the way the initial stages of his quest for authenticity in the Carnets, his developing concept of commitment from 1940-6, and his reflections on the nature of history. An in-depth discussion of Sartre's relationship with Nizan in the late 1930s opens Part Three, and is followed in chapter IX by a detailed examination of Sartrean aesthetics with a special focus on Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? 15
The early Sartre's developing awareness of the economic and political dimensions of life is often presented in the critical literature as an awakening to Marxist concepts and the need to be politically committed after the Liberation. Without rejecting this reading, I have sought to problematise it by highlighting the ways in which it can lead to an overly schematic view of Sartre's development. My account hence questions and challenges the separation of the postwar Sartre's political thought from his wartime and even pre-war writings which this reading involves. Throughout this study, the continuities in Sartre's thought throughout the period are emphasised, although not with the objective of proving that Sartre became Marxist much sooner than is commonly believed. Rather, I have set out to demonstrate that the philosophical, political, and even ethical and aesthetic tendencies which were to characterise his Marxist-tending and, in some cases, unambiguously Marxist positions of the latter half of the 1940s were already firmly in place in his thinking long before this time in key respects. A key question posed by this study, often in an implicit way, is that of what is to be understood by 'Marxism'. That is, what does this overarching term include in its span, and what kind of theoretical issues does Marxist philosophy treat? Although most Sartre commentators acknowledge that the early Sartre's assessments of Marxist philosophy and of his own relationship to it are not reliable and hence are to be treated with circumspection, rare are those who have chosen to explore the Marxist canon in depth themselves. There has been a consequent tendency in the literature to ignore certain fields of Marxist reflection when discussing Sartre's development. Marxist ethics and aesthetics are notable examples of areas which have been almost entirely overlooked. For many commentators, Sartre exhibited Marxist tendencies only upon his awakening to history and socio-economic constraints on freedom, and once he began advocating a working-class led socialist revolution. These tendencies are invariably considered to have developed in his thought only after the Liberation. Yet, the first two of these tendencies had in fact been germinating in Sartre's writings from as early as 1940, and although not actively committed, Sartre had been a supporter of the proletarian cause throughout the 1930s. Furthermore, Marxist philosophy is much broader in its span 16
(and indeed more heterogeneous) than the aforementioned criteria allow. Might it not be the case, for example, that Sartre's evident hostility to affirmations of legal rights in L'Enfance d'un chef is in fact a 'Marxist' tendency? Certainly, his repeated identification of rights with intellectual abstractions is strongly reminiscent of the early Marxian critique of rights. And might not Sartre's conception of authentic ethics in the Cahiers in fact be at least as derivative of the Left's insistence on solidarity in the political struggle as it is an 'ethical' theory in the sense meant by liberal ethical theorists? My point is that a broader and more detailed knowledge of Marxist philosophy does not simply enhance our understanding of Sartre's thought but is perhaps indispensable to a thorough grasp of its real implications. As I have indicated, during the period under examination in this study Sartre's knowledge of the Marxist theoretical tradition was comparatively limited. Indeed, it would not be before the very end of the 1940s that evidence of a more wide-ranging and thorough knowledge of different theorists' claims would start to be apparent in his texts. It is for this reason in part that I have not restricted the Marxist authors discussed in this study to those theorists with whose works Sartre was familiar with at the time. The imposition of such a limitation would from the outset have defeated the aim of identifying conceptual relationships between early Sartrean and Marxist thought. It is unlikely that Sartre had read the works of the early Lukâcs before the 1950s, for example, and Gramsci's Prison Notebooks were not available in French translation during the 1940s. Sartre was quite well informed about Trotskyism during the 1930s and 1940s, although it is unlikely that he had read Trotsky's Literature and Revolution (1925), which constitutes an important focus of our discussion in chapter IX. My choice of Marxist authors for special attention was made in accordance with a number of criteria. First, I wanted this choice to reflect to some degree at least the diversity of preoccupations and theoretical positions of theorists of the first half of the twentieth century who are typically placed in the 'Marxist' category. This approach seemed the most effective way of deconstructing the quasimonolithic character which is sometimes foisted upon the term 'Marxist' in non-Marxist critical discourse. Secondly, Marxism was an 17
international movement and I did not wish to restrict my choice of authors to one country or context, hence the juxtapostion in this study of figures as diverse in this respect as Trotsky, Lukâcs, and Gramsci. It was more important to choose authors who made particularly significant theoretical contributions than those who merely shared the same geographical and cultural moorings as Sartre's. More was to be gained from relating Sartre's concept of inauthenticity to the Gramscian concept of hegemony, for example, than from comparing it with the threadbare claims of Jean Kanapa. On the other hand, the work of French intellectuals Merleau-Ponty and Lefebvre is discussed in some detail in this study, and Simone de Beauvoir's autobiographical writings are frequently referred to, so the French intellectual milieu has by no means been neglected. Thirdly, in view of Sartre's antiStalinist intellectual and political stance during the 1930s and 1940s, and his consequently tense and troubled relationship with the PCF, I believe it important (and considerably more interesting from a theoretical standpoint) to concentrate on thinkers who did not endorse, or who were openly hostile to the scientistic Marxist theoretical paradigm. With the exception of brief references to Merleau-Ponty's study of Marxist dialectics Les Aventures de la dialectique (1955) in a number of chapters, and a general discussion of the ethical humanist Marxist current which extended from the 1940s until well into the 1960s, the Marxist primary sources referred to in this study do not extend chronologically beyond the 1940s, which is where my examination of Sartre stops. Given the breadth of the field of Marxist theory, it goes almost without saying that my choice of authors for close attention was selective, this study laying no claim to provide an exhaustive account of the ways in which Sartre's early thought relates to Marxism. Nevertheless, I have endeavoured to choose those authors (and, in the case of Lukâcs in particular, the relevant period of his career) whose theoretical positions lend themselves most readily to comparison with Sartre's thought. These authors by and large share the characteristics of being humanist thinkers and of subscribing to the Marxian insistence on a unity of theory and practice, both of which are also Sartrean tendencies. Throughout the book, I have tended to group such thinkers under the formulation 'classic Marxist' even though some of them 18
(notably Lukâcs and Gramsci) are often categorised in critical literature on Marxism as 'western Marxists'. Uniting these authors under the heading 'classic Marxist' has allowed me implicitly to set them apart from certain Marxist currents either whose theoretical positions were anti-humanist, or which disconnected the activity of theorising from political practice, or both (Althusserian structuralist Marxism is a notable example in this regard). Moreover, I have tended to focus with regard to specific subject-areas in Sartre's writings on Marxist thinkers whose theories lent themselves particularly well to comparison with Sartre's ideas in those areas. This was often due to a Marxist thinker having theorised or contributed significantly in one area but not in another: Nizan, for example, is known for his communist novels and writings on aesthetics but not for having produced detailed ontological or ethical theories, hence discussion of his work is limited to Part Three. It was also due to the necessity of a certain selectiveness and in view of the heterogeneity of different Marxist theorists' ideas. Choosing to focus my discussion of Sartre's postwar aesthetics on its relationship with Trotsky's Literature and Revolution, for example, meant limiting considerably the amount of space devoted to consideration of early Lukâcian aesthetics. This was not because the latter seemed inappropriate for further discussion but was rather owing to the fact that focusing on both Trotsky and Lukâcs in this regard would have involved adopting two contrasting methodological approaches. The extension of the chronological scope of this study from the 1930s through to the latter part of the 1940s might appear problematic in view of my explicit designation of the 'early' Sartre in the title. Not late enough to be counted amongst the mature writings and too late to be considered part of the early period, writings such as Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? and the Cahiers pour une morale seem to fall in a sort of'no man's land' between two commonly acknowledged 'periods' of Sartre's development. I nevertheless chose to allow my account of Sartre's intellectual and political itinerary to extend well beyond the seminal post-Liberation writings for a number of reasons. First, as a key objective was to demonstrate the conceptual continuities between Sartre's early thought and the developments of the postwar period it was evidently necessary that my discussion included consideration of 19
Sartre's important texts of the immediate postwar years such as Matérialisme et révolution, Cahiers pour une morale, and Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? so that the appropriate comparisons could be made. Secondly, the continuities that can be identified between these works and writings which date back long before the Liberation such as the Carnets de la drôle de guerre, and even L'Imaginaire and certain of Sartre's literary works, intrinsically problematise the designation of any precise date between the Liberation and 1948 as the moment which separated the 'early' and 'later' periods of Sartre's work. I argue in Part Two of the book that a global coherence to Sartre's thought can be perceived which incorporates the inauthentic ethicoontological vision articulated in L'Etre et le néant on the one hand and the authentic ethics and socialist politics of the Cahiers on the other. The Carnets de la drôle de guerre, which focus on questions surrounding the nature of both inauthenticity and authenticity, suggest that Sartre had already conceived of the ideal of an ethics of authenticity as early as 1940. His claims in L'Etre et le néant, from the standpoint of ethics at least, were to be essentially limited to articulating the dimension of human life which he reproved firmly, namely man's inauthentic condition prior to ethical conversion. I have tended to highlight the centrality of ethical reflection to early Sartrean thought and close attention is paid to the Carnets de la drôle de guerre, which is a vital document revealing Sartre's developing ethical and political thought. The centrality of ethics to this study owes in particular to the fact that Sartre's ethical reflections constitute an important bridge area linking both ontology and politics, and also aesthetics and politics. As is apparent notably in chapters III and IV, my account of the concept of inauthenticity is more multidimensional than in the critical literature on Sartre to date, where there has been a tendency, in addition to discussion of bad faith as lying to oneself, to focus on the idea that individual subjects seek the inert substantiality of the material. I argue that Sartre's ontology-derived ethical concept of inauthenticity is just as frequently represented in his texts as involving flights into abstraction in an attempt to escape the real, and as a refusal of the temporal present in favour of an identification with a past self or past state of affairs. In chapter III, a close parallel is established between representations of inauthenticity 20
involving the desire for abstraction or elevation in certain Sartrean texts and the abstract character of the dominant ideology for the Marx of The German Ideology. In other words, Sartre's concept of inauthenticity is shown to occupy the space that, in Marxist theory, is occupied by ideology theory. An area of thematic similarity and coherence between Sartrean ethics and Marxist political theory thus being established, I proceed at the close of chapters III and VII to explicate not only the postwar Sartre's Marxian-derived concept of ideology in the pejorative sense but also his concepts of ideology in the positive and neutral senses. The appearances made by these concepts (the latter two in particular) in Sartre's writings, although of considerable importance, are typically discreet which probably goes some way towards explaining why they have been very largely overlooked in the existing critical literature on Sartre. My account links the pejorative and positive conceptions of ideology to Sartre's ethical journey from inauthenticity to authenticity respectively. Moreover, a connection is established between Sartre's conception of writing and the role of literary art expounded in Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? and the positive conception of ideology in chapters VII and IX.
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Part One: Ontological Bases
I. Conceptions of Concrete Reality: Sartre's Refusal of Materialism
The Sartre of the 1930s was in agreement with many of the key political convictions of the Marxists of his day. In numerous places in her autobiographical work La Force de l'âge, Simone de Beauvoir's account centres on Sartre's left political tendencies and on his associations and interests of the period, many of which suggest a certain sympathy and potential common ground with a Marxist outlook and project. Sartre shared not only his friend Paul Nizan's hatred of the bourgeoisie but also his hopes for a proletarian revolution.1 Although Sartre did not commit himself to any left political group, he considered joining the French Communist Party many times during the 1930s. Despite these political sympathies and, like his Marxist contemporaries, a strong antipathy towards idealist philosophy, Sartre was to remain sceptical of Marxism, and his existentialist philosophy would itself become the object of increasingly scathing criticisms on the part of his Marxist contemporaries. The source of these disagreements was largely located at the level of philosophical rather than political convictions.2 In particular, Sartre wanted to account for the concrete reality of existence, but he rejected the Marxist insistence on materialism which, as he would later explain in his preface to Nizan's Aden Arabie, he had from a young age perceived to be deterministic and reductive of subjective freedom.3 From the mid 1940s onwards, Sartre's Marxist critics in the PCF for their part were highly critical of his insistence on the irreducible freedom of consciousness, consid1 2
3
Simone de Beauvoir, La Force de l'âge (Gallimard, 1960) pp. 41-2 (hereafter FA). Mark Poster, Existential Marxism in Postwar France (Princeton University Press, 1975) p.131, and Andrew Dobson, Jean-Paul Sartre and the Politics of Reason (Cambridge University Press, 1993) pp. 46-7, have both expressed this view. Situations IV (Gallimard, 1964) p. 147
25
ering this tendency to be an instance of philosophical idealism. The principal bone of contention between the two sides was therefore the issue of what constituted concrete reality as both believed that they were better placed to account for it. The PCF's rejection of Sartre, with the exception of only a few critical studies by communists,4 tended to be excessively reductive of his thought due in good measure to the feeling that the popularity of existentialism represented a challenge to that of the Party after the Liberation. The question of the early Sartre's knowledge of the materialist conception which underlies Marxist philosophy, and of the implications of his view of it for the relationship between his thought and Marxism, is a more complex one. Our discussion will turn to this following an examination of the early Sartre's conception of reality.
Sartre's Conception of the Concrete Reality of Existence: 'Etre-en-Situation' Speaking of his ontological preoccupations of the 1930s, Sartre claims in Questions de méthode that it was 4au concret absolu que nous voulions arriver.'5 There is much in his works of the period to substantiate this claim. In La Transcendance de l'ego, Sartre rejects the Husserlian transcendental ego insisting that, unlike consciousness, it is transcendent. This means that the ego cannot be separated off from the objects of the external world. Moreover, Sartre remains faithful to Husserl's principle of intentionality thereby ensuring that consciousness can exist only in relation to those objects. It is of the 4
5
26
Henri Lefebvre's L'Existentialisme (Editions du Sagittaire, 1946), and Henri Mougin's La Sainte famille existentialiste (Editions sociales, 1947) had the merit of treating the question at length and in some depth. Jean Kanapa's vitriolic L'Existentialisme n 'est pas un humanisme (Editions sociales, 1947), however, was more representative of the tone of the French communists' response to existentialism in the immediate postwar years. Questions de méthode (Gallimard, 1960) p.23 (hereafter QM).
very nature of both being and consciousness to be in the world: 'tout est dehors, tout, jusqu'à nous-mêmes: dehors, dans le monde', he writes in an article of 1939 devoted to Husserl's thought.6 In opposition to the idealist French philosophers who had given consciousness a content comprised of external objects which it was supposed to have assimilated, Sartre insists on consciousness being empty and translucid, constantly projecting outwards: 'si [...] vous entriez "dans" une conscience, vous seriez saisi par un tourbillon et rejeté au dehors, près de l'arbre [...] car la conscience n'a pas de "dedans"; elle n'est rien que le dehors d'elle-même'.7 Sartre hence entirely rejects any notion of there being an interiority to consciousness, a refusal which, in so far as it is of a piece with his dislike of 'la vie intérieure' [FA: 32], harmonises with his reservations about bourgeois literature which were later to find fuller expression in the indepth critique included in Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?. If the phenomenological movement had called for a return to our perception of things themselves, Sartre's philosophical vision radicalises that of Husserl in this regard. Moreover, it is his refusal of transcendental idealism from the outset and his insistence on situating the ego in the world along with the objects of perception which is one of the key reasons why his early philosophy could subsequently draw closer to Marxism without fear of debilitating internal contradiction. In L'Etre et le néant, Sartre states unequivocally that 'l'être est antérieur au néant et le fonde'.8 Consciousness cannot be conceived of as an abstraction from being: 'on ne [peut] concevoir le Néant en dehors de l'être, ni comme notion complémentaire et abstraite [...] Il faut que le Néant soit donné au cœur de l'Etre' [EN: 57]. Consciousness is a negation of being but its capacity to negate must be a characteristic of being itself because only something that enjoys the status of being can negate [EN: 57]. Consequently, Sartre argues, '[l]'Etre par qui le Néant arrive dans le monde est un être en qui, dans son Etre, il est question du Néant de son Etre' [EN: 58]. The only kind of being which matches this description, Sartre concludes, is man 6 7 8
'Une Idée fondamentale de Husserl', in Situations I (Gallimard, 1947) p.34 Ibid p.33 L'Etre et le néant (Gallimard, 1943) p.51 (hereafter EN).
27
[EN: 59]. What is striking here, in view of the commonly reductive readings of Sartrean existentialism of the 1940s which presented it as a form of philosophical idealism, is the unambiguous way in which Sartre accords initial priority to being over consciousness. He even argues that the very apparition of consciousness 'renvoie bien à l'effort d'un en-soi pour se fonder' [EN: 122]. Moreover, although his discussion centres elsewhere on consciousness' capacity for transcending being, he insists that consciousness should nevertheless not be conceived of as dissociable from the body which is 'une structure permanente de mon être et la condition permanente de possibilité de ma conscience comme conscience du monde et comme projet transcendant vers mon futur.' [EN: 376] Although it is in the nature of consciousness to transcend, the body remains indispensable to my future possibilities. Consciousness does enjoy a certain autonomy, but it is never distinct as such from being and Sartre goes so far as to speak of there being a 'facticité du pour-soi. C'est cette facticité qui permet de dire qu'il est, qu'il existe' [EN: 121]. Sartre's emphasis on the concreteness of existing things with which consciousness comes into contact is clearly perceptible in his fictional writings of the period. In works such as La Nausée and Erostrate,9 there is at once a sense of intense fascination and of Célinian violence and disgust vis a vis the concrete reality of objects in the world. It is the 'atroce jouissance' [N: 187] that overcomes Roquentin when observing the root of the chestnut tree in La Nausée which is generally taken to be the high point of the work. His consciousness is so entirely taken with perceiving the root, which is described as 'au-dessous de toute explication' [N: 185] and as having 'perdu son allure inoffensive de catégorie abstraite' [N: 182], that he feels that he becomes the root itself: 'J'étais la racine de marronnier.' [N: 187] Sartre's retention of the principle of intentionality in conjunction with his preoccupation with the reality of objects here yields a heightened awareness of the concreteness of existence as Roquentin seems to be consumed by the object of his perception. In Erostrate, Paul Hilbert has a prostitute parade around the room naked whilst he watches, thereby reducing her to the condition of brute facticity, an 9
28
Le Mur (Gallimard, 1939) pp. 77-99.
object to be observed by the transcendental consciousness. The narrator's descriptions of Marcelle in L'Age de raison similarly often focus on the facticity of the body and it is the physical condition of pregnancy, and the consequent need for Mathieu to arrange an abortion, which provide the impetus for the central action of the novel. We are informed of Marcelle's 'diarrhées' and she is described, because pregnant, as 'pourrie' [AR: 156]. Her pregnancy represents the considerable potential of the facticity of existence to limit the freedom of consciousness. Sartre's opposition to philosophical idealism and desire to account for concrete reality in his works of the 1930s and early 1940s is hence clear. He accords priority to the objects of the world and not to ideas. And yet, concrete reality is highly complex in Sartre's conception because it is neverthless dependent on the perception and synthetic understanding of consciousness: 'si la négation n'existait pas, aucune question ne saurait être posée, en particulier celle de l'être.' [EN: 57] Sartre remains faithful by and large to the subjective outlook onto the world of phenomenology and hence claims that without the existence of consciousness, not only would being lack the justification that it seeks but would be without a foundation: 'Pour fonder son propre être, il faut exister à distance de soi et cela impliquerait une certaine néantisation de l'être fondé comme de l'être fondant, une dualité qui serait unité: nous retomberions dans le cas du pour-soi.' [EN: 119] The paradox both of asserting that being has priority over consciousness and of suggesting, as Sartre also does, that it is dependent on consciousness is indicative of a tension between his dual focus on ontological and on phenomenological questions in his philosophy. Sartre wants to assert the existence of a mind-independent reality and to account for it on the one hand, and yet also claims that this reality is dependent on consciousness' perception and apprehension of it. In La Transcendance de l'ego, this dual ambition is expressed in his positing a kind of simultaneity of consciousness and world: 'Il suffit que le Moi soit contemporain du monde et que la dualité sujet-objet [...] disparaisse définitivement des préoccupations philosophiques. Le Monde n'a pas créé le Moi, le Moi n'a pas créé le Monde'. [TE: 86-7] He explains in his war diaries that he is postulating 'non l'esprit, non le corps [...] mais la condition humaine en 29
tant qu'unité indivisible', and seeks to 'établir la réalité humaine, la condition humaine, l'être-dans-le-monde de l'homme et son être-ensituation.'10 This synthesis of external reality and consciousness is often presented by Sartre, as Dominic LaCapra suggests,11 as involving a sort of dialectical interplay between the two. Sartre claims in L'Etre et le néant, that '[1]'homme et le monde sont des êtres relatifs et le principe de leur être est la relation.' [EN: 355] Indeed, his discussion of the freedom of consciousness in relation to the facticity of situation presupposes such a relationship [EN: 538-612]. The synthesis of consciousness and world, Sartre argues, is not however a matter of bringing together two disparate phenomena because they should be seen as forming a synthetic totality from the outset. It is this synthetic totality comprised of consciousness and world which Sartre labels the concrete: Le concret ne saurait être que la totalité synthétique dont la conscience comme le phénomène ne constituent que des moments. Le concret, c'est l'homme dans le monde avec cette union spécifique de l'homme au monde que Heidegger [...] nomme « être-dans-le-monde ». [EN: 37-8]
Sartre's conception of the concrete is clearly not that of materialism although it is worth noting that his fictional representations of concrete reality and the betwitching and limiting influence which it can exercise over consciousness often seem closer to materialism than his theoretical formulations do. In these theoretical formulations, having asserted the intial priority of the 4en-soi' over the 'pour-soi', Sartre posits the concrete as a synthetic whole composed of both which would seem to suggest that they are entirely interdependent. However, lest one should conclude that Sartre thereby gives some quarter to idealism, it should be remembered that his view of consciousness as empty and translucent, and the central role which he accords to the Husserlian principle of intentionality, mean that he conceives of consciousness as in any case thoroughly taken up with external objects
10 11
30
Les Carnets de la drôle de guerre (Gallimard, 1995) p.205 (hereafter Q . Dominic LaCapra, A Preface to Sartre (London: Methuen, 1978) pp. 122-3.
of perception.12 Although consciousness retains an independence from being and confers meaning on being which it would otherwise entirely lack, consciousness hence remains an opening onto its 'massif, contingent character, its 'pleine positivité' [EN: 33]. Moreover, Sartre is keen to avoid the suggestion that the qualities which we habitually attribute to the 'en-soi' can be assimilated to the meaning-conferring consciousness. Although an unperceived 'en-soi' would not exist, its qualities are nevertheless intrinsic to it as the following statement suggests: 'si nous aimons une femme, c'est parce qu'elle est aimable.'13 What then does the Sartrean conception of the concrete ultimately amount to? Sartre rejects philosophical idealism and yet cannot accept what LaCapra terms a 'captive objectivism', be this interpreted primarily as Heideggerian ontologism,14 as positivism,15 or, as I shall take it principally to mean, as materialism. Sartre rejects the 'pensée de survol' of idealism whilst insisting at the same time on the irreducible freedom of consciousness. The view, expressed in L Imaginaire, that the aesthetic involves transcendence of a material analogon through the imaginary appears to suggest that it is by definition a metaphysical phenomenon. However, Sartre's keeness to stress that consciousness is in the world and to accord to the objects of perception their full reality means that he in fact tends strongly towards realism, although with the important caveat that the freedom of consciousness must be safeguarded. Sartre's description of his position as "néo-réaliste" in a letter to Beauvoir of January 1940 would seem to be the most accurate.16
12
13 14 15 16
Juliette Simont, in Jean-Paul Sartre. Un demi-siècle de liberté (De Boeck&Larcier, 1998, p. 19), points to the importance of Sartre's fidelity to the principle of intentionality in his avoidance of idealism, and in his advancing a realist position which does not succumb to the ills of positivism. Situations I (Gallimard, 1947) p.34 LaCapra op.cit. p. 122 Simont op.cit. pp. 19, 86. Lettres au Castor II p.56 (Gallimard, 1983) (hereafter LCII).
31
Marxism, Determinism and the Question of Subjectivity In the closing paragraph of La Transcendance de l'ego, Sartre's insistence on a simultaneity of consciousness and world is articulated explicitly in conjunction with his rejection of the doctrine of materialism and his reservations about Marxist philosophy: Il m'a toujours semblé qu'une hypothèse de travail aussi féconde que le matérialisme historique n'exigeait nullement pour fondement l'absurdité qu'est le matérialisme métaphysique. Il n'est pas nécessaire, en effet, que l'objet précède le sujet pour que les pseudo-valeurs spirituelles s'évanouissent et pour que la morale retrouve ses bases dans la réalité. [TE: 86]
This statement is immensely rich in significance, revealing as it does on the one hand Sartre's sympathies with historical materialism and yet also pointing to the fact that his conception of concrete reality developed partly in opposition to the materialist conception which he saw as lying at its basis. Sartre's reactions to Marxist philosophy can hence be seen as important to the very formation and articulation of his own philosophical position from as early as his first major published work. Indeed he would later, in Questions de méthode, highlight the importance of this complex relationship, arguing that his existentialism 's'est développé en marge du marxisme et non pas contre lui.' [QM: 22] The closing sentence of La Transcendance de l'ego indicates that not only a political awareness but also a clear concern with the future articulation of an ethico-and politico-philosophical position is of importance to Sartre at this time. He claims that once consciousness is accorded equal status with the facticity of the world, rather than being relegated to secondary status, '[i]l n'en faut pas plus pour fonder philosophiquement une morale et une politique absolument positives' [TE: 87], a wish which considerably problematises any portrayal of the pre-war Sartre as having been almost entirely apolitical. What must not be overlooked is the fact that much of Sartre's early work is expressive of an initial destructive phase - destructive notably of bourgeois thought - which he was to speak of a few years later in his
32
war diaries and which he claims is contrary to his fundamentally constructive disposition: 'J'ai toujours été constructeur et La Nausée et Le Mur n'ont donné de moi qu'une image fausse, parce que j'étais obligé d'abord de détruire.' [C: 280] The question of Sartre's attitude to materialism lies at the heart of his relationship to Marxist philosophy up until the 1950s. In an interview of 1970, Sartre defined his project as having been from the outset about attempting to 'donner à l'homme à la fois son autonomie et sa réalité parmi les objets réels, en évitant l'idéalisme et sans tomber dans un matérialisme mécaniste.'17 The inclusion of the term 'mécaniste' to describe the materialism he opposed is significant not least because it is almost entirely absent from his references to materialism in the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, as I shall argue with reference to the diverse interpretations of Marx and distinctive theoretical positions of the early Lukâcs, Antonio Gramsci, and Henri Lefebvre, all of whose thought was in the lineage of Marxist philosophy, the question of what is implied by the term materialism in the context of historical materialism is highly complex. The plurality of interpretations of Marx's thought is itself a major source of difficulty. Sartre's knowledge of the Marxist theoretical tradition was generally somewhat limited until the latter years of the 1940s and the 1950s and he tended to take a reductive view of what its thinkers had understood by materialism in the context of the materialist conception of history, as the first part of his Matérialisme et Révolution (1946) reveals.18 This text, originally published in Les Temps modernes, is the most important document of Sartre's relationship with Marxism amongst his theoretical works of the 1930s and 1940s and will provide the principal focus of our discussion in this chapter subsequent to a brief survey of previous appearances made by materialism, determinism and Marxism in Sartre's writings. It is clear that Sartre's principal objection to materialism, and hence the basis of his reservations about Marxist philosophy, was that he believed that postulating the materiality of the world meant that human consciousness would be relegated to the status of a mere 17 18
Situations IX (Gallimard, 1972) p. 104 In Situations III (Gallimard, 1949) pp. 135-225 (hereafter MR).
33
epiphenomenon, subject to the determinations of matter rather than acting upon the world. In his war diaries he notes that '[1]'erreur du matérialisme [...] est de faire de l'homme un être naturel.' [C: 204-5] As an entirely natural being, Sartre thinks, man becomes nothing more than an object in the world amongst other objects. Sartre cannot conceive of how any place for an independent, creative consciousness can be safeguarded in such a schema. In L'Existentialisme est un humanisme, he claims that '[t]out matérialisme a pour effet de traiter tous les hommes, y compris soi-même [...] comme un ensemble de réactions déterminées, que rien ne distingue de l'ensemble des qualités et des phénomènes qui constituent une table ou une chaise' [EH: 58]. Sartre considers the Marxist adherence to the doctrine of materialism and the priority accorded to the objective over the subjective as an instance of the 'sérieux': 'Marx a posé le dogme premier du sérieux lorsqu'il a affirmé la priorité de l'objet sur le sujet.' [C: 579] In Les Chemins de la liberté, the communist Brunet's adherence to Stalinist Marxist ideology unites both this type of 'sérieux' and a fatalist view of historical change: he sees only bourgeois idealist abstraction in Mathieu's defence of independent, free thinking and he 'continu[e] à [s]e prendre pour le processus historique', as Schneider puts it.19 In L'Imaginaire, Sartre argues that '[c]e n'est pas le déterminisme, c'est le fatalisme qui est l'envers de la liberté.' [/: 99] Determinism posits that specific causal relationships must pertain between given phenomena, whereas fatalism involves working backwards from a posited future outcome to insist that the causal chain of events which led to it was bound to happen. For Sartre, the key difference between the two is that fatalism necessarily involves the work of consciousness whilst determinism belongs to natural processes alone and 'ne saurait s'appliquer en aucune façon aux faits de conscience' [/: 99]. Sartre is wary of determinism nevertheless with respect to theories such as materialism which do not stop at the idea of causal determinations in nature but also - erroneously, Sartre believes - assimilate consciousness to the natural such that it must be subject to the same causal processes as material things. Materialist anthropology, Sartre thinks, involves a huge category error because man, by virtue of 19
34
La Mort dans lame (Gallimard, 1949) p.342 (hereafter MA).
his possessing a consciousness, should conversely be seen as qualitatively different from the natural world and not subject to its physical laws. Sartre's film script Les Jeux sont faits is highly illuminating of his relationship with Marxist philosophy and politics in the first half of the 1940s. In this work, remarkably written only a short time after L'Etre et le néant in 1943, Sartre stages the idea of social determinism commonly associated with Marxist thought, ostensibly adopting a philosophical stance of which he is himself critical. He was to remark in an interview of 1947 that his film script 'ne sera pas existentialiste' adding that 'l'existentialisme n'admet point que les jeux soient jamais faits.'20 In the piece the protagonists Pierre Dumaine and Eve Charlier, who first meet each other in a dreamworld-like afterlife, discover that their amorous relationship is unworkable upon their return to the real world in which they are situated once again in class-divided society and are each implicated, directly or indirectly, in a conflictual political situation. Pierre is working class and the leader of a radical left political group whereas Eve is bourgeois and the wife of 'milicien' leader André Charlier. Sartre's comment that his text 'baigne dans le déterminisme'21 is clearly a reference to the ultimate failure of Eve and Pierre to transcend the obstacles posed by their concrete situations. Were the reader not aware of Sartre's refusal of deterministic thinking, she could be forgiven for categorising Les Jeux sont faits with the Marxist literature of the period as the text is essentially supportive of the Marxist world-view. The idea of class identity being ultimately more defining of individuals' personalities and possibilities than personal characteristics is clearly perceptible. For example, when forced to choose, Pierre feels he must put his political associates before a personal attachment whereas Eve, in line with the values of her bourgeois social context, does not understand why he feels that he should. Pierre's feeling of obligation towards his fellow political activists is suggestive of the classic Marxist notion of a proletarian class consciousness which, in its cohesiveness, Marxists supposed 20 21
Le Figaro (29/4/47), re-printed in Michel Contât and Michel Rybalka, Les Ecrits de Sartre (Gallimard, 1970) p. 156 Contât and Rybalka op.cit.p. 156
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would serve as an arm against bourgeois oppression. Pierre holds a more pronounced idea of class identity than Eve does, tending towards the view that a person is indelibly marked by her social origins, as when he tells Eve: - [ . . . ] je hais ceux qui vous entourent. - Je ne les ai pas choisis. - Ils vous ont marquée.22
Sartre's staging of the classic Marxist emphasis on social conditioning through the characterisation of Pierre is not, in and of itself, sufficient for Les Jeux sont faits to be categorised as a Marxist text however. What could potentially justify such a categorisation is rather the fact that the story's dénouement itself confirms Pierre's world-view. Ultimately, class division and conflict render the couple's relationship impossible. This outcome accords Pierre, and more importantly the class struggle in which he is implicated, a sort of moral victory over the bourgeois world-view. From a political standpoint, Les Jeux sont faits is hence without any doubt a work which supports the communist cause. However, the reader's awareness that Sartre is deliberately staging the Marxist idea of social determinism - even though he does so in a somewhat exaggerated manner23 - which he himself does not support debilitates any attempt to categorise the text as Marxist. Ultimately, Les Jeux sont faits is best understood as an expression of political sympathy but philosophical divergence with Marxism and, as such, is highly representative of Sartre's stance with regard to Marxism at the time. Despite accusing Marx's philosophy of being a manifestation of the 'sérieux' in his war diaries, Sartre's remarks about Marx are of a very different sort in 'A Propos de l'existentialisme: Mise au point' (1944), a piece published in the communist journal Action, which sought to answer communist criticisms of existentialism and to smooth over points of philosophical divergence. Here Sartre 22 23
36
Les Jeux sont faits (Nagel, 1947) p. 117 Only Marxists with a limited knowledge Marxist reflection on history and society would have advocated a view of the historical process whose deterministic character was mechanistic to the degree suggested by Les Jeux sont faits.
seems keen to present Marx as a sort of proto-existentialist thinker, in a manner similar to the humanist Marxists who stressed the existential dimension implicit in Marx's conception of man: 'Marx n'accepteraitil pas [...] cette devise de l'homme qui est la nôtre: faire et en faisant se faire et n'être rien que ce qu'il s'est fait.'24 In fact, this reading of Marx is perhaps best seen to some extent as a conciliatory gesture towards the communists by Sartre, who was seeking to be accepted as a critical fellow traveller.25 His attitude towards Marx was never as unreservedly favourable in other works of these years and he tended, in the heat of polemic, to assimilate Marxist thought in general, with the exception of Trotskyism, to the scientistic, positivistic thought characteristic of the Stalinist theoretical paradigm of the era. In the immediate postwar years, Sartre's existentialist philosophy was the object of virulent attack notably from the communist left, which saw existentialism's popularity as a challenge to that of the PCF. Amongst a plethora of articles, and a number of full-length studies by communist intellectuals, Henri Lefebvre's L'Existentialisme (1946), Henri Mougin's La Sainte famille existentialiste (1947), and Georg Lukâcs's Existentialisme ou marxisme? (1948) stand out in particular as valuable critiques of existentialism. The debates of these years have received a good deal of critical attention, and a thorough account, including appraisals of these key full-length works, is provided by Mark Poster in his Existential Marxism in Postwar France (Princeton, 1975).26 Broadly speaking, whilst Mougin made the charge of philosophical idealism the focal point of his critique of Sartre's philosophy, Lefebvre and Lukâcs concurred in the view that existentialism was a manifestation of the philosophical irrationalism characteristic of bourgeois thought since the nineteenth 24 25 26
Action no. 17 (12/1944), reprinted in Contât and Rybalka Les Ecrits de Sartre p.655 On a raison de se révolter (Gallimard, 1974) p.26 (hereafter ORR). For a more recent discussion of relations between Sartre and the PCF in the immediate postwar years, see David Drake's Intellectuals and Politics in Postwar France (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002) pp. 23-33. This matter was also the focus of Drake's 'Sartre et le Parti Communiste Français après la Libération (1944-48)', a paper given on 23rd July, 2005 at a conference entitled 'Jean-Paul Sartre : écriture et engagement' which was held at Cerisy-la-Salle.
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century. Only dialectical materialist philosophy could offer a remedy to the ills of philosophical irrationalism, Lefebvre arguing that not only did it save reason from irrationalism but also, in Hegelian fashion, that it could incorporate and transform the irrational: 'cet irrationnel - l'action et la pratique, les contradictions multiples de la vie et de la pensée - devient le contenu, le fondement de la Raison concète, au lieu d'en être exclu.'27 For all three writers, existentialism went hand in hand with a reactionary politics and Lukâcs went so far as to present contemporary existentialism as the latest expression of bourgeois ideology. Existentialism, he claimed, reflected 'sur le plan de l'idéologie, le chaos spirituel et moral de l'intelligence bourgeoise actuelle',28 a conviction shared by Herbert Marcuse in an article of 1948 devoted to Sartre's philosophy.29 With hindsight, the excessive reductiveness of this charge is readily apparent in its derivation from a dogmatic insistence on evaluating Sartre's philosophy in accordance with the classic Marxist assimilation of non-materialist philosophy to bourgeois ideology.
Sartre's Matérialisme et révolution Matérialisme et révolution was clearly intended by Sartre as a riposte to his communist critics. In this text, he goes on the offensive, polemically labelling Marxist philosophy inept and charging it with being an unsuitable theoretical basis for a revolutionary politics. Matérialisme et révolution is an indispensable and yet difficult work to assess as an indicator of how Sartre's thought relates to Marxist philosophy. A brief recapitulation of the principal arguments of the first part of the text, which is what will concern us in this chapter, should provide an adequate basis for an in-depth analysis of this
27 28 29
38
Henri Lefebvre L'Existentialisme p.249 Georg Lukâcs L'Existentialisme ou marxisme? (Nagel, 1948) p. 19 Herbert Marcuse 'Existentialism: remarks on Jean-Paul Sartre's L'Etre et le néant\ in Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 8, no.3, pp. 309-336, (3/1948). Marcuse presents existentialism as a support to the ideology of free competition under capitalism (p.323).
relationship. Sartre delivers a brilliant critique of the doctrines of materialism and dialectical materialism intended as a settling of scores with the areas of Marxist thought which he opposes and as a prelude to advancing an alternative, existentialist-inspired theory of revolution in the second part of the text. The difficulty in the first part centres on the issue of precisely what role these doctrines play in the theories of Marx and Marxist theorists. For all that Sartre exposes the contradications and incoherences of materialism and in particular dialectical materialism, the full relevance of his criticisms to the thought of Marx and many other Marxist theorists is questionable and inevitably leads us back to complex questions of interpretation which have themselves long been the subject of controversy within Marxism. It remains nevertheless broadly the case, as Mark Poster points out,30 that Sartre's critique is primarily a response to the Stalinist philosophical world-view which was dominant in the PCF of the 1940s and which the Soviet leader had set out in his highly influential Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938).31 The first major argument of Matérialisme et révolution is that materialism, although an ostensibly positivistic and anti-metaphysical doctrine, is itself guilty of metaphysical abstraction because it involves the superimposition of an objectivist conception of the world onto reality. The objectivist conception is superimposed because it denies the subjective experience which is necessary to legitimate it. If man is entirely composed of matter, Sartre thinks, then his free subjectivity is denied. The affirmation that everything is material hence cannot be derived from our actual experience of the world. Materialists are caught in an insoluble contradiction because they reject metaphysics outright in the name of a scientific conception of reality and yet fall back on metaphysics to make this very claim. It is what Sartre sees as the denial of subjectivity in particular, however, which is the basis for his opposition to materialism. If everything is matter, Sartre argues, then explanations of why things are as they are 30 31
Mark Poster op.cit. p. 129 Michael Kelly, in Modern French Marxism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982) p.39, reminds us that Stalin's primer was by far the most influential introduction to Marxist ideas in the period.
39
and how change occurs can be reduced to nothing more than scientific descriptions. Sartre speaks of materialism as engendering a 'mythe de l'objectivité', as a doctrine which works to 'éliminer la subjectivité en réduisant le monde, avec l'homme dedans, à un système d'objets' [MR: 138]. The complexity of evaluating Sartre's critique of materialism stems at one and the same time from the perceptiveness and, in many places, validity of his objections on the one hand, and yet their problematic applicability to the Marxist philosophy to which they are supposed to relate. On the issue of materialism, Sartre himself acknowledges the questionable relevance of his criticisms to Marxism, explicitly anticipating the objection that the materialism of which he speaks is in fact i e matérialisme naïf d'Helvétius et d'Holbach' [MR: 144]. Indeed, even brief consideration of the writings of Marx suffices to confirm the accuracy of this assessment. In the first of his 'Theses on Feuerbach' (1845), Marx had argued that '[t]he chief defect of all previous materialism (including Feuerbach's) is that the object, reality, what we apprehend through our senses, is understood only in the form of object or contemplation; but not as sensuous human activity, as practice; not subjectively.'32 This statement problematises greatly any mechanistic reading of Marx or any interpretation which presents his opposition to philosophical idealism as involving a conception of reality that suppresses the active and creative role of the subjective consciousness, as does the following which opens Marx's third 'thesis': 'The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of [men's] circumstances [...] forgets that circumstances are changed by men'.33 Marx's criticisms of the materialism of Feuerbach and his predecessors thus highlight specifically its inability to account for the centrality of human activity both in historical change and, in a manner which seems to anticipate Sartre's conception of the concrete, to how we should conceive of reality itself. Marx distinguishes between this materialism and a 'new materialism', which we can suppose to be his
32 33
40
Karl Marx, 'Theses on Feurbach', in The Portable Karl Marx (New York: Viking Penguin, 1983), ed. Eugene Kamenka, p. 155 IbidpA56
own, whose standpoint is 'human society'. It follows that Sartre's objection that the materialist doctrine involves a metaphysical superimposition of a theoretical schema onto reality is hence hardly applicable to Marx's thought of the 1840s. Indeed, Antonio Gramsci was later to point out that affirmations of materialism in the first half of the nineteenth century in any case involved rejecting philosophical idealism more than they implied an adherence to a precise doctrine: The term "materialism" in the first fifty years of the nineteenth century should be understood not only in its restricted technical philosophical sense [...]. The name materialism was given to any philosophical doctrine which excluded transcendence from the realm of thought. It was given therefore, not only to pantheism and immanentism, but to any practical attitude inspired by political realism [...]. 35
If the conception of materialism advanced by Marx is not reductive of subjectivity, but rather an expression of opposition to idealist philosophy as Gramsci argues, Sartre's charge of positivism, at least as Sartre formulates it, would similarly seem to be of doubtful relevance to his thought. Sartre presents the materialism adhered to by Marxists as an extreme type of positivism because involving a flat, unverifiable assertion about the nature of reality. Whereas nineteenth-century positivists recognised the limitations of their approach, Sartre argues, and they refrained from pronouncing on certain questions, such as whether God existed, the materialist assumes that his conceptual schema is a complete explanatory theory and flatly denies the existence of God. Sartre identifies here 'une prise de position nette et a priori sur un problème qui dépasse infiniment notre expérience.' [MR: 139] Whereas in reality, Marx's acknowledgement of the crucial role played by subjectivity means that his materialism does not involve the kind of abstraction from immediate human experience which would make his theoretical claims a wholly metaphysical 'pensée de survol'. Sartre hence exaggerates greatly the positivist implications of Marx's thought, reading Marx's materialism as a mere reaffirmation of the 34 35
Ibidp.\5S Antonio Gramsci Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), p.454 (hereafter PN).
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philosophical doctrine of materialism rather than as an insistence on taking the practical conditions for man's life as a social being and for his ideas as the basis for a conception of human history. Sartre's extended critique of'dialectical materialism' is similarly flawed by his excessively literal and narrow interpretation of the concept's comprising terms. Sartre starts out from the basic assumption that dialectical materialism involves a conceptual marriage of the Hegelian dialectical schema on the one hand, and of the assertion that reality is entirely composed of matter on the other. Sartre presents this marriage as a union of two radically different, analytically separate, elements which are in fact irreconcilable. Not only are the ideas which comprise the Hegelian system 'naturellement synthétiques' [MR: 145] but they are characterised by a 'dynamisme' [MR: 144] which propels the dialectic forward, whereas 'la matière dont parlent les savants' which materialists insist on is characterised by its inertia [MR: 145]. Sartre offers little to substantiate this controversial latter claim, adding only that '[c]ela signifie qu'elle est incapable de rien produire par soimême. Véhicule de mouvements et d'énergie, ces mouvements et cette énergie lui viennent toujours du dehors' [MR: 145]. In fact, the claim that matter is inert is an essential support to the distinction which Sartre wishes to maintain between matter and consciousness in order to affirm the independence of the latter. As such it is indicative of a fundamental opposition between spontaneity and inertia which runs through his entire philosophy,36 Sartre conceiving of consciousness alone as capable of creative agency. Sartre also objects that the Hegelian consciousness is an intrinsically dialectical construction, but when the dialectic is inverted so as to explain the progression of the material world it is not intrinsic in this way and hence loses its essential and necessary character. Dialectical materialists are attempting the impossible: they want to retain the essential character of the dialectic and yet they invert the dialectic so as to apply it to the material world even though this inversion undermines the claim to essentialness. Turning the materialists' hostility to idealism against 36
42
Thomas Flynn, in Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason (University of Chicago Press, 1997) Vol.1, p.39, reminds us of this vital central axis of Sartre's thought.
them, Sartre argues furthermore that in trying to give matter a synthetic mode of development which belongs only to ideas, dialectical materialists also inadvertently fall into an idealism. Their interpretation of the material world turns its objects into ideas because it involves projecting the Hegelian dialectical schema onto them.
Stalin's Marxism Sartre's rather literal understanding of the formulation 'dialectical materialism' is not without precedent in Marxist thought. Behind his interpretation clearly lurks the theory of the dialectic of nature, associated in particular with the later Engels. Sartre discusses aspects of this influential theory, which Engels had formulated in his Anti-Duhring (1878) under the influence of Darwinian theory and which had constituted the basis for the scientistic conception of Marxism developed in the writings of the Second International thinkers, finally receiving its most brief and simplified formulation in Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism. However, Marx himself never actually employed the formulation 'dialectical materialism'37 and the question of the appropriateness of the concept in the context of the historical materialism of even his mature thought has long been a subject of debate within Marxism.38 Moreover, even those Marxist theorists who were affiliated to the PCF in the high Stalinist period of the 1930s to the early 1950s cannot all be fairly said to have employed the expression in the sense characteristic of the aforementioned scientistic current. I shall examine in some depth later the ways in which the PCF intellectual Henri Lefebvre in particular set out an alternative theoretical basis to the communist world-view in Le Matérialisme dialectique (1939) and other works.
37 38
Poster op.cit. p.40 David McLellan, for example, in his The Thought of Marx (London: Macmillan, 1971) p. 139, argues that Marx subscribed to the dialectic of nature thesis nevertheless. Humanist Marxists, by contrast, have long tended to set Marx apart from the thought of the later Engels.
43
Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism is one of the principal texts to which Sartre's attack on Marxist philosophy is a response. Even a cursory glance at this short work suffices to confirm the theoretical poverty of the world-view which Stalin sets out and the validity of Sartre's objections. In what is a most egregious distortion, Stalin gives the order of priority to dialectical materialism over historical materialism, thus seemingly recasting Marx's theory in the image of the work of the later Engels. Stalin writes: 'Historical materialism is the extension of the principles of dialectical materialism to the study of social life.'39 Social change, then, is presented by Stalin as operating along the same lines as the 'laws' governing nature which Engels had employed the Hegelian schema to establish. In consequence, history is perceived as having no element of contingency because social change can be entirely predicted: [...] social life, the history of society, ceases to be an agglomeration of 'accidents', and becomes the history of the development of society according to regular laws, and the study of the history of society becomes a science.40
Conceiving of historical change as such a predictable phenomenon, Stalin's claim that 'the liberation of the working class from the yoke of capitalism cannot be effected by slow changes, by reforms, but only by a qualitative change of the capitalist system, by revolution'41 appears, at least from the Sartrean perspective, paradoxical and out of place. If man's agency and the progression of history can be reduced to dialectical materialist laws, then surely the future advent of a socialist society must be an inevitability, whereas the affirmation of the necessity of revolution implies a conscious decision on the part of individual subjects to engage in concerted political activity.42 Sartre 39 40 41 42
44
Joseph Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1939) p.3 IbidpAl Ibidp.12 It is worth noting that the struggle for political revolution was not one of the more central Marxist themes for Stalin, as it would never be for the PCF either. In Problems of Leninism (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1945 [1926]), his urgings for proletarian mobilisation in the construction of the USSR suggested an implicit recognition of the importance of subjective partici-
points up this incompatibility between the Stalinist theoretical reliance on dialectical materialism and the political objective of proletarian revolution and counters, echoing his ontological claims in L'Etre et le néant, that man must be conceived of as ontologically free in order to be able to emancipate himself politically: 'si l'homme n'est pas originellement libre, mais une fois pour toutes déterminé, on ne peut même pas concevoir ce que pourrait être sa libération.' [MR: 207] Sartre is also critical of Stalin's claim in Dialectical and Historical Materialism that society's superstructures are a reflection of the economic base, clearly wary of its determinist implications, and points to the incoherence of a theory which postulates that superstructural and ideological elements enjoy a certain autonomy whilst at the same time riveting them to a dialectical materialist schema [MR: 157-159].
Non-Mechanistic Marxist Dialectics: Lukâcs, Gramsci and Lefebvre Sartre's critique of materialism and dialectical materialism in the first part of Matérialisme et révolution is hence a sustained attack on the scientistic current of Marxism, known since the Stalinist era as 'diamat', which remained the dominant theoretical world-view amongst Sartre's communist contemporaries. There is almost no discussion of Marx himself in the original 1946 version of the text, a point which Sartre would subsequently acknowledge grudgingly in an added footnote when the piece was re-published in 1949 [MR: 135]. Yet, Sartre's references to 'marxistes' [MR: 161, 162], 'la matière marxiste' [MR: 161], and to 'l'attitude révolutionnaire' for which 'la foi matérialiste' has historically been the theoretical basis [MR: 173], in addition to occasional negative allusions to Marx [MR: 141, 165, 169], suffice to give the impression that he is addressing his critique of dialectical materialism to Marxism in its entirety. Examination of the thought of Marx and much Marxist literature reveals the pation in collective action, but this was in a post-revolutionary situation. Moreover, even in this text, there is more than a strain of dictatorial fatalism in his projecting onto the proletariat 'an invincible faith in the victory of Socialist construction' (p. 177), as if the latter is bound to take place.
45
inappropriateness of such an amalgamation. Although the scientistic world-view was the most influential in Marxist circles, notably in the late 1930s and 1940s, owing to the dominance of Stalinism, the most significant contributors to Marxist theory of the first half of the twentieth century insisted that this tendency was not a faithful representation of the thought of Marx and themselves produced Marxist theories which ran counter to it. It is to these debates which we will now turn our attention, keeping in mind the early Sartre's fundamental theoretical objection to Marxist philosophy, namely his belief that its insistence on a materialist conception of reality is deterministic and reductive of free subjective thought and agency. In the work of many Marxist writers, the dividing line between exposition of Marx's thought and a distinctive Marxist theoretical position is often difficult to establish, exegesis and original theorising becoming almost indissociable. References to such as 'Marxist method', 'dialectical method', and 'dialectical materialism' take on particular meanings and resonances in the context of different theorists' preoccupations, even though those theorists often claim to be merely elucidating the ideas of Marx. What is striking, however, is the marked scepticism which is in evidence with respect to the doctrines of the dialectic of nature and of philosophical materialism in the writings of thinkers whose theories are otherwise contrasting in significant ways. In what follows, I shall focus on three thinkers in particular, the pre-Stalinist Lukâcs, Gramsci and Lefebvre, relating their positions to Sartre's thought. In History and Class Consciousness (1923), Lukâcs' declared task is 'to understand the essence of Marx's method and to apply it correctly', and this involves 'defending orthodox Marxism against Engels himself.'43 The failing of Engels' position in the Anti-Duhring, Lukâcs argues, is that it does not acknowledge 'the most vital interaction, namely the dialectical relation between subject and object in the historical process, let alone give it the prominence it deserves.' [HCC: 3] If the objects of the world remain unaltered by thought, then thought in turn is relegated to a merely contemplative role. The 43
46
History and Class Consciousness Preface (xlii) (London: Merlin Press, 1971 [1923]) (hereafter: HCC).
dialectical method sets out to change reality and this requires the interaction of the two fields, Marx's commitment to a unity of theory and practice depending on their interaction. Lukâcs uses the formulation 'dialectical materialism' when describing the Marxist philosophical vision although it is clear that, as in the case of Lefebvre after him, this should not be understood as the simple union of two separate doctrines which have not been worked into a new conceptual synthesis. First, he is critical of 'the vulgar materialists' suggesting, as Sartre does, that the unmediated positivism of their position involves metaphysical abstraction. They are unable, Lukâcs argues, to relate the phenomena of the world to the 'concrete totality' [HCC: 9]. Second, although Lukâcs articulates what is in many ways a Hegelian Marxism, his preoccupation with conceiving of reality as a totality being itself clearly derivative of Hegel's philosophy, the dialectical relationships which he charts are some way removed from the Hegelian schema, as set out in the Logic, interpreted strictly.44 Indeed, stressing as it does an ongoing dialectic of subject and history, his theory can be seen as a vital precursor to that of Sartre in Questions de méthode, a line of filiation which we will examine in Part Two. Rather as Merleau-Ponty would do notably in the immediate postwar years,45 Lukâcs argues that for a dialectical theory there is no contradiction between asserting at one and the same time that the progression of history follows a pattern and that the course of historical change is decided in the present moment [HCC: 4]. Indeed, for Lukâcs the dialectical method necessarily implies that history be made in the present in relation to the objective conditions provided by social history thus far. Human praxis is hence indispensable to historical change. In the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci also insists on the centrality 44
45
Maurice Finocchiaro, in a section of his Gramsci and the History of Dialectical Thought (Cambridge University Press: 1998) (pp. 182-230) devoted to Hegel's dialectic, points to four principal interpretations of the dialectic. Finocchiaro argues that the 'triadic' reading, which takes the dialectic to be principally the synthesis of thesis and antithesis, is both the most widespread and the least plausible. It is the version of the dialectic which became central to the scientistic current of Marxism and hence to diamat. Our discussion will turn to Merleau-Ponty's Sens et non-sens (Nagel : 1948) and Humanisme et Terreur (Gallimard, 1947) in chapter VI.
47
of human praxis, although without explicitly emphasising the role of dialectics as such. Indeed, praxis becomes the basis of Gramsci's historicist reading of Marxist philosophy. Not only historical change but also knowledge itself, and hence explanatory theories, depend on the subject in the existential present. For Gramsci, no given philosophy, including Marxism itself, can be timelessly true because such theories are inevitably a response to the historical eras in which they are produced. This thorough-going historical relativism ties in closely with Gramsci's opposition to all forms of objectivism, and hence to the dialectic of nature. Gramsci is critical of these positivistic tendencies' failure to take into account the conditions of possibility of objective knowledge, which is to say that they do not conceive of our knowledge of objects as mediated by subjective thought. The unity of theory and practice is itself part of the historical process for Gramsci and he is scathing of those whose 'mechanical determinism' suppresses subjective knowledge and agency. Moreover, it is an error, he argues, to ascribe such a deterministic materialism to Marx whose 'concept of regularity and necessity in historical development cannot be thought of as a derivation from natural science but rather as an elaboration of concepts born on the terrain of political economy'.46 For Gramsci, only a return to a form of transcendental reflection enables us to escape the trap of objectivism, and Thomas Nemeth argues that although Gramsci should not be seen as a phenomenalist and was wary of subject-based philosophies, his position bears affinities with the philosophy of Husserl.47 There is an interesting parallel between Sartre's and Gramsci's respective critiques of mechanistic materialist Marxism at the level of what might be called a 'paradox of subjectivity'. Both thinkers suggest that those who subscribe to this theoretical tendency do so to relieve themselves of having to recognise the necessity of taking an 46 47
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Prison Notebooks p.410 (hereafter: PN). Thomas Nemeth, Gramsci's Philosophy (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980) pp. 103-9. Nemeth remarks that although Gramsci would have wished to guard against the dangers of solipsism implied by the Husserlian phenomenological reduction, '[t]o a surprising extent Husserl's phenomenological reduction operates in a dimension comparable to Gramsci's philosophy of praxis.' (p.107).
active role in bringing about change. They are subjects who prefer to be non-subjects, constantly deferring to a putatively objective historical process. Sartre writes: 'J'ai vu des conversions au matérialisme: on y entre comme en religion; je le définirais volontiers comme la subjectivité de ceux qui ont honte de leur subjectivité'. He describes materialism as 'une des formes de l'esprit de sérieux et la fuite devant soi-même.' [MR: 162-3] This analysis of the mechanistic materialists, irrespective of it being couched partly in the terms of Sartre's conception of inauthenticity, is remarkably similar in substance to the following given in the Prison Notebooks: Real will takes on the garments of an act of faith in a certain rationality of history and in a primitive and empirical form of impassioned finalism which appears in the role of a substitute for the Predestination or Providence of confessional religions. It should be emphasised, though, that a strong activity of the will is present even here, directly intervening in the "force of circumstance", but only implicitly, and in a veiled and, as it were, shamefaced manner. [PN: 336]
Gramsci laments the fact that mechanical determinism becomes 'a cause of passivity' masking the responsibility of the working class to change history [PN: 337]. The link between praxis and responsibility is stressed by Gramsci and can be seen as conceptually related to Sartre's insistence on freedom implying responsibility in L'Etre et le néant and L'Existentialisme est un humanisme. As Sartre came increasingly to emphasise the link between his ontology and his ethical and ultimately political positions in the first half of the 1940s (an exception having to be made for L'Etre et le néant, as I shall argue in chapter III), the link between freedom and action was to become increasingly explicit, Sartre himself eventually adopting the notion of praxis. From 1946-7 onwards, under the influence of MerleauPonty and Trotsky, he was also to subscribe to the Marxist idea of a dialectics of history led by the revolutionary proletariat. This idea had been at the heart of both Lukâcs's Hegelian Marxism and Gramscian historicism. We will examine in greater depth the numerous ways in which Sartre's positions cohere with the Marxist emphasis on praxis and the historical dialectic in Part Two.
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Henri Lefebvre's Le Matérialisme dialectique (1939) appeared the year after the publication of Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism. Although not as influential as Stalin's work, it was a best-seller in France and became 'the principal introduction to Marxist ideas for two or three generations of non-communist readers after the war.'48 Sartre indicates in a footnote in Matérialisme et révolution that he has read this work and contrasts Lefebvre's analyses with those of the more orthodox PCF intellectual and spokesman Roger Garaudy [MR: 165-6]. Lefebvre's account of Marxism highlights the dialectical conception in the mature Marx's thought rather than taking the later Engels as a starting point. The historical materialism of Marx and Engels in The German Ideology had marked a rejection of Hegel's logic, their materialism taking as its basis man's practical life rather than ideas, and employing a radically transformed version of the Hegelian concept of alienation. The account which Marx and Engels offer in this work of the development of history implied 'une certaine dialectique: opposition des classes, de la propriété et de la privation dépassement de cette opposition. Mais cette dialectique n'est pas rattachée à une structure du devenir exprimable conceptuellement. Elle est conçue comme donnée pratiquement et constatée empiriquement.'49 In so far as dialectical relationships can be identified in the theory of the Marx of the 1840s, then, they exist only loosely and at a macroscopic level. Lefebvre shows how the later Marx progressively reinstates dialectics subsequent to his renewed interest in Hegel after 1858. Whilst still insisting on the primacy of the material circumstances of men's lives, Marx increasingly finds that his analyses of the economic phenomena of society lead him to identify certain abstract relations, that is economic categories such as value, labour and so on. Marx thought it necessary to incorporate such categories into economic analysis in order to penetrate beyond the superficial appearance of market relationships and explain their 'essence'. However, he does 48 49
50
Michael Kelly, 'Towards a heuristic method: Sartre and Lefebvre' in Sartre Studies International Vo\. 5, No.l, 1999, p.3 Henri Lefebvre, Le Matérialisme dialectique p.75 (Presses Universitaires de France, 1940) (hereafter MU).
not, Lefebvre continues, transpose the real entirely onto the level of abstraction because these abstract categories are the theoretical expression of real economic phenomena and '[l]e donné réel peut donc rester toujours présent comme contenu et présupposition.' [MD: 81] Lefebvre's account of later Marxian dialectics centres on the interaction between the concrete and the abstract, that is between particular economic phenomena and abstract categories. The dialectical thought of the later Marx, he argues, achieves a synthesis of the two such that '[1]'abstrait est en même temps concret. Le concret est en même temps, et par un certain aspect, abstrait.' The result is what Lefebvre terms 'l'abstrait concret' [MD: 82], and this is a preoccupation which becomes central to his own theorising some years later, notably in his Logique formelle, logique dialectique (1947).50 Lefebvre discusses Marx's distinction between use value and exchange value and shows how the relationship between the two reveals this dialectical interaction of the concrete and the abstract. Marx accounts for how the value of an object, seen in terms of its practical application, changes when it enters the process of exchange on the market. It takes on a different, more abstract, status as part of a network of social relations although without, for all that, being divorced from its original use value: 'Ces deux aspects de la valeur ne se séparent jamais complètement et cependant ils se différencient et s'opposent.' [MD: 83] Exchange value is the most fundamental of all economic categories, Lefebvre argues, proceeding to explain that Marx's account shows it to be the basis of other abstract features of capitalist society such as money, the division of labour and the market economy. These categories emanate one from another dialectically and compose collectively the totality that is modern society. This totality, Lefebvre argues, is an abstraction and creates the impression of an objectivity of social and historical change which goes beyond man's individual action. Such an impression is an illusion, however, because its constituting categories, although abstract, are rooted in the concrete. Marx's theory, then, accords primacy to the material base 50
In this text, Lefebvre's principal focus is the question of why form and content, that is the abstract and the concrete, should be seen as constituting a unity.
51
whilst acknowledging that, in modern society, abstractions veil it. Men make their own history even if it appears that they do not: La réalité historique ne peut être qu'en apparence extérieure aux hommes vivants, comme une substance histonque, économique ou sociale, mystérieux sujet du devenir. Le véritable sujet du devenir est l'homme vivant. Mais autour de lui, au-dessus de lui, les abstractions prennent une étrange existence [...] [MD: 91]
Lefebvre is keen to set the dialectical materialism which he attributes to Marx apart from the scientistic Marxist conception of dialectics. He corrects the commonly-held scientistic view that the origin of the later Marx's dialectical method lay in Hegel's Logic,51 pointing out that that it is rather to the Phenomenology that we should look: 'Elle est pour Marx la clef du système hégélien. On y retrouve le contenu réel de la vie humaine, le mouvement ascendant qui va "de terre au ciel".' [MD: 54] This view of Marxian dialectics as a conception which integrates the material dimension without falling into the dialectic of nature is confirmed by David McLellan: For Marx, the dialectical interchange between man and nature was conducted through a specific mode of production which itself generated new needs and the means to satisfy them - even human nature itself being subject to the dialectic of social change.52
Lefebvre's insistence on the union of the abstract and the concrete is closely related to his conviction that historical materialism transcends the traditional opposition between idealism and materialism. Historical materialism, Lefebvre argues, is a fusion of these two tendencies. Once formulated by Marx and Engels, it turned against philosophy in general, whose approach was merely contemplative, to accede to the truth which was located in the totality, that is the unity of thought and world. Henceforth theory and practice were no longer separate but united as human praxis. Rather than philosophy, or ideas, being the sole guide to truth, '[l]e vrai est dans le concret' [MD: 66] although 51 52
52
See footnote 44. It is this reliance on Hegel's Logic which gave rise to the implausible 'triadic' interpretation of the dialectic which Finocchiaro refers to. David McLellan, The Thought of Karl Marx p. 139
the role played by ideas remains crucial nevertheless, ideas being given a new vitality by their unity with material practices: 'Le matérialisme cherche à rendre à la pensée sa force active, celle qu'elle avait avant la séparation de la conscience et du travail' [MD: 66]. In Matérialisme et révolution, Sartre rejects Lefebvre's claim that a unity of idealism and materialism is achieved in historical materialism. Apparently assimilating Lefebvre's interpretation of Marx to the scientistic dialectical materialist tendency, Sartre calls this unity 'fallacieuse': if the concept of matter remains that of natural science, he argues, then there cannot be any real synthesis of the two fields [MR: 166]. Sartre's objection visibly takes the historical materialist insistence on material practice as an affirmation of the centrality of inert matter rather than as man's practical activity characterised principally by the activity of labouring. Sartre hence rejects Lefebvre's account of historical materialism's uniting of thought and practice because he is wary of the freedom-limiting effects of what he supposes to be a theory which gives priority to the inert. If this fear is an ill-founded one, it leads to a misreading of historical materialism on Sartre's part which is all the more unfortunate because his own theory of the concrete in L'Etre et le néant originates precisely in a similar attempt to transcend the opposition between ideas and the world. In fact, Lefebvre's conception of the concrete as a totality comprised of ideas and material practice appears to differ from that of Sartre principally only in so far as Sartre's philosophy does not extend to speaking of the objective world as involving material practices, and notably labour. Indeed, from L'Existentialisme est un humanisme and his other theoretical works of the immediate postwar years onwards, Sartre would make increasingly explicit the relationship between free thought and action. Although this latter would not be conceived of as labour as such, the similarities between Sartre's position on this issue and the Marxist insistence on the unity of theory and practice are undeniable. Sartre's assimilation of Lefebvre's account to the scientistic paradigm appears paradoxical in the light of the fact that one of the overarching general tendencies of Lefebvre's Le Matérialisme dialectique is its attempt to 'excise philosophical materialism from
53
Marxism'. Lefebvre plays down the Feuerbachian phase in Marx's development, ultimately preferring to present Marxism as developing essentially in response only to Hegelianism. As a consequence, Lefebvre's account of Marxism ultimately does not tend, as Sartre implies, towards metaphysical materialism but rather, as Michael Kelly points out, towards philosophical idealism. Kelly concludes that 4 [i]n place of materialism he offers an updated, self-propelling Hegelianism whose idealism is nominally disowned but substantially retained',54 an assessment which, in its turn, pushes Lefebvre fractionally too far in the other direction, underestimating as it does the extent to which he insists that Marxian historical and then dialectical materialism modifies Hegelian idealism, and notably the dialectic, when it unites them with concrete realities of man's practical life and of economic relationships.
Sartre, the Marxists and Marx These brief surveys of the accounts of Marxism offered by Lukâcs, Gramsci and Lefebvre point to the conclusion that the early Sartre's theoretical disagreements with Marxism stemmed principally from his assessments relying too heavily on the scientistic brand of Marxism which characterised the thinking of his Stalinist contemporaries in the PCF. The addition of the following crucial footnote at the start of the amended version of Matérialisme et révolution, published in 1949, suggests a recognition on Sartre's part that the specific focus of his critique had perhaps obstructed a clear view of Marx's thought itself: 'je précise que mes critiques ne s'adressent pas à [Marx] mais à la scolastique marxiste de 1949. Ou, si l'on veut, à Marx à travers le néo-marxisme stalinien.' [MR: 136] This statement is in fact more defensive than it is self-critical, suggesting as it does that Sartre had focused his critique on 'la scolastique marxiste' intentionally rather 53 54
54
Michael Kelly, Modern French Marxism p.37 Ibid p.39, see also pp.57-60.
than on Marx, and had merely omitted to make this explicit at the time. Whilst not entirely implausible, this assessment is of rather doubtful accuracy, it being more likely that Sartre's knowledge of Marx's work remained somewhat limited in 1946, his focus on 'la scolastique marxiste' involving an inadvertent conflation of Marx and the Stalinist world-view. Sartre had read Marx's Capital and The German Ideology whilst at the Ecole Normale but, by his own admission,55 had not gained much from the experience. In his war diaries, he makes brief reference to Marx's Misery of Philosophy [C: 360], and Annie Cohen-Solal reports that Sartre returned to reading Marx in 1941 during the period of the existence of his resistance group 'Socialisme et liberté'.56 In the amended version of Matérialisme et révolution Sartre adds a number of footnotes, no less than five of which clearly seek to correct the negative image of Marx given by the original text [MR: 135, 141, 184, 210, 213]. In particular, he recognises that Marxian materialism should not be reduced to a crude objectivism [MR: 141], and refers to works of the early 'humanist' Marx such as the 1844 Manuscripts and the 'Theses on Feuerbach', implying the latter's claims harmonise with his own existentialist conception of man [MR: 184, 210]. These additions to the original text of 1946 are far from minor in significance, and the likelihood is that Sartre read the crucial early works of Marx for the first time during the period 1946-9.57 A certain misrepresentation of Marxian thought is hence undeniable in the original 1946 version of Matérialisme et révolution and it is clear that this was due to an insufficient knowledge of Marx's writings on Sartre's part. It was perhaps also owing to a desire to steer clear of the complex questions of interpretation which have long surrounded Marx's thought. Although Ronald Aronson is by and large right to conclude that 'it was only around 1949 that Sartre was able to reflect on Marxian theory as distinct from the 55 56 57
Questions de méthode p.23 Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre (Gallimard, 1985) p.235 The 1844 Manuscripts (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1970), which had become available in France in 1938, and were at the centre of debate in Marxist circles from the Liberation onwards.
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official Communist movement's version of it', we should nevertheless not imagine that Sartre was unaware that he was evading certain key questions surrounding Marx. Moreover, Sartre cannot be fairly accused of assimilating Marxism in its entirety to the Stalinist current because Matérialisme et révolution actually contains a brief but suggestive passage on Trotskyism which Sartre defends against the attacks of the PCF intellectuals [MR: 170-1]. In a revealing footnote Sartre refers to 'des conversations que j'ai eues à maintes reprises avec des intellectuels communistes' [MR: 171] in which he had countered the communists' accusation that the Trotskyists were police informers. Sartre's sympathy with Trotskyism in opposition to the Stalinism of the PCF comes as little surprise when one considers Beauvoir's references in La Force de l'âge to Sartre's and her own interest in Trotskyism during the 1930s. She remarks that they had 'la plus grande estime pour Trotsky', and were drawn to 'l'idée d'une "révolution permanente'" [FA: 156]. Trotsky's Ma Vie had been one of the more important non-literary works for them in the early 1930s [FA: 59] and they had also struck up a personal friendship during these years with Colette Audry, who was a Trotskyist [FA: 140-1]. This Trotskyist leaning on Sartre's part points to the conclusion that his opposition to the Stalinist Marxism of the PCF was founded not just on philosophical disageements but also to a more limited extent on divergent political convictions as well.59 Trotskyist sympathising aside, Sartre's attitude towards Marxism until the latter part of the 1940s was globally characterised by a certain wariness and scepticism and was, as we have seen, founded to a significant extent on a misunderstanding of the real 58 59
56
Ronald Aronson, Jean-Paul Sartre: Philosophy In The World (London: Verso, 1980). Ian Birchall 'Sartre and gauchisme', in Journal of European Studies, Vol. 19, 1989. Birchall argues convincingly that Sartre and Beauvoir, although not politically committed, were familiar with the positions of the different left tendencies. If Sartre did not join the PCF, this was not only because of his philosophical disagreements with Marxism but also because 'he already knew something of the gauchiste critique of Stalinism and [...] he felt strongly distrustful of the PCF on political grounds.' (p.24)
import of many of its central theoretical claims. His misreading of Marxism, rather like his communist contemporaries' unjustly reductive view of existentialism, placed serious obstacles in the path of the identification of the many points of convergence between the two philosophies.
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IL The Free Subject in Situation
Developments in Sartre's Concepts of Freedom and Situation We have seen that, in opposition to both idealism and materialism, Sartre seeks to 'établir la réalité humaine, la condition humaine, l'êtredans-le-monde de l'homme et son être-en-situation.' [C: 205] Sartre employs a variety of formulations to express the fundamental idea that the ontological nature of reality is comprised of the synthetic unity of consciousness and world. In true dialectical fashion, it is the relationship between the two domains, and the way in which they act upon each other in relations of interdependence, which is of crucial importance for Sartre. The attempt to explain 'la réalité humaine', then, involves both offering an ontological account of the world in relation to its perception by consciousness and accounting for the nature and freedom of consciousness in relation to its situational constraints in the external world. Nevertheless, it is the anthropological dimension of Sartre's phenomenologico-ontological enquiries which remains of greatest interest to him, that is to say the implications of the freedomsituation relationship for an account of man. In the introduction to his Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions, Sartre subordinates the discipline of pyschology to the burgeoning field of phenomenology. Psychology seeks to explain 'l'homme en situation' but this can only be achieved, Sartre argues, by the formulation of a phenomenological anthropology which has succeeded in elucidating 'les notions d'homme, de monde, d'êtredans-le-monde, de situation.'1 This conviction will form the basis of Sartre's central theoretical concerns in the years to come, announcing as it does the orientation of key claims advanced in L'Etre et le néant. 1
Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions (Hermann, 1939) p.27
59
If consciousness is by definition ontologically free because irreducible to and inassimilable to the material world, then a vital principle of the early Sartre's philosophy is that the situation itself, by and large synonymous with his conception of the concrete, involves the creative input of consciousness because it must be apprehended by the subject. In L'Imaginaire, Sartre refers to situations as 'les différents modes immédiats d'appréhension du réel comme monde' [/: 355], and the situation is described more even-handedly in L'Etre et le néant as the 'produit commun de la contingence de l'en-soi et de la liberté' [EN: 544]. Sartre argues that it is only by being situated in the world that consciousness can imagine [/: 355], a claim which is echoed by the conviction that 'il ne peut y avoir de pour-soi libre que comme engagé dans un monde résistant.'[EN: 540] Indeed, the imaginary and the freedom of consciousness are concomitant concepts for Sartre, as they both involve transcendence of the real, conceived in L'Etre et le néant as the constraining situation, whilst at the same time depending on it. Sartre argues that it is by the very same process that consciousness imagines and realizes its freedom [/: 358], a claim which implies a conceptual reciprocity between his conception of the aesthetic and his existentialist anthropology. In the first chapter of Part IV of L'Etre et le néant, entitled 'Etre et faire: la liberté', Sartre discusses at some length the situational contexts of subjective freedom. The concept of situation was to become an important 'bridge concept'2 linking existentialism and Marxism, it being an obvious point of intersection between the early Sartre's subject-based philosophy and the historico-social basis of much classic Marxist theory. The examples of situations which Sartre gives in L'Etre et le néant, however, remain some way removed from the sort of contexts which have traditionally interested Marxist theorists. Social and economic structures in particular are not accorded any significant place in Sartre's account whose scope is restricted to the local level environment and concerns of the free subject. Sartre discusses a number of 'structures de la situation',3 but to take the 2 3
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Thomas Flynn, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism p.26 L'Etre et le néant pp. 546-606: 'Ma place', 'Mon passé', 'Mes entours', 'Mon prochain', 'Ma mort'.
example of the 'structure' which Sartre puts under the heading 'Mon passé', for instance, rather than giving special consideration to different types of conditioning as one would expect almost any nonexistentialist theory to do, Sartre's discussion remains focused on the matter of how my free consciousness in the present relates to my past. Sartre argues that 'je suis l'être par qui le passé vient à soi-même et au monde' [EN: 553], and that 'la signification du passé est étroitement dépendante de mon projet présent.' [EN: 555] The meaning of the past, then, is conferred on it by the choices which my free consciousness makes in the present moment. Sartre's view of the role of the free consciousness in relation to the facticity of situations in general is by and large consistent with this argument. On the opening page of the chapter devoted to the situation, Sartre claims that '[l]e coefficient d'adversité des choses, en particulier, ne saurait être un argument contre notre liberté, car c'est par nous, c'est-à-dire par la position préalable d'une fin, que surgit ce coefficient d'adversité.' [EN: 538] In this regard, it is important to note that in L'Etre et le néant Sartre, because strongly influenced by phenomenology, tends to assess all phenomena from the standpoint of the subject. In his analyses of the situation, as elsewhere in the work, Sartre does not much concern himself with the implications of factors which the subject does not have direct awareness of, tending to work on the assumption that a constraining situation that is not percieved as such by the subject is not really worthy of consideration as a genuine limit on freedom. Whilst this might be true from the subject's standpoint, it draws a veil over those constraints on freedom in his life which he may not be aware of or which withstand a mere change of psychological attitude on his part towards them. The consistently subjectivist slant of early Sartrean philosophy is of course one of its key points of divergence and incommensurability with much classic Marxist philosophy although, as I have suggested in chapter I and as will become more apparent subsequently, areas of overlap and reciprocity in this regard can nevertheless be identified. To return to Sartre's subsection entitled 'Mon passé', one might object that the fact that the past would be devoid of meaning without the work of the free consciousness in the present does not entail the idea that there hence had not been a past which conditioned the 61
present, including my consciousness itself amongst other things. In the famous example of the rock which seems too steep to climb, Sartre grants that there remains 'un residuum innommable [...] qui appartient à l'en-soi' [EN: 539], which is to say intrinsic qualities of the rock itself which make it difficult to scale, but otherwise emphasises the importance of the attitude of the free consciousness to the rock.4 Sartre's tendency to suggest that the potential limitations implied by a given situation can be transcended by the subject choosing to take one attitude rather than another towards them points to the conclusion that, as Thomas C. Anderson argues,5 the conception of freedom which Sartre formulates in L'Etre et le néant is only really a freedom of consciousness. Indeed, when justifying his famous claim that the slave is as free as his master, Sartre claims that the slave is free to choose to break his chains, that is to decide to revolt, or not to do so [EN: 608]. Sartre does not give consideration to the basic difficulty that freely choosing to revolt may well prove ineffectual in the face of the material constraints and oppressive social structures which confront the slave. What this last example in particular illustrates clearly, however, is the fact that there is not one conception of freedom in L'Etre et le néant but two, namely ontological freedom and freedom in situation. Margaret Whitford points out that this distinction was given insufficient attention by Sartre's contemporary critics, Merleau-Ponty amongst them.6 In particular, Sartre's insistence that 'ou bien l'homme 4
5 6
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Sartre skilfully nuances this example more than the others he gives in his discussion of the situation, however, by linking consciousness' perception of the degree of difficulty which the rock poses to scale to the matter of the subject's 'choix originel de [s]oi-même' [EN: 519]. Sartre suggests that the rock, as a thing that is to be climbed, retains a sort of objective difficulty level because 'une conversion radicale de [s]on être-dans-le-monde' [EN: 520] on the part of the subject would be necessary to accomplish the task. He could do it 'mais à quel prix?' [EN: 509] Thomas C. Anderson Sartre's Two Ethics: From Authenticity to Integral Humanity (Chicago: Open Court, 1993) p.24 Margaret Whitford, Merleau-Ponty 's Critique of Sartre (Lexington, Ky: French Forum, 1982) pp.56, 61. Whitford points out that Merleau-Ponty, in his critique of Sartre in Les Aventures de la dialectique (Gallimard, 1955), recognises that Sartre has two definitions of freedom, but addresses only the ontological kind.
est entièrement déterminé (ce qui est inadmissible...) ou bien l'homme est entièrement libre' [EN: 497] received sharp criticism, commentators often failing to acknowledge that the notion of absolute freedom referred to man's ontological condition and consequently inalienable capacity to make choices rather than to his position as a situated being. The example of the slave focuses almost exclusively on the former type of freedom, Sartre being keen to insist that no matter how constraining a person's circumstances are, he nevertheless always has a freedom of decision. By contrast, the example of the rock which seems difficult to climb shows that subjective freedom in situation is not absolute. Although I can always freely choose to attempt the climb, the facticity of the rock imposes a situational constraint on my actual ability to accomplish the task. Whitford concludes that although in L'Etre et et le néant 'the emphasis is on the possibilities of freedom rather than on its limits, nonetheless the limits are clearly defined'.7 Whitford is right to insist on the importance of freedom in situation in L'Etre et le néant, but it is far from certain that her defence of Sartre is sufficient to answer Anderson's objection. Sartre tends to suggest, as in the case of 'Mon passé', that not only did a given 'structure' of a situation depend on the work of consciousness for its very existence in the first place but that it is the meaning that consciousness confers on it which decides whether or not it is to be a constraint on freedom. The limits Whitford speaks of are hence considerably reduced, as the following remarks confirm: 'La liberté est totale et infinie, ce qui ne veut pas dire qu'elle n 'ait pas de limites mais qu'elle ne les rencontre jamais. Les seules limites que la liberté heurte à chaque instant, ce sont celles qu'elle s'impose à elle-même' [EN: 589]. It is worth noting, however, that even in the chapter of L'Etre et le néant devoted to the situation Sartre is generally keener to insist on the inalienability of the ontological kind of freedom than on examining in depth the implications of genuinely constraining circumstances for subjective freedom. His subsections devoted to the 'structures de la situation' are comparatively weaker argumentatively than much of his writing elsewhere in the work, the capacity of the 7
Whitford op.cit.p.59
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situation to limit freedom being presented as ultimately so implausibly small that it seems unlikely that Sartre could have intended to present such 'structures' as entirely representative of his views on the implications of the situation for freedom. When he writes, towards the close of the chapter, 'Ces différentes descriptions [...] n'ont pas la prétention d'être exhaustives, ni même détaillées' [EN: 606], it is almost as if to acknowledge areas of inadequacy in his analyses. Indeed, his account of freedom in relation to situation in L'Etre et le néant is not representative of the position he adopts on the matter either explicitly or, as is more often the case, implicitly in numerous of his other wartime writings. His wartime novels L 'Age de raison and Le Sursis are notable, amongst other reasons, for the complexity and realism of the worldly situations which they portray and the difficulties which such situational factors pose for subjective freedom. One need only recall the fact that the starting point for much of the narrative development of L'Age de raison, for example, is Mathieu's need to raise the money necessary to finance Marcelle's abortion. In Le Sursis, through a skilful blending of personal preoccupations and political events, Sartre succeeds in conveying the uncertainties and anxieties of the immediate prewar situation. Indeed, it is not only the work's numerous characters who are disoriented by difficult and complex circumstances but also the reader whose attempts to perceive a coherent narrative development are thwarted by frequent changes of narratorial focus. In certain key works of the years immediately following the Liberation, such as Réflexions sur la question juive (1944), 'Présentation des Temps Modernes' (1945), and the second part of Matérialisme et révolution (1946), Sartre was to offer more convincing theoretical accounts of the nature of situations and the real conditions and constraints which they imply for subjective freedom. In Réflexions, Sartre argues that we must employ the concept of situation to account for the position of the Jews in society. It is precisely their 'situation commune de Juif 8 in a society that labels them Jewish, rather than any intrinsic racial or religious characteristics, that French Jews share. In line with his ontology-derived ethics of L'Etre et le 8
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Réflexions sur la question juive (Gallimard, 1954 [1944]) p.81 (hereafter RQJ).
néant, and revealing his characteristic tendency to play down any notion of a fixed, pre-determined identity or essence, Sartre argues that the Jews' identity is foisted upon them by other members of society [RQJ: 83]. However, there is a certain theoretical tension in this work between the anti-essentialist conception of man which constitutes the basis of Sartre's defence of the Jewish community and the Marxist-tending conception of situation which he has now adopted. On the one hand, he argues that the Jewish community is 'ni religieuse, ni ethnique, ni politique: c'est une communauté quasi historique' [RQJ: 176] Yet he had asserted earlier in the same work that man 'forme un tout synthétique avec sa situation biologique, économique, politique, culturelle' [RQJ: 72], a claim which involves a significantly broadened conception of situation in relation to that of L'Etre et le néant. Hence, Sartre asserts that people are fundamentally without any determinate or fixed identity when his aim is to defend them against racial prejudice. Yet, when his objective is to lend support the struggle of the working class against bourgeois dominance he insists that people's material and cultural conditioning is integral to who they are, which surely implies that they have some kind of determinate identity. This paradox is indicative of a tension which begins to become perceptible from the Liberation onwards between the libertarian orientation of Sartre's ontology and his developing political thought. 'Depuis quinze ans,' Sartre later remarked in an interview of 1960, 'je cherche quelque chose: il s'agit [...] de donner un fondement politique à l'anthropologie.'9 Indeed, it is in his founding statement to Les Temps modernes that the conception of man which would receive mature expression in the Critique de la raison dialectique first becomes clearly recognisable. In 'Présentation des Temps Modernes\ Sartre gives a more detailed exposition of the idea that man is best understood as a synthetic whole, and this is accompanied by a concomitant development in his concept of situation. Stating that he seeks to found 'une anthropologie synthétique', Sartre argues that man should be seen as a totality,10 which involves acknowledging not only 9 10
Situations IXp.9 'Présentation des Temps modernes'' in Situations II p.23 (hereafter P).
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that he is necessarily in situation but also that he is conditioned by his economic circumstances and by his social class. Such situational constraints encroach much more significantly on subjective freedom than those discussed in L'Etre et le néant. 'L'homme n'est qu'une situation: un ouvrier n'est pas libre de penser ou de sentir comme un bourgeois' [P: 27], he remarks, indicating that ontological freedom, though not reducible to or determined by situation, nevertheless cannot simply transcend the conditioning it produces. Sartre's call for a synthetic anthropology is closely related to his rejection of analytical thought and his adoption of 'une conception synthétique de la réalité' [P: 17-22]. Broadly speaking, in 'Présentation des Temps Modernes' these contrasting categories correspond to bourgeois and liberal thought on the one hand and left-wing thought on the other. Sartre explains that the 'esprit d'analyse' was the mode of thought which served as an intellectual weapon of the bourgeoisie in its struggle against the aristocracy and consisted in asserting the indivisible particularity of individuals in the interests of affirming their rights as citizens. Whilst it had originally been a progressive tendency, in contemporary France the analytic mode of thinking has since become a means by which the bourgeoisie protects its economic and political dominance. It legitimates a refusal to acknowledge the real condition of the working class: 'La bourgeoisie a tout intérêt à s'aveugler sur les classes [...]. Elle persiste à ne voir que des hommes, à proclamer l'identité de la nature humaine à travers toutes les variétés de situation' [P: 18-19]. Convinced that the 'esprit d'analyse' only serves today to 'troubler la conscience révolutionnaire et d'isoler les hommes au profit des classes privilégiées' [P: 20], the synthetic conception of reality is that of '[c]eux qui ont fortement compris que l'homme est enraciné dans la collectivité et qui veulent affirmer l'importance des facteurs économiques, techniques et historiques' [P: 24]. Clearly, this synthetic conception is strongly reminiscent of the classic Marxist idea that acknowledging men's practical circumstances as labourers working in a socio-economic structure are central to understanding their condition. Ultimately, it is best seen as part of a radical critique of political liberalism. In Réflexions, the analytic thought Sartre speaks of with regard to the bourgeoisie in 'Présentation des Temps Modernes' is formulated as the 'libéralisme abstrait' 66
of the democrat which accords Jews rights as it accords them to other citizens but fails to see the Jews as 'des produits concrets et singuliers de l'histoire.' [RQJ: 142] Sartre's conclusion in this text is that a 'libéralisme concret', which would recognise the rights of minorities in their concrete particularity, is needed to remedy this state of affairs [RQJ: 177]. As he develops this argument, however, it becomes clear that he considers the very formulation itself to be something of a misnomer. Improving the situation of the Jews requires working to eradicate anti-Semitism, but this latter is a symptom of bourgeoisdominated class society, hence a socialist revolution is necessary [RQJ: 181-2]. In effect, concrete liberalism is not political liberalism as such at all, it is socialism. In 'Présentation des Temps Modernes', Sartre's declared aim is hence to 'concourir à produire certains changements dans la Société qui nous entoure' [RQJ: 16], his synthetic anthropology being part of a project of man's emancipation. Sartre's adoption of the synthetic view of reality is indicative of his increasing philosophical rapprochement with Marxism. His broadening of the concept of situation draws it closer to the Marxist emphasis on socio-economic factors, and his understanding of the concept of the concrete clearly marks a departure from the much more limited definition offered in L'Etre et le néant. The concrete for Sartre is no longer simply the synthesis of consciousness and world but, in Marxist fashion, is explicitly opposed to the abstraction of idealism and to political liberalism's failure to take individuals' worldly conditions of possibility into account. However, he is nevertheless keen to guard against what he sees as Marxism's freedomlimiting subsuming of the individual in the collectivity. He considers there to be an antinomy between the Marxists and the liberal democrats on this matter and wishes to retain something of the latter's defence of the freedom of the individual. Formulating for the first time a position which would remain central to his existential Marxism until the Critique and beyond,11 Sartre hence argues that the capacity 11
In Questions de méthode, Sartre describes his method as 'régressive-progressive et analytico-synthétique' (p.94). The regressive-progressive method would accord a more central place to the dialectical interaction between the free subject and his socio-historical situation than the position Sartre advances in
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for subjective self-determination must be safeguarded within the synthetic conception of reality: 'Nous concevons sans difficulté qu'un homme, encore que sa situation le conditionne totalement, puisse être un centre d'indétermination irréductible.' [P: 26] This coexistence of conditioning and freedom is indispensable to the philosophy of political revolution which Sartre expounds in the second part of Matérialisme et révolution. In this text, the conditioning of the working class takes on a decidedly Marxist character, Sartre focusing on the socio-economic constraints which define the worker's situation: '[l]e double caractère de producteur et d'opprimé suffit à définir la situation du révolutionnaire' [MR: 178] Yet, as we have seen, Sartre insists, in opposition to Stalinist thinking, that it is only by according man subjective freedom that the revolution is a genuine possibility: 'si l'homme n'est pas originellement libre, mais une fois et pour toutes déterminé, on ne peut même pas concevoir ce que pourrait être sa libération.' [MR: 207] The revolutionary must be ontologically free, then, in order to be able to emancipate himself from his constraining socio-economic situation. Sartre explains this double requirement of freedom by pointing out that 'ce n'est pas sous le même rapport qu'il [le révolutionnaire] est libre et enchaîné.' [MR: 209] The distinction which Sartre maintains here and throughout this text between the subjective and the political types of freedom is the direct descendant of that established between ontological freedom and freedom in situation in L'Etre et le néant. By the time of 'Présentation des Temps Modernes' and Matérialisme et révolution, Sartre's adoption of the 'Présentation' does, but the basic idea of the subject who is conditioned by history and yet free to act upon and change her circumstances remains the same. However, the temptation to conclude that as of 1945 Sartre, clearly on course for his existential Marxism of the Critique, hence departs radically from his claims of L'Etre et le néant should be resisted. Although the adoption of the synthetic view and of a Marxist conception of situation clearly mark a progression on Sartre's earlier positions, his conceptions of the concrete and indeed of situation itself in L'Etre et le néant similarly involved the idea of the interdependency and interaction of the free consciousness and the world. If Sartre was able to bring his existentialism into gradually greater alignement with Marxism, not only politically but also philosophically, so relatively soon after the publication of L'Etre et le néant, it was because the two philosophies already shared key areas of common ground.
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synthetic conception of man and reality implies a full acknowledgement of the socio-economic conditioning and constraints of the working class. Yet he insists that man's ontological freedom which, as we saw with the example of the slave in L'Etre et le néant, guarantees power of choice vis-à-vis the situation, always remains irreducible. The worker, like the slave, is free either to accept his condition or to revolt [P: 28]. Sartre's marked rationalist tendency12 is such that he refuses at this stage to entertain the possibility that the existential choice itself may, in certain circumstances, be affected by the subject's conditioning. Both the slave and the worker might, for instance, be so thoroughly conditioned by their oppressive situations that the option of revolting does not present itself to them even in thought. They might, for example, be under the influence of a powerful dominant ideology, a form of false consciousness, to the extent that even the intellectual choice of whether to revolt or not is no longer a real one for them. Paradoxically, it was during the same period as writing L'Etre et le néant that Sartre composed not only Les Jeux sont faits, ostensibly giving credence to the idea of social determinism, but also Les Mouches in which he staged a community, the Argives, which is so thoroughly in the grip of an insidious dominant ideology that its members cannot even see the possibility of
12
In an interview of 1944, discussing the question of which French thinkers have influenced him, Sartre claims that 'un seul a agi profondément sur mon esprit, c'est Descartes. Je me range dans sa lignée et me réclame de cette vieille tradition cartésienne qui s'est conservée en France.' (Contât and Rybalka op.cit.p.108). Sartre refers appreciatively in 'La Liberté cartésienne' (1946) to the vital role that Descartes attributes to thought, interpreting his predecessor's philosphy as a defence of the unassailable character of intellectual freedom: 'Descartes nous pourvoit d'abord d'une entière responsabilité intellectuelle. Il éprouve à chaque instant la liberté de sa pensée en face de l'enchaînement des essences' (Situations I p.317); 'Cette entière liberté, précisément parce qu'elle ne comporte pas de degrés [...]' (Ibidp.318); 'Descartes a parfaitement compris que le concept de liberté renfermait l'exigence d'une autonomie absolue' (Ibid p.332). Such statements, written in the same year as Matérialisme et révolution, are evidence that despite advancing a Marxist conception of situation by 1946, Sartre's conviction that ontological freedom and the power of choice are irreducible remains unshaken.
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emancipation from their oppressed condition. We will discuss representations of ideology in Sartre's literary works in Part Two.
Sartre's Insistence on the Freedom of the Subject: an Un-Marxist Preoccupation? It is clear from the texts we have discussed, as well as others of the period, that in the early to mid 1940s Sartre believed that his insistence on man's inalienable ontological freedom distinguished his position from Marxism. Many commentators, explicitly or implicitly taking Sartre's lead on this matter, have endorsed this view. Indeed, the existentialist dimension even of Sartre's later philosophy has been considered a tendency which set it apart from Marxism.13 Sartre would explain in an interview of the 1970s that at the time he took the interests of the working class to be entirely represented by the PCF [ORR: 28, 30]. The dominance of the Stalinist world-view in the PCF at the time, and Sartre's still relatively limited knowledge of Marxist writings prior to the late 1940s, explain his somewhat reductive view of Marxist philosophy. In reality, the question of the extent to which Sartre's insistence on the existential freedom of the subject within situational contexts retains an independence from a Marxist philosophical position is more complex than any of these assessments suggest. When Sartre writes that 'un ouvrier ne peut pas vivre en bourgeois' [P: 27] he recognises the importance of conditions of possibility for subjective agency, and reveals that the concept of what Lukâcs had called 'objective possibility' [HCC: 51] is firmly in place in his conception of the subject's relationship to situation. Yet Sartre refuses to accept that the operations of consciousness may perhaps also be subject to conditions of possibility, and insists that although 13
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Even as sympathetic a commentator to Marxism as Thomas Flynn, when describing Sartre's later philosophy, opts for 'Marxist Existentialism' rather than 'Existential Marxism', thereby suggesting that the existentialist emphasis of Sartre's position distinguishes it from Marxism.
man is entirely conditioned, his capacity for free thought cannot be encroached on. This stance relates closely to Sartre's refusal of the doctrine of materialism, marking as it does a rejection of any form of causal determinism, and does appear to be an area of incompatibility with Marxist philosophy. However, the fact that the contributions to the field of such major theorists as the early Lukâcs, Gramsci and Lefebvre not only acknowledge but explicitly insist on the crucial role played by subjective thought in the process of historical change, as I indicated in chapter I, suggests that such a conclusion is far from unproblematic. A central area of difficulty is the fact that the aforementioned Marxist thinkers did not formulate in-depth theories of subjectivity, which means that the matter of exactly what free subjective thought entails for them is left inexplicit. Consequently, it is not possible to ascertain with sufficient precision how they conceived of the relationship between conditioning and freedom of thought at the level of the subjective consciousness. Our investigation hence encounters an area of basic incommensurability between Sartrean existentialism and Marxism. Consider the following statements by Gramsci, for example, drawn from a paragraph in which he enquires into the definition of man: Possibility is not a reality but it is in itself a reality. Whether or not a man can or cannot do a thing has its importance in evaluating what is done in reality. Possibility means "freedom". The measure of freedom enters into the concept of man. Man is to be conceived as an historical bloc of purely individual and subjective elements and of mass and objective or material elements with which the individual is in an active relationship. [PN: 360]14
14
It is worth noting in passing that Gramsci's position here as elsewhere is at one and the same time reminiscent of that of Lukâcs in History and Class Consciousness and foreshadows key claims concerning the subject/history dialectic which Sartre was later to articulate in Questions de méthode, notably the progressive-regressive method. The areas of common ground between Gramsci's philosophy and these other two seminal Marxist works merit indepth study but are beyond the scope of this study.
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The question of what exactly is entailed for Gramsci by 'freedom' and 'individual and subjective elements' in relation to 'objective or material elements' is difficult to answer with greater accuracy than to assert that he clearly believes that subjective thought cannot be assimilated to a fatalistic conception of objective reality. The 'active relationship' which he speaks of presupposes that consciousness is independent enough to be able to make choices which influence the course of objective reality and history. The relationship between these existential choices and the conditioning of consciousness remains unclear however. More precisely, the extent to which such choices might themselves be influenced in part by that conditioning is not articulated by Gramsci. What is almost certainly the case however, in view of the crucial role which Gramsci and other Marxists attribute to the historical and social forces which condition subjective thought and agency, is that their conception of the subject could not be as resolutely and uncompromisingly rationalist as that of the early Sartre. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels state that although man possesses a consciousness, it is not "pure" but is 'from the very beginning a social product',15 thereby emphasising the historico-social dimension of subjective thought. By the time of writing Questions de méthode, Sartre had come to the view that the existential dimension of man, although neglected in the work of many of his Marxist contemporaries, was fully acknowledged in the work of Marx: 7e fondement du marxisme, comme anthropologie historique et structurelle, c'est l'homme même'; 'le marxisme de Marx, en marquant l'opposition dialectique de la connaissance et de l'être, contenait à titre implicite l'exigence d'un fondement existentiel de la théorie.' [QM: 108] Indeed, the dialectic which is the basis of Sartre's progressive-regressive method in this work is not substantially different from, but rather illuminates that implied by Marx's famous dictum, 'Men make their own history, but [...] they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted
15
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The German Ideology pp. 50-1 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1970) (hereafter GI).
from the past.'16 When Sartre claims that it is important to 'maintenir provisoirement l'autonomie de l'idéologie existentielle' [QM: 107] in relation to Marxism, the Marxism he is referring to is that of his neoStalinist contemporaries, not that of Marx. Nor, as we have seen with regard to the work of the early Lukâcs, Gramsci, and Lefebvre, is he referring to that of the most capable classic Marxist theorists. Sartre's existential Marxism of the Critique is hence at once an original and contemporary elaboration of certain of the basic claims of Marxist philosophy and also in some sense a call for a return to Marx. The later Sartre's greater awareness of the implicit existential dimension of Marxian historical materialism induces us to question the extent to which his positions of even the mid 1940s are, in their existentialist emphasis, distinct from Marxism. If the existential dimension is fully acknowledged by Marx and other theorists, then it may be that the basic claims advanced in texts like 'Présentation des Temps Modernes' and the second part of Matérialisme et révolution, rather than standing in opposition to Marxism as the polemical debates of the immediate postwar years suggested, are better understood when seen as contributing to a debate situated within Marxism, rather than as being part of a distinct philosophical current.17 In such a case, Sartre's emphasis on the existential dimension of reality would constitute the particularity of his philosophy within the Marxist context just as the particularity of the early Lukâcs' theory, for instance, is the centrality which it accords to the notion of totality and that of Gramsci's theory its absolute historicism. This is a matter which our discussions of subsequent chapters will continue to probe in different ways.
16 17
Karl Marx: Selected Writings ed. David McLellan (OUP, 2000) p.300 Michael Kelly, in Towards a heuristic method: Sartre and Lefebvre' (Sartre Studies International Vol.5, No.l, 1999, pp. 5-6), argues that the polemical tone of the debates between Sartre and the Marxists masked important areas of common ground. In his L'Existentialisme (1946), for instance, Lefebvre 'was at pains to point out how close Sartre came to understanding the dialectical relationship between thought and action' (p.6) in L'Etre et le néant.
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Continuity in Sartre's Concepts of Freedom and Situation The development in Sartre's thought between L'Etre et le néant and his writings of the postwar years on the matter of the crucial question of the relationship between freedom and situation lies, as we have seen, at the level of the situation itself which comes to take on the Marxist characteristics of economic and social circumstances and conditioning. These modifications to the concept of situation inevitably have implications for Sartre's understanding of subjective freedom, the limitations on which are acknowledged much more fully in the postwar writings. However, Sartre continues to insist that individuals' ontological freedom imposes inalienable existential choices on them, and that they hence cannot be absolved of responsibility for their actions. This insistence ensures a fundamental coherence and continuity with the position articulated in L'Etre et le néant. It was notably with the belated appearance of Sartre's Carnets de la drôle de guerre in 1983, however, that it became apparent that any marked separation of early Sartrean from Marxist thought was excessively schematic, and reductive of both philosophies. Much of our discussion of the Carnets, which constitute a vital document of Sartre's intellectual progress during the phoney war period, will be reserved for chapters III and IV. For the time being, our enquiry will be limited to the implications of Sartre's reflections in the diaries for his concepts of freedom and situation. There is a perceptible progression in the course of the diaries towards conceiving of subjective situation in a way which clearly anticipates the synthetic conception of reality and the broadened conception of situation which surface explicitly in the postwar writings. There is, for instance, Sartre's account of the abstraction and rootlessness of his character with reference to the political and economic developments of modern French history. Sartre had earlier identified his rootlessness as a symptom of a socially and economically privileged status, remarking that, by contrast, '[r]ien n'enracine davantage qu'une âpre et dure situation pécuniaire.' [C: 485] 'Je suis certainement le produit monstrueux du capitalisme, du parlemen-
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tarisme, de la centralisation et du fonctionnarisme' [C: 537], reads the opening sentence of an account which, in its derivation of individual characteristics from economico-social phenomena, would seem to draw more heavily on a classic Marxist than an existentialist explanatory schema. From an early stage in the diaries, there is a movement in Sartre's thinking towards the idea that he must perceive the real nature of his situation and take full responsibility for himself in it, eventually culminating in an outright rejection of his own abstraction and rootlessness: 'Ce que j'ai compris c'est que la liberté n'est pas du tout le détachement stoïque des amours et des biens. Elle suppose au contraire un enracinement profond dans le monde et on est libre par-delà cet enracinement, c'est par-delà la foule, la nation, la classe, les amis qu'on est seul.' [C: 538] The conception of situation implied by these remarks is considerably broader than that which Sartre was to articulate in L'Etre et le néant. Individual freedom is only genuine and meaningful, Sartre suggests, when defined in the context of the collectivity. It is only in circumstances which condition and place constraints on the individual consciousness that the subject, understood as a detotalised totality, as Sartre would later put it, enjoys a freedom that is not debilitatingly abstract. The conception of the subject implied by such a view of individual freedom is in fact closer to Marxism than it is to existentialism, although the final clause of the aforementioned quotation appears to suggest that Sartre's desire to be rooted in the world is partly in the interests of better affirming his individuality. This distances him from communist collectivism, anticipating as it does his insistence in the postwar theoretical writings that the freedom of the subject always be safeguarded. In a later passage, Sartre is critical of his tendency during the 1930s to turn a blind eye to the influence which objective circumstances could exert over his freedom: 'cette façon de me réfugier en haut de la tour, quand le bas en est attaqué, et de regarder de haut en bas, sans sourciller, avec des yeux tout de même un peu agrandis par la peur' [C: 576]. It is worth pausing to note the coherence of this metaphor, and also Sartre's earlier opposition between rootlessness and rootedness, with the Marxist philosophical world-view, opposing as it does the abstract or elevated to real objective conditions. The 75
abstraction implied by the tower is suggestive of that of both philosophical idealism and bourgeois social elevation in relation to the material conditions of possibility which Marx and Engels, in The German Ideology, argued that both tendencies denied. Sartre explains that it was only at the time that he thought he was going mad that he made the valuable discovery that 'tout pouvait m'arriver à moi\ a feeling which he sees to be a precious one [C: 576]. He concludes that he must now definitively shut the door leading up to the tower [C: 580]: '[M]on réapprentissage doit consister précisément à me sentir "dans le coup", sans défense.' [C: 577] What is sketched out in these reflections in the Carnets is the first tentative formulation of the politicised conception of man later developed in Sartre's postwar writings and whose closest point of theoretical reference is the Marxist tradition. If being 'dans le coup' is of a piece with staying at the base of the tower in heat of the action as Sartre suggests, then it involves a refusal of abstraction in the interests of participating fully in the concrete reality of the situation, with all the genuine limitations on subjective freedom which this implies. In short, although Sartre's reflections rarely extend as far as in-depth consideration of economic and social conditioning at this stage, they nevertheless culminate in an acknowledgement of conditions of possibility for subjective thought and agency which, in so far as they are suggestive of the synthetic conception of reality he would later advocate, points in the direction of the politicised anthropology of classic Marxism. We will examine more closely in chapter IV the ways in which the Carnets anticipate Sartre's later engagement with Marxism. The continuity between the conclusions which Sartre arrives at in his war diaries and the position which he advances in his post-war writings poses the problem of how we are to account for the contrasting position which is set out in L'Etre et le néant and is sandwiched chronologically between the two. That is, how are we to explain the fact that following his return to Paris in April 1941 Sartre proceeded to set out a conception of subjective freedom in situation which contrasted so evidently with the position he had formulated whilst in captivity, only then to return to this earlier position from late 1944 onwards? This difficulty has not been given the attention it 76
merits in the critical literature, appearing to have been largely overlooked in accounts of early Sartrean thought. The apparent divergence marked by Sartre's position in L'Etre et le néant can only be satisfactorily explained, I believe, by insisting on the specificity of the work as a study in phenomenological ontology. That is, L'Etre et le néant cannot be taken to treat matters which touch on the social, political or economic fields in any convincing depth because they are distant from its focus. Hence, although Sartre includes a discussion of certain dimensions of the situation in L'Etre et le néant, the views he expresses should not be taken as representative of his entire conception of the nature and implications of situations. It is important to resist the temptation to view L'Etre et le néant as a work which encompasses all the key aspects of Sartre's philosophical world-view at the time that it was written. L'Etre et le néant was of course Sartre's most lengthy and in-depth theoretical work to date when it was published, so it is tempting to imagine that he sought to present a philosophical system therein which grouped together all his key theoretical positions. Reading L'Etre et le néant this way, however, would seem to give credence to the misapprehension that Sartre lacked an awareness of the political dimension of human freedom at the time of its composition. In reality, although Sartre's knowledge of Marxism remained limited in the early 1940s, he was already an astute observer of the political dimension of life, as his literary works reveal. One need only think of the portrayals of such as Lucien Fleurier in L'Enfance d'un chef and Brunet in Les Chemins de la liberté. Moreoever, the very fact that Sartre was writing L'Etre et le néant during a period and in a context - Nazi-occupied Paris - in which the political dimension of life was very prominent, is sufficient to dismiss any notion that he could have genuinely believed that all the situations in which subjective freedom finds itself were limited to those he sets out in the chapter entitled 'Liberté et Facticité: La Situation', in the fourth part of his existentialist classic. He, as a Frenchman, was enduring a situation which was the epitome of political wrcfreedom and in 1941 he even initiated a resistance group, 'Socialisme et liberté', in response to it. If L'Etre et le néant is taken for a philosophical system then it is, as such, undoubtedly an incomplete work. Not only are the political, 77
social and economic dimensions of life absent but, equally importantly, Sartre's ethical views are misrepresented because presented entirely one-sidedly. Our discussion in chapters III and IV will analyse the way in which Sartre, although ostensibly separating ontology off from ethics in L'Etre et le néant, in fact makes what he sees as our pre-conversion habitually inauthentic ethical outlook on life a fundamental though suppressed premise for his ontological claims. In his war diaries, the conditions and quest for authenticity had also been a central preoccupation but were not to resurface explicitly in his writings until the postwar years. In short, L'Etre et le néant in fact marks just one stage in Sartre's exposition of his ideas at the time looking forwards as it does to the account of authentic ethics, now known as the Cahiers pour une morale, which of course never materialised in published form during Sartre's lifetime. It is for these reasons that an accurate account of the development of Sartre's thinking between 1940 and the Liberation must at one and the same time take full account of the theses advanced in L'Etre et le néant and look beyond them. If L'Etre et le néant is taken as largely representative of Sartre's global position in the early 1940s, our understanding of his social, political, ethical and historical awareness will inevitably be distorted. It would not be until the postwar period that Sartre would begin to address these areas in his published writings, but an accurate assessment of his thinking during the war years must acknowledge not only his interest in such questions but also the fact that some of the theoretical positions which he was to adopt and develop after the Liberation were already established in his thinking at the time. The tendency to see L'Etre et le néant as representative of Sartre's thinking in the early 1940s long encouraged the misapprehension that his progression towards a proto-Marxist position in the mid 1940s took place in the short time separating L'Etre et le néant and the Liberation. In reality, this progression is better understood as a more gradual process of development between 1940 and 1945.
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Sartre's Stance with Regard to Idealist Abstraction It will be evident from the above that the early Sartre was hostile to modes of thought which were detached from the concrete reality of man's existence in the world. This hostility highlights a basic area of common ground with Marx for whom, notably in his early writings, the refusal of idealist abstraction had been a fundamental premise. However, Sartre rejects idealism not to embrace materialism but rather in the name of a conception of concrete reality inspired by phenomenology. His war diaries reveal an implicit questioning of the phenomenological brand of philosophical realism, Marxist concepts entering Sartre's discourse and problematising his pre-war worldview. It would only be in the postwar years, however, that Sartre's published theoretical works would convey this development in his thinking. Prior to the Liberation, Sartre's published theoretical writings essentially remained faithful to the conception of philosophical realism which he had first formulated in La Transcendance de I 'ego when he rejected the Husserlian transcendental ego, insisting that the ego was transcendent and only consciousness was transcendental. There are a number of further points I would like to clarify in this regard, in view of the centrality of Sartre's conception of the real both to his conception of subjective freedom in situation and to the possibility of his advancing meaningful positions with respect to ethics and politics. These latter areas will constitute our principal focus in Part Two. It might be objected that it is inappropriate to discuss early Sartrean thought in terms of an opposition between abstraction and realism as I do here. Sartre declared a desire to avoid both idealism and materialism [TE: 85-6, EN: 31], so the objection might run, and his theoretical positions should hence not be situated on this sort of vertical axis. It is Marx's philosophical world-view - his rejection of Hegelian idealism in the name of materialism - which emphasises the vertical axis, not Sartre's. This objection is a well-founded one, although I nevertheless believe it important to consider Sartre's thought in the light of the traditional idealism/materialism opposition
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all the same. As LaCapra reminds us,18 certain early Sartrean formulations - his references to the freedom of consciousness being of a transcendental nature, for example - misleadingly suggest the abstraction of idealism. An accurate understanding of Sartre's claims hence requires a reappraisal of their implications. Commentators such as Simont19 and notably Levy20 have rightly suggested that the early Sartre of even the pre-war years in reality tended more towards materialism than idealism because of his fascination with the external objects of perception. In short, Sartre's stance with regard to idealist abstraction is not always what it seems. L'Imaginaire, although published in 1940, was written in 1935-6 and is hence a work that is contemporaneous with La Transcendance de Vego. In these works Sartre appears more sympathetic towards philosophical abstraction than he would at any subsequent point in his career. In La Transcendance de l'ego, Sartre's use of the term 'transcendental' to describe consciousness' inassimilability to the ego suggests that it in some sense 'rises above' the ego. This suggestion is confirmed in L'Imaginaire in which the ability of consciousness to imagine is presented as constitutive of its freedom in relation to the real: Lorsque l'imaginaire n'est pas posé [...] le dépassement et la néantisation de l'existant sont enlisés dans l'existant [...] l'homme est écrasé dans le monde, transpercé par le réel [...][/: 359]
Sartre's references, here as elsewhere in L'Imaginaire, to the 'dépassement' and 'néantisation' of the world seem to suggest that a process of abstraction from the real is vital to imagining and to the freedom of consciousness. However, the formulations Sartre employs are somewhat misleading, his endorsement of abstraction from the real not being as unqualified as his terminology suggests. When he claims, for example, that 'l'objet en image est un irréel' [/: 240] he does not mean to imply that imagining involves literally denying the physical reality of the object. He rather seeks to distinguish imagining the 18 19 20
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LaCapra op.cit. pp. 48-9. Simont op.cit. pp. 17-20. Bernard-Henri Levy Le Siècle de Sartre (Grasset, 2000) pp. 222-228.
object in its absence from actually perceiving it directly. There is, he says, a '"pauvreté essentielle" des objets en image' [/: 284]. The image I have of Anny in her absence is less detailed than my perception of her when she was present, and as time goes on it increasingly fades [/: 278]. For Sartre imagining, then, implies the unreal by contrast with perceiving which involves the real. It does not necessarily or intrinsically involve a vertical movement towards abstraction as such. Sartre's attitude with regard to philosophical abstractions remained ambivalent in the latter years of the 1930s. On the one hand, La Nausée closes with Roquentin seeking an escape from the contingency of the world through writing a fictional work which he would like to be to be 'au-dessus de l'existence' [TV: 249]. And in his short stories La Chambre and Erostrate Sartre also strongly evokes the imaginary as a means of escaping the real. Yet, Sartre's position is in fact considerably more complex than it appears in this regard. The story Roquentin plans to write apparently symbolises a flight into the imaginary and yet he claims that it should be 'belle et dure comme de l'acier' [N: 250]. This statement of intention, synthesising as it does the aesthetic with brute facticity, is too striking to be passed over as insignificant. Of greater consequence, however, is Sartre's subtle but increasingly confident engagement with social critique in works like La Nausée and L'Enfance d'un chef. His scathing portrayals of the bourgeoisie and of far right anti-Semitists in these works respectively reveal a keen awareness of important socio-political issues of the late 1930s. As such, they implicitly challenge the idea that the literary text, as imaginary work and aesthetic object, should not be concerned with real-world issues of a political and ethical nature. We will return to this matter in subsequent chapters. Even from as early as the mid 1930s, Sartre hence does not tend towards idealist abstraction to anything like the degree that his formulations suggest. What happens as his thought develops, however, is that he becomes increasingly explicit in his criticisms of idealisttending abstractions. This tendency becomes particularly prominent in the postwar years of course, and notably in the Cahiers and Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?, but had also been an increasingly important theme in the Carnets of 1940, as we have seen. I will demonstrate in chapter 81
Ill that from as early as La Nausée certain of his representations of inauthenticity are clearly associated with abstraction from the real. Indeed, in this work as well as in L'Enfance d'un chef, Sartre's hostility to idealist abstraction is linked with social critique. In particular, it is integral to his numerous negative representations of the bourgeoisie, who are typically characterised as inauthentic, and also to his portrayal of the liberal democratic conception of political rights. I think it important to stress, however, that my claim that Sartre's critical attitude towards idealist abstraction becomes increasingly apparent is not tantamount to saying that his position hence takes a materialist turn in the strict philosophical sense of the term 'materialist'. Towards the end of the Carnets, for instance, he is highly critical of the abstraction of his pre-war bourgeois condition and sees the need to be more rooted, but nevertheless does not want to become 'sérieux', the concept in this instance designating the desire for material substantiality [C: 580]. Similarly, when he concludes in the same text, as we shall see in chapter IV, that authenticity requires the unity of principles and practical conduct, no 'downward' movement is implied towards the materialist concrete (nor, it should be noted, had such a 'downward' movement been indispensable to the Marxist insistence on the unity of theory and practice: in the 'Theses on Feuerbach', Marx criticised the inertia of 'contemplative materialism' insisting that concrete reality was better understood as constituted by human agency). Indeed, the Sartre of Matérialisme et révolution (1946) would remain as critical of the doctrine of philosophical materialism as he had been at the time of La Transcendance de l'ego (1936). But by 1946 his hostility to idealist abstractions would involve the belief that man should be conceived of as a synthetic totality, and that there was the need for a proletarian-led revolution. Sartre was to pursue further his attack on idealist abstraction in the Cahiers and in Qu 'estce que la littérature? The Marxian tone of the anti-idealist arguments articulated in the latter work in particular is very noticeable. In the Cahiers, he rejects the 'universel abstrait' in the name of 'l'universel concret',21 and describes his ethics of authenticity as a 'morale concrète' [CM: 111]. 21
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Cahiers pour une morale p. 14 (Gallimard, 1983) (hereafter CM).
Part Two: From Ontology and Ethics to Politics and History
Introduction
Sartre never published an ethical treatise, but ethical preoccupations underpinned not only his several attempts to formulate a formal ethics but also many other central areas of his thought. In a manner to some extent reminiscent of the Marxist intellectual tradition, the ethical problematic in Sartre's works, whilst vital, long remained implicit. The posthumous publication of his Cahiers pour une morale, as well as the Carnets de la drôle de guerre and the Lettres au Castor which preceded them, served to illuminate this area which, although clearly perceptible in Sartre's works of the 1930s and 1940s,1 had by and large lacked explicit articulation. Fabrizio Scanzio rightly points out the need to distinguish between Sartre's reflections on ethics and Sartrean ethics proper. The latter, Scanzio argues, is the ethics of authenticity announced in L'Etre et le néant and undertaken but never completed in the immediate postwar years. Although the site of Sartre's formal ethical enquiries, this ethics, to be found today in the Cahiers pour une morale, should be seen only as existing in close relation to reflections on ethical matters which are present throughout Sartre's oeuvre.2 The value of Scanzio's interpretative distinction is that it facilitates a better understanding of the ethical drive which can be clearly perceived in many of Sartre's works even when they do not explicitly address questions which have traditionally been seen as the province of 'ethics'. It hence becomes possible to identify the ethical implications not just of Sartre's famous awakening to the politics of ideas and to politics proper in his published works of the postwar years but also, and less obviously, the ethical perspectives which
1
2
Francis Jeanson's study of Sartre's early work, Le Problème moral dans la pensée de Sartre (Editions du Seuil, 1965), was the first to perceive the centrality of ethical questions to the author's ostensibly ontological and aesthetic centres of interest. Maurizio Scanzio, Sartre et la morale (Naples : Vivarium, 2000) pp. 14-15.
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accompany the positions he advances with respect to aesthetic matters and even ontology. The early Sartre's ethical convictions developed in parallel to, and in association with, his aesthetic and ontological positions. Indeed, he described one of his numerous early 'morales' as a 'morale esthétique' [C: 286] and in the closing paragraph of La Transcendance de I yego he argued, as he would do later in the final chapter of L'Etre et le néant, that ethical prescriptions could be derived from his ontological account of the relationship between consciousness and world [TE: 87]. Beauvoir recounts that it was in the early 1930s that Sartre first elaborated his concept of bad faith [FA: 149], which indicates that he had formulated an early version of his concept of authenticity prior to encountering the ideas of Heidegger. Sartre's preoccupation with authenticity was subsequently to become the central focus of his ethical thought. In Part Two, I will chart the progression in Sartre's writings from fictional representations and theoretical descriptions of what he sees as our habitual inauthentic condition to an integrally authentic type of conduct with both ethical and political implications. In my account of Sartre's concept of inauthenticity in chapter III, I emphasise the fact that the ethical impulse was so central to his thought that the scope of inauthenticity is ultimately broad enough to underpin the ontology of L'Etre et le néant almost in its entirety. Sartre later referred to L'Etre et le néant as an 'eidétique de la mauvaise foi',3 his phenomenologicoontological account of the human condition being a description of man in his inauthentic state prior to conversion. I also argue, identifying a point of overlap between ethics, ontology and political thought earlier than is commonly acknowledged in the critical literature, that Sartre's concept of inauthenticity can be seen, in some of its manifestations, as a bridge area with the Marxist concept of 'ideology in the pejorative sense', as Raymond Geuss terms it.4 This discussion is followed in chapter IV by an account of Sartre's progression towards an ethics of authenticity notably during his time as a military conscript in the 3 4
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'Merleau-Ponty Vivant' in Situations IV p. 196 In The Idea of a Critical Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1981) (pp. 1222), Geuss offers a detailed discussion of this phenomenon.
phoney war period and, in chapter V, by an analysis of his developing concept of commitment from this time through to Matérialisme et révolution (1946). Chapter VI focuses on Sartre's nascent dialectical theory of history, and in chapter VII I argue that Sartre's attempts to formulate an ethics in the postwar years, and in the Cahiers pour une morale in particular, are best understood when taken in conjunction with his increasing involvement with left-wing political thought and the Marxist conception of morality founded on the historical dialectic. On many interlinking levels, the transition in Sartre's thought between accounting for man's inauthentic condition and outlining an alternative, ethically defensible type of conduct is of a piece with his increasingly explicit political commitment to the struggle for socialism. The rejection of man's desire for a fixed identity, or 'being', in favour of an emphasis on 'doing' develops in conjunction with an acknowledgement of the importance of active participation in the political struggle. The movement towards an ethics of reciprocity develops in parallel with recognising the value of intersubjective solidarity. And the progression towards an explicit politicisation of the concept of 'engagement', most famously with respect to writing and aesthetics in Qu'est-ce que la littérature?, clearly echoes certain tendencies in Marxist political and aesthetic theorising. Moreover, I shall argue that these developments are accompanied by a progression in Sartre's thinking towards endorsing a positive conception of ideology reminiscent of the idea of proletarian class consciousness to be found notably in the Leninist-inspired work of the early Lukâcs. Around 1946, in addition to explicit references to the Marxist concept of dominant ideology, Sartre starts to employ the term 'ideology' in such a way as to suggest that it is a weapon in the struggle for political emancipation. A more general use of the term which roughly corresponds to the idea of a world-view or outlook, and which is reminiscent of the neutral sense of ideology to be found in the work of Gramsci, is also perceptible in Sartre's writings of this period. Overall, in my argument of Part Two, I seek to illuminate a political trajectory which can be traced through Sartre's developing ethical and ontological positions from the 1930s through to the late 1940s. Whilst the latter part of this journey, namely that of Sartre's ethics of authenticity and his growing emphasis on commitment, has a 87
perceptibly political dimension, it is preceded by ethical and ontological positions which are less obviously expressive of a political stance. These positions, however, when examined in their situational representations in Sartre's fiction in addition to their theoretical formulations, are also harmonious with a left political vision. Indeed, the progression in Sartre's thought from inauthentic, alienated ethics to an ethics of authenticity and socialist commitment can be seen as loosely reminiscent of the passage from the alienated life of presocialist society to socialism famously envisaged by Marx. There is a clear correspondence between Sartre's ethical ideal of authenticity and the political ideal of socialism, and there is also a coherence between the habitually inauthentic condition of man charted by Sartre notably in works up to and including L'Etre et le néant and the alienated, fractured life of man in society prior to the advent of socialism against which Marx's writings were directed.
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III. Inauthenticity and Ideology
Sartre's Concept of Inauthenticity Amongst the writings of the early Sartre, the Carnets de la drôle de guerre offer the most revealing and sustained discussions of the Heideggerian-influenced concepts of authenticity and inauthenticity, which form the backbone of his ethical world-view. The war diaries are most profitably read in conjunction with the Lettres au Castor, written during the same period, which comment on their content and provide supplementary information aiding their interpretation. Most importantly, whereas the starting point for the surviving diaries is 12 November 1939, the letters allow us to follow Sartre's experiences right through his time as a military conscript starting in September 1939 and thus provide details about the developments in his thinking that had taken place since the beginning of the phoney war. Many of Sartre's initial reflections on inauthenticity in his letters and war diaries are to be found in the analyses of his fellow conscripts which he offers. His remark that amongst the soldiers '[i]l règne une camaraderie courtoise, serviable, et superficielle qui s'adresse indistinctement à l'homme, créature interchangeable'1 is reminiscent of his negative portrayal of the inauthentic humanism of the Autodidact in La Nausée who favours the generality of the concept of man over recognising the particularity of individual subjects. Setting aside the 'léger sentiment de supériorité' in himself of which he is critical [LC I: 302], Sartre's attitude towards the soldiers in his entourage is characterised principally by his assessment of their ethical outlook on the world. Sartre's observation of and discussions with fellow conscript Pieter, in particular, prove to be notably revealing of his conception of inauthenticity. At an early stage, Sartre informs Beauvoir that 1
Lettres au Castor I p.216 (hereafter LC /).
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he feels 'un peu de sympathie pour le "matérialiste" [...] Pieter' [LCI: 287] which he does not feel for the others, in spite of the fact that Pieter is the incarnation of the Heideggerian "das Man" [LC I: 282]. Sartre describes Pieter as 'hardi, optimiste, débrouillard' [LC I: 286], personality traits which clearly resemble his own. What Pieter has in common with Sartre, unlike the others, is a lucidity about his own ethical outlook on the world. It is this lucidity, coupled with the thorough coherence of his inauthenticity, which makes him an interesting case for Sartre, who will do intellectual battle with him on ethical questions over many months, sometimes openly but more commonly in his letters and diaries. Ultimately, it is an open dispute with Pieter on 13th November 1939 which will ignite what Sartre would subsequently refer to as 'cette drôle de crise d'où, au fond, est sortie ma théorie de l'authenticité'. [LC IL 131] We will examine the progression in Sartre's thinking towards this ethics of authenticity, and the catalytic role played by the dispute with Pieter, in chapter IV. In one of his earliest remarks about Pieter, Sartre comments that 'on n'imagine pas qu'il ait pu, une seconde dans sa vie, être touché par l'existentiel' [LC L 282]. In view of the centrality which Sartre accords to the existential present, from which derive his insistence on making self-defining choices and taking full responsibility for them, it is clear from the outset that he has detected characteristics in Pieter entirely at odds with his own world-view. Indeed, Sartre's subsequent observations about Pieter corroborate his initial suspicions, Pieter proving to be 'le plus beau spécimen du rationalisme inauthentique, très exactement du "o«" heideggerien.' [C: 193] This inauthenticity manifests itself in Pieter's repeated attempts to assimilate the particular characteristics of individuals to general types and antecedently existing social categories [C: 194-5]. Pieter subscribes implicitly to a naturalistic conception of man, explaining individuals' thoughts and actions in terms of a supposed natural temperament which, in turn, he assimilates to social categories [C: 194]. On Pieter's view, Sartre continues, these social categories themselves derive from Tintersection de la nature héritée et de l'activité professionnelle' [C: 194]. From this ineptly conceived synthesis of naturalism and sociologism Pieter proceeds directly to what Sartre terms 'la morale de l'intérêt', the assumption being that following one's natural temperament will 90
involve seeking to serve one's own interests [C: 194]. Moreover, Pieter's rhetorical strategies are geared to satisfying his desire to 'jouir le plus longtemps possible de l'accord de son esprit avec lui-même' [C: 193], a tendency which is at odds with Sartre's characteristic lack of solidarity with himself. On all these different levels, Pieter's outlook is one which denies the subject genuine autonomy of thought and the capacity for individuality. It hence conflicts with the central tenets of Sartre's world-view. Sartre's brief account of Pieter's faith in legal rights is consistent with this outlook: Il se considère [...] comme sujet de droit. Mais il s'agit de droits sociaux, c'est dans une société donnée et le code à la main qu'il entend user de ses droits - et tout juste ceux que le code lui accorde. Il n'imaginerait pas d'en rêver d'autres [...] [C: 195]
For Pieter, the subject's possibilities for action are hence exactly coextensive with the rights conferred upon him by a system of law which not only pre-exists him but which he would not dream of trying to alter. Sartre, by contrast, dislikes appeals to legal rights for the purposes of self-justification, considering the attempt to fall back on them a manifestation of the 'sérieux'. We will discuss this concept shortly. Sartre's critique of Pieter's faith in legal rights had been anticipated in the closing pages of L'Enfance d'un chef by his characterisation of the young bourgeois Lucien Fleurier's new-found self-assurance. Lucien's 'J'existe [...] parce que j'ai le droit d'exister'2 is an attempt to dispense with existential uncertainty by subordinating subjective freedom in the existential present to the notion of a pre-existing right. In this work, the inauthenticity of a reliance on rights is directly linked with the 'sérieux' of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, Sartre explicitly politicises this theme by showing how the legitimacy which the bourgeois imagine are conferred on them by rights, and by the social roles they inhabit, act as crucial supports to the maintenance of a position of dominance in relation to the working class: 'Des générations d'ouvriers pourraient [...] obéir 2
L'Enfance d'un chef in Le Mur pp. 243-4 (hereafter EC).
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scrupuleusement aux ordres de Lucien, ils n'épuiseraient jamais son droit à commander' [EC: 243], reads a concluding passage. Sartre hence shows how the bad faith and social status of the bourgeoisie protected by the rule of law, and the maintenance of an oppressive social structure go hand in hand with each other. Sartre notes with surprise the day after his dispute with Pieter 4 that [c]e qui me frappe c'est que son inauthenticité est sans aucun trou, à la différence de celle de la plupart des gens. C'est un système du monde cohérent et sans failles. C'est là que se pose le mieux la question du Castor: « Mais si l'inauthenticité est cohérente, qu'est-ce qui prouve qu'elle vaut moins que l'authentique ? »' [C: 196]. Sartre proposes no answer to this question and the likelihood is that he feels both challenged and genuinely perplexed at this time by the problem of an inauthentic world-view which is entirely coherent. Yet, Sartre's apparent disorientation on this issue is belied by his own fictional writing of the period as we have seen: Lucien's inauthenticity at the end of L'Enfance d'un chef is also coherent but, in so far as it involves justifying his socially elevated position by appealing to rights laid down by bourgeois law, it contributes to the maintenance of an unjust social structure. In short, the political content of Sartre's text has strong implications for his ethical thought: the coherence of Lucien's inauthenticity takes nothing away from the fact that his social position is morally reprehensible because it contributes to the oppression of the freedom of others. In so far as Pieter's bad faith, like that of Lucien, involves an unquestioning acceptance of legal rights as a guide to and justification for ethical conduct, he is implicated in an ongoing process of legitimation of the liberal order. By the time of the Cahiers pour une morale Sartre would present legal rights as essential supports to an oppressive liberal political structure: Le droit est [...] dans une société d'oppression l'exigence que les oppresseurs formulent vis-à-vis des opprimés3 Le droit du libéralisme est [...] la mystification dans sa forme la plus pure. [CM: 153] 3
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Cahiers pour une morale p. 15 2 (hereafter: CM).
In such statements, Sartre's stance on rights is clearly aligned to the Marxist position. Marx, in his article of 1843 entitled On the Jewish Question, questioned the extent to which the rights of man, as formulated in 1791 following the French Revolution, accorded real freedom to individuals. '[T]he so-called rights of man [...] are quite simply the rights of the member of civil society, ie. of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and from the community',4 Marx argued. 'Liberty', according to this conception of rights, 'is [...] the right to do and perform everything which does not harm others [...]. The liberty we are dealing with is that of man as an isolated monad who is withdrawn into himself.'5 For Marx, such a conception of rights takes the bourgeois citizen for a model and is limited to the protection of his interests. It fails to take into account the economic conditions which are necessary for such a bourgeois citizen to exist, and hence also ignores the real circumstances of most people in society who are involved in the process of economic production. Understanding real freedom requires taking man's economico-social context as the starting point for political reflection: Only when real, individual man resumes the abstract citizen into himself and as an individual man has become a species-being in his empirical life, his individual work and his individual relationships, only when man has recognized and organized his forces propres as social forces so that social force is no longer separated from him in the form of political force, only then will human emancipation be completed.6
In the 'Présentation des Temps Modernes' Sartre also explictly criticises the conception of rights which was to become a pillar of political liberalism in the nineteenth century. In the following passage he inadvertently echoes Marx's claims, although with the particularity that he links bourgeois thought to the 'esprit d'analyse': Ces principes [i.e. analytical thinking] ont présidé à la Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme. Dans la société que conçoit l'esprit d'analyse, l'individu, particule
4 5 6
Marx, On the Jewish Question, in Karl Marx Early Writings p.229 Ibidp.229 Ibidp.234
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solide et indécomposable [...] est tout rond, fermé sur soi, incommunicable. [P: 18]
Sartre's postwar Marxian rejection of the liberal conception of rights had first been suggestively although inchoately formulated years earlier in L'Enfance d'un chef and had made an initial appearance in his theoretical writings in the passages devoted to Pieter in the Carnets. In L'Enfance d'un chef the politics of the text are veiled, however, by Sartre's pervasive use of irony. We will discuss the nature and function of irony in Sartre's pre-war literary writings in chapter VIII. In the context of the present discussion, it suffices to remark that the literary dimension of a work such as L'Enfance d'un chef complicates the identification of the text's ideological content, although without in any sense nullifying that ideological content. It is in July 1940, only a few weeks after being made a prisoner of war, that Sartre announces in a letter to Beauvoir that he has started writing L'Etre et le néant [L IL 286]. The writing of this work marks a turning point in Sartre's development because, as Scanzio points out,7 it is only from the time of his conceiving L'Etre et le néant that ethics and ontology would ostensibly take separate paths in his thought and that ontology, at least in his published output, came to enjoy preeminence in relation to ethics. In reality, the status of the ontology set out in L'Etre et le néant was to remain ambiguous with respect to ethics. On the one hand, Sartre suggests that it is not possible to discuss ethics in the context of an ontological account of man. There is, for example, the well known footnote in which Sartre refers to 'la possibilité d'une morale de la délivrance et du salut. Mais celle-ci doit être atteinte au terme d'une conversion radicale dont nous ne pouvons parler ici.' [EN: 463] Moreover, Sartre entitles the final, brief chapter of L'Etre et le néant 'Perspectives morales' thereby suggesting that the ontological account he has given points in the direction of a future ethics for which it is only the foundation. 'L'ontologie,' this closing chapter begins, 'ne saurait formuler elle-même des prescriptions morales. Elle s'occupe uniquement de ce qui est, et il n'est pas possible de tirer des impératifs de ces indicatifs. Elle laisse entrevoir ce que sera 7
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Scanzio op.cit. p. 102
une éthique qui prendra ses responsabilités en face d'une réalité humaine en situation' [EN: 690] On the other hand, Scanzio's distinction between Sartrean ethics proper and the reflections on ethics which are to be found throughout Sartre's writings makes it possible to acknowledge fully the extent to which the ontology of L'Etre et le néant, whilst being preparatory to Sartre's planned ethical treatise, is itself saturated with ethical presuppositions.8 Sartre's ontological claims are intended as a description of man's habitual condition which, in Sartre's view, is an inauthentic one. Sartre makes it clear that although he does not intend to discuss in this work the possibility of reaching a more authentic condition, authenticity nevertheless remains the ultimate ethical ideal for man, despite the difficulty of its attainment. The well-known footnote at the close of the first part of the work evokes the possibility of a radical departure from bad faith, '[m]ais cela suppose une reprise de l'être pourri par lui-même que nous nommerons authenticité' [EN: 107]. A clearly perceptible ethical axis can hence be identified in Sartre's thought extending from L'Etre et le néant to the attempt to formulate an ethics of authenticity in Cahiers, the relationship between the two works not simply being that of ontology to ethics. When Sartre claims to be reserving discussion of ethics for a later work [EN: 692], it is in reality only the positive ethics of authenticity and reciprocity which he is temporarily putting to one side, the negative ethical vision taking its full part in the ontology itself. The habitually inauthentic condition of man, as Sartre conceives of it, manifests itself in a number of different ways, each being part of an attempt to evade the basic futility of our existence as unavoidably free beings in a contingent world of facticity. The most central aspect of man's inauthentic condition is his desire to give himself a foundation in the world: 'l'apparition du pour-soi [...] renvoie bien à l'effort d'un en-soi pour se fonder: il correspond à une tentative de l'être pour lever la contingence de son être' [EN: 122]. At its most 8
Gérard Wormser, in 'L'Etre et le néant et la phénoménologie des valeurs', included in Sartre et la phénoménologie éd. Jean-Marc Mouille p.312, notes: 'L'éthique sartrienne ne rompt pas avec les orientations de sa recherche phénoménologique, qu'il est impossible de séparer de la morale.'
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basic ontological level, this manifests itself in consciousness' desire to be self-identical. Sartre refers to Ten-soi-pour-soi, c'est-à-dire l'idéal d'une conscience qui serait fondement de son propre être-ensoi par la pure conscience qu'elle prendrait d'elle-même.' In other words, Sartre concludes, i'homme est fondamentalement désir d'être Dieu.' [EN: 626] Man's project to be God involves his attempting to find stability and identity in an already existing self, concomitant with which are his identification with existing value-systems and social roles, and his attempts to gain psychological ascendancy over others who, like himself, also seek to be God. Sartre's concept of the 'sérieux' is a close relative of the project to be God. 'Il y a sérieux, en somme', Sartre had noted in his war diaries, 'quand on part du monde et quand on attribue plus de réalité au monde qu'à soi - ou, à tout le moins, quand on se confère une réalité dans la mesure où on appartient au monde.' [C : 578] The account of the 'sérieux' included in L'Etre et le néant [EN: 640-1] reiterates this definition, Sartre adding that '[i]l va de soi que l'homme sérieux enfouit au fond de lui-même la conscience de sa liberté, il est de mauvaise foi9 [EN: 641]. Sartre's hostility to the 'sérieux' is directed at those, such as the bourgeoisie notably, who think that their material situation justifies their existence, and at those left political revolutionaries who derive their conduct from a reductively materialist conception of the world [C: 577-9]. It is also directed at those who fall back on pre-existing values and roles. Another dimension of Pieter's integral inauthenticity which Sartre remarks upon is his inability to distinguish value from fact. Pieter takes the values he holds for things with objective existence rather than recognising the work of consciousness in creating these values. He consequently defends lazy, habitually inauthentic forms of conduct rather than recognising that, although commonly practised, they are ethically questionable. 'Si on lui parle de la valeur d'une union libre,' Sartre notes, 'il répond en disant: « Toutes celles que je connais ont fini par un mariage ou ont tourné au collage. »' [C: 195] Pieter, then, only recognises values in so far as they are borne out by normative social practices, whereas it is precisely the gap between the inauthentic nature of an unreasoning fidelity to such conventional practices on the one hand, and the ethical
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ideal of authenticity on the other, which Sartre wishes to emphasise by insisting on the distinction between facts and values. In the famous example of the inauthentic waiter presented in L'Etre et le néant, Sartre offers an illustration of his conviction that individuals' over-identification with roles involves a similar reliance on convention in the interests of evading subjective freedom. The waiter who 'joue à être garçon de café' [EN: 95] seeks an 'être-en-soi du garçon de café' [EN: 96], that is a foundation in the world through a full identification with his role. It is worth noting, however, that in contrast to Sartre's definition of the 'sérieux' in the Carnets which presents it as tending towards the inert substantiality of the material, this case of inauthentic conduct tends conversely towards abstraction. Sartre points out that the waiter knows that the role of waiter in which he invests himself consists of both obligations and rights. These concepts, however, 'renvoient au transcendant. Il s'agit de possibilités abstraites, de droits et de devoirs conférés a un « sujet de droit ».' It is this possessor of a right which the waiter thinks he must be but is not, and he attempts to make the leap by imitating the gestures of waiters and 'en [s]e visant comme garçon de gafé imaginaire à travers ces gestes pris comme « analogon ».' [EN : 96] The tendency towards abstraction is a dimension of Sartre's concept of bad faith in certain of its manifestations. Bad faith, Sartre argues, involves lying to oneself in order to mask from oneself an unpleasant truth [EN: 84] and is described by Sartre as an attitude which is 'essentielle à la réalité humaine' [EN: 83]. In the famous example he gives of the coquettish young woman, Sartre describes an individual who persists in deluding herself that her suitor's intentions are not of a sexual nature, even though she is actually aware that they are. She maintains her state of delusion in two principal ways. First, she 'purifie le désir de ce qu'il a d'humiliant, en n'en voulant considérer que la pure transcendance qui lui évite même de le nommer.' [EN: 93] That is, she only recognises the sexual nature of her suitor's intentions 'dans la mesure où [le désir] se transcende vers l'admiration, l'estime, le respect' [EN: 91]. The situation starts to become problematic for her, however, when the suitor takes her hand: 'On sait ce qui se produit alors: la jeune femme abandonne sa main, mais ne s'aperçoit pas qu'elle l'abandonne. Elle ne s'aperçoit pas parce qu'il 97
se trouve par hasard qu'elle est, à ce moment, tout esprit. Elle entraîne son interlocuteur jusqu'aux régions les plus élevées de la spéculation sentimentale [...]. Et pendant ce temps, le divorce du corps et de l'âme est accompli' [EN: 91-2]. It is also via a movement towards transcendence, or abstraction, that the woman is able to ignore the immediate significance of her suitor's physical gesture, because she 'se réalise comme n'étant pas son propre corps' [EN: 92]. This tendency towards transcendence in bad faith also manifests itself as a crucial support to the 'sérieux' of Mathieu's bourgeois brother Jacques in L 'Age de raison. When Mathieu asks him for money because Marcelle is pregnant, Jacques' apparent inability to intuit that the money is to be used for an abortion is presented as an instance of bad faith: Mathieu rougit de colère: comme toujours, Jacques refusait d'envisager honnêtement la situation, il tournait obstinément autour d'elle et pendant ce temps-là, son esprit s'évertuait à trouver un nid d'aigle d'où il pût prendre des vues plongeantes sur la conduite des autres. Quoi qu'on lui dît, quoi qu'on fît, son premier mouvement était pour s'élever au-dessus du débat, il ne pouvait rien voir que d'en haut, il avait la passion des nids d'aigle. [AR: 128]
In this example, Jacques wilfully abstracts from the concrete reality of the situation in order to postpone the moment of acknowledging the real reason for Mathieu's request. It is also by this process of abstraction that Jacques attempts to gain the psychological upper hand over Mathieu, both as a point-scoring manoeuvre in their tense and competitive relationship and also in the interests of reaffirming his social standing as a bourgeois lawyer. Such examples of inauthenticity involving a movement towards abstraction are not representative of all the cases of inauthentic conduct which Sartre's texts present. As we have seen, Sartre also conceives of the 'sérieux', in particular, as conversely involving a desire for the substantiality of the material. The tendency towards abstraction is nevertheless an important dimension of many instances of inauthenticity in Sartre's writings. We have seen that it is Pieter's 'rationalisme inauthentique' [C: 22 my italics] which Sartre seeks to understand and that, like Marx, Sartre considers a reliance on legal rights to involve a movement towards abstraction from the real. For 98
Lucien in L'Enfance d'un chef, rights are 'par-delà l'existence, comme les objets mathématiques' and '[q]uelque chose dans le genre des triangles et des cercles: c'était si parfait que ça n'existait pas' [EC: 243]. Our identification of the relationship between inauthenticity and abstraction in early Sartrean thought is significant because, as will become apparent shortly, it constitutes an important bridge area with the classic Marxist concept of ideology.9 Prior to the Liberation, Sartre's writings do not contain any explicit references to ideology in the sense meant by Marxists when they refer to dominant ideologies. Certain of Sartre's literary texts offer representations of relations of socio-political dominance and oppression, but the absence of references to ideology in his theoretical writings means that these representations have to be read, initially at least, as exemplifications of his ethical concept of inauthenticity. As my argument of the next subsection will show, our recognition that Sartre's concept of inauthenticity involves a movement not simply towards substantiality but also, in other cases, towards abstraction allows for a broader and richer understanding of the early Sartre's writings, and notably of their political content and implications. However, the identification of these tendencies, i.e. towards abstraction or towards substantiality, involves situating Sartre's concept of inauthenticity on the vertical axis of the traditional idealism/materialism antinomy. My reading of Sartre's concept of inauthenticity will involve the claim that an accurate and fuller understanding of its appearances in Sartre's texts must also situate it on the horizontal axis of temporality. In the case of certain textual examples, it is clear that inauthenticity for Sartre is ultimately as much about the subjective consciousness's refusal to face up to the responsibility imposed by the temporal present as it is about its desire for substantiality or elevation. Consciousness's constant attempts to give itself a foundation in the world involve, at the level of ontology, trying to identify with a past self, namely its being, in which it seeks a fixed and stable identity. And consciousness's attempts to identify with pre9
It goes without saying that not all cases of inauthenticity portrayed in Sartre's works, however, lend themselves to comparison with the concept of ideology in the pejorative sense, only those which have a socio-political dimension.
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existing values and pre-established social status are derived from this basic inauthentic project. Ultimately, such attempts are all doomed to failure, Sartre believes, because consciousness is condemned to selfdefinition in the temporal present. It is condemned, in other words, to be free. Sartre's account of interpersonal ethics in L'Etre et le néant, to which he attributes an almost exclusively negative character, is amongst the better known features of the work. It is, moreover, one of the few areas of Sartre's work of phenomenological ontology which falls within the category of 'ethics' as traditionally conceived although the positions Sartre advances are in reality best understood as derivative of his ontological account of man's habitually inauthentic condition. They are in reality as much a part of the ethical ramifications of the ontology as they are expressive of the early Sartre's definitive views on interpersonal ethics, the exposition of which he says he is reserving for a forthcoming work on ethics.10 In the chapter of L'Etre et le néant entitled 'Les relations concrètes avec autrui', Sartre presents the various types of relationship which we enter into with others, including those which are usually thought of as positive such as love and sexual relationships, as instances of fundamentally conflictual relations between the self and others: 'Le conflit est le sens originel de l'être-pour-autrui.' [EN: 413] Sartre's paints a picture of intersubjective alienation in which each subject attempts to capture and enslave the free consciousness of those with whom he or she enters into contact. Earlier in the work, Sartre had established that the principal instrument of this enslavement was the glance which I cast on the other in order to objectify him, that is to turn him into an object in my world. The other is of course attempting to do the same to me, and Sartre describes the feeling of disempowerment which the other's glance produces thus: 'je vis une aliénation subtile de toutes mes possibilités qui sont agencées loin de moi, au milieu du monde avec 10
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Sartre includes a lengthy discussion of alienated intersubjective relations in L'Etre et le néant, but his references to the possibility of an ethics of authen ticity which he intends to formulate in a subsequent work suggest strongly that he considers these negative ethical relationships principally to be derivative of the habitually inauthentic condition of man which he is describing.
les objets du monde' [EN: 311]; '[p]ar le regard d'autrui, je me vis comme figé au milieu du monde, comme en danger, comme irrémédiable.' [EN: 314] Sartre's negative portrayal of intersubjective ethics, rather like the other dimensions of man's inauthentic condition such as the project to be God, the 'sérieux', and bad faith, can be traced without difficulty back to the fundamental propositions of the ontology of L'Etre et le néant. The need to objectify the other, and hence the impossibility of non-conflictual intersubjective relations, stems from the glance of the other putting into jeopardy my project to be an ens causa sui or, as Sartre puts it, to be God. Being reduced to the status of a thing in the world for the other obstructs my attempts to establish my own foundation. My only defence against the challenge posed by the other is to attempt to objectify him just as he objectifies me: 'L'objectivation d'autrui [...] est une défense de mon être qui me libère précisément de mon être pour autrui en conférant à autrui un être pour moi.' [EN: 315] The basis of the intersubjective ethics of L'Etre et le néant is hence a power struggle between conflicting 'pour -soi', and this struggle can in turn be related back to the project of each subjectivity to be God. The origin of the project to be God, moreover, can itself be identified in the most fundamental claims of Sartre's ontology, namely the relationship which he posits between consciousness and being. Consciousness, Sartre argues, seeks to be reconciled with being 'parce qu'elle surgit à l'être comme perpétuellement hantée par une totalité qu'elle est sans pouvoir l'être, puisque justement elle ne pourrait atteindre l'en-soi sans se perdre comme pour-soi.' [EN: 129] Such attempts to achieve full self-coincidence are doomed to failure as the relationship between consciousness and being is by its very nature one of non-coincidence. It is precisely this disjunction, or fissure, in the composition of the subject which ensures his irreducible freedom. The subject habitually persists in the attempt to evade this freedom by seeking to give himself a foundation, however, and is hence inauthentic. The intimate connection between the evasion of freedom and the condition of inauthenticity illustrates the impossibility of arguing for any marked separation between ontology and ethics in Sartre's work. An inauthentic mode of existence, for Sartre, is one which involves 101
trying to work against the nature of one's ontological make-up. The movement towards authenticity, by contrast, starts with facing up to the reality of one's condition and accepting that one's inalienable freedom implies responsibility and the necessity to be self-defining through action. In fact, the very failure of consciousness's inauthentic projects described by Sartre in L'Etre et le néant points in the direction of his ethics of authenticity. Scanzio rightly points out that '[1]'ontologie sartrienne n'est pas statique: elle contient et esquisse déjà le mouvement qui la projette vers la morale.'11 Sartre's famously describes the inauthentic man of his ontological account, who is characterised by the ultimate failure of his habitual attempts to give himself a foundation, as a 'passion inutile' [EN: 678]. The passage from inauthentic ethics to the authentic ethics of the Cahiers involves the transformation of this ineffectual and dishonest 'passion' into outward-looking, creative action, and commitment.
Inauthenticity, Dominant Ideology and False Consciousness There is a clear thematic connection, as we have seen, between the condition of inauthenticity described in Sartre's ontology and the representation of power holders and defenders of the status quo in his fictional works. The inauthenticity of such power holders, as we have seen, is notably represented in the bourgeois 'sérieux', a pronounced form of the project to be God which is a fundamental tendency of man's ontological make-up. What is less readily apparent is the conceptual link which can be established between certain of these representations and the Marxist concept of the dominant ideology,12 or 11 12
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Scanzio op.cit.p. 130 Sartre's representations of the inauthentic conduct of the bourgeoisie give his writing a dimension of social critique, a tendency which is also central to Marxist theories of ideology. It might be objected, however, that the antibourgeois sentiment expressed in Sartre's works is not necessarily evidence of a
what Raymond Geuss appropriately terms 'ideology in the pejorative sense'.13 One of the most important areas of common ground between Sartre's libertarian thought and Marxism is a shared hostility to the oppression of individuals' capacity for creative agency. This oppression of freedom is expressed in Sartre's conceptual schema in the terms of his concept of inauthenticity: both the socially dominant (the bourgeoisie, notably) and the oppressed (the non-privileged classes) are inauthentic, the former because they are 'sérieux', the latter because they are in bad faith with respect to their capacity for creative agency. I shall argue that in those cases in which politicosocial power relations are represented in Sartre's literary texts, the one type of inauthenticity engenders the other. That is, the 'sérieux' of the dominant is generative of the bad faith of those they dominate: it is the 'sérieux' of the bourgeoisie which encourages the passive acceptance of the existing social hierarchy in the non-bourgeois characters, who deceive themselves that they are not free to act creatively to change their situation. Sartre himself did not explicitly articulate this relationship in his theoretical writings. Politico-social relationships, although clearly portrayed in many of his fictional works, were never a key focus of his critical attentions prior to the Liberation. Moreover, by the time that he started to address questions relating to political theory directly in his theoretical writings, during the years 1945-7, he was already on course for the positive ethics and commitment of the Cahiers and Qu'est-ce que la littérature? It is my intention here to elucidate the implicit politics of Sartre's early thought which he left unarticulated at the time of its genesis.
13
Marxist tendency because anti-bourgeois satire had long been a feature of French literary writing, much of which had not been the work of politically radical authors. This objection is well-founded and it is not my intention to argue that the Sartre of the late 1930s was proto-Marxist as such, but rather merely to point up areas of conceptual common (or parallel) ground between Sartre's satire of the bourgeoisie and the Marxist view of bourgeois dominance. If Sartre was to adopt and endorse the Marxian conception of ideology in the pejorative sense in his postwar writings, it was because his earlier representations of bourgeois power-holders already tended in this direction in certain key ways. Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory p. 12
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In Marxist thought, the concept of ideology in the pejorative sense, rather than that of inauthenticity, is employed to account for the relationship between the socially dominant and the non-privileged classes. Classic Marxist thinkers have generally conceived of ideology in the pejorative sense as involving a dominant ideology which shores up the interests of the ruling class. This dominant ideology is often presented as also engendering a form of consciousness, commonly known as 'false consciousness', in the non-privileged classes, and notably the working class, which involves them holding a distorted view of the social and economic relations that are characteristic of capitalist society. The workers' false consciousness serves to conceal from them the oppressive and exploitative attitude of the ruling elite, thus reducing the force and frequency of their challenges to the dominance of that elite. In the discussions which follow of instances in Sartre's literary texts of inauthenticity shoring up unequal social structures, I shall argue that a parallel can be drawn with the Marxist concept of ideology in the pejorative sense. My intention is on the one hand to highlight the compatibility between the inauthenticity of the socially dominant, namely their 'sérieux', and the concept of a dominant ideology in the Marxist conceptual schema. I will seek on the other hand to reveal the compatibility between the inauthenticity of the oppressed, namely their bad faith, and the Marxist concept of false consciousness. In the Bouville museum scene in La Nausée, Roquentin describes the reactions of a man and woman who are looking at the portraits of the bourgeois leaders of the town. The humility with which they admire the portraits reveals their modest social origins. The relationship which is implied here between the bourgeois represented in the portraits and the couple can be elucidated with reference to Sartre's conception of inauthenticity. It is clear from Roquentin's descriptions of the portrayal of the bourgeois leaders that these individuals represent for Sartre classic cases of the bourgeois 'sérieux'. Everything about them, from their poses to their facial expressions, communicates a confidence in their social status because they enjoy important standing in society. Rather as Sartre would present the 'sérieux' waiter oîL'Etre et le néant a few years later, the 'sérieux' of these bourgeois is portrayed as tending strongly towards abstraction, or elevation, and not towards substantiality. The glance of Pâcome, for 104
example, 'errait au loin' [N: 126]. There is a spirituality in the glance of Rémy Parrottin. [N: 128] His brother, Jean Parrottin, 'avait la simplicité d'une idée.' [N: 130] And Roquentin observes that Olivier Blévigne had been portrayed as if taller than he really was: 'le destin des hommes de cette taille,' Roquentin comments, 'se joue toujours à quelques pouces au-dessus de leur tête.' [N: 136] It is through their desire to be portrayed as elevated that these bourgeois attempt to confirm the superior social status which society has conferred upon them. The effect of this bourgeois 'sérieux' depicted in the portraits on the couple in the gallery is predictable, struck as they are by the importance of these leaders of Bouville. Moreover, a passivity on their part engendered by an over-identification with their social role, and a capacity for self-delusion about the nature of their real condition, can be perceived in the text. In reaction to the stare of Jean Parrottin, '[l]a dame restait bouche bée, mais le monsieur n'était pas fier: il avait l'air humble, il devait bien connaître les regards intimidants et les audiences écourtées.' [N: 132] When faced with the stare of a 'sérieux' bourgeois, then, the man's response is to adopt a humble attitude which Roquentin presumes is a habitual reaction born of frequent experience of such situations in real life. The man's response serves only to confirm the superior status of the bourgeois in relation to himself. It would seem to be inconceivable to him to question Parrottin's superior status. Doing so would require a recognition of his own capacity, as a free being, to dissociate himself from the social role as an inferior which he has come to accept. The man is in bad faith in his obedient acceptance of the unequal social hierarchy of which he is a part. Interpreting the relationship between the bourgeois and their less prestigious observers in the light of the early Sartre's conceptual schema hence reveals this episode of La Nausée to be an illustration of different types of inauthentic conduct. The episode lends itself equally well, however, to a Marxist analysis of the role of ideology in the pejorative sense in the maintenance of unequal class relations. The portrayals of the 'sérieux' bourgeois in the portraits can clearly also be seen as an instance of a dominant ideology inducing false consciousness in the non-privileged classes. This false consciousness is apparent in the couple's reactions to the bourgeois, as these reactions 105
correspond exactly to the impression of themselves which the latter sought to project. In response to the portrait of Rémy Parrottin, for instance, the woman remarks how intelligent he seems, and she is somewhat intimidated by Olivier Blévigne's self-aggrandising pose [N: 133]. 'Les rouspéteurs devaient trouver à qui parler', her companion responds with regard to the latter, following which, Roquentin notes, the man 'se mit à rire avec un petit bruit [...] d'un air fat et tatillon, comme s'il était lui-même Olivier Blévigne.' [N: 133] This response to the portrait of Blévigne is an illustration of Marx's and Engels' claim in The German Ideology that '[t]he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, ie. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.' [GL 64] The man endorses the image of superiority which Blévigne projects to such an extent that he even simulates identification with the role Blévigne is playing out. He has himself been frequently belittled by individuals such as Blévigne and Jean Parrottin but is entirely supportive of their belief in their own social superiority nevertheless. He is, in other words, entirely incorporated by the ruling ideology because unable to understand the world differently from the ruling class's vision of the world. The Marxist concept of false consciousness seeks to explain this phenomenon of mystification or delusion, presenting the dominant ideology as capable of producing a disjunction between individuals' perception of class relationships and their understanding of their real implications. Individuals' delusions about their real condition are of course central to Sartre's concepts of the 'sérieux' and of bad faith too, although Sartre's ontology points to the conclusion that these delusions are individuals' se^f-delusions.14 What is common to both the Marxist and early Sartrean conceptual schémas in this regard, however, is the fundamental claim that the majority of people, in their habitual condition, are blind to the truth of their condition, and that an apprehension of their true condition is the first step on the road to selfemancipation.
14
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In chapter IX, I will highlight the role played by the imaginary in the creation of these self-delusions.
The type of false consciousness which the man and woman in the gallery demonstrate corresponds to that which Geuss describes as characterised by its 'functional properties'. That is, their world-view serves a function by 'supporting, stabilizing, or legitimizing certain kinds of social institutions or practices.'15 This world-view is that of the ruling elite as it is the dominant ideology of the bourgeoisie that, for classic Marxists, characterises the way in which the class relationships which constitute society are understood by members of all social classes. In the case of the portraits of the bourgeois leaders of Bouville, the abstraction-tending character of their 'sérieux' can be interpreted, drawing on Marxist ideology theory, as closest to the conception of ideology employed by the early Marx, expounded notably in The German Ideology. In this work, ideology is presented as by its very nature an abstraction from concrete reality. Ideology for the early Marx is of a piece with idealist philosophy, both phenomena emanating from the same source, namely the bourgeoisie; it is, as Eagleton puts it, 'essentially otherworldliness: an imaginary resolution of real contradictions which blinds men and women to the harsh actuality of their social conditions.'16 The world-view which the couple in the gallery have been conditioned to adopt is one which seeks to escape concrete reality into abstraction; the bourgeois of the portraits, whose authority and superior status they admire, have assumed poses and expressions suggestive of immortality as a symbolic representation of their dominance. This tendency towards abstraction is corroborated by the numerous negative references to the rights of the bourgeoisie which are made in the text, Sartre once again presenting rights as intrinsically abstract in character. In his first remarks about the bourgeois of the portraits, Roquentin associates the idea of rights with the abstractions typically associated with religious thinking such as God and eternal life. Imagining the circumstances of these men's death, he comments : 'En règle, ce jour-là comme les autres jours, avec Dieu et avec le monde, ces hommes avaient glissé doucement vers la mort, pour aller réclamer la part de vie éternelle à laquelle ils avaient droit.' 15 16
Geuss op.cit. p. 15 Terry Eagleton, Ideology. An Introduction (London: Verso, 1991 ) p.77
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[TV: 123] Of Jean Parrottin, Roquentin comments: 'Son regard était extraordinaire; il était comme abstrait et brillait de droit pur.' 'Cet homme', he continues, 'avait la simplicité d'une idée. Il ne restait plus en lui que des os, des chairs mortes et le Droit Pur.' [N: 130] Like the portrait gallery scene in La Nausée, Sartre's Les Mouches offers a fine illustration of social relations of dominance and subordination which, although primarily derived from his concept of inauthenticity, can similarly be better understood when the Marxist concept of ideology in the pejorative sense is introduced as an accompanying interpretative tool. In Act II, scene 5 the inauthenticity of the evil king Egisthe becomes fully apparent, his remarks about the years he has spent as ruler of Argos revealing the mixture of roleplaying, the 'sérieux', and the God project which have characterised his conduct. 'Voilà quinze ans que je joue la comédie,'17 he admits, referring to the culture of guilt which he contrived and propagated in the city so as to blind the population to their real nature as free beings. These fifteen years' role-playing have made him weary, he claims, wondering what had condemned him to playing out such a role for so long. Jupiter informs him that his passion for order lay at the basis of it all. 'L'ordre. C'est vrai', Egisthe admits, 'je voulais que l'ordre règne et qu'il règne par moi.'18 The claim which lies at the heart of Sartre's account of man's habitually inauthentic condition in the ontology of L'Etre et le néant, namely that man's fundamental desire is to be God, is instantiated here in the portrayal of Egisthe. Egisthe's project to instigate and incarnate order is part of an attempt to give himself a foundation in the world. As the 'Fête des morts' scenes at the start of Act II show, it is this 'sérieux' of Egisthe's project which has induced a passivity in the people of Argos. Their full identification with the culture of guilt which he introduced, and which finds full expression in this ceremony of the dead, involves concealing from themselves their autonomy of thought and freedom to define themselves. They are hence classic examples of Sartrean bad faith.
17 18
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Les Mouches, Act 2 scene IV, in Huis clos suivi de Les Mouches (Gallimard, 1947 [1943]), p.200 Ibidp.202
Analysis of Les Mouches in the light of the Marxist ideology theory is illuminating of Sartre's treatment of social relations of dominance and subordination but also reveals how that treatment differs from his portrayal of such relations in the scenes in La Nausée which we have examined.19 As with the bourgeois leaders of Bouville and their humble admirers, the guilt culture which Egisthe has propagated and the bad faith of the Argives can be seen as an instance of a dominant ideology engendering false consciousness. This false consciousness, as in the case of the false consciousness of the couple in the portrait gallery, matches up to the type which Geuss describes as characterised by its 'functional properties'20 because it serves a function by 'supporting, stabilizing, or legitimating certain kinds of social institutions or practices.'21 However, whereas the dominant ideology of the bourgeois leaders in La Nausée tended towards abstraction and was hence reminiscent of the early Marxian conception of ideology, the dominant ideology in Les Mouches is notable for the way in which it is transmitted and expressed through institutional and material practices. As such, it is reminiscent rather of the concept of hegemony which, in Gramsci's thought, largely substitutes for the concept of ideology in the pejorative sense. Under Egisthe's rule, the 19
20
21
Clearly, Les Mouches is set in a pre-capitalist era and comparison with the class relations portrayed in La Nausée cannot be a strict one. Nevertheless, the Marxist theory of ideology can still be fruitfully employed to describe the ways in which the dominant obtain acquiescence to their rule from their subordinates. It also corresponds to the type of false consciousness which Geuss claims involves subjects mistaking the epistemic status of certain beliefs which they hold, ie. taking for true certain beliefs which are actually false; these false beliefs are vital to the perpetuation of the unequal social power structure. I will not discuss here the ways in which this dimension of the concept of false consciousness can be identified in Sartre's portrayal of the Argives. Such a discussion would divert the course of the argument away from showing how the types of ideology in the pejorative sense which can be identified in Sartre's texts relate to Marx's and other Marxists' conceptions of ideology in the pejorative sense. I have examined this dimension of Sartre's portrayal of the Argives in my article 'Sartre's Concept of Bad Faith in Relation to the Marxist Notion of False Consciousness: Inauthenticity and Ideology Re-Examined', published in Cultural Logic Vol.2 No.2, March 2002. Geuss op.cit. p. 15
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ceremony of the dead and acts of repentence are practices which are both constitutive of and central to the maintenance of the culture of guilt. The ceremony of the dead is religious in character as it is presided over by the High Priest. Moreover, this ceremony, along with the other practices in which the Argives are induced to participate, serves to ensure the continued acceptance in Argos of the culture of guilt without it being necessary for Egisthe to employ coercive measures. For Gramsci, hegemony is characterised by just such rule by consent, rather than by coercion, on the part of dominant powers. Such dominant powers avail themselves of institutional practices in civil society, such as those of the church and the family, through which they are able to transmit beliefs and values that are supportive of the existing social power structure. These institutions become hegemonic apparatuses or, as Louis Althusser would later put it in his Gramscian-influenced structuralist theory, Ideological State Apparatuses.22 The parallel I have established between Sartre's concept of inauthenticity and the Marxist concept of ideology in the pejorative sense highlights the potential for some sort of cross-fertilisation or synthesis of the two concepts. I have suggested that Sartre's concept of inauthenticity, when a feature of representations of relations of political dominance and subordination in his writings, occupies the space which, in Marxist theory, is reserved for the concept of the dominant ideology. In other words, the early Sartre and Marxists employ different conceptual schémas - the Sartrean being an ontologico-ethical schema, whereas the Marxist is part of a theory of society and history - to account for the same phenomena. The examples we have discussed have shown that the two approaches nevertheless complement and shed new light and meaning on each other.
22
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Louis Althusser, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)' re-printed in Slavoj Zizek Mapping Ideology (London: Verso, 1994)pp. 100-140.
Explicit References to Ideology in Sartre's Writings: Ideology in the Pejorative Sense Our discussion of the early Sartre's ideas in relation to the Marxist concept of ideology has so far centred on cases of inauthenticity in his fictional works which lend themselves to interpretation as instances of ideology in the pejorative sense. In certain cases, Sartre's ontologybased concept of inauthenticity provides the theoretical basis for fictional representations which Marxists would most commonly employ the concept of ideology to explain. Indeed, in Sartre's literary texts examples of inauthentic conduct stand in for ideology rather as bad faith replaces the unconscious of psychoanalysis in Sartre's philosophy [EN: 85-90]. But what of the concept of ideology in Sartre's writings? That is, what sort of explicit mentions of ideology does Sartre make in his theoretical works? Explicit references to ideology are not common in Sartre's writings prior to 1946. The early Sartre's theoretical writings do not contain any discussion of ideology, the phenomenon being accorded no explicit role in L'Etre et le néant}2. It is only as of the time of Sartre's increasingly explicit engagement with Marxist ideas in the immediate postwar years that references to ideology appear more frequently in his writings. In Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?, where the term is employed more often than in any other works of this period, a wide range of phenomena are made adjectival to the concept of ideology, there being references to 'l'idéologie chrétienne',24 'l'idéologie des dirigeants' [QL: 90], 'l'idéologie religieuse et politique' [QL: 96], 'l'idéologie de l'élite' [QL: 98], 'l'idéologie spirituelle' [QL: 100], '[l']idéologie révolutionnaire' [QL: 113], and 'l'idéologie bourgeoise' [QL: 125]. In fact, the diversity of phenomena to which the term 'ideology' is applied can be broken down, in the context of Sartre's historical account of the place of literature at different stages of social development, into the three basic models of ideology proposed by Geuss in his discussion of the topic, namely ideology in the 23 24
Majumdar op.cit. p.32 Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? p.92 (hereafter QL).
Ill
'pejorative' sense, ideology in the 'positive' sense, and ideology in the 'descriptive' sense.25 These three models themselves constitute a broad enough spectrum, however, to rule out any simple explanation of what Sartre takes the concept of 'ideology' to mean. Moreover, in certain of his references to ideology from Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? onwards, it is difficult to pinpoint precisely to which of these classic models of ideology Sartre's meaning is closest, there being a certain fluidity in his use of the term. Discussion of the appearances of the latter two models of ideology in Sartre's writings will be postponed until chapter VII. We will address here only ideology in the pejorative sense whose areas of reciprocity with Sartre's concept of inauthenticity we have have been charting. Sartre presents the majority of the phenomena listed above to which he attributes an ideological character as closely related historically to the idea of 'l'idéologie de l'élite' [QL: 98]. He posits such a connection notably in his account of the place of the writer in seventeenth-century society. Sartre describes the writer in this period of classicism as almost entirely hemmed in by a myriad of ideological forces which collectively contributed to the maintenance of the existing social and political structure at the summit of which was the rule of the absolute monarch. Writers were generally bourgeois, depended for their material well-being on the nobility, and were read by only a limited and privileged section of the public, as a consequence of which, Sartre argues, they produced works destined for the consumption of those who upheld the existing structures of society [QL: 97], Thus although secular in some cases themselves, the majority of these writers implicitly accepted the religious and political ideology of the period [QL: 96-7]. This account shows the clear influence of Marxist thought in the relationship it charts between economic conditions of possibility and the superstructural sphere of cultural production. As in much classic Marxist theory, the superstructure is presented not as merely secondary, but as the crucial site of the production of ideological supports to an existing social order. The seventeenth-century writer, Sartre argues, became fully complicit with
25
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Geuss op.cit. pp. 4-26.
the various dimensions of the ideology which bolstered up the rule of the aristocracy. Unsurprisingly, it is in his analyses of bourgeois dominance from the nineteenth century to the present day that Sartre's conception of ideology corresponds most closely to the classic Marxist model of ideology in the pejorative sense. In fact, the conception of ideology which Sartre's analyses presuppose draws considerably on the early Marxian conception of The German Ideology which portrays the dominant ideology as fundamentally abstract in nature because concomitant with the bourgeois social condition. In Matérialisme et révolution, Sartre explicitly presents the abstraction of idealist philosophy as of a piece with the bourgeois condition and world-view in a thoroughly early Marxian way. The thought of bourgeois philosophers seeks to 'se cacher son caractère pragmatique: comme elle ne vise pas à changer le monde mais à le maintenir, elle déclare qu'elle le contemple tel qu'il est. Elle envisage la société et la nature du point de vue de la pure connaissance'. This philosophy contributes vitally to the bourgeoisie's ideological defence of its interests: 'Il faut noter que la pensée des philosophes issus de la classe dirigeante est action [...]. Nizan l'a bien montré dans ses Chiens de garde. Elle vise à défendre, à conserver, à repousser.' [MR: 182] In Qu'est-ce que la littérature?, Sartre reaffirms the close reciprocity between the bourgeois worldview and idealist abstraction: 'comme le bourgeois n'a de rapport avec les forces naturelles que par personnes interposées [...] comme sa tâche consiste essentiellement à manier des symboles abstraits, mots, chiffres, schémas [...], comme sa culture tout aussi bien que son métier le disposent à penser sur de la pensée, il s'est convaincu que l'univers était réductible à un système d'idées' [QL: 120-1]. Sartre's argument subsequently develops into an abridged version of Marx's critique of Hegelianism in The German Ideology. The bourgeois, Sartre claims, conceives of human progress 'comme un vaste mouvement d'assimilation: les idées s'assimilent entre elles et les esprits entre eux. Au terme de cet immense processus digestif, la pensée trouvera son unification et la société son intégration totale.' [QL: 121] In fact, this early Marxian-influenced hostility to the Hegelian idealist view of history had been subtly anticipated in the portrait gallery scene in La Nausée which we have already examined. Roquentin notes that upon 113
encountering the portrait of Rémy Parrottin, the man in the gallery exclaims to his wife: 'Parrottin, de l'Académie des sciences [...] par Renaudas, de l'Institut. C'est de l'Histoire!' [N:133] Here Parrottin's pseudo-elevated pose, and the elevated status of the institutions to which he and Renaudas belonged, seem to permit their assimilation into a greater abstraction which transcends them both, namely the idea of history written with a capital 'H'. Sartre's explicit references to dominant ideologies in his postwar writings hence draw greatly on the classic Marxist concept of ideology. In the case of ideologies which intrinsically involve a movement towards abstraction and 'otherworldliness', Sartre specifically subscribes to the early Marxian view of ideology. In fact, most of the dominant ideologies to which Sartre refers in his historical account in Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? are presented as tending in this direction albeit in a largely implicit way, unlike in the case of bourgeois ideology. To return to the 'idéologie de l'élite' [QL: 98] served by the seventeenth-century writer, for instance, Sartre presents numerous ideological tendencies as supportive of and concomitant with this ruling ideology. These tendencies clearly suggest a certain movement towards abstraction: mention of 'l'idéologie religieuse' [QL : 96] and 'l'idéologie spirituelle' [QL: 100], in conjunction with a political ideology which reinforces the position of the absolute monarch and the nobility [QL: 96-7] evokes a clear upward movement.
Continuity Between Sartre's Ethical and Political Thought Sartre's increasing tendency in his postwar writings to employ concepts and terminology drawn from political thought is one of the factors often thought to correspond to an awakening on his part to the need for left-wing political commitment. When Sartre starts to use the terminology of discourse on ideology, for example, he begins to articulate for the first time certain of his key intellectual positions in the terms employed by Marxist theorists. Our analysis of the areas of
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reciprocity between Sartre's concept of inauthenticity, in certain of its manifestations, and the Marxist concept of ideology in the pejorative sense, however, points to the continuity of Sartre's ontology-linked ethical stance right through from his 'pre-political' years as a phenomenologico-ontologist 'atteint de moralisme' [C: 267] to his subsequent gradual conversion to the conceptual apparatus of left political theory. The relative ease with which we have been able to establish a parallel between Sartre's concept of inauthenticity and the Marxist concept of ideology in the pejorative sense is owing to the fact that early Sartrean and classic Marxist philosophy, although employing contrasting explanatory schémas, share basic ethical presuppositions. I will examine in more detail the areas of ethical common ground between early Sartrean and Marxist thought notably in chapters V and VII. The libertarian tendency which, as I will argue in chapter V, is central to early Sartrean and humanist Marxist thought alike gives rise, in both cases, to a preoccupation with explaining the causes of unfreedom, and in particular the oppression of people's freedom by others. This preoccupation, in turn, provokes a shared interest in the characteristics of the power holders who are responsible for this oppression. We have seen that, in Sartre's thought, it is individuals' habitually inauthentic desire to establish for themselves a foundation in the world which constitutes the basis of both their antagonistic and alienated intersubjective relations with others and their tendency, notably in the case of the bourgeoisie, to dominate others. In the latter case, the early Sartre's ontology-derived concept of inauthenticity permits him, notably in his literary works, to shed light on cases of socially-generated unfreedom which Marxists explain with the aid of the concept of ideology in the pejorative sense. The transition which Sartre was subsequently to make in the postwar years to employing the Marxist theoretical model to explain social oppression would be a relatively smooth one because of areas of common ground between his characterisation of bourgeois 'sérieux' and the early Marxian view of bourgeois ideology. In both cases, the bourgeoisie is characterised as attempting to evade the concrete reality and contingency of the situation by identifying with an inappropriate and dishonest idea of elevation. Not only did Sartre dislike the dominance 115
of the bourgeoisie, then, as did Marx, but he presents it as manifesting itself in similar psychological and intellectual tendencies to those Marx attributed to the bourgeoisie in his writings. The early Sartre's ontology-linked ethical convictions, as they are represented in his treatment of the oppression of people's freedom in class relations, hence anticipate in important ways the Marxist political tendencies of his postwar writings. Sartre's formulation of his ethical views in the terms of his ontology-linked concept of inauthenticity does not distance them as much from the Marxist concept of ideology as the apparent contrast between these two conceptual schémas might appear to suggest.
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IV. Sartre's Search for Authenticity
The outbreak of war and Sartre's experiences as a conscript lead him to undergo a period of profound self-questioning and réévaluation of his ethical outlook on life. Sartre's life in the military camp and his feeling that he is a participant in a major historical event provoke an increased lucidity about his pre-war self which he comes to see as having been fundamentally inauthentic. Sartre's surviving war diaries, published as the Carnets, reveal a progression in his thinking from what he would refer to some months later as 'cette drôle de crise' [LC IL 131] of November 1939 to the formulation of a new, more authentic 'morale'1 early the next month, and ultimately, in the winter months of early 1940, to a conception of authentic conduct stressing the concrete nature of the worldly situations in which human freedom defines itself. It is this progression which we will chart in this chapter. In his letters of the first two months of the war Sartre documents the transition in his thinking towards a new understanding of man in the world. A few weeks after being conscripted, on 28 September, he writes to Beauvoir that his 'être-dans-le-monde' has changed. It is now an 'être-pour-la-guerre' [LC L 321]. A discussion of this devel-
1
I employ the term 'morale' rather than the English 'ethics' because what Sartre terms his 'morale' consists in claims which are both of an ethical and an ontological nature. Sartre has not yet introduced the formal separation of ethics and ontology which he would do at the time of writing L'Etre et le néant. Moreover, as we have seen, the Sartre of the 1930s consistently employed the term 'morale' to indicate not just his own ethical but also ontological and even aesthetic outlook on the world. With regard to my references to 'morality' and 'ethics' henceforth, it is worth noting that Monique Canto-Sperber, in her recent study of morality entitled L'Inquiétude morale et la vie humaine (PUF, 2002), acknowledges the difficulties involved in attempting to make a distinction between the two, and states that she uses them interchangeably throughout her study. 'Après tout,' she concludes, 'il n'y a aucun doute sur le fait que les termes « morale » et « éthique » désignent le même domaine de réflexion.' (p.25).
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opment is to be found in his diary entry of the previous day. In so far as he is not in a position to avoid being in a war situation, he argues, the war engenders both 'une modification du monde et de mon êtredans-le-monde [...] La guerre est une manière d'exister pour le monde et moi qui suis dans le monde, mon destin individuel commence à partir de là'. [C: 59] In other words, facing up to the reality of the war, Sartre believes, involves recognising that the war provides the context and conditions in which all one's thoughts are formulated, hence the introduction of the concept * être-pour-la-guerre' as a stand-in for 'être-dans-le monde'. The substitution of 'pour' for the less resolute 'dans' in this new formulation is far from incidental, marking as it does Sartre's tendency at this time to want to take an increasingly positive attitude with respect to being part of a war. In a letter of 4 October, he remarks that he feels a strange obligation to 'en faire le plus possible pour sentir la guerre le plus possible' [LC I: 332]. Indeed, throughout his time as a conscript, the process of attaining greater authenticity will involve him not only progressively coming to a better awareness of the reality of his situation as a participant in the war, but also personally shouldering the responsibility for it. Sartre observes in a letter of 26 October 1939 to Beauvoir that during the whole interwar period he had been 'en totale inauthenticité' [LC I: 378] with respect to the war. The future war had been constantly on the horizon but he had not recognised this, seeking, rather, to evade its looming menace. He has now come to the view - one which involves more than a touch of uncharacteristic fatalism - that '[c]hacun a sa guerre, comme il a sa mort [...] on a un être-pour-la-guerre [...] comme on a un être-pour-mourir. Et depuis le début.' [LCI: 356] This position is closely linked to Sartre's adoption of the concept of 'historicity' gleaned from his readings of Heidegger. Had he conducted himself during the interwar period in a manner appropriate to the fact that the future war was its 'sens concret', Sartre argues, he would have grasped his own historicity [LC I: 378]. As early as October 1939, Sartre believes that through changing his attitude towards the war he has now arrived at a correct understanding of his place in relation to it. Indicating that he has written ten pages on historicity in his notebook, he remarks, 'Je commence à m'y
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reconnaître.' [LCI: 377] He feels that he is now taking his full part in a war which is i a plus conforme à ma destinée' [LCI: 369]. It is hence not without justification that in late October 1939 Sartre writes to Beauvoir of there being 'bien du changement dans ma morale' [LC I: 377]. However, it is Sartre's dispute with fellow conscript Pieter on the 13th November, which ignites the crisis of ethics which he later says set him on course for his theory of authenticity [LC II: 131]. This dispute is the follow-up to a series of tensions between Sartre and the conscripts in his entourage which he had reported in letters to Beauvoir during the first two months of the war. In particular, as we saw in chapter III, Sartre had subjected the ethical outlook of his fellow-conscripts to harsh criticism in his letters, as he would continue to do subsequently in his war diaries. However, in this case it is Sartre's own ethical credibility which is in question, and his inability to find convincing answers to Pieter's objections leaves him profoundly troubled. Sartre reports in his notebook that in response to one of his customary jibes at the bourgeois social origins of the other conscripts in his entourage, Pieter replies that if he dislikes the bourgeoisie so much he should renounce his bourgeois privileges [C: 188-9]. Why, Pieter asks, does Sartre not join those army regiments which would be amongst the first to be sent to fight the enemy and why does he not renounce his state employee's salary? 'Pourquoi en effet? Toute la question est là' [C: 188], Sartre concedes privately in his notebook. Pieter openly acknowledges his own lack of moral scruples about benefiting from the privileges which his bourgeois social condition affords him: in an unequal society, he argues, there will inevitably be a privileged minority, and if he were not one of them someone else would take his place. There is a fundamental inconsistency in Sartre's position, by contrast, between principles and acts. Sartre criticises the social superiority and inauthenticity of the bourgeoisie whilst continuing to enjoy bourgeois privileges, Pieter objects, and then tries to win the moral high ground over the bourgeois 'salauds' by showing that he is lucid about the unjustifiability of his position whereas they are not: 'toi tu dis que tu es un salaud, c'est plus habile, mais tu profites comme moi des avantages de la météo. Un type qui dirait: je suis un salaud et puis qui refuserait ces avantages, qui partirait s'engager dans la biffe, celui-là je dirais qu'il est 119
sincère.' [C: 189] Determined not to lose face, Sartre riposts so not to appear to be defeated by Pieter, but he knows that the arguments he is employing are sophistical and that he has lost the battle: 'Je reprends l'offensive, mais [...] je suis sonné: j'aurai Pieter parce que je veux l'avoir par vanité blessée, mais au fond je sais qu'il m'a eu' [C: 189— 190]; 'mon triomphe est d'apparence, au fond Pieter m'a touché au vif [C: 191]. Pieter clearly manages to touch a raw nerve in this dispute and he does so despite being a less skilful debater than Sartre [C: 191], which indicates that Sartre's unease is due to a fundamental weakness in the position he is defending. Pieter's unquestioning acceptance of his own privileged social status is an instance of what Sartre sees to be his thoroughly inauthentic tendency to conflate values and facts. To Pieter's way of thinking, the fact that society is unequal means that he is entirely justified in continuing to enjoy the privileges which his social position accords him. His ethical conduct faithfully follows existing social conventions and he sees no sense in holding values which, because based on principles rather than existing conventions, might run counter to those conventions. The basis of Pieter's objections to Sartre, by contrast, is that Sartre's repeated criticisms of the bourgeoisie are of no significance whatsoever as long as he does not renounce his bourgeois social condition. In reality, Sartre is just as much a bourgeois as he is, and just as complicitous with the unequal structure of society. Sartre is, according to his own principles, therefore just as inauthentic. Moreover, Sartre's attempt to gain moral high ground over the bourgeois conscripts in his entourage by admitting that he is a 'salaud' whilst they do not is insufficient to extricate him from this predicament. In fact, this ruse is an instance of what could be described as 'enlightened inauthenthenticity', somewhat in the manner of Pieter Sloterdijk's concept of 'enlightened false consciousness'.2 Sloterdijk describes a condition in which individuals are aware of the fact that they are subject to the workings of a dominant ideology, and that they harbour false or distorted ideas about social realities, and yet continue to be cynically complicitous with the 2
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Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), chapter I.
existing social structure rather than trying to change it. The formulation 'enlightened inauthenthenticity' is appropriate particularly in view of the important areas of reciprocity between the Sartrean concept of inauthenticity and the Marxist concept of ideology in the pejorative sense which we have charted in chapter III: we have seen that, with respect to the representation of unequal social relations in Sartre's fiction, the concept of inauthenticity often substitutes for the Marxist concept of ideology in the pejorative sense. In the present case, Sartre imagines that his lucidity about his own moral unjustifiability in some sense disculpâtes him from it, or at least reduces the force of its unpleasant reality. His private acknowledgement of Pieter's victory over him in the argument, however, is an implicit recognition of the fact that such lucidity is an unconvincing ploy, an attempt to mask the basic untenability of his position. This dispute highlights the increasing importance which a more concrete3 conception of man will start to take in Sartre's concept of authenticity from the early months of 1940 onwards. At the time of the dispute, Sartre imagines, as he had done throughout much of the 1930s, that he can dissociate himself from the bourgeois inauthenticity of such as Pieter by making consistently critical remarks about the bourgeoisie. Sartre's underlying assumption here is that contestatory ideas and intellectual positions alone are in and of themselves constitutive of a critical stance with regard to the bourgeoisie. To Pieter's pragmatic way of thinking, however, the notion that ideas could enjoy the kind of autonomy from concrete social realities which Sartre thereby implicitly attributes to them is untenable. For Pieter, ideas hostile to the bourgeoisie are only meaningful if accompanied by a rejection of all concrete bourgeois privileges. In this, Pieter paradoxically demonstrates an area of common ground with the classic Marxist world-view to which Sartre will draw closer in his quest for authenticity during the months to come. Although far from a Marxist indeed, his specifically political leanings are much further removed 3
I use the term 'concrete' in the everyday sense rather than in the specifically Sartrean sense discussed in chapter I. That is, I have in mind a conception of man which takes the practical realities of his life into account to a greater extent.
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from Marxism than Sartre's - Pieter's objection to Sartre actually resembles closely that of the early Marx to Hegelianism: ideas which are completely disconnected from concrete social realities, Marx argues in The German Ideology, are mere abstractions which have no more reality than figments of the imagination. In this light, Sartre's artful ruse, consisting in admitting that he is himself a 'salaud', can clearly be seen as similarly lacking any real argumentative force because it does nothing to change the embarrassing facts of the concrete situation, namely that Sartre continues to enjoy the privileges of the bourgeois social condition. Whether or not Sartre thinks he is a 'salaud' is of no importance unless he is willing to align his ethical conduct with his ideas and change his concrete situation. Overall, when Sartre privately admits defeat in this dispute, he is not, contrary to appearances, conceding a point to Pieter, whose overall ethical outlook he reproves firmly. Rather, he is in fact starting to intuit, without explicitly tracing them to their theoretical source, certain of the basic claims of classic Marxist philosophy with which Pieter's bourgeois pragmatism ironically overlaps. This acknowledgement will become more apparent as Sartre becomes gradually more aware, some months later, not just of his own historicity but also of his concrete existence in the world. The immediate developments in Sartre's ontologico-ethical reflections documented in Carnets and Lettres in the weeks following this dispute do not show its influence on his thinking. The real impact of the dispute, and of a few more vital months spent as a military conscript, will become apparent with Sartre's gradually increasing awareness, from late February 1940 onwards, not just of his own historicity but also of his concrete existence in the world. We will turn to these developments after examining Sartre's reflections on ethics of late November and December 1939. On 28 November, Sartre announces in a letter to Beauvoir that he has just made 'mon énième rupture morale' [LC I: 441], a clear indication that his ethical outlook is in a state of flux. This is followed on 1 and 2 December by an extended critical appraisal of the different phases through which his thinking has passed from his adolescence until the present. 'Je ne crois pas schématiser trop,' he begins, 'en disant que le problème moral qui m'a préoccupé jusqu'ici c'est en somme celui des rapports de l'art et 122
de la vie.' [C: 268] He had always had the desire to write from the outset but a host of questions surrounded the matter of how he should lead his life outside of his writing. Sartre describes how his unhappiness at having to make the transition to adulthood upon becoming a teacher in Le Havre led him to attach increasingly great importance to the outlook on life which he had adopted whilst still a student. This outlook, for which he uses the formulations 'morale de salut par l'art' [C: 275] and 'morale esthétique' [C: 286], involved the idea that it was only through creating works of art that one could justify one's otherwise absurd existence. Roquentin's desire for salvation through the aesthetic in the closing pages of La Nausée was subsequently to stage this attitude, although Sartre himself had actually moved beyond it by the time of the work's publication.4 This auto-critique in Sartre's war diaries is followed only one day later, on 3 December, by his announcement to Beauvoir that he has conceived of a new 'morale': 'j'ai vu cette morale que je pratique depuis trois mois sans en avoir fait la théorie [...]. Tout tourne naturellement autour des idées de liberté, de vie et d'authenticité.' [LC I: 455] Sartre sets it out in his diary on 7 December and then presents a brief exposition of it to Beauvoir in a letter of two days later. The composition of this new 'morale' represents a highly significant moment in the development of Sartre's thought in a number of ways. The account of the basic defining features of the human condition which he offers is the earliest clearly recognisable formulation of the account of man which he would set out in L'Etre et le néant. Human reality is 'd'abord conscience, c'est-à-dire qu'elle n'est rien qu'elle ne soit conscience d'être' [C: 314]. Consciousness lacks a foundation and projects itself into the world in an attempt to escape its fundamental gratuitousness. The most effective way for consciousness to achieve this aim is for it to become its own foundation and it hence 'se jette vers l'avenir pour y être son propre fondement.' [C: 315] Sartre argues that this project is doomed to failure and that man's 4
Sartre explains that his study of the work of Scheler during the 1930s drew his attention to the existence of values. Prior to this, he had been so preoccupied with the idea of personal salvation that 'je n'avais jamais bien compris le problème spécifique de la morale.' [C: 288]
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constant attempts to become God, as he would later put it, ultimately leave him where he started, 'gratuit jusqu'aux moelles' [C: 316]. This search for a foundation which can never be attained is inauthentic, and human reality is hence characterised by its fundamentally inauthentic character. In L'Etre et le néant, the vision of man's basic condition which Sartre sketches out in this 'morale' will be more commonly formulated in the terms of ontology and its ethical dimension will be left largely implicit, but here in the Carnets he makes it very clear that there is a fundamental connection between ontology and ethics. 'La réalité humaine est morale parce qu'elle veut être son propre fondement' [C: 316], he writes. The attempts of the 'pour-soi', as he was to describe consciousness in L'Etre et le néant, to identify with the 'ensoi' hence themselves have clear ethical implications: the desire to be one's own foundation is part of one's ethical outlook in life. Indeed, these constant attempts are so fundamental to human reality's being in the world that Sartre describes human reality itself as at one and the same time being and value: [...] la réalité humaine est d'un type existentiel tel que son existence la constitue sous forme de valeur à réaliser par sa liberté. [...] cet être-valeur qui nous constitue en tant que valeur de nos horizons [...] c'est le sursis toujours mouvant de la réalité humaine elle-même [...]. La réalité humaine existe à dessein de soi. Et c'est ce soi avec son type d'existence propre (comme ce qui l'attend dans l'avenir pour être réalisé par sa liberté) qui est la valeur. Il n'existe d'autre valeur que la réalité humaine pour la réalité humaine. [C:314]
Sartre's new 'morale' is a significant development in his thought partly because it sketches out and reveals the ethical dimension of the ontology of L'Etre et le néant in this way, but also because it is here that Sartre charts for the first time the possibility of progressing beyond human reality's habitually inauthentic condition towards an ethics of authenticity. Indeed, this 'morale' anticipates, structurally at least, the progression which will characterise Sartre's reflections on ethics during the 1940s, that is, in particular, the progression between L'Etre et le néant and the promised future work on ethics which will ultimately become the uncompleted Cahiers pour une morale. Sartre's well
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known reference to a 'conversion' to 'une morale de la délivrance et du salut' in L'Etre et le néant [EN: 463], which he presents as a necessary step in order to escape our habitually inauthentic condition, is also anticipated in this 'morale'. These early appearances of key features of Sartre's better known works of subsequent years confirm that there is a clear continuity in his reflections on ethics from much earlier than the specifically ontological formulations of L'Etre et le néant through to Cahiers and beyond. Sartre's references to authenticity in his 'morale' of December 1939 are actually somewhat misleading, however, as the term does not imply a rejection of the inauthentic project to be God, or commitment and socialist political struggle as it would do in his writings of the postwar years. For the time being, Sartre limits his definition of the conversion to the idea that one becomes fully aware of, and responsible for, oneself and for one's inauthentic desire to give oneself a foundation. 'La recherche d'un fondement exige qu'on assume ce qu'on fonde', Sartre argues. 'En outre assumer signifie reprendre à son compte, revendiquer la responsabilité.' [C: 319] Consciousness' inalienable ontological freedom means that '[t]out ce qui lui arrive doit lui arriver par elle-même' [C: 319]. One hence cannot make excuses for one's conduct because one is entirely responsible. What Sartre refers to as authenticity in this 'morale' is based primarily on the idea of a total lucidity which human reality can attain about its condition if it undergoes the conversion. This latter involves 'une intuition du vouloir qui consiste à prendre à son compte la réalité humaine. Et par cette reprise la réalité humaine est dévoilée à ellemême dans un acte de compréhension' [C: 319]. This conception of authenticity actually anticipates certain key claims of Sartre's account of our habitually /«authentic condition set out in L'Etre et le néant more than it is an obvious predecessor to the conception of authenticity elaborated in his postwar works. In L'Etre et le néant, this total lucidity will be ensured by the pre-reflexive consciousness in particular which renders impossible our attempts to deceive ourselves fully when in bad faith; Sartre argues that we must know the unpleasant truth which we are striving to conceal in order to lie to ourselves [EN: 84-5]. Similarly, the idea of total responsibility which Sartre expounds in his 'morale', and indeed throughout the war diaries, is most 125
emphatically expressed in his rationalist existentialist account of man in L'Etre et le néant: 'la responsabilité du pour-soi est accablante, puisqu'il est celui par qui il se fait et qu'il y ait un monde' [EN: 612]. As we saw in chapter II, in this latter work Sartre accords to consciousness a considerable capacity for creative agency in relation to the situation. When Sartre states that 'si je suis mobilisé dans une guerre, cette guerre est ma guerre, elle est à mon image et je la mérite' [EN: 613], the claim rests on the presumption of this constitutive role of consciousness in relation to worldly circumstances.5 In his new 'morale' Sartre primarily gives theoretical formulation to his ontologico-ethical reflections of the first three months of the war. Although initially content with it, only a short while later he will nevertheless start to question the originality of his claims. On 9 January 1940 he offers the following critique in a letter to Beauvoir: [...] j'ai relu mes cinq carnets et ça ne m'a pas fait l'impression agréable que j'escomptais un peu. Il m'a semblé qu'il y avait du vague, des gentillesses et que les idées les plus nettes étaient des resucées de Heidegger, qu'au fond je ne faisais depuis le mois de septembre, avec les trucs sur « ma guerre », etc., que développer laborieusement ce qu'il dit en dix pages sur l'historicité. [L IL. 27]
As his developing reflections on ethics of the early months of 1940 reveal, it is not just the originality of his 'morale', however, which Sartre will start to question. Rather as his admission of defeat in the dispute with Pieter had been an implicit acknowledgement of the failure of lucidity alone to disculpate him from an inauthentic, ethic5
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The total responsibility which Sartre attributes to consciousness in his 'morale' clearly implies an austere ethical outlook, and indeed Sartre comments to Beauvoir that his 'morale' is 'sombre comme il se doit' [L h 458]. This newly acquired tendency on Sartre's part to stress the total responsibility of conscious ness, which would subsequently become central to the vision set out notably in L'Etre et le néant, is best understood as in part a response to the feelings of disorientation and powerlessness which the outbreak of war and being con scripted provoke in him. Sartre's claim that 'ce que sera pour moi la guerre, le visage qu'elle me dévoilera, ce que moi-même je serai dans la guerre et pour la guerre, tout cela, je le serai librement et j'en suis responsable' [C: 144] involves pushing his rationalist tendencies further than ever before in order to bestow upon himself a sense of psychological control over an objectively difficult situation.
ally unjustifiable form of conduct, Sartre will gradually come to the conclusion that attaining genuine authenticity requires more personal adaptation than simply coming to full awareness of and shouldering the responsibility for one's habitually inauthentic condition. Sartre's moral defeat in the dispute on 13 November, which pre-dates the formulation of the new 'morale' by three weeks or so, in fact announces what Sartre would subsequently see as the inadequacy of this 'morale' as a theory of authenticity. Pieter had objected to the abstract character of Sartre's ethical principles, pointing to the discrepancy between these principles and Sartre's ethical conduct. Beauvoir, in her response to the abridged version of the 'morale' which Sartre sends her on 9 December, is highly approving of Sartre's new theory but suggests that it in its present state it remains too formalistic: [...] tout sur la volonté et la morale est convaincant et je n'y vois aucune faute, et ça m'éblouit d'évidence [...] Seulement je suis cupide de la suite, je ne vois pas du tout comment se fait le passage à la morale pratique [...] je trouve ligne à ligne tout exact, je me demande seulement comment vous en sortirez, que dois-je assumer, et quand j'assume ma liberté, que fais-je de cette liberté assumée?6
Beauvoir's questions would remain unanswered, as Sartre does not address them in subsequent letters of December 1939. Moreover, in the final chapter of L'Etre et le néant, entitled 'Perspectives morales', Sartre will briefly touch upon the ethical implications of his freedombased ontology. The questions he poses echo those of Beauvoir and similarly leave them open-ended, the implications of ontology for practical ethics apparently still remaining indeterminate. In the Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Sartre's continuing reflections on the nature of authenticity during February and March 1940 nevertheless not only reveal the influence of Pieter's and Beauvoir's objections to his ontologico-ethical position but also suggest that he is approaching a new position in the light of them. Before the middle of March, Sartre has in certain key ways gone beyond the neo-Heideggerian tendencies in his own thought of which he had been critical in January. This 6
Beauvoir, Lettres à Sartre 1930-9 (Gallimard, 1990) p.350.
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development is provoked by a few more months' experience of life as a conscript and by the impact of Pieter's and Beauvoir's objections. Furthermore, Sartre undergoes a personal life crisis in February 1940 which leads him to reevaluate once again his overall ethical outlook. This crisis plays a vital role in his reaching the new position of March 1940. In a letter to Beauvoir of 21 January 1940, Sartre remarks that the war has enabled him to push ahead intellectually and distance himself more easily from ideas he formerly held: 'C'est bien curieux comme la guerre et le sentiment d'être, malgré tout, un peu "perdu" m'a donné de la hardiesse, c'est-à-dire d'aller de l'avant sans me préoccuper jamais de savoir si j'étais ou non en accord avec mes idées antérieures' [LC IL 51]. Prior to going on leave on 3 February, Sartre notes in his diary that he wants to live these ten days away in an authentic way and shows a certain apprehensiveness about the effect which returning to Paris will have on him [C: 414]. Upon his return, the experience of military leave becomes a point of reference allowing him to be more clear-sighted about his intellectual and personal development in the camp. On 16 February, he concludes an account of his stay in Paris with the following reflection: 'Ce que j'ai appris [...] c'est qu'il est beaucoup plus facile de vivre propre et authentique dans la guerre que dans la paix.' [C: 421] This is followed on 20 February by a more explicitly critical judgement on his time in Paris, and by an in-depth account of authenticity which updates in certain ways the 'morale' of December. 'Je crois un peu que j'étais authentique avant ma permission', writes Sartre. 'Sans doute parce que j'étais seul. A Paris je ne l'ai pas été.' [C: 447] '[L]'authenticité s'obtient d'un bloc,' he continues, 'on est ou on n'est pas authentique.' One's authenticity has to be constantly re-created in the existential present as there is the constant danger of falling back into one's habitually inauthentic condition [C: 447]. Moreover, the desire for authenticity, writes Sartre, reiterating his position of December, 'n'est au fond qu'un désir d'y voir plus clair et de ne pas la perdre' [C: 449]; authenticity, in other words, involves being lucid about one's condition. This assertion is followed by a revealing passage which shows the clear influence of the criticisms of Pieter and Beauvoir. Examining the
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obstacles which an individual encounters when striving to attain authenticity, Sartre argues that: [...] la résistance vient non pas de résidus d'inauthenticité qui demeureraient ça et là dans une conscience mal époussetée mais simplement de ce que les situations antérieures résistent au changement comme choses. Il les a vécues jusque-là d'une certaine façon et en les vivant il les a constituées. Elles sont devenues des institutions, elles ont en dehors de lui leur permanence propre et même elles évoluent malgré lui. Il faut remettre en question. Le désir de remettre en question [...] ne peut paraître que sur un fond d'authenticité. Et il ne suffit pas de remettre en question, il faut changer. Mais ces changements révolutionnaires qui se traduisent par une lutte contre la cohérence des institutions ne sont pas différents par nature des changements qu'un politique veut apporter aux institutions sociales et rencontrent les mêmes résistances. Aussi ne suffit-il point d'être authentique, il faut adapter sa vie à son authenticité. [C: 449]
This densely-written passage is revealing of a development in Sartre's thinking in a number of ways. It is here that he openly acknowledges for the first time that authenticity defined as lucidity alone is inadequate: one must adapt one's ethical conduct to one's principles for one's authenticity to be genuinely meaningful. This process involves personal development and change. The opposition between movement and inertia which is characteristic of early Sartrean thought is clearly perceptible in the passage, inauthenticity being identified with inertia. What is significant, though, is the way in which Sartre employs social and political metaphors to articulate this opposition: 'situations antérieures' are referred to as 'institutions'; and the process of selftransformation which should accompany the questioning of these situations is described in terms of 'changements révolutionnaires'. In the penultimate sentence of the passage, not only are the ideas of movement and inertia translated through metaphor into entirely social and political terms, but are explicitly compared with the real-life attempts and difficulties of politicians to change social institutions. Given the clear socio-political dimension to Sartre's concept of inauthenticity, perceptible notably in his repeated identification of the bourgeoisie with a strongly inauthentic condition, this comparison is neither innocent nor coincidental. Indeed, the terms which Sartre employs metaphorically to describe the pre-existing situation and the movement 129
towards self-transformation are so semantically close to the explicitly socio-political phenomena with which he is comparing them that a sort of literalisation of metaphor results. That is, in effect, a sort of metamorphosis takes place in the text such that Sartre's original point about the relationship between pre-existing situations and self-transformation seems almost to become a point principally about the nature of political change. Although Sartre remains at this stage some way off explicitly acknowledging the political implications of ideas and intellectual positions as he would do increasingly in the postwar years, this passage is undoubtedly a harbinger of the connection which he would later establish between radical philosophy and radical politics. The significance of the political references in this passage is confirmed by a remark which Sartre makes in a letter to Brice Parain written on the very same day, 20 February: 'Pour ce qui est de la politique, n'aie pas peur. J'irai seul dans cette bagarre, je ne suivrai personne et ceux qui voudront me suivre me suivront.' [LC IL 82] With a few notable exceptions,7 and in particular his brief involvement in practical politics in 1948,8 in the immediate postwar years 'politics' for Sartre would mean the politics of ideas and ultimately political philosophy. It is in this sense that the term is best understood in Sartre's letter to Parain. Moreover, rather as the political references of the passage in the war diaries are linked to a discussion of subjective autonomy in relation to situation, Sartre's remark in this letter is preceded by a discussion of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle which concludes with the similar claim that an individual is in situation but cannot be
7
8
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In 1947, Sartre organised a petition, which was signed predominantly by intellectuals, demanding that the PCF provide evidence to substantiate the slanderous accusation that Nizan had been a police informer. Later the same year, Sartre and the Temps modernes team found themselves at the centre of a heated dispute with the Gaullists following their radio broadcast 'La Tribune des Temps Modernes' of 20th October devoted to De Gaulle. In 1948, Sartre joined the short-lived Rassemblement Démocratique Révolu tionnaire which sought to steer a course politically between the western bourgeois democratic social modeland the PCF's brand of communism which was modelled on the Stalinist eastern bloc. In the increasingly polarised political climate of the early Cold War years, this project proved unworkable in practice.
reduced to his situation. A close thematic link between the concept of situation and a politicised conception of man in society is hence first suggestively formulated by Sartre as early as February 1940. 'Ma permission a consommé la rupture avec mon passé', Sartre notes in his diary on 21 February [C: 460]. In the course of the following three weeks, this rupture will prove to be the point of departure for significant developments in his overall ethical outlook. As of 23 February, his letters to Beauvoir chart over the period of a week a crisis in his personal life which incites him to draw important conclusions for his future ethical conduct. The crisis is ignited by his girlfriend Tania's discovery of a short-lived past amorous involvement which she has been misled to believe is still ongoing. Sartre feels impelled to send an unpleasant letter to the ex-girlfriend in question, Martine Bourdin, in order to save his relationship with Tania10. The following day, he confesses in a letter to Beauvoir that this whole episode is making him feel 'dégoûté de moi très profondément' [LC IL 92]. A harsh auto-critique follows in which he puts into question his entire ethical approach to relationships with women, concluding that 'je n'ai jamais su mener proprement ni ma vie sexuelle ni ma vie sentimentale; je me sens tout profondément et sincèrement un salaud.' [LC IL 94] By 28 February, Sartre's relationship with Tania is returning to normal, the storm having passed, but the intervening days of uncertainty and self-questioning have made a real impact on his thinking. 'Je suis en train de changer,' he tells Beauvoir, going on to explain that he would like to approach social relationships in general differently in the future. He intends to 'rompre avec tout ce genre de 9
10
Sartre argues that it is not plausible to exonerate Drieu from criticism on the grounds that his ideas are those of his generation. 'L'individu Drieu est de sa génération, c'est entendu et il a connu les problèmes de sa génération. Mais il ne faut pas dire qu'il est sa génération.' [L II: 82] Seventeen years later, in Questions de méthode, Sartre would reaffirm this position in opposition to mechanistic Marxism. 'Paul Valéry est un intellectuel bourgeois, cela ne fait pas de doute', he quips. 'Mais tout intellectuel bourgeois n'est pas Valéry.' [CRD: 44] Valéry's ideas, then, cannot be explained exclusively in terms of his social class just as Drieu's are not just the product of the generation to which he belongs. Pseudonym for Wanda Kosakiewcz.
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générosité louche qui me fait passer des heures et des heures avec des gens avec qui je ne tiens pas plus qu'à une rognure d'ongle [...]. Je veux tenir à des choses, j'en ai assez d'être un poisson à sang froid ou un sépulcre. Donc je ne veux pas m'éparpiller et gâcher mes possibilités d'aimer les gens et les choses' [LCII: 104-5]. During the period of this crisis, Sartre does not refer in his war diary to the personal difficulties which he is experiencing, but an undercurrent of psychological and emotional uncertainty is perceptible in the long diary entries written at this time. These entries, which are predominantly given over to self-analysis, indicate a profound selfquestioning on Sartre's part. He discusses the fundamental human desire to appropriate and his own lack of any sense of ownership [C: 473-483]. His tendency to spend money freely he explains as the consequence of having grown up in a milieu of civil servants, adding that '[l]à encore je n'ai pas de racines' [C: 485]. He offers a detailed account of what it is to want to be loved, highlighting the inauthentic character of this desire before going on to admit that he has himself long been guilty of this type of inauthentic conduct [C: 492-500]. And he engages in a lengthy account of his defining character traits and of his attitude towards close friendships, personal relationships, and social relationships in general from childhood through to adulthood [C: 501-530]. The tone of these autobiographical passages is neutral rather than self-critical, Sartre apparently attempting to reach a clearer understanding of his outlook on life via an analysis of his past. In the first weeks of March, however, having thus achieved a greater lucidity about his principal character traits and the main lines of his thought, his tone becomes highly self-critical. Pieter's and Beauvoir's objections to his conception of authenticity as lucidity, it will be remembered, consisted essentially in drawing attention to the excessively formalistic character of his thought: his principles were severed from practical ethical conduct. The thrust of Sartre's entire autocritique in March 1940 centres on his psychological, philosophical and ethical tendency towards this kind of abstraction. Sartre explains this tendency partly in terms of his social and economic situation from childhood through to the present day.4Je suis certainement le produit monstrueux du capitalisme, du parlementarisme, de la centralisation et 132
du fonctionnarisme', begins a powerful critique of the underlying reasons for his outlook on life. 'A toutes ces abstractions prises ensemble je dois d'être un abstrait et un déraciné' [C: 538], he concludes. Beauvoir has told him, he notes, that true authenticity consists in plunging into life fully rather than trying to set oneself apart from it. Initially daunted at the idea of such a radical self-transformation, he resolves to adopt the principle that 'il faut s'enraciner [...] j'entends que la personnalité doit avoir un contenu' [C: 538] By 11 March 1940, Sartre is not only fully lucid about the abstract-tending character of his outlook on life and the ways in which his situational contexts to date have engendered it, but is in a position to set out much more confidently an alternative ethical vision. This alternative vision, although Sartre does not label it as such, constitutes a new 'morale', that is a revised overall ethical outlook in relation to the 'morale' he had formulated in December 1939. Referring once again to the milieu of civil servants ('fonctionnaires') to which he has always belonged, Sartre observes that what he has always had in common with Gide is a sense of being detached from reality: 'nous n'étions que trop disposés à prendre le réel pour un décor.' [C: 575] He contends, taking a rather severe line on his earlier work, that the central thesis of La Transcendance de Vego had been expressive of this kind of abstract conception of the self in relation to the world. He had at that time conceived of consciousness as capable of completely transcending the difficulties presented by situations to such an extent as to be entirely unaffected by them [C: 575]. Sartre goes on to discuss his dislike of the 'sérieux' at some length and acknowledges that this aversion, linked as it often was to a scepticism about all forms of substantiality, was derivative of and fully coherent with the abstract conception of the freedom of consciousness which he had always held [C: 577-9]. 'Le passage de la liberté absolue à la liberté désarmée et humaine [...] s'est opéré cette année', Sartre claims, summing up the development in his thinking since his mobilisation in September. He now realises that he must learn to conceive of himself differently in relation to the world around him: 'mon réapprentissage doit consister précisément à me sentir "dans le coup", sans défense.' [C: 575] This process also involves a new understanding of oneself as an individual 133
in the world: 'Je suis en train d'apprendre, au fond, à être une personne', he notes. In reality, what Sartre is calling into question is the tendency in his thinking towards a detached rationalist conception of the subject. This tendency, he now believes, had been encouraged and facilitated by his social and economic condition as a state employed teacher ('fonctionnaire'). The abstraction inherent in such rationalist detachment had been the source of his aversion for the 'sérieux', hence his characteristic lightness and 'frivolité' [C: 575]. It had also left its mark on his personal relationships. When, as we have seen, Sartre says to Beauvoir following the Tania-Bourdin crisis, 'Je veux tenir à des choses, j'en ai assez d'être un poisson à sang froid' [LC IL 104], it is partly this detachment which he is putting into question because it is an obstacle to his having meaningful relationships. Authenticity, Sartre now believes, depends crucially on refusing all attempts to escape the reality of the situation. Departing from the 'morale' he formulated in December, this refusal involves questioning in a fundamental way the abstract conception of the self which he has always held up until this time. He now wishes to accord to the situation its full reality and believes that subjective freedom which does not define itself in relation to the situation is inauthentic. Moreover, Sartre's newfound conviction that only ethical principles which are accompanied by the corresponding forms of practical ethical conduct can be constitutive of an authentic outlook is fully coherent with this critique of abstract thinking. To attain genuine authenticity it is not enough to be lucid about and responsible for one's inauthentic condition, one must change one's conduct. Sartre discusses the aversion he has always felt for all manifestations of the 'sérieux' and reaffirms this feeling [C: 577-9]. However, his new conception of authenticity problematises his position on this issue considerably. On the one hand, he is critical of materialists, and notably political revolutionaries, because 'ils se connaissent à partir [du] monde' [C: 577]. He had always been insulated from such thinking by his own psychological and intellectual tendencies, and by his social condition as a state employed teacher which had facilitated and encouraged them. On the other hand, the principal defining characteristic of his new conception of authenticity seems to be a rejection of the abstract character of this outlook on life. He is highly critical of his 134
own thinking to date, speaks of the importance of being rooted, and intends to engage himself more fully in his situation. The ambiguity of his position on this issue is apparent in the following short passage: 'j'étais protégé contre le sérieux par ce que j'ai dit. Plutôt trop que pas assez: je n'étais pas du monde parce que j'étais libre et commencement premier.' [C: 579] Clearly, the acknowledgement that he was too insulated from the 'sérieux' is an indication that he is now critical of his earlier assumption that he was 'pas du monde' and 'commencement premier'. In fact, it is precisely this idea of his being a 'commencement premier' which the appraisals of the personal and social origins of his thought implicitly put into question in February and March; his acknowledgement that his outlook on life was in part a symptom of his social and economic condition is nothing if not a recognition of the role played by objective conditions in the development of modes of subjective thought. Sartre perceives the difficulty which his new conception of authenticity poses for his rejection of the 'sérieux'. Can he avoid becoming 'sérieux', he wonders, whilst striving to live in conformity with such a conception of authenticity? His answer is confident if rather brief in view of the complexity of the problem: he will not become 'sérieux', he replies, '[c]ar se saisir comme une personne c'est bien l'opposé de se saisir à partir du monde. Et pour authentique qu'on est, on n'en est pas moins libre [...] puisqu'on est condamné à une liberté sans ombre et sans excuse. Et enfin être-dans-le-monde ce n'est pas être du monde.' [C: 580] In these passages, Sartre identifies the 'sérieux' notably with materialist doctrine, and hence with the desire for substantiality, and singles out Marx in particular: 'Marx a posé le dogme premier du sérieux lorsqu'il a affirmé la priorité de l'objet sur le sujet.' [C: 579] His own position will not become 'sérieux', he thinks, because its refusal of an abstract detachment from the world nevertheless does not involve postulating that man is a material thing, an object in the world of material objects. As we saw in chapter I, at this stage in his career Sartre holds a reductive view of the materialism of Marx, apparently seeing it as a simple determinism which denies subjective freedom. Setting aside the complex question of whether Marxian materialism actually does or does not correspond to the Sartrean concept of the 'sérieux', the irony of Sartre's position 135
is that his new concept of authenticity in fact draws close to early Marxian thought without him realising it. Indeed in these passages on authenticity in the latter pages of the Carnets de la drôle de guerre, although Sartre does not go so far as to embrace materialism, his critique of different forms of abstraction is clearly reminiscent of Marx's position in The German Ideology. Sartre makes an explicit link between the abstraction of his own detached rationalist outlook on life and the privileged social and economic condition he has always enjoyed. He presents his characteristic lightness, detachment from the real, lack of seriousness, and insouciance with regard to money as of a piece with coming from a social milieu of civil servants whose financial well-being was always sound and stable. The intellectual and socio-economic forms of abstraction from the real hence went hand in glove. When Sartre claims, speaking of how he arrived at his new conception of authenticity, '[c]'est la guerre et c'est Heidegger qui m'ont mis sur le chemin' [C: 577], there is the clear suggestion that his position has now gone beyond the Heideggerian influence which he was seeking to distance himself from in January. Although it was indeed Heideggerian concepts which put him 4sur le chemin', the experience of being a military conscript, in conjunction with being confronted with the objections of Pieter and Beauvoir, led him to intuit a new conception of philosophical realism. It is this realism, based not only on a lucidity about the inauthenticity of his bourgeois social condition but involving a commitment to adapting his practical ethical conduct to his principles, which he now sees as the basis of commitment.
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V. Commitment, Humanism and Left Political Thought
Sartre's political commitment has often been a focal point of interest in critical discussions centering on the intellectual debates of the French postwar years. The subject of controversy and disagreement at the time, it has since become a mainstay of the critical literature on Sartre.1 The centrality of Sartre's awakening to politics and to the importance of active commitment can hardly be overestimated as it is what principally marks the transition between his 'early' and 'later' thought. In this chapter, I will offer an account of the development of Sartre's concept of commitment and its full flowering in the theory of revolution he proposes in the second part of Matérialisme et révolution (1946). This discussion will be followed up in chapter IX with an examination of Sartre's conception of committed writing. The impetus for this account is my feeling that the political content of Sartre's pre-Liberation texts in particular has not been given as much attention as it merits, the ways in which Sartre's ethical and ontological positions harmonise with left-wing politics and political philosophy deserving in-depth examination. Commitment is of course not just a Sartrean concept as it is and has always been traditionally central to the Marxist political and intellectual outlook. Marxist conceptions of commitment have themselves always been varied and diverse, as our discussion of Nizan and Trotsky in chapters VIII and IX respectively will show. It is vital on the one hand that the specificity of Sartre's concept of commitment in relation to Marxist conceptions be recognised because it originates in his ontological world-view and this contrasts with the materialist ontology of classic Marxism in many key ways. On the other hand, 1
See, for example, David Archard's Marxism and Existentialism: The Political Philosophy of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1980) or Michael Scriven's Jean-Paul Sartre. Politics and Culture in Postwar France (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999).
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the significance of Sartre's concept of commitment can nevertheless only be properly understood in the light of the Marxist tradition's reflections on commitment because it is predated and in key ways anticipated by this tradition. We will relate these two tendencies to each other in this chapter and notably in chapter IX. In the critical literature, it is often suggested that Sartre awoke to the political and moral dimensions of commitment after the Liberation, that is around the time that he first explicitly entered into the long intellectual debate with Marxism which would ultimately lead him to Critique de la raison dialectique. Hence, politicised Sartrean commitment, it is implied, is a development that is concomitant with Sartre's growing interest in Marxism. Whilst it is accurate that Sartrean commitment took on an increasingly pronounced political and moral character in the postwar years, what this reading overlooks is the fact that there are important examples in Sartre's preLiberation texts of commitment of this sort. Furthermore, as we saw in chapter IV, prior to this, in March 1940, Sartre's preoccupation with authenticity led him to conclude that his principles and practical conduct must form a coherent unity. This view, whilst not an affirmation of political commitment as such, was nevertheless thoroughly saturated in ethical presuppositions and undoubtedly laid the ground for Sartre's positions of the postwar years. Moreover, examples such as these have to be taken to some extent in conjunction with the contributions to left social critique made by Sartre in texts as early as La Nausée and L'Enfance d'un chef. As we saw in chapter III, not only is the bourgeoisie mercilessly ridiculed in these works but in numerous places Sartre offers examples of his concept of inauthenticity, and this effectively occupies the space reserved for ideology critique in classic Marxist theory. Andrew Dobson's account of Sartre's famous defence of existentialism in L'Existentialisme est un humanisme provides an example of the critical tendency to pass over the political and moral dimensions of Sartre's thought prior to the Liberation.2 Dobson perceives a 2
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Dobson Jean-Paul Sartre and the Politics of Reason (Cambridge University Press, 1993) pp. 44-6. The account of Sartre's politics offered by Scriven (op. cit.) also exemplifies this critical tendency.
development in Sartre's thought which he describes thus: 'In Being and Nothingness, freedom was an ontological truth [...] now it has become a moral imperative, a political exercise. Perceptibly, Sartre has moved onto the plane of politics.'3 This statement suggests that moral and political concerns came to take on an importance for Sartre between 1943 and 1945, Sartre presumably becoming preoccupied with these areas in the latter part of the war and in its aftermath. If Sartre 'has moved onto the plane of politics' in L'Existentialisme est un humanisme, then one can only suppose that politics were not amongst his intellectual concerns prior to this time. It is not that Dobson is incorrect in his identification of a significant difference of emphasis between L'Etre et le néant and L'Existentialisme est un humanisme. The focus of the former work was indeed limited largely to questions of ontology. And Dobson's statement does not of course explicitly commit him to the stronger and evidently untenable claim that Sartre had no interest whatsoever in questions of politics or morality prior to or at the time of writing L'Etre et le néant. The difficulty lies not so much in what Dobson actually states as in what he omits to mention, and a somewhat distorted view of the Sartre of the early 1940s results from this omission. As we saw in chapter II with regard to the globally unsatisfying account of the 'situation' in L'Etre et le néant, Sartre's focus on ontology in this work often led him to put to one side temporarily the treatment of themes which lay outside the purview of ontology. We saw that it was the absence of any convincing treatment of the historical and social dimensions of the situation in L'Etre et le néant which left Sartre's account not only incomplete and inadequate, but also unrepresentative of his global position on the matter. Works such as L 'Age de raison and Le Sursis, between which L'Etre et le néant falls chronologically, presented a much fuller view of human situations. In a similar way, in-depth consideration of questions of morality, politics (and indeed aesthetics) are temporarily shelved by Sartre, only making appearances in a way that is ancillary to his ontological enquiries. In L Etre et le néant he rarely touches on matters directly pertaining to politics at all, and in the closing chapter of the work he explicitly 3
IbidpA6
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indicates that a study of ethics is being reserved for a subsequent work. However, as we saw in chapters III and IV, it is clear from the Carnets de la drôle de guerre that Sartre had been giving in-depth consideration to ethical issues from as early as 1940. In reality, postwar texts such as L'Existentialisme est un humanisme and 'Présentation des Temps Modernes' are hence best understood as continuing and developing the reflections of the Carnets, rather than as evidence of a sudden awakening to politics and morality on Sartre's part. This is what statements such as Dobson's fail to make explicit. Much of the discussion of Sartre's concept of 'engagement' has centred on his famous conception of committed writing as set out in postwar theoretical texts such as 'Présentation des Temps Modernes' and in particular Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? As Sartre was first and foremost a writer, the matter of what commitment entailed for the writer was central to his view of commitment. It was also during the immediate postwar years of course that Sartre first began to insist explicitly on the importance of left political commitment. In Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?, as we shall see in chapter IX, these two themes are woven together into a complex synthesis. However, the conceptual basis of Sartre's conception of commitment lies in his ontology and anthropology and cannot be accurately understood without reference to these areas. There is a clear conceptual continuity between the view of commitment to be found in L'Etre et le néant and that of L'Existentialisme est un humanisme and 'Présentation des Temps Modernes'. In what follows, I will argue against any marked separation of Sartre's ontology and his postwar politics. The latter builds on and is an extension of the former rather than being in any sense a rejection of it. This is not to say that the ontology hence precedes the ethical convictions which underpin Sartre's more overtly politicised postwar theoretical works. As our examination of the Carnets in chapters III and IV showed, the ontology was in fact formulated by Sartre in tandem with reflections on ethics. The two fields underwent a largely formal separation when Sartre wrote L'Etre et le néant. Nor is it to suggest that between L'Etre et le néant and Sartre's postwar writings leading up to the ethics of authenticity of the Cahiers and the strong affirmation of left commitment in Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? there was no development of Sartre's ontological 140
world-view. There can be no doubt that Sartre's thought underwent a process of conceptual development between the early 1940s and the positions of 1947-8. Yet the fact remains that there are a number of important reasons for believing that Sartre had already conceived some kind of over-arching vision which was both ontological, ethical, and even political as early as 1940-1, however comparatively inchoate this vision may still have been at this stage. On 20 February 1940 in a letter to Brice Parain [LC II: 82], Sartre had unambiguously declared his intention to involve himself in politics. The following year, he not only initiated a resistance group but also drafted a constitution for postwar France.4 As David Drake points out, 'Sartre should be given credit for attempting to "do something" at a time when there was virtually no organised resistance at all.' 5 And the account of man in L'Etre et le néant, which Sartre says deals only with man's condition prior to the ethical conversion, is best understood, in one sense, as a prelude to a future work on ethics. Indeed, it appears to have been written with such a future work in mind. The relationship between Sartre's distinctive left theoretical stance and other distinctive left positions was more complex than has tended to be portrayed in the critical literature. The avoidance of indepth analysis of Marxist texts in much of the literature on Sartre has led to the tendency to present rather schematically an increasing rapprochement with Marxism from 1945 onwards. Whilst it is of course correct that there is a perceptible development towards Marxist concepts in Sartre's works after 1945, it is important to recognise that in reality his thought between 1940 and 1948 was always at once conceptually closer to and more distant from Marxist thought than this reading suggests. Closer because Sartre's ideas share important areas of political and philosophical common ground with Marxism at a much earlier stage in his oeuvre than has often been acknowledged. And yet also more distant, because many of the aspects of his thought which were not obviously reconcilable with Marxism in the early 1940s remained fundamentally in place in his thought until well into the 1950s, as Merleau-Ponty was later to argue - in fact spitefully 4 5
Cohen-Solal op.cit. p.l 69. No surviving copy of this text has been located. David Drake, Sartre (London: Haus Publishing, 2005) p.51.
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exaggerating the claim somewhat6 - in Les Aventures de la dialectique. Indeed, even the Marxist Sartre of Critique de la raison dialectique would remain a particular kind of Marxist, although this idiosyncrasy would not in and of itself mark his work off from the canon of western Marxist writing.7 Beauvoir, in La Force des Choses II (Gallimard, 1963), rightly remarks that 'l'attaque de Merleau-Ponty était dans son fond d'une grande âpreté' (p.62), Sartre and Merleau-Ponty having fallen into political disagreement in 1950 at the time of the Korean War (Sit IV : pp. 236-240). The particularity of Sartre's Marxism is widely acknowledged in the literature. However, there has been a tendency implicitly to oppose the particularity of Sartre's existentialist Marxism to a supposed Marxist orthodoxy. In reality, outside of the Marxist-Leninist lineage, which reached its apogee in scientistic Stalinist Marxism, there was no such orthodoxy amongst Marxist theorists, and it is consequently very difficult even to decide upon firm criteria which define philosophers as 'Marxist' rather than 'non-Marxist'. Thinkers such as the early Lukâcs, Gramsci, and Lefebvre all demonstrated idiosyncrasies which con firmed them as distinctive theorists in relation to the Marxist tradition rather as the later Sartre did. There would hence appear to be equal reason to question the Marxist credentials of these thinkers as those of the later Sartre and yet they are habitually categorised unambiguously as western Marxist theorists. Flynn, in his Sartre and Marxist Existentialism (pp. 173-177), acknowledges the difficulty involved in any attempt to set the later Sartre's philosophy apart from Marxism. Flynn is keen to establish such a distinction but has to concede that on virtually no recognised criteria does the philosophy of the Critique fail to be Marxist. He ultimately falls back on Lucien Goldmann's claim that the concept of the collective subject is indispensable to Marxism. For Goldmann, Sartre's refusal to accept the idea of a trans-individual subject excluded his philosophy from being Marxist (Marxisme et sciences humaines, Gallimard, 1970, pp. 3301). Even this criterion proves to be of uncertain reliability, however, Flynn acknowledging that the humanism of the 1844 Manuscripts problematises the idea of a collective subject even in Marx's work. Flynn ultimately argues that the position Sartre advances in the Critique remains primarily existentialist despite now also being "Marxist" because of the primacy Sartre accords to praxis (p. 196). This conclusion is far from entirely satisfying, however, in view of the importance which not only the early Marx but also leading western Marxist theorists such as Lukâcs and, in particular, Gramsci attached to subjective agency in the historical process, as we saw in chapter I. Ultimately, it would seem that if the Sartre even of the Critique was to remain a particular kind of Marxist, he was hardly more divergent from the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy than many other western Marxist theorists.
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Sartrean Commitment In Sartre's works 'engagement' is an ontological, ethical, and political concept. Sartre synthesises these three dimensions of commitment into one unified whole for the first time explicitly in L'Existentialisme est un humanisme. Prior to this, the ethical and political aspects of commitment, to the extent to which they had taken form in Sartre's thinking, had been left largely implicit or were expressed indirectly. The discussion of commitment in L'Etre et le néant had been limited to its derivation from Sartre's ontological claims about the nature of man. In the Carnets, in which no formal separation of ontology and ethics had yet taken place, Sartre had taken a significant step in the direction of the ethical and politicised vision of man of the postwar years although without quite arriving at the idea of active political commitment. The personal and intellectual development undergone by Sartre notably during 1940-1 proved to be the vital turning point in his thinking up until that time. Although pre-war fictional works such as La Nausée and L'Enfance d'un chef had contributed to the left social and political critique of the period, it was only now that Sartre began to make the transition psychologically which would later lead him to reject his pre-war politically disengaged stance. In the Carnets, Sartre's growing awareness of his own historicity, and of himself as a social and political being, is concomitant with his gradual awakening to a certain kind of humanistic belief in the possibility and value of intersubjective solidarity. My starting point in this section will be Sartre's new understanding of man-in-the-world in the Carnets and the subsequent germination of his existentialist humanism from the summer of 1940 onwards. Both of these developments would ultimately prove to be vital to the ethical and political dimensions which his concept of commitment was to take. Whilst a military conscript during the phoney war period Sartre undergoes a phase of rapid personal and intellectual development. In chapter IV we charted the progression in his thinking towards a powerful new conception of authenticity based on an insistence on one's situational context described in the Carnets and the letters to
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Beauvoir. Although not yet an affirmation of the political commitment of his postwar texts, these developments are a crucial prelude to it; it is during this period that Sartre becomes aware of his own historicity and also starts explicitly to view himself and his ideas in a sociopolitical light. A vital accompaniment to this progression in Sartre's thinking is his awakening, a short time later when a POW after June 1940, to a certain kind of humanistic vision of life. Prior to this time, he had taken a sceptical and sometimes scornful attitude towards humanism. In La Nausée, Roquentin's irritation with the Autodidact famously develops into a tirade against 'tous les humanistes que j'ai connus' [N: 167], all of whom in some sense believe in the intrinsic worth of man. Roquentin's reaction to the Autodidact's humanism finally culminates in a resolute expression of individualism, 'Je ne veux pas qu'on m'intègre' [N: 170]. Nevertheless, it is important not to exaggerate Sartre's pre-war aversion to humanistic values as some commentators have done.8 In La Force de l'âge, Beauvoir remarks that Sartre 'avait en horreur certaines catégories sociales, mais il ne s'en prit jamais à l'espèce humaine en général: sa sévérité visait seulement ceux qui font profession de l'aduler' [FA: 173]. Indeed,
8
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In recent criticism, Bernard-Henri Levy's Siècle de Sartre (Grasset, 2000 (pp. 229-241)) is notable for its overstatement of the pre-war Sartre's criticisms of humanism. Levy applauds Sartre's 'anti-humanism', considering it a precursor to the post-structuralist dissolution of the subject and rejection of humanist thought. For Levy, the chief merit of this theoretical anti-humanism was that it was irreconcilable with those totalitarian ideologies, and notably Stalinist communism, which set out to fabricate a new man and then committed acts of barbarousness as a means to this end. Entirely coherent with this reading is Levy's severe treatment of the Sartre of the 1950s and 1960s whom he presents as radically departing from an underappreciated anti-humanist early philosophy only to become ensnared in communist humanist ideology. Levy's reading hence involves distinguishing between 'good' early and 'bad' later phases of Sartre's career. In reality, this opposition of Levy's is an erroneous one, his assimilation of later Sartrean thought to communist ideology being as in accurate as his 'anti-humanist' reading of the early Sartre is. The extent of my disagreement with Levy's reading will be apparent from my account of Sartre in this thesis as a whole. Rather than emphasising moments of rupture in Sartre's development as Levy does, I stress the areas of ethical, ontological and political continuity between his pre-war and postwar thought.
even Roquentin himself distinguishes his non-humanist position from anti-humanism: 'je ne commettrai pas la sottise de me dire « antihumaniste »', he states. 'Je ne suis pas humaniste, voilà tout.' [N: 170] Ultimately, Sartre's pre-war attacks on humanism are best understood as being part of a destructive phase which he subsequently explained had been necessary to his intellectual development but was out of keeping with his fundamentally constructive disposition. 'Si je laisse de côté l'individualisme destructeur et anarchisant de ma dixneuvième année,' he comments in his diary entry of 2 December 1939, 'je vois que tout aussitôt après je me préoccupai d'une morale constructrice. J'ai toujours été constructeur et La Nausée et Le Mur n'ont donné de moi qu'une image fausse, parce que j'étais obligé d'abord de détruire.' [C: 280] Nothing in the Carnets, which span the period between November 1939 and March 1940, indicates that Sartre's life with the other conscripts in the military camp provokes a sudden conversion to humanistic values in him. As we saw in chapter III, he is highly critical of those in his entourage, and in particular Pieter, often seeing them as illuminating examples of inauthenticity. During his first months in the camp in particular, Sartre prefers to underline the otherness of his social entourage in relation to himself. In his 'morale' of December 1939, Sartre's definition of the ethical conversion is limited to the idea of our being fully lucid about our inauthentic desire to give ourselves a foundation. He introduces the concept of responsibility but not in a way which anticipates the strongly ethical and political flavour of texts like L'Existentialisme est un humanisme and 'Présentation des Temps Modernes'. One must simply accept complete responsibility for one's inauthentic desire to be one's own foundation and for oneself as a being in the world. At no point is there any suggestion of authenticity involving intersubjective relations of reciprocity as it was to do some years later in the Cahiers. This 'morale' remains thoroughly individualistic. It is also formalistic and abstract, as Beauvoir objected, because divorced from any genuine consideration of practical conduct. We have seen in chapter IV how in the first months of 1940 Sartre struggles to escape the abstraction of this world-view. By March he is starting to formulate a new conception of authenticity which, in its insistence on the necessity of 145
unifying one's principles and practical conduct, involves a profound questioning of the formalism of the previous 'morale'. This questioning is of course coherent with those depictions of inauthentic conduct in his fictional works which are characterised by the tendency towards intellectual abstractions from the real and which can be linked with Marxist ideology critique. Moreover, the idea of a unity of principles and practical conduct, in its echoing of the classic Marxist insistence on the unity of theory and practice, anticipates the synthetic anthropology of the 'Présentation des Temps Modernes' five years later, where Sartre was to argue that man must be seen as a 'totalité indécomposable', that is, a unity of ideas, actions and situation in the world [P: 22]. The existing war diaries stop at March 1940 and the written evidence of Sartre's thinking from this time onwards is much more sporadic. In late April and early May, Sartre complains to Beauvoir that his character Mathieu 'ne s'historialise pas' [LC II: 191] and that he is striving to rectify this [LC II: 205]. A letter of 10 May reminds Beauvoir that 'nous pensons vous et moi qu'on doit écrire comme on parle\ and the paragraph which follows registers Sartre's reaction to the German invasion of Belgium and the end of the phoney war period. He declares that the news came as 'presque un soulagement. L'impression de toucher du réel [...] après huit mois de guerre « pourrie ».' [LC II: 218] Sartre hence expresses his desire for realism once again, here juxtaposing considerations pertaining to imaginative writing with political events in a manner that is characteristic of the Carnets and the Lettres au Castor. However, in none of this is there any expression of fraternal feelings on Sartre's part towards his fellow conscripts, and hence no indication that any kind of conversion to humanistic values has yet taken hold in him. It would be during the period he spent as a POW, from July 1940 until March 1941, that Sartre would first develop a genuine awareness of the value of being part of a social collectivity.9 Unable to continue writing and reading at 9
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In La force des choses I (Gallimard, 1963) (p. 16), Beauvoir notes that Sartre 'participa dans l'allégresse à la vie communautaire.' Cohen Solal (op.cit. pp. 148-159) offers a detailed account of the period Sartre spent as a POW in the Stalag XII D.
the prodigious rate he had maintained during the phoney war period, Sartre soon finds himself enjoying communal life in the prison camp. The posthumously published 'Journal de Mathieu',10 in which he describes his experience as a POW, is a revealing document in this regard, its interest lying principally in its depiction of camp life rather than in the development of Sartre's ethical outlook. However, Sartre does emphatically reiterate the criticisms he had made in Carnets of his previous 'morales'. '[TJoujours de la lucidité. Suprême lâcheté de la lucidité: c'est un alibi, tout comprendre pour ne rien faire',11 he insists, apparently growing increasingly frustrated with not committing actively to anything. And he is even more scathing with regard to the idea of personal salvation that he had long entertained during the 1930s, and which he now judges too individualistic: 'Toute morale du salut est pourrie parce que c'est notre salut que nous voulons faire.'12 'Il y a un saut à faire', he concludes as if in anticipation of the future. Save for a handful of brief surviving letters,13 Sartre's Christmas play of 1940 Bariona is one of the only surviving written documents from this crucial period of his development, and it provides the first reliable evidence that he is beginning to make the leap he speaks of. For much of the play, Bariona's attitude is roughly coherent with the pessimism of the Sartre of the late 1930s with regard to human solidarity. He responds to Roman oppression only with dignified resignation and refuses to place any faith in the newly born Messiah, preferring to advocate to his people that they simply cease to reproduce. By the conclusion of the play, however, he has become convinced of the importance of believing in and fighting to defend the Messiah, and urges his people to unite in mounting resistance to the Romans: 'marchons contre les mercenaires d'Hérode, marchons, saouls de chants, de vin et d'Espoir', 14 he implores. There can be little doubt that the message which Sartre conveys in allegorical form here was clear to his captive audience in the prison camp. Bariona, staging 10 11 12 13 14
Les Temps Modernes September 1982 pp. 449-475. IbidpA64 IbidpA66 Lettres au Castor II pp. 282-307. Bariona, Septième tableau, scène HI (in Contât and Rybalka op.cit. p.632)
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as it does Sartre's rejection of anti-humanist individualism, expresses his newfound belief in the importance of human solidarity to achieve desired ends. Its closing pages incite the audience to commit to fighting the oppressor in the name of hope for a better human world. In the context of the French defeat of 1940, the type of commitment the play seeks to inspire is clearly of a political character and has strong ethical underpinnings. As such, it is the first clear expression of the politicised brand of commitment with which the postwar Sartre came customarily to be associated. The absence of any surviving war diaries dating from the period of Sartre's captivity means that we have no explicit indication of the development of his reflections on ethics which were charted in the course of the Carnets of 1939-40. We can infer from Bariona, however, that by the winter of 1940 Sartre's 'morale' has undergone a transformation in relation to the position he had adumbrated in March 1940. In particular, it seems clear that authenticity for Sartre now implies action for the first time, and indeed concerted action. The importance of this development could hardly be overstated because, as we will see in chapter VII, it ties in with the emphasis on 'doing' rather than 'being' which the Sartre of the Cahiers pour une morale will see as indispensable to authenticity. Action also proves vital to the concept of commitment which Sartre will formulate subsequently in theoretical writings, and will be crucial to his politicised conception of man in the world The emphasis on human solidarity and concerted action is of course characteristic of left political thought but the primarily ontological focus of L'Etre et le néant excludes treatment of these ethical and political dimensions. Rather than consolidating the developments of Bariona, which clearly point towards the 'Présentation des Temps Modernes' and L'Existentialisme est un humanisme, in L'Etre et le néant Sartre appears to take a step back towards his prewar thought. He stresses, for example, that freedom inevitably implies responsibility and commitment [EN: 612-5] but his account reads much more like an elaborate version of the 'morale' he had formulated in December 1939 in the Carnets than it anticipates L'Existentialisme est un humanisme. Shorn of ethics and politics, responsibility and commitment seem to be a largely individualistic affair, the direct consequence of the inassimilability of consciousness to being rather than indispens148
able guides for social conduct. The impression conveyed by L'Etre et le néant is deceptive, however, the work's ontological focus masking as it does the considerable development which Sartre's ethical thought and understanding of political issues has undergone since the start of 1940. Moreover it is important to note that, as with L'Imaginaire, the freedom of consciousness is not conceived of by Sartre in such a way as to imply abstraction from the real. Sartre argues that 'on ne [peut] concevoir le Néant en dehors de l'être, ni comme notion complémentaire et abstraite [...]. Il faut que le Néant soit donné au cœur de l'Etre' [EN: 57]. There is a 'facticité du pour-soi' [EN: 117], consciousness being embodied: 'le corps est une caractéristique nécessaire du pour-soi [...] il découle nécessairement de la nature du pour-soi qu'il soit corps' [EN: 357]. Indeed, it is not the vertical axis but the horizontal axis of temporality which is implied by Sartre's descriptions of the inassimilability of consciousness to being:15 [...] le corps est perpétuellement le dépassé. Le corps [...] c'est ce au delà de quoi')Q suis [...] Ainsi le corps, étant le dépassé, est le Passé. Dans chaque projet du Pour-soi, dans chaque perception, le corps est là, il est le Passé immédiat en tant qu'il affleure au Présent qui le fuit. Cela signifie qu'il est à la fois point de vue et point de départ: un point de vue, un point de départ que je suis et que je dépasse à la fois vers ce que j'ai à être. [EN: 374] Mais dépasser le monde, c'est précisément ne pas le survoler, c'est s'engager en lui [EN: 375]
15
It is for this reason that I argued in chapter III that Sartre's conception of inauthenticity is as much to do with consciousness' refusal to accept the responsibility implied by the temporal present as it is to do with a desire for substantiality. For Sartre, the free consciousness' relation to the body is that of being 'au-delà', not 'au-dessus', and an authentic outlook consists in resisting one's habitual impulsion to try to establish a fixed identity for oneself by identifying with an already existing, or past, self. There has been a tendency in the critical literature to neglect this horizontal axis of temporality in accounts of Sartre's concept of inauthenticity, commentators preferring to emphasise the connection between inauthenticity and the desire for substantiality.
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Oreste's self-liberating act in Les Mouches, completed in 1943, incarnates the ontology-derived concepts of commitment and responsibility formulated in L'Etre et le néant a short while earlier. From the standpoint of ethics and politics, the play is ambiguous, however. On the one hand, Oreste's act is in many ways an individualistic affair, the intersubjective solidarity which had characterised the humanism of Bariona being much less pronounced. And yet, the implications of his act are undoubtedly further reaching than could be any mere illustration of ontological principles in the strict sense. Indeed, Sartre anticipates L'Existentialisme est un humanisme where a key conceptual development would be the broadening of the existential choice and the extent of subjective responsibility: in making choices, Sartre would argue, the subject chooses for the whole of humanity [EH: 31-2]. 16 Orestes' refusal to feel guilt and his decision to renounce the throne before leaving Argos undoubtedly constitute this type of choice and these actions clearly have ethical implications. In fact, Orestes' actions exemplify a heroic tendency in Sartre's existentialist humanist anthropology which is at once representative of the staunch individualism of the pre-conversion ontology of L'Etre et le néant and vital not only to the ethical dimension of L'Existentialisme est un humanisme but also to the theory of political revolution expounded in the second part of Matérialisme et révolution.17 It is the rationalism of 16
17
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It is worth noting that this argument makes its first appearance in Sartre's theoretical writings some months earlier in his article 'A Propos de l'existentialisme: Mise au point', published in the communist review Action, no. 17, December 1944. Re-printed in Contât and Rybalka pp. 653-8. Sartre claims that 'en se faisant [l'homme] assume la responsabilité de l'espèce entière' (p.656). A parallel can be drawn between this heroic tendency in Sartre's humanist existentialist anthropology and what Lesek Kolakowski has described as a Promethean motif in Marx's thought (Main Currents of Marxism. I: The Founders, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978, p.412). Sartre is careful to avoid explicitly vaunting heroic behaviour in his writings on the whole, probably wary of the concept's self-regarding and narcissistic implications. There is, however, a revealing statement on the matter in his article of 1944, 'A propos de l'existentialisme', which sheds light on the kind of psychological attitude which spawned works such as Bariona and Les Mouches: 'Héroïsme, grandeur, générosité, abnégation, j'en demeure d'accord, il n'y a rien de mieux et,
Sartre's conception of the subject which constitutes the basis of his heroic outlook. The inescapable ontological freedom of the subjective consciousness means that it is not susceptible to assimilation to, or incorporation by, any antecedent 'essence', be this its own being or its situation in the world. It hence enjoys a considerable independence in relation to these freedom-limiting constraints. In Les Mouches, Orestes' heroism manifests itself in his staunch refusal of the dominant ideology of Argos upheld by Egisthe, and in his confident affirmation of the irreducibility of his freedom of thought. In so far as he tries to win Electre over to his way of thinking, and hopes the people of Argos will follow suit, this heroic stance amounts to nothing less than incitement to resistance and even political revolution. If the theme of human solidarity is not foregrounded in Les Mouches, it re-surfaces the following year in the article 'A Propos de l'existentialisme: Mise au point', published in the communist journal Action, where Sartre asserts that 'l'existentialisme n'est pas une délectation morose, mais une philosophie humaniste de l'action, de l'effort, du combat, de la solidarité' [Sartre's italics].18 In this text, written only a few months after the Liberation, Sartre is keen to bring to the fore the ways in which his existentialist philosophy is compatible with left political thought, notably drawing a parallel between existentialist and Marxian anthropology.19 Solidarity is also central to the conclusions which Sartre draws at the close of Réflexions sur la question juive, also written in the post-Liberation months. Furthermore, it is in this text that Sartre's first explicit affirmation of the need for left revolutionary commitment is to be found. Not only should we be 'tous solidaires du Juif puisque l'antisémitisme conduit tout droit au national-socialisme', but 'la révolution socialiste est nécessaire et suffisante pour supprimer l'antisémite; c'est aussi pour les Juifs que
18 19
finalement, c'est le sens même de l'action humaine.' (Contât et Rybalka op.cit. p.658) Contât and Rybalka op.cit. p.658 Ibid Sartre argues that his conception of man 'ne s'éloigne pas beaucoup de la conception de l'homme qu'on trouverait chez Marx' (p.655), and points up the centrality of action in both cases.
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nous ferons la révolution.' In these passages, then, Sartre suggests that a sense of collective social responsibility is needed to guard against the evils of fascism. The pre-conversion view of man as inauthentic and apolitical which Sartre set out in L'Etre et le néant had clearly not been representative of his global philosophical world-view in the early 1940s. The image which Sartre conveys in these texts of late 1944 of his existentialist philosophy, and the indirect call to resistance and political commitment of Les Mouches, are entirely coherent with the newfound humanistic optimism of the closing pages of Bariona four years earlier. Moreover, the anti-fascist sentiment of Réflexions sur la question juive is essentially an extension of that which Sartre had expressed through literary discourse in L'Enfance d'un chef However, Sartre's pervasive use of irony in this earlier work, rather like the use of allegory in Bariona and Les Mouches subsequently, meant that the political content of Sartre's writing had fallen short of being an explicit call for commitment. The article 'A Propos de l'existentialisme' was hence the first time that Sartre revealed explicitly the political dimension of his thought. In two texts of 1945, 'Présentation des Temps Modernes' and L'Existentialisme est un humanisme, he then develops this further, bringing political and ethical considerations to the fore and discussing at length active commitment in these respects for the first time. It is committed writing that constitutes the central focus of 'Présentation des Temps Modernes9, and consideration of this will be postponed until Part III. In the context of our present discussion, we should nevertheless note the significant degree to which Sartre makes an explicit move towards the theoretical postulates of classic Marxism in this text. He rejects the reliance of the bourgeoisie on analytical thought, advocating a synthetic anthropology which takes man as a totality. The 'homme-totalité' [P: 23] is not just the individual as conceived in liberal thought, but also involves his economic, social, and historical situation and conditioning [P: 24]: 'Puisque l'homme est une totalité, il ne suffit pas [...] de lui accorder le droit de vote, sans toucher aux autres facteurs qui le constituent: il 20
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RQJ p. 182 Although not published until later, this essay was written in October 1944.
faut qu'il se délivre totalement [...] en agissant sur sa constitution biologique aussi bien que sur son conditionnement économique' [P: 23]. This 'totalitarian' conception of man, as Sartre puts it, builds on the conclusions which he had been feeling his way towards in the final pages of the Carnets, discussed in chapter IV. Here Sartre's earlier reflections receive a more sophisticated conceptual formulation and the introduction of terms drawn from the lexicon of political theory highlights the Marxist overtones more explictly. The theme of intersubjective solidarity is developed in L'Existentialisme est un humanisme. Bringing ethical considerations to the fore, Sartre argues that the subject's freedom is dependent on others also being free; seeking to ensure one's own freedom hence implies wanting also to ensure the freedom of others [EH: 69, 70]. This claim is a significant step in the direction of the ethics of reciprocity of the Cahiers, and also prepares the ground for the conception of revolutionary politics of Matérialisme et révolution. However, if the idea of interdependent freedoms in this text marks a departure from L'Etre et le néant, the conception of commitment which it accompanies, although now carrying political implications, remains firmly rooted in the earlier ontology. Commitment in L'Existentialisme est un humanisme takes on a political dimension, first, in that the broadening of the implications of the individual's choice to the rest of humanity [EH: 31-2] imposes enormous ethical responsibility on her with regard to society as a whole. Secondly, Sartre emphasises the link between commitment and action and attributes this latter concept considerably greater politico-social implications than he had done in L'Etre et le néant. There is much more the sense that action involves actually getting things done in the social world. '[L]a collectivisation [...] arrivera-t-elle?', Sartre asks. 'Je n'en sais rien, je sais seulement que tout ce qui sera en mon pouvoir pour la faire arriver, je le ferai' [EH: 51]; committing oneself to the project of collectivisation, then, implies taking concrete steps to try to bring it about. It is from 'A Propos de l'existentialisme' and 'Présentation des Temps Modernes' that it first becomes apparent that Sartre's concept of commitment is a vital point of intersection between his existentialist philosophy and Marxist politics and thought. The idea of commitment, of both individual and collective varieties, had been central to 153
the vision of the class struggle promulgated by all non-mechanistic brands of Marxist thought up until this time. However, it is important to note the distinctiveness of Sartre's concept of commitment even in the post-Liberation years. Until well into the 1950s, the derivation of Sartrean commitment, even in its most overtly political expressions, from the ontological world-view set out in L'Etre et le néant gave it a particularity in relation to the Marxist tradition. The ethical and political vision of commitment ofL'Existentialisme est un humanisme is hence best understood as a conceptual development on, rather than departure from, the vision of L'Etre et le néant. The ontological view of man of the earlier work appears, in summary, in the formulation "l'existence précède l'essence" [EH: 29, 32] and the central concepts of choice, responsibility, commitment and action had all been established previously. In reality, rather than there being any sudden leap towards politics in the brief period separating L'Etre et le néant and L'Existentialisme est un humanisme, the earlier work is in fact much closer conceptually to Sartre's postwar politics than has often been thought.
Reading Ethical Humanist Marxism in Sartre's Theory of Revolution In the second part of Matérialisme et révolution (1946) Sartre proposes a theory of political revolution derived from the principles of his existentialist philosophy. This text offers the most unambiguous evidence of Sartre's commitment to the left political struggle up until this time, but he sets out to re-write the theoretical basis on which that struggle is predicated for Marxists, and in particular, for the communist activists of the PCF. Having misunderstood the real import of Marxism's theoretical reliance on materialism and rejected the doctrine, Sartre believes that his philosophical world-view can provide a sounder basis for revolutionary political action. In addition to allowing a broader conception of situation so as to account for the
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worker's economic and social conditioning and constraints, in this text Sartre moves towards a more concrete conception of intersubjective solidarity than had been adumbrated in the argument for the interdependence of subjective freedoms in L'Existentialisme est un humanisme. Sartre also suggests for the first time that philosophy should be in part intrinsically political in nature. What is striking about Sartre's existentialist theory of revolution is the fact that, as with the claims of L'Existentialisme est un humanisme, it displays a fundamental continuity with the ontological arguments set out in L'Etre et le néant. Moreover, there are key areas of similiarity and overlap with the humanist brand of Marxism which attached particular importance to the early writings of Marx; this relationship will be discussed in some detail in this section. As we saw in chapter I, Sartre believes that the materialist basis of Marxist theory makes it excessively essentialist and reductive of subjectivity. What the political revolutionary needs is not a theory which reduces him to his concrete situation and to a pre-defined historical process but one which conversely recognises that, although conditioned by his social and economic circumstances, he remains free to bring about change. 'Le révolutionnaire se définit [...] par le dépassement de la situation où il est' [MR: 179] and must be able to 'décoller d'une situation pour prendre un point de vue sur elle' [MR: 194], Sartre claims, reiterating the position of L'Etre et le néant. With regard to the question of subjectivity, these existentialist claims of Sartre's stand diametrically opposed to Stalinist Marxism, and hence to the PCF ideologues of the day such as as Roger Garaudy and Cécile Angrand. They do not however run counter to the theories of many other key Marxist thinkers as they are largely incorporated into their theories, albeit without the same degree of emphasis on the centrality of subjective choice in the existential present. At an early stage in the exposition of his theory of revolution, Sartre establishes a connection between bourgeois ideology and idealist philosophy, echoing Marx's and Engels' The German Ideology. The bourgeois are 'monarques par droit divin; le monde est fait pour eux, leur existence est la valeur absolue et parfaitement satisfaisante pour l'esprit qui donne son sens à l'univers. C'est ce que signifient originellement tous les systèmes philosophiques qui affirment la primauté 155
du sujet sur l'objet et la constitution de la nature par la pensée.' [MR: 185] Idealist philosophy, then, Sartre suggests, is an outgrowth of and harmonises with the bourgeois condition and ideology. Moreover, whereas the bourgeois is born into a social situation which automatically bestows rights on him, i'opprimé se sent un naturel: chacun des événements de sa vie vient lui répéter qu'il n'a pas le droit d'exister' [MR : 186]. In fact, the latter formulation had been previously employed to describe Roquentin in relation to the bourgeois 'salauds' [N: 125].21 The use of the term 'un naturel' is of significance in this passage, suggesting as it does an opposition between bourgeois abstraction and the concrete reality of the condition of the working class. Aligning his theoretical position with the Marxist world-view more explicitly than hitherto, Sartre suggests that the philosophy of the revolutionary should be a total explanatory theory, that is a theory which is not merely the basis for political action but rather a sort of grand narrative accounting for the human condition in its entirety: 'il faut que cette philosophie soit totale, c'est-à-dire qu'elle apporte un éclaircissement total de la condition humaine.' [MR: 180] The Marxian emphasis on the unity of theory and practice, taken up and elaborated by generations of Marxist thinkers, had led to the conviction that philosophy in the traditional sense had been superseded by a truth which was constituted by a synthesis of ideas and action, termed 'praxis'. When Sartre claims a propos of his own theory of revolution that 'l'humanisme révolutionnaire apparaîtra non pas comme la 21
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Roquentin remarks that Pacôme's judgemental stare 'mettait en question jusqu'à mon droit d'exister. Et c'était vrai, je m'en étais toujours rendu compte: je n'avais pas le droit d'exister.' Furthermore, in the closing pages of L'Enfance d'un chef, Lucien's newfound self-confidence as a bourgeois is expressed in terms of his possessing rights and these are presented as abstractions. Henceforth, 'son droit à commander' is a certitude, and rights are described as 'par-delà l'existence, comme les objets mathématiques' [EC: 243]. My point is to indicate the thematic continuity between Sartre's hostility to the bourgeoisie and to abstractions from the real in the late 1930s on the one hand, and the explicit Marxian tendencies of his political thought in his writings after 1946. If Sartre was to adopt certain key aspects of the Marxian world-view in the postwar years, it was partly because he had always shared areas not just of political but also philosophical common ground with Marx.
philosophie d'une classe opprimée, mais comme la vérité elle-même' [MR: 224], he suggests a similar indissociability of the conceptual and the practical, the theoretical and the political, linking a global notion of truth with the revolutionary struggle. The key development in Sartre's thinking in this regard lies in his broadening of individual action to include political activity, in line with his newfound socioeconomic understanding of man's situation. In L'Existentialisme est un humanisme, the concept of action had been extended to the ethical and even political drive to realise aims in the social world, but Sartre had not gone as far as partisan activism. Sartre now argues that as the worker is oppressed by his social and economic conditioning, his desire for emancipation can only be realised through revolutionary political activity. The concept of 'praxis' would appear explicitly in Sartre's writings from 1947 onwards, ultimately becoming, in his later thought, the successor to that of consciousness. Although Sartre refuses any notion of a collective consciousness, and would continue to do so in his later philosophy, in Matérialisme et révolution the idea of interdependent subjective freedoms in L'Existentialisme est un humanisme is extended into a full-blown notion of solidarity. '[L]e révolutionnaire ne se comprend que dans ses rapports de solidarité avec sa classe' [MR: 180], Sartre argues. He seeks liberation as a worker specifically, for which the emancipation of his class in its entirety is necessary. Only a collective struggle can succeed in bringing about the requisite changes in the social and economic structure of society. The revolutionary does not however, Sartre claims, consider such solidarity with his fellow workers to be a temporary expedient but rather the point of departure for a new social order under socialism, hoping that 'les rapports de solidarité qu'il entretient avec les autres travailleurs deviennent le type même des rapports humains.' [MR: 180] In an interesting conceptual crossfertilisation with the position of L'Etre et le néant, Sartre argues that it is only because man is free rather than determined that such solidarity, and a resulting proletarian class consciousness, is possible. Such phenomena cannot result from a passive conception of man, Sartre thinks, inappropriately pointing the finger at Marxist materialism.
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If existentialism was moving increasingly in the direction of Marxism in the course of the 1940s, the much publicised22 1844 Manuscripts after the Liberation were stimulating a far-reaching réévaluation of Marx's œuvre. A new image of Marx was coming into focus, although official communist doctrine would thereafter consistently minimise the importance of the manuscripts, disapproving of the image of Marx as a fundamentally humanist thinker which was coming to the fore. Such a view of Marx highlighted the centrality of subjective agency and self-realisation, a dimension of his historical materialist theory which had been identified by perceptive commentators such as the early Lukâcs and Gramsci in particular but had been overlooked by many. For the devotees of diamat in the PCF, it appeared to challenge Marxism's status as a science of history with objective laws of change. It also drew Marx undeniably closer to the PCF's rival and foe of the immediate postwar years, namely existentialism. The basis of Marx's humanism in the manuscripts is his reformulation of the Hegelian concept of alienation to account for man's condition under capitalism. For Marx, man's alienation is threefold: he is separated from the products of his labour because they belong to the capitalist; the act of production is alien to him, being unrelated to the satisfaction of his own needs; and he is alienated from his species,23 that is his fundamental nature, as it is distorted by his participation in the capitalist labour process. It is the latter form of alienation which is the most central to ascertaining the anthropological underpinnings to Marx's philosophy and which lends itself to comparison with Sartre's existentialist anthropology. Marx holds the conviction that after the overthrow of the capitalist system man, released from his alienated condition, will be able to realise himself fully and flourish in a realm of freedom. It is this vision revealed in
22 23
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The manuscripts had in fact become available in France in 1937-8 (Kelly op.cit. p.26), but were to attract the most attention after the Liberation. In the 1844 Manuscripts (pp. 112-114), Marx refers to 'species being', Gattungswesen, following Feuerbach's use of the term.
the manuscripts which led many theorists of the postwar years,24 developing the claims of key Western Marxist theorists starting with Lukâcs,25 to insist that a fundamental humanist impulse lay at the basis of Marx's thought as a whole, his mature historical materialist theory included. Such humanist readings of Marx highlighted the ethical dimension and implications of his thought ignored by the ideologists of the party who, in an attempt to preserve the scientistic interpretation of historical materialism, responded by arguing for a separation of the young and the mature Marx. It would only be some years later, in the form of Louis Althusser's anti-humanist structuralist Marxism, that a case of merit would be made against the humanist Marxist insistence on the crucial importance of Marx's early thought to his mature theory. The postwar Sartre places emphasis on the idea that subjective freedom is not merely a prerequisite for meaningful action because it is itself defined through and united with action. In Matérialisme et révolution he claims that 'la liberté ne se découvre que dans l'acte, ne fait qu'un avec l'acte' [MR: 205]. The freedom of the working class is hence presented as closely connected to its political struggle for emancipation. This position signals a development in his thinking on the position articulated in L'Etre et le néant, but it is more a difference of emphasis, Sartre closing the formal gap between ontology and ethics, than it denotes a conceptual departure. Although Sartre focused in L'Etre et le néant more on ontological freedom than on action and its ethical implications, his view of the relationship between freedom and action had nevertheless been fundamentally the same as the following remark indicates: 'La liberté se fait acte et nous l'atteignons ordinairement à travers l'acte' [EN: 492]. Indeed, the progression in Sartre's thought towards an explicitly political philosophy after the Liberation actually takes place with surprising ease on the whole, 24
25
Lefebvre's Le Marxisme (PUF, 1948), Pierre Bigos's Marxisme et humanisme (PUF, 1953), and Erich Fromm's Marx's Concept of Man (New York: Ungar, 1966) are three notable works of the period which are representative of this humanist Marxist tendency. In History and Class Consciousness, Lukâcs had remarkably anticipated the late appearance of the early Marxian emphasis on alienation as central to radical critique, the 1844 Manuscripts having not yet come to light.
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involving extension and elaboration of previously established concepts and positions rather than their contradiction or rejection. Sartre's existentialist philosophy, although far from always oriented explicitly towards left radical thought, is hence best understood as having shared many of the latter's basic presuppositions and perhaps even as having been formulated to some extent in accordance with its values and demands. When Sartre argues that 'la philosophie révolutionnaire doit être une philosophie de la transcendance' [MR: 196], he is advancing a claim which is at one and the same time clearly an expression of a left radical urge to go beyond the existing limitations on subjective possibilities and which goes to the heart of his own existentialist philosophy, with its emphasis on consciousness' capacity to transcend constraining situations. His ethical claim in L'Existentialisme est un humanisme that in choosing one's own path one sets the whole of humanity on a certain course [EH: 31-2] is ostensibly unpolitical and yet could itself in fact be taken as a loose description of the actions of the political revolutionary and their consequences. Sartrean humanism, both before and after Matérialisme et révolution, is libertarian in character, posing man's freedom both as a necessary condition for action and as a goal to be achieved through action, freedom in the former sense being of the ontological kind and in the latter sense being in situation. Humanist Marxist theorists, seeing the early Marx's preoccupation in the 1844 Manuscripts with overcoming alienation as a central, if largely inexplicit, category of his mature thought, have stressed the centrality of human freedom to his world view. Erich Fromm argues that 'Marx is primarily concerned with the emancipation of man as an individual'26 also describing his philosophy as 'a kind of 'existentialist' thinking.'27 R.G. Peffer's study Marxism, Morality and Social Justice highlights freedom as one of the fundamental principles on which Marx's thought is based: The moral content of the various forms of alienation Marx describes in the Manuscripts, the moral grounds upon which he condemns these forms of alienation, can [...] be successfully reduced to three primary moral principles to which he implicitly subscribes in the Manuscripts and throughout the rest of his 26 27
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Fromm op.cit.p.5 Ibid Preface^
writings [...] freedom (as self-determination), human community, and selfrealization.28
The moral imperatives of freedom and self-realization which Peffer mentions would clearly seem to cast Marx as an important precursor for any left libertarian position, and hence for Sartre's philosophy as well. Henri Maler goes further in this direction than Peffer, claiming that the basic impulse motivating all of Marx's theorising was a libertarian one. 'La liberté est la valeur à la base de la pensée de Marx,' Maler has argued, adding that this freedom is 'historiquement située, pourtant universalisable'.29 Maler's reading of Marx is of particular interest in relation to Sartre's philosophy, to which his assessment is also applicable. In the closing paragraph of L'Etre et le néant, Sartre ventures that freedom might perhaps be able to take itself for a 'valeur en tant que source de toute valeur', and then wonders, were this possible, whether i a liberté, en se prenant pour fin, échappera-t-elle à toute situation! Ou, au contraire, demeurera-telle située ?' [EN: 691] When Sartre turns his focus to the ethical and political dimensions of human reality over the following years, and comes to acknowledge the necessity of seeing man as a synthetic totality, he is drawn to the Marxian position, namely that freedom is historically situated and therefore incapable of transcending all situations, and yet is 'universalisable' all the same. The centrality of ethical themes to Sartre's writing is widely recognised in the critical literature today.30 In the case of Marx, the prevalence of diamat in the Stalinist era gave rise to the common misapprehension in communist and liberal circles alike that Marxian theory, supposed to enjoy the status of scientific truth, did not contain ethical and moral presuppositions. There is a conspicuous lack of discussion of these fields in Marx's writings, Marx, as Yvon Quiniou 28 29 30
R.G. Peffer, Marxism, Morality and Social Justice (Princeton University Press, 1990)p.51 These analyses were made in a paper given by Maler at Université Paris VIII, entitled 'Marx libertaire' (18/1/2001). See, for example, Yvan Salzmann's Sartre et l'authenticité (Genève: Laboret Fides, 2000) or Thomas C. Anderson's Sartre's Two Ethics: From Authenticity to Integral Humanity.
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reminds us, stressing the primacy of politics in relation to morality which he tends to associate with the abstraction of bourgeois ideology.32 Quiniou argues that a 'normativité morale' can nevertheless be clearly detected in Marx's thought, problematic though it in some ways is: 'Sa présence est évidente: Marx l'a clairement assumée à titre de motivation initiale de son itinéraire théorico-pratique.'33 Peffer concurs in this reading, speaking of reconstructing Marx's 'implicit moral theory' despite the difficulty posed by the 'submerged character' of Marx's moral views.34 'Although Marx never developed the philosophical basis for a fully-fledged moral theory,' writes Peffer, 'he did exhibit a moral perspective, which remained relatively constant [...] throughout his writings',35 freedom being one of the basic moral values, if not the most fundamental,36 underpinning this perspective. In chapter VII, we will examine the Marxist conception of morality in greater detail. Marx's concept of alienation describes the negative effects of capitalist labour relations on the working class individual subject. In Matérialisme et révolution, Sartre offers an account of labour which initially paraphrases Marx's argument but then subverts it into what is perhaps best described as a sort of neo-Hegelian existentialist position on the question. Sartre accepts that labour 'est commandé et prend d'abord figure d'asservissement du travailleur' [MR: 197], that 'le patron va jusqu'à déterminer à l'avance les gestes et les conduites du travailleur' [MR: 197], and that the labourer's work 'lui est imposé à l'origine et on lui vole finalement le produit.' [MR: 199] However, he then goes on to portray labour in a much more positive light, presenting it as an experience through which consciousness can take cognizance of its freedom: 'le travail offre une amorce de libération concrète' [MR: 198]; 'c'est au plus profond de son esclavage [...] que l'action, en lui conférant le gouvernement des choses et une 31 32 33 34 35 36
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Etudes matérialistes sur la morale (Editions Klimé, 2002) p.65 This point was defended by Quiniou in 'La Morale de Marx', a paper given at Université Paris VIII, (25/1/2001). Yvon Quiniou, Etudes matérialistes sur la morale p.66 Peffer op.cit.p.4 Ibidp35 IbidpMô
autonomie de spécialiste sur laquelle le maître ne peut rien, le libère' [MR: 199]. The existentialist emphasis of Sartre's revolutionary theory hence leads him to see in the worker's subjective agency a step in the direction of a revolutionary movement which will overthrow capitalism. At first glance, it seems that such a view of labour runs counter to that of Marx whose position would appear to be founded on the conviction that it is only subsequent to the overthrow of the exploitative socio-economic structure which ensures man's alienation that subjective freedom is possible. In reality, Marx's stance on this issue was considerably more nuanced than this, incorporating to some extent the idea of the emancipatory potential of the process of labour itself which Sartre argues for, apparently borrowing from Hegel. Marcuse highlights Marx's indebtedness to Hegel in this regard: Marx lays particular stress on the decisive contributions of Hegel's concept of labour. Hegel had said that the division of labour and the general inter dependence of individual labour in the system of wants alike determine the system of state and society. Moreover, the process of labour likewise deter mines the development of consciousness. The 'life and death struggle' between master and servant opens the path to self-conscious freedom.37
If Sartre's and Marx's views on labour are hence not as dissimilar as one might imagine, the fact remains however that for Marx man's emancipation is primarily conceived as contingent upon the overthrow of the structures which alienate and oppress him. There is an important reason why this is the case for Marx which goes to the core of his thought, and which should also serve as a reminder of the fact that although Sartre's and Marx's philosophical world-views do share much common ground in the ways we have examined, the concordance between them is nevertheless not an obvious one. In a nutshell, whereas the basis of Sartre's general philosophical outlook is his anti-essentialist conception of the subject, that of Marx is the exact opposite, the subject being conceived of as possessing an essential
37
Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (New York: Humanity Books, 1999 [1964])p.259
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nature. This fundamental disagreement inevitably problematises certain areas of theoretical concordance between the two thinkers. For Marx, man's essential nature, which he terms 'species- life',39 is to engage in creative labour. Marx objects to the capitalist labour process not simply because it is exploitative but also because he is faithful to the idea of the possibility of the whole, total man, unfragmented by the alienating capitalist labour process.40 This idea of a unified man ties in with Marx's materialist stance, Marx seeing man as ideally in harmony with rather than working against nature. Sartre, on the other hand, conceives of the subject not as a unified whole but as fundamentally fissured because, in his view, consciousness is inassimilable to being. Wary of all naturalisms, Sartre's refusal to endorse philosophical materialism is both a cause and expression of this antiessentialism. It is clear that Sartre's and Marx's respective positions here are not easily commensurable, the terms of their ontological claims being different: Sartre's focus is the relationship between consciousness and being, whereas Marx's is man's relationship to the labour process. The fact nevertheless remains that the two thinkers undeniably diverge with respect to the question of whether or not the subject possesses a fundamental nature. Regarding the issue of each thinker's libertarianism, for Sartre the fundamental freedom of consciousness and the subject's subsequent capacity for selfdefinition are derived conceptually from his anti-essentialist view of the subject: it is the subjective consciousness's non-coincidence with being which ensures its freedom. For Marx on the other hand, freedom
38
39 40
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As I suggested in chapter I, however, Marxist writers have not been in agree ment about exactly what Marx's essentialism consisted in. Lefebvre's desire to exorcise philosophical materialism from Marxism leads him to present a Hegelian Marx for whom man is in effect without a material foundation and hence lacking a determinate essence. Most commentators, by contrast, have argued that Marx saw man's essential nature to be harmonious with the material world conceived more broadly. Eagleton, for example, describes Marx as 'a sort of Aristotelian essentialist, who holds that there is a human nature or essence, and that the just society would be one in which this nature was allowed to come into its own.' (Marx and Freedom, London: Phoenix, 1997 p. 17) 1844 Manuscripts p. 114 Ernst Fischer, Marx In His Own Words (London: Allen Lane, 1970) p. 15
is a fundamental moral value, if not the most fundamental, and yet this conclusion is derived conversely from the essential nature which he imputes to man: Marx's critique of alienation is based on the conviction that man is severed from engaging in creative labour. Similarly, Sartre's largely positive view of the labour process harmonises with his general outlook founded on his anti-essentialist ontology: Sartre sees in the subjective thought and agency which labour involves the possibility for change and hence a step in the direction of emancipation. For Marx on the other hand, it is the labour process which produces a primarily alienating effect on man because his essential nature is directly contradicted by his participation in that process. The divergence between Sartre and Marx due to the divergent ontological bases for their claims is clearly perceptible with regard to their respective treatment of the phenomenon which Marxists call 'reification'. In those places in his account of labour where he echoes the Marxian critique of alienation, Sartre concludes that the bourgeois tends to reduce the worker 'à l'état de pure et simple chose en assimilant ses conduites à des propriétés.' [MR: 198] As a critique of bourgeois dominance, this claim is not actually as Marxist as the argument which it is part of, reposing as it does on Sartre's antiessentialist rejection of any theoretical reduction of the free subject to the status of an object in the world. As we saw in chapter I, Sartre assumes that material objects of the world are by definition characterised by their inertia in contrast to the spontaneity and dynamic activity of the subject. The materialist and essentialist Marx, by contrast, is not opposed to the idea that man is an object as such but rather to the idea of him being reduced to a mechanical function in a system of production which alienates him. Man is reified by the capitalist mode of production because, as Lukâcs puts it, 'he is a mechanical part incorporated into a mechanical system.' [HCC: 89] The incompatibility between Marx and Sartre with regard to essentialist or anti-essentialist conceptions of the subject seems much more problematic than it is in reality. Employing the essentialism/ anti-essentialism interpretative schema to assess and compare Marx and Sartre leads inevitably to the conclusion that the two thinkers' world-views are divergent. This divergence is in fact more apparent than real, their fundamental affinities belying the impression of 165
irreconcilability created by the essentialism/anti-essentialism opposition. The essential nature which Marx imputes to man is, after all, entirely coherent not only with his own libertarian impulse but also, by the same token, with the libertarian drive that characterises Sartre's 'anti-essentialist' position. Marx's emphasis on 'creative labour' harmonises with Sartre's conception of man as free and defining the world through his actions. For Sartre, man's freedom is derivative of his ontological make-up and is also a goal to be realised in situation. Marx conceives of man's freedom as an implicit but fundamental constitutive part of his essential nature and urges him to change the social and economic structures which restrict its full development. In fact, viewed in a Sartrean perspective, Marx's essentialism is highly paradoxical because it does not involve a denial of man's fundamental freedom, unlike other cases of essentialism as Sartre sees them; rather, it makes freedom into a basic moral value as Sartre's philosophy does. With regard to the question of reification, although Marx's materialist essentialism means that he does not share what Frederic Jameson has called Sartre's dislike of 'thingness',41 at the basis of his hostility to the reduction of the worker to mechanical functions is his aversion to the passivity which this induces. Lukâcs articulates the point thus: 'As labour is progressively rationalised and mechanised his [the worker's] lack of will is reinforced by the way in which his activity becomes less and less active and more and more contemplative.' [HCC: 89] In fact, looking behind the essentialist/ non-essentialist opposition central to the ontological conceptual apparatus of L'Etre et le néant, it is a similar refusal to conceive of man as passive or inert which lies at the very basis of Sartre's existentialist anthropology. A key area of apparent divergence between Sartre and Marx is the fact that Marx does not share Sartre's preoccupation with establishing the irreducible particularity of consciousness in relation to the world. Michel Henry rightly argues that the distinction between the living and the non-living is much more
41
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Frederic Jameson, Sartre: Origins of a Style (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971) p.191
central for Marx. Yet this distinction involves a similar opposition between the animate and the inanimate, the active and the passive. For Marx, when the worker is reduced to a mechanical function, he is relegated to the category of the non-living or inanimate. When Sartre deplores the fact that the worker is reduced to an object, it is the same aversion for the inanimate and passive which underlies his claims. These fundamental affinities between Sartre's and Marx's philosophies point to the conclusion that their apparent divergences owe much more to their use of radically contrasting conceptual schémas to set out their ideas than to genuinely irreconcilable worldviews. The existentialist and Marxist anthropologies hence have a great deal more in common than than they do not. We must in any case not take for granted the validity of Sartre's essentialism/antiessentialism conceptual schema, derived from his ontology, which is ostensibly so exclusive of Marx, and which, one might add, has been so influential for postwar Sartre-influenced and post-Sartrean French philosophy and theory. The notable fact that, as we saw in chapter I, the majority of non-Stalinist Marxist thinkers did not deny the role played by subjectivity in the historical process, points to the conclusion that Sartre, who had not at the time adequately understood the claims of materialists, perhaps went to excessive lengths in his early philosophy to safeguard the freedom of thought of the individual subject. Excessive because at the price of resulting in an overweening philosophical rationalism which he would spend the rest of his career retreating from. Sartre's position in the mid 1940s hence demonstrates clear conceptual as well as political affinities with the humanist brand of Marxist thought which came to the fore after the appearance of Marx's 1844 Manuscripts, These affinities are of course most apparent in the theory of revolution he sets out in the second part of Matérialisme et
42
Michel Henry Marx (Gallimard, 1976, 2 vols). This opposition may seem similar to that between consciousness and world, but it is nevertheless distinct from it in the following respect: for Marx, the living (as oppposed to the non living) designates notably the material human self whose 'species-being' is to be engaged in creative labour. Sartre's distinction, by contrast, fundamentally involves making a theoretical separation of consciousness from being.
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révolution but are more obliquely perceptible in his theoretical worldview as a whole at the time. In Matérialisme et révolution, as in 'Présentation des Temps Modernes' before it, Sartre employs concepts evidently drawn from Marxist theory, but he does so whilst maintaining and reaffirming the central tenets of his existentialist ontology. Certain of the principles of his ontology undergo a degree of modification in order to meet the requirements of a radical left political theory, but they are not rejected as such. Ultimately, it is at the level of their anthropologies that Sartre's and the humanist Marxists' positions overlap. The centrality which Sartre's theory of revolution in Matérialisme et révolution accords to a conception of man as an active, creative being who is united with his fellow men in the struggle for political emancipation is very reminiscent of that which humanist Marxists attribute to Marx. It also marks a new stage in Sartre's affirmation of political commitment.
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VI. Towards a Dialectics of History
Reflections on History and the Individual Subject in Sartre's Carnets de la Drôle de Guerre It is near the start of March 1940, a period during which he is arriving at a new concept of authenticity, as we saw in chapter IV, that Sartre first starts to formulate the questions concerning the nature and meaning of historical events which will remain key philosophical preoccupations throughout much of the rest of his career. In response notably to his own involvement in a major historical event and also to Raymond Aron's Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire,1 which had appeared two years earlier, Sartre sets out to treat a theoretical problem which he says has been plaguing him since September 1938 [C: 539]. What order of importance, Sartre wonders, is to be given to the different kinds of causes for historical events, and in particular to the role played by individuals in relation to that played by social groups? He discusses this question with reference to three contrasting historical events: the outbreak of the First World War, Rousseau's writing the Contrat social, and the start of the present war. It is to the first of these examples, and specifically the matter of the extent to which Kaiser Wilhelm's physical handicap and his English policy were linked, that Sartre devotes most of his critical attentions. 'Qui sait si nous n'allons pas trouver un rapport interne de compréhension entre cette politique anglaise et ce bras atrophié?' [C: 548], enquires Sartre. This discussion has already received a thorough analysis elsewhere,2 and so will not be our focus here. Its principal thematic contours are also to be found in Sartre's other two examples. In the cases of Rousseau's Contrat social and the looming of war in the late 1 2
Gallimard, 1938 Flynn, Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason Vol.1 pp. 19-22.
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1930s, Sartre recognises that these events were the work of both socio-historical and individual causes. The writing of the Contrat social can be explained on the one hand in terms of ideological currents characteristic of Geneva at the time, and on the other with reference to Rousseau's personality [C: 541]. The build-up to war was both the product of what Sartre describes as 'la rivalité des peuples prolétaires avec les ploutodémocraties', and of the political decisions taken by Hitler and his advisors [C: 541]. Sartre concludes that both explanatory models are valid but that they do not harmonise well and hence cannot be affirmed simultaneously: [...] lorsqu'on explique le Contrat social par Genève, la personnalité de Rousseau s'efface, il devient seulement la conscience abstraite, le milieu signifiant où la liaison s'opère entre l'idéologie genevoise et le Contrat social considéré comme un ouvrage juridique, synthèse parmi d'autres de ces courants idéologiques. Mais si j'envisage au contraire le Contrat à partir de Rousseau, il devient un simple prolongement de sa personnalité, une objectivation de ses tendances personnelles, bref un objet strictement individuel et incomparable. [C:541]
It is the apparent irreconcilability of the two explanatory models which is problematic for Sartre, who clearly believes that a truthful account of the historical event requires both synthesised into some sort of totality. To make a brief analogy with Anglo-Saxon historiography, it is as if Sartre were wishing to reconcile the Whig and the Marxist views of history! Sartre's ambition to find a convincing synthesis of the individual and the collectivity would not be realised satifactorily until the formulation of his existentialist dialectic in the Critique de la raison dialectique. His reflections of March 1940 on Rousseau's Contrat social and the causes of the war constitute his first formulation of the problem and he remains as yet some way off perceiving any such synthesis. Nevertheless, certain of his conclusions reveal him to be feeling his way in the direction of the existentialist dialectic he would later elaborate in detail. Anticipating his later insistence on mediation, which would be crucial to the 'progressive-regressive' method set out in Questions de méthode, Sartre already identifies one important way in which the two types of historical explanation are linked. Even 170
socio-historical, economic or ideological causes of historical events must be felt and lived out by individuals, Sartre argues. That is, such factors must filter through individuals' experience in order that historical events can actually take place. No matter how imposing the external causes of events might be, it is individuals' agency which makes these events happen [C: 542-4]. At this point, Sartre introduces his concept of situation to encompass the diverse range of such external causes: 'il n'y a de "situation"', he stresses, 'que pour une réalité humaine qui se pro-jette à travers cette situation vers ellemême. Aucune situation n'est jamais subie [...]. Ainsi n'est-il aucune force mécanique qui puisse décider de l'Histoire' [C: 544]. Sartre hence concludes that the historical event must be the work of both the collectivity and the individual but he presents the former as necessarily mediated by the latter. The crucial role of subjective thought and decision-making in the existential present is hence preserved.
Merleau-Ponty and the 'Sens' of History Sartre's next significant writings on the nature of history are to be found in his Cahiers pour une morale and reveal a considerable development in his thinking on the matter. Written in unsystematic note form, Sartre's reflections on history in this work are interwoven with ethics, political philosophy, and neo-Hegelian dialectical thought. My analysis of Sartre's arguments will be based on the assumption that it is notably in Marxist philosophy that these different areas have traditionally shared common ground. Sartre himself later described his Cahiers as having principally documented his developing relationship with Marxism at the time.3 It is well known that the experience of war and Occupation, and the heated intellectual debates which followed the Liberation, stimulated an awakening to political thought in Sartre. No account of the development in his thinking in the immediate 3
In Sartre par Sartre, the Cahiers are described by Sartre as 'rien d'autre qu'une discussion avec le marxisme' {Situations IXp.99).
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postwar years would be adequate, however, without some analysis of the crucial influence which the writings of his colleague and friend Merleau-Ponty had on him. In the lengthy obituary which he later wrote for Merleau-Ponty, Sartre acknowledged the extent to which Merleau-Ponty's texts provided the bridge for him between existentialist philosophy and a deeper understanding of history and political thought: Depuis qu'il avait appris l'Histoire, je n'étais plus son égal. J'en restais à questionner les faits quand il essayait déjà de faire parler les événements.4 Il s'orientait mieux que moi dans le monde ambigu de la politique [S IV: 214] Je lisais, je m'instruisais, je finissais par me passionner pour ma lecture. Il fut mon guide; c'est Humanisme et Terreur qui me fit sauter le pas. Ce petit livre si dense me découvrit la méthode et l'objet: il me donna la chiquenaude qu'il fallait pour m'arracher à l'immobilisme. [S IV: 215]
Like Sartre, Merleau-Ponty had been a keen student of Husserlian phenomenology in the 1930s. However, his parallel interest in Marxism had set him on the course of a reconciliation of subject-based philosophy and socio-historical structures much earlier than his more literary contemporary. Their contrasting early centres of interest are perceptible in the important differences of emphasis in their respective existentialist philosophies. The rationalism of Sartre's outlook in L'Etre et le néant is concomitant with his identification of human freedom with evasion of the real through the imaginary. In La Phénoménologie de la perception, by contrast, Merleau-Ponty's less marked distinction between consciousness and being, and greater emphasis on the role of the body, coheres with the materialist anthropology underlying Marxian thought. Similarly, whereas the early Sartre's ethical individualism is of a piece with his relative political disinterestedness during the 1930s, Merleau-Ponty's conviction that human subjectivity emerges from an antecedent pre-reflective intersubjectivity harmonises with the Marxist focus on the politico-social
4
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Situations IVpp. 206-7 (hereafter SIV).
dimension of life.5 In the mid 1940s when Sartre and the French communist left were caught in a deadlock of mutual misunderstanding and misrepresentation, Merleau-Ponty was a vital intermediary in the intellectual debate whose position was close enough to both to illuminate the inadequacies of each side. He stood almost entirely alone6 in his insistence on the compatibility of existentialism and Marxism and was the only thinker in the immediate postwar years who argued forcefully for their reconciliation. In an article of November 1945 entitled 'La querelle de l'existentialisme', originally published in the second number of Les Temps Modernes, Merleau-Ponty defended Sartre, albeit expressing certain reservations of his own about the latter's philosophy, against the charges of his less subtle Marxist critics. True Marxism acknowledged the vital role played by subjectivity in the historical process, he argued, and had hence never been incompatible with the precepts of existentialist philosophy.7 Contemporary Marxism, he concluded, had everything to gain from incorporating rather than rejecting existentialist thinking: 'Un marxisme vivant devrait "sauver" la recherche existentialiste et l'intégrer, au lieu de l'étouffer.' [SNS: 101] This conviction was undeniably well-founded because French Marxist theorising was mired in mechanistic and undialectical thinking in the immediate postwar years, the majority of the most capable French Marxist thinkers having been killed during the war.8 Merleau-Ponty's insistence that existentialist philosophy was compatible with Marxism was a call to restore genuine dialectical thought to the latter. Merleau-Ponty's discussions of the relationship between existentialism and Marxism are to be found notably in a series of articles published in various contemporary journals and later collected in Sens 5
6
7 8
For a detailed study of the points of contrast between Sartre's and MerleauPonty's early philosophies, see Margaret Whitford's Merleau-Ponty's Critique of Sartre's Philosophy. Michael Kelly, in Towards a heuristic method: Sartre and Lefebvre' Sartre Studies International Vol. 5, No. 1, 1999 pp. 5-6, suggests that Lefebvre's overt hostility to Sartre's thought in his full-length study L'Existentialisme masked important areas of common ground shared by the two thinkers. Re-printed in Sens et non-sens pp. 98-101 (hereafter SNS). Michael Kelly, Modern French Marxism pp.52-3.
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et non-sens? My account will draw principally on three articles which I consider to express most clearly and succinctly Merleau-Ponty's insistence that existentialist thinking be reinstated into the Marxist view of history and society, namely Tour la Vérité' (1945), 'Autour du marxisme' (1946) and 'Marxisme et philosophie' (1946). The relationship between existentialism and Marxism is also central to the argument he advances in Humanisme et terreur,10 as are important ethical questions which we will discuss in chapter VII. In this work, Merleau-Ponty is keen in particular to illuminate the paradoxes of a dogmatic Marxist view of history. Although a close Marxist sympathiser since the 1930s,11 Merleau-Ponty's existentialist tendencies effectively insulated him from the unquestioning faith in the inevitability of the historical process of the less astute communists of the day. The outcome of the class struggle and ultimate success of a future socialist revolution were in no sense guaranteed. They could be realised only in the existential present and were hence subject to its manifold uncertainties. After the Liberation, Merleau-Ponty believed that the class struggle might make a confident reappearance following the war years during which it had laid dormant. As the 1940s wore on, however, he became increasingly pessimistic about the working class realising the mission bestowed upon it by Marxism.12 What was chiefly at stake in Merleau-Ponty's view was classic Marxism's neoHegelian notion of a rationality of history. The failure of the class struggle to re-surface, he believed, put into jeopardy the conviction that history followed a rational course. The articles which compose Sens et non-sens, all written between 1945 and 1947, are expressive of 9 10 II
12
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Nagel, 1948. Gallimard, 1947. Sartre would later argue that Merleau-Ponty had been closer to Marxism before 1939 than at any subsequent time, surmising that the news of the Moscow show trials had been the turning point in this regard (SIV: 204). A. Rabil, in Merleau-Ponty: Existentialist of the Social World (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1967) p.l 13, notes that by 1948 Merleau-Ponty was acknowledging that 'the proletariat had forgotten its mission and was unaware of any universal significance its struggle might have. The following year, 1949, he stated that the proletariat had failed to materialise in any universal form, which was only a short stepfromdenying that it could do so.'
Merleau-Ponty's still tentatively optimistic stance. Indeed, Sens et non-sens is the last of his major publications in which he continues to hold out hope that the Marxist vision of a working-class-led revolution ushering in a genuine socialist society may prove true in contemporary France. In response to the dogmatic Stalinist Marxist view of history as developing rationally according to a set pattern, Merleau-Ponty emphasises the role of contingency in the unfolding of events. The historical event, for Merleau-Ponty, is an ambiguous phenomenon as his juxtaposition of the terms 'sens' and 'non-sens' suggests. It should be remembered that 'sens' carries a dual signification being at once history's direction and its meaning. In the context of a rational theory of history, these two senses of the term are closely linked as postulating a direction or a course is a way of ascribing meaning, and the concept of rationality encompasses both. If history is said to have both a 'sens' and a 'non-sens', then it is at once rational and non-rational. The historical event follows a pattern and is subject to a causal process on the one hand, whilst also being crucially decided and realised in the existential present. Merleau-Ponty argues that the contingent, or existential, dimension of the event is the reason why there have been moments and periods at which history was diverted from its course. The real difficulty for the Marxist historian is knowing whether the recurrence of diversions does not ultimately invalidate the very idea of history having a rational development at all: Bien que l'analyse marxiste nous permette mieux qu'aucune autre de comprendre un très grand nombre d'événements, nous ne savons pas si, pour toute la durée de notre vie ou même pour des siècles, l'histoire effective ne va pas consister en une série de diversions dont le fascisme a été la première, dont l'américanisme ou le bloc occidental pourraient être d'autres exemples. [SNS: 147] [...] un marxiste lucide, voyant comme le schéma de la lutte des classes se diversifie et se nuance, en vient à se demander si, de diversion en diversion, l'histoire sera bien finalement l'histoire de la lutte des classes [...] [SNS: 150]
In addition to demonstrating Merleau-Ponty's doubts about the idea of a rational history, these statements are also revealing of a certain
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ambiguity in his stance with regard to Marxism itself. On the one hand, there is his repeated insistence in numerous of the essays of Sens et non-sens that the valuable insights of the major Marxist theorists should not be conflated with the mechanistic, reductive world-view of Stalinist communism.13 He plainly believes the theoretical positions of such as Marx, Trotsky, and the early Lukâcs, all of whom acknowledged the vital role of contingency in historical change, to have been the work of 'lucid' Marxist thinkers. Marx's Capital does not tend towards any sort of fatalistic laws of nature, he argues, but stresses the importance of social structures in the forward movement which carries capitalism towards its own demise. 'Une économie politique marxiste,' he adds, 'ne peut parler de lois qu'à l'intérieur de structures qualitativement distinctes et qui doivent être décrites en termes d'histoire.' [SNS: 153] The Marxist conviction that history is a totality is founded not on some physical or mathematical law but on the phenomenon of alienation. When alienated man reclaims his real self and the world from which he has become estranged, he as a conscious and active agent forms a totality with the world and together they carry history forwards [SNS: 156]. Explicitly answering the objection made by Sartre in Matérialisme et révolution that materialism is incompatible with dialectics, he argues that Marxism never considers matter and consciousness in isolation from each other: '[la matière] est insérée dans le système de la coexistence humaine, elle y fonde une situation commune des individus contemporains et successifs [...] et rend possible une ligne de développement et un sens de l'histoire, mais si cette logique de la situation est mise en train, développée et accomplie, c'est par la productivité humaine' [SNS: 157]. Marxism, then, postulates an interdependent and interactive relationship between matter and consciousness and this is the basis of the historical dialectic. On the other hand, Merleau-Ponty's deep-seated reservations about the idea of history essentially following a discernible pattern are nevertheless somewhat more than a mere 13
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In 'Marxisme et philosophie', for example, Merleau-Ponty pithily remarks that although left radicals have every nght to adopt scientistic and mechanistic modes of thinking if they wish, 'il faut savoir et dire que ce genre d'idéologie n'a rien de commun avec le marxisme.' [SNS: 153]
rejection of Stalinist diamat. They point to theoretical difficulties which he perceives in Marxism itself. In the closing pages of his article 'Autour du Marxisme', he offers a succinct exposition of what he sees to be the fundamental weakness in the Marxist belief in a rational history founded on the class struggle. True Marxism fully acknowledges that there is both a logic and a contingency of history but '[s]i l'on admet qu'à chaque moment, quelle que soit la probabilité de l'événement, il peut toujours avorter [...] il peut se faire finalement que la logique et l'histoire divorcent et que l'histoire empirique ne réalise jamais ce qui nous paraît être la suite logique de l'histoire. Or, en perdant le caractère d'un avenir nécessaire, la révolution ne cesse-telle pas d'être la dimension fondamentale de l'histoire, et, à l'égard de l'histoire effective, qui après tout importe seule, celui qui juge de toutes choses sous l'angle de la lutte des classes n'opère-t-il pas une mise en perspective arbitraire?' [SNS: 146] Acknowledging the role played by contingency in the unfolding of events in history, then, is to recognise the possibility that the socialist revolution which Marxism presents as the logical outcome of the class struggle might never happen. This uncertainty, Merleau-Ponty thinks, surely undermines the validity of the claim that the class struggle culminating in revolution is the motor of human history. In Humanisme et terreur, the discussion centering on rationality and contingency is by and large presented as an opposition between objectivist and subjectivist conceptions of reality.14 Merleau-Ponty's analyses of the Roubachof character in Koestler's Le Zéro et l'infini15 is first and foremost an in-depth interrogation of the dogmatic Marxist belief in an objectively determined and rational history. In his portrayal of Roubachof, Koestler stages what he sees as the impossibility of a synthesis of the subjectivist and objectivist conceptions of reality. Roubachof, rather like Sartre's character Brunet in Les Chemins de la liberté, incarnates the faithful party activist who believes he can subordinate his subjectivity entirely to the objective course of history. 14 15
This opposition can equally be interpreted, as does David Archard in Marxist Existentialism p.52, as involving a dichotomy between fatality and will. Humanisme et terreur Part One, 'Les Dilemmes de Koestler', and 'L'Ambi guïté de l'histoire selon Boukharine'.
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The Stalinist Marxist ideology of the Soviet bloc can be clearly perceived as the model for this characterisation. In his account of Le Zéro et Vinfini, Merleau-Ponty criticises Koestler for staging the undialectical and mechanistic version of Marxism as if it were representative of the Marxist world-view as a whole. Koestler, he believes, presents a caricature of Marxism in order to discredit it: 'Dans la pensée de Roubachof et dans le communisme de Koestler, l'histoire cesse d'être ce qu'elle était pour Marx: la réalisation visible des valeurs humaines par un processus qui comporte des détours dialectiques [...]. Elle devient une force extérieure dont le sens est ignoré de l'individu, la pure puissance du fait.'16 Merleau-Ponty argues that it is Koestler's rigid, undialectical view of Marxism which leads him to believe that there is a stark dichotomy between objectivity and subjectivity. A deeper and less jaundiced understanding of Marxism would permit a more accurate view of the ambiguous character of historical reality. History, like the present social situation, is not for Merleau-Ponty either completely rational and external to man or entirely contingent and motivated by ahistorical individuals, but is the work of the dialectical interaction of these two fields. Although the Merleau-Ponty of Sens et non-sens and Humanisme et terreur consistently defends Marxism against misrepresentation and caricature in the hands of its detractors and indeed certain of its advocates, his own reservations about the Marxist rational view of history persist: Marxism's belief in the class struggle and the working class motoring history towards socialism might, he thinks, yet prove unfounded. In response to this difficulty, he underlines the importance of carefully observing contemporary events. Analysis of the contemporary social and political situation, he argues, will either prove the Marxist predictions about the course of history accurate or inaccurate: Notre seul recours est dans une lecture du présent aussi complète et aussi fidèle que possible, qui n'en préjuge pas le sens, qui même reconnaisse le chaos et le non-sens là où ils se trouvent, mais qui ne refuse pas de discerner en lui une direction et une idée, là où elles se manifestent.17
16 17
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Humanisme et terreur p. 18 (hereafter HT). Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 'Pour la vérité' in Sens et non-sens p.205
Si le marxisme reste toujours vrai, nous le retrouverons sur le chemin de la vérité actuelle et dans l'analyse de notre temps.18
Merleau-Ponty's reflections on the classic Marxist view of history ultimately conclude, then, in an existentialist reaffirmation of the role of contingency and of the centrality of the subject. It is essential to recognise 'l'esprit prolétarien sous sa figure du moment',19 he insists. The working class might prove unready or unwilling to fight the revolution, and might even grow increasingly distant from this objective which Marxism had set for it. For Merleau-Ponty, the culmination of the class struggle in socialist revolution, far from being an objective and immutable truth, should be seen as conditional on contemporary working-class politics making a tangible move in that direction. As an explanatory schema, the Marxist view of history hence remains at best a plausible hypothesis whose validity depends on being empirically proven in the existential present.
The Subject and History: Sartre's Existentialist Dialectics in the Cahiers pour une morale As we have seen, as early as 1940 Sartre had arrived at the conclusion that both individual and social factors contributed to producing historical events, and he had emphasised in particular the role of the individual without whom events could not take place. Although Merleau-Ponty's reflections of the mid 1940s ultimately seem to culminate in a similar position, they in fact constitute a highly distinctive body of work in the context of existentialist thought. Their particularity lies in Merleau-Ponty's recognition of a political dimension to questions of historical meaning. When Merleau-Ponty speaks of the role played by individuals in the historical process in Sens et non-sens, he is referring to members of the working class who may or 18 19
Ibidp.208 Ibid p.200
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may not engage in revolutionary action. And his discussions of the rationality of history go beyond the idea of the social collectivity to designate the historical pattern and direction ascribed to the class struggle by Marxism. In short, Merleau-Ponty's reflections are very largely situated within the parameters of Marxist historiography whereas those of Sartre's war diaries had not been. Sartre's thinking on history in the Cahiers pour une morale reveals a considerable development on his earlier position, and bears the stamp of MerleauPonty's Marxist-influenced discussions. Indeed, it is through MerleauPonty's lessons in the politics of history that the postwar Sartre first begins to reconcile his views on history with an increasingly overt political radicalism and insistence on commitment. However, Sartre's Marxist turn in the philosophy of history would always be of a more explicitly Hegelian character than that of Merleau-Ponty. Whereas Merleau-Ponty's enquiries into the 'sens' of history are ultimately limited to explaining the ambiguity and unpredictability of the existential present, from the Cahiers through to the Critique Sartre endeavours to elaborate an existentialist version of the Hegelian dialectic so as to propose a new global account of history's forward movement. In the Cahiers, it is not only history which is understood as having a fundamentally political dimension. Certain key questions of ethics are similarly presented as intertwined with matters of political theory and practice: 4La morale aujourd'hui doit être socialiste révolutionnaire',20 claims Sartre in the first notebook of the series. Moreover, in many places in the Cahiers, Sartre presents questions of history and of ethics as interconnecting: 'La morale doit être historique' [CM: 14]; 'La fin de l'Histoire ce serait l'avènement de la Morale' [CM: 95]. This intertwining of historiography, ethics and politics is reminiscent of key theoretical contributions to the Marxist intellectual tradition and hence draws Sartre philosophically closer to Marxism than he had ever been before. We will examine the precedents in Marxist philosophy for Sartre's blending of ethical and political issues in chapter VII. Our present discussion will focus on the close relationship which the Sartre of Cahiers identifies between history and politics. 20
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Cahiers pour une morale p.20 (hereafter CM).
The discussions of the ideas of thinkers such as Marx and, in particular, Engels and Trotsky, documented in the Cahiers reveal that Sartre's reflections on history, like Merleau-Ponty's, now presume to a significant degree the validity of Marxist historiographical paradigm founded on the concept of class struggle. In these discussions, as also in other parts of the Cahiers, Sartre's analyses and constructive criticisms are for the most part those of an insider who is seeking to resolve certain theoretical difficulties and tensions having basically accepted the key premises of the Marxist theoretico-political project.21 In numerous places, his concern with the cause of the oppressed is a clear priority as it is for Marxists and, in a manner reminiscent of Merleau-Ponty's position in Humanisme et terreur, he is critical of political liberalism and accepts the need for possibly violent revolutionary change. Yet Sartre's nascent Marxism is from the outset subtly divergent from classic Marxism and, to some extent for this very reason, also significantly contrasts with Merleau-Ponty's arguments despite the two thinkers' mutual affiliation to existentialist philosophy. Although Sartre recognises the capacity of economic factors to limit man's possibilities, he is keen to safeguard man's independence from any form of material determination. History, Sartre insists, is by definition a human rather than a natural or material phenomenon. Economic factors can do no more than provide the concrete situation or structure in which men's actions decide the future course of history: [...] l'économique est la structure extra-historique de la situation historique. [CM: 82] Un homme est toujours au-delà de l'économique, qu'il conserve d'ailleurs comme soubassement dépassé. [CM: 82]
The basis of this position is of course Sartre's continuing fidelity to the subject-oriented philosophical outlook of L'Etre et le néant. On the plane of ethics, this subject-oriented dimension of Sartre's reflections in the Cahiers underlies his attempts to formulate a traditional 21
In La Force des Choses I p.207, Beauvoir relates that in unpublished notes written a few years later, Sartre was to observe that 'A partir de 1947 [...] je jugeais aussi mes principes à partir de ceux des autres - du marxisme.'
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ethics centering on intersubjective relationships even though he now also tends towards the more politicised and foundational type of ethics characteristic of Marxism. Indeed, the reflections on ethics contained in the Cahiers straddle both ethical conceptions and hence lie on the cusp between Sartre's early thought and the long period leading up to and including the Critique. These issues will constitute the central focus of our discussion in chapter VII. In his discussions of the difficulties surrounding the idea of a rational course of history, Merleau-Ponty does not embrace a Hegelianism that is not mediated by the Marxist paradigm of the class struggle. The putative rationality of history, for Merleau-Ponty, is essentially that of the working class's mission to usher in a socialist revolution. The Sartre of the Cahiers, although also influenced by the politicised Marxist paradigm, nevertheless also maintains a more direct relationship to the thought of Hegel. At one moment early on in the first notebook, he declares that 4 Hegel représente un sommet de la philosophie. A partir de lui, régression: Marx apporte ce qu'il n'avait pas donné entièrement (développement sur le travail). Mais il manque beaucoup de grandes idées hégéliennes.'22 [CM: 67] Although attracted by the challenge posed by Hegel's philosophy at a relatively early age,23 it was not until 1945 that Sartre started to investigate it in any depth. In this regard, the critical studies of Jean Hyppolite and, in particular, Alexandre Kojève devoted to Hegel proved pivotal, and Sartre's Cahiers contain numerous quotations drawn from these writings.24 The unsystematic thematic exposition and formal presentation of the Cahiers renders difficult the attempt to identify an entirely coherent view of history. Comparison of thoughts noted by Sartre in 22
23
24
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If Sartre is critical of Marxism, he goes on to deliver scathing assessments of Husserl and Heidegger ('petits philosophes' CM: 67), and of French philosophy ('nulle' CM: 67), the unbridled severity of which suggests that these remarks should probably not be taken for his considered opinion. Raymond Aron, in his obituary for Sartre, would recall a conversation of their student days in which Sartre expressed the ambition to measure up to Hegel philosophically ('Mon petit camarade', L 'Express, 19-25 April 1980). Sartre quotes from the following works: Hyppolite Genèse et structure de la Phénoménologie de l'Esprit (Aubier, 1946), prefatory note to the Philosophy of Right (Gallimard, 1946); Kojève Introduction à Hegel (Gallimard, 1947)
different places sometimes reveals semantic ambiguities and apparently contrasting positions. I believe it nevertheless possible to chart the main lines of a view of history which, in its blend of subject-based and historicist approaches, unites existentialism and Hegelianism and which, in conjunction with Sartre's accompanying radical left political convictions, is somewhat reminiscent of the Hegelian Marxism of Lukâcs' History and Class Consciousness, There are moments in the first notebook of the Cahiers in particular where Sartre's discussions of history seem to reiterate Merleau-Ponty's arguments in Sens et non-sens and Humanisme et terreur with little more than slight variations of wording to disguise the allusions.25 The forty-page section Sartre devotes to history bears the eminently Merleau-Pontian title, 'Ambivalence de l'Histoire. Ambiguïté du fait historique' [CM: 26]. There is, however, a conspicuous absence of explicit references to Merleau-Ponty's writings in the Cahiers which is itself significant as it is in all probability indicative of the extent to which Sartre himself had difficulty at the time distinguishing his ideas about history from those of his political editor at Les Temps modernes}6 Yet closer analysis of the Cahiers reveals that Sartre, who was never one to undergo an intellectual influence passively, is in fact beginning to formulate the premises of a distinctive theoretical position almost from the outset. 'S'il y a une Histoire c'est celle de Hegel. Il ne peut y avoir d'autre' [CM: 31], he states unequivocally, apparently attracted by the ambitiousness of Hegel's philosophy. More specifically, it is Hegel's idea of dialectical relationships composing history conceived as a 25
26
Furthermore, it is likely that certain of Sartre's choices of subject for discussion in the Cahiers were prompted by reading Merleau-Ponty who had treated the same topics in his writings. The role and implications of violence, for example, constituted a central theme in Humanisme et terreur and is subsequently raised by Sartre on numerous occasions in the Cahiers. And it seems somehow more than mere coincidence that Sartre should undertake an in-depth analysis of Trotsky's Their Morality and Ours {Cahiers pp. 167-176) when MerleauPonty's case for a Marxist ethics had drawn significantly on the text a short while earlier (see Humanisme et terreur, pt. II). Sartre would later remark of Merleau-Ponty's work of the postwar years that 'il me semblait, à le lire, qu'il me découvrait ma pensée.' [5/^:214]
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totality that appeals to Sartre. In the ontology of L'Etre et le néant, prior to taking a keen interest in Hegel, he elaborated a view of man and the world which also involved the basic ideas of interaction and unity. '[L]'homme et le monde sont des êtres relatifs et le principe de leur être est la relation' [EN: 355], he argued. Moreover, consciousness and situation not only interact constantly with each other, they form a synthetic totality [EN: 37-8]. What lay at the heart of the relationship Sartre posited between consciousness and situation were the ideas of movement and change, and it is these characteristics which have an appeal for him in the Hegelian dialectic where they are also central. From the first notebook of the Cahiers onwards, it is apparent that Sartre's aim with respect to the philosophy of history is wider reaching than the attempt to decipher the existential present. However, for all that his reflections about history now seem to be under the spell of Hegelian thought, his own distinctive philosophical tendencies can nevertheless be clearly perceived. Elaborating on the attempt to synthesise the individual and the collectivity begun in his war diaries, he argues that subjectivity is a 'détotalisation de la Totalité' [CM: 94]. This formulation signifies that the thoughts and actions of the individual subject exist in relation to the totality of history whilst remaining irreducible to it. Her existential freedom places her beyond any kind of causal determinism and compels her to make history in the present. Although she is an 'objet de l'Histoire' and a 'transcendance transcendée [pour] l'Autre', she is also a 'sujet de l'Histoire en tant qu['elle] reprend ou non à [s]on compte les propositions.' [CM: 37-8] Sartre encapsulates this idea of dual movement in the phrase, 'chaque être historique est en même temps un absolu ahistorique' [CM: 32] The subject's actions make history whilst also being the product of history, and the historical fact itself is consequently a fundamentally ambiguous phenomenon [CM: 26]. The germ of the dialectic of subject and history which would later form the basis of the 'progressiveregressive' method of Questions de méthode is clearly perceptible in these arguments, as it is also in the following statements: Chaque fait histonque enferme [...] en lui-même l'inertie de l'extériorité de la nature en même temps qu'il est perpétuellement historicisation active. [CM: 43]
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[...] FHistoire non progressive est récupérée réellement comme progrès par le progrès progressif [CM: 48] [...] universel dans le singulier; singulier dans l'universel. [CM: 51] je m'historialise en me revendiquant comme conscience libre d'une époque en situation dans cette époque, ayant son avenir dans l'avenir de l'époque et ne pouvant manifester que cette époque, ne pouvant dépasser l'époque que si je l'assume et sachant que ce dépassement même de l'époque est d'époque et contribue à la faire. [CM: 506]
Even at this early stage, Sartre's nascent dialectical theory is perceptibly divergent from the classic Hegelian dialectic of history. Sartre's existentialist emphasis on human subjectivity is such that he conceives of history's dialectical movement as open-ended and contingent. Human reality, because irreducible to historical determinants and conditioning, is in Sartre's view the basis of historical change. Although an individual is himself a totality, he is unsubsumable to a unified totality of history or society. Sartre concludes that there is hence not one totality of history, but a multiplicity of totalities [CM: All\ Historical events, Sartre argues, are more contingent in nature than any closed dialectical schema allows because they are made up of numerous individual consciousnesses whose freedom of thought has the capacity to influence the course of events. Sartre gives the example of a strike and concludes that such an event is 'ni un objet dialectique ni un objet antidialectique, mais c'est une dialectique à trous.' [CM: 474-5] Merleau-Ponty's discussions of the 'sens' and 'non-sens' of history presume a broadly Hegelian philosophical problematic but rarely involve detailed analyses of Hegel's thought because MerleauPonty, following classic Marxism, essentially takes it to have been superseded. Sartre's reflections on the philosophy of history in the Cahiers, by contrast, expressed as they often are in explictly Hegelian terminology, communicate a desire to rehabilitate Hegel's dialectics of history with the proviso that closer attention be paid to the role of the individual consciousness. The Lukâcs of History and Class Consciousness seems to unite these two approaches, presenting Marx's philosophy as a signal advance on that of Hegel whilst nevertheless
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accentuating the Hegelian elements that contribute to it. For Lukâcs, Marx retained all that was progressive and valuable in Hegelian dialectical thought but found a way to adapt it so as to account for concrete and social realities accurately: [...] Marx's dialectical method continued what Hegel had striven for but had failed to achieve in a concrete form. [HCC: 17] It is at reality itself that Hegel and Marx part company. Hegel was unable to penetrate to the real driving forces of history. [HCC: 17]
Lukâcs presents a Hegelian Marx who, whilst not subscribing to the dialectic of nature advocated by the later Engels and eventually the Stalinists, believed that history and society form a totality. 'It is not the primacy of economic motives in historical explanation that constitutes the decisive difference between Marxism and bourgeois thought,' Lukâcs goes so far as to claim, 'but the point of view of totality.' [HCC: 27] With the discovery of historical materialism, Marx was able to avoid the pitfall of Hegelian idealist abstraction and was in a position to describe the concrete unity of the world. It was on the basis of this powerful new philosophical realism that the working class, with its unique awareness of the real conditions of existence, would lead humanity towards emancipation. In so far as Lukâcs adopts a classically Hegelian insistence on there being one unified totality of history and society, his theory sets itself apart from that adumbrated by Sartre in the Cahiers. In many other ways, however, History and Class Consciousness proves to be an important precursor for Sartre's nascent existentialist dialectic of history.27 For Lukâcs the role played by individual consciousnesses in 27
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Years later, when highlighting the inadequacies of the mechanistic thought of his communist contemporaries in Questions de méthode, Sartre gives special attention to the Lukâcs of the Stalinist era whose thought he portrays as representative of the communist 'idéalisme volontariste' [QM: 28] which paradoxically writes man out of history. Sartre's barbs at the later Lukâcs are no doubt a belated response to the latter's hostility to Sartrean existentialism in his polemical Existentialisme ou marxisme? (Nagel, 1948) Arguing that Lukâcs misunderstood his early thought and misrepresented it in the latter work, Sartre goes on to formulate the 'progressive-regressive' method in which he moulds
the historical process is vital as, in his view, there is no doubt that it is men who make history and not natural or economic causal processes alone. And yet Lukâcs, like Sartre after him, realises that he must nevertheless account for the ways in which individuals are acted upon and conditioned by history. The conclusions he reaches on this matter read like Merleau-Pontian and later Sartrean historiography avant la lettre. c[M]an,' he argues, 'must become conscious of himself as a social being, as simultaneously the subject and object of the sociohistorical process.' [HCC: 19] He approvingly recapitulates Marx's conception of man in the following way: [Marx] sees man historically and dialectically, and both are to be understood in a double sense. (1) He never speaks of man in general, of an abstractly absolutized man: he always thinks of him as a link in a concrete totality, in a society. The latter must be explained from the standpoint of man but only after man has himself been integrated in the concrete totality and has himself been made truly concrete. (2) Man is himself the objective foundation of the historical dialectic and the subject-object lying at its roots, and as such he is decisively involved in the dialectical process. To formulate it in the initial abstract categories of dialectics: he both is and at the same time is not. [HCC: 189]
into a synthesis the existentialist concern with the free subject and the Marxist focus on objective conditions in history. What Sartre omits to acknowledge however, probably not wanting to do Lukâcs the honour of a positive mention, are the ways in which his new position is indebted to that of History and Class Consciousness with respect to the issue of the dialectical interaction of subject and history. Putting to one side the key ideas of the subject making history and of the historical process being mediated by her in the present, both of which had also been central in History and Class Consciousness■, the distinctly Sartrean character of the 'progressive-regressive' method principally lies only in its comparatively greater emphasis on the creative role of the subjective project in the existential present. Questions de méthode can hence be seen as an extended dialogue with Lukâcs, only one aspect of which - the negative, critical side - is explicit. In reality, the later Sartre sides with the early Lukâcs, as MerleauPonty had done a few years earlier in Les Aventures de la dialectique, whilst rejecting his Stalinist successor. The complex relationship between the later Sartre's existentialist Marxism and the Hegelian Marxism of the early Lukâcs merits thorough examination but is beyond the scope of this thesis.
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In this account of Marxian anthropology, man is the place where objectivity and subjectivity, and past and present meet. For Lukacs, there is nothing incongruous about this synthesis of contrasting phenomena. 'Fatalism and voluntarism are only mutually contradictory to an undialectical and unhistorical mind,' he notes. 'In the dialectical view of history they prove to be necessarily complementary opposites' [HCC: 4]. The historical dialectic, for the Sartre of the Cahiers onwards, is meaningless if it does not culminate in the individual subject whose actions push history forwards in the existential present. He had argued in the founding statement of Les Temps Modernes that although the subject might be entirely conditioned she nevertheless remained a 'centre d'indétermination irréductible' [P: 26], that is a free being capable of acting on the world around her. The issue of conditioning in the Cahiers is subsumed in Sartre's newfound neo-Hegelian view of history, but it is clear from other postwar texts that Sartre conceives of individuals as situated in and conditioned by their social class. Moreover, his insistence in Matérialisme et révolution on the need for solidarity in the political struggle is of a piece with his endorsing the Marxist idea of a united working class whose concerted actions push the historical dialectic forwards towards the socialist revolution, as we will see in chapter VII. For Lukâcs, it is the consciousness of the proletariat as a class which is the culmination point of the historical dialectic in the existential present: '[Dialectics,' he writes, 'is not imported into history from outside [...] but is derived from history made conscious as its logical manifestation at this particular point in its development [...]. [I]t is the proletariat that embodies this process of consciousness. Since its consciousness appears as the immanent product of the historical dialectic, it likewise appears to be dialectical.' [HCC: 177] He later offers the following contrasting formulation of this point: 'the proletariat is the identical subject-object of the historical process, i.e. the first subject in history that is (objectively) capable of an adequate social consciousness.' [HCC: 199] Proletarian class consciousness, then, is the outcome of the dialectical process and its revolutionary militantism in the present carries the historical dialectic forward towards the advent of a socialist society. The key claim which sets Lukâcs's theory apart from that of Sartre in the 188
Cahiers, and indeed later in Questions de méthode, can be perceived in these statements. It lies in his endorsement of the idea of a collective consciousness of the proletariat. Sartre's insistence on individual self-determination led him consistently to repudiate such a trans-subjective phenomenon and would remain one of the points distinguishing his philosophy from much classic Marxist theory.
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VIL Authentic Ethics and Socialist Politics in Sartre's Cahiers pour une morale
The progression in Sartre's thought towards a humanistic brand of existentialism sharing common ground with ethical humanist Marxism is paralleled by other developments in his thought during the years 1944-7 which show a movement towards an ethics of authenticity. In Réflexions sur la question juive, 'A Propos de l'existentialisme', and notably L'Existentialisme est un humanisme, Sartre's evident concern with questions of ethical responsibility suggests the possibility of intersubjective relationships which are not irredeemably alienated, and points towards a solution to the problem in L'Etre et le néant of man's existence being futile. Formulations derivative of the philosophy of Kant are often used by Sartre to voice these preoccupations, and it is notably during these years that a complex relationship between Sartrean and Kantian ethics comes to the fore. This crucial period of development in Sartre's ethical thinking has received in-depth critical examination elsewhere1 and will not be the focus of our discussion here. In and amongst the scattered notes of the Cahiers, there is a clear attempt on Sartre's part to define how it is possible for man to cast off his habitually inauthentic condition by undertaking the ethical conversion alluded to in L'Etre et le néant. The new, more authentic outlook on life sketched out by Sartre opens up the possibility for intersubjective relationships involving such positive values as understanding, generosity and solidarity. In what follows, I will initially examine this transition between L'Etre et le néant and the Cahiers 1
For an analysis of Sartre's relationship to Kantian philosophy, see Christina Howells Sartre: The Necessity of Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 1988), chapter II, and Sorin Baiasu 'The Anxiety of Influence: Sartre's Search for an Ethics and Kant's Moral Theory', in Sartre Studies International Vol.9, No.l, 2003. Flynn's Sartre and Marxist Existentialism (pp. 33-41) offers an examination of Sartre's ethical claims in L'Existentialisme est un humanisme.
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before progressing to an account of Sartre's often overlooked adherence to a Marxist historicised and politicised conception of morality in the latter work. I shall seek to highlight the coherence between Sartre's ethics of authenticity and this conception of morality which posits the class struggle as the basis of a historical dialectic culminating in a socialist revolution.
The Possibility of Non-Conflictual Interpersonal Relationships in the Cahiers pour une morale Sartre's preoccupation with authenticity is a mainstay of his ethical thought of the 1930s and 1940s. Whereas the ethical dimension of his philosophical world-view is masked in L'Etre et le néant by his focus on questions of ontology, earlier in the Carnets de la drôle de guerre this dimension had been fully apparent and even crucial to the genesis of the ontology itself. In the Cahiers, there is a similar absence of any formal separation of ontology and ethics, and the conception of authenticity which Sartre sketches out cannot be understood without examination of the ways in which he departs from the ontological claims of the work he was later to refer to as 'une eidétique de la mauvaise foi' [S IV: 196]. At the basis of Sartre's ontological argument in L'Etre et le néant lay his conviction that the inalienable freedom of consciousness rendered impossible any lasting union with being. Consciousness would constantly strive to achieve such a union in an attempt to be an ens causa sui or, as Sartre put it, to be God, a non-contingent being which was its own foundation. Sartre characterised this desire as inauthentic because it involved man trying to escape his fundamental nature as a free being condemned to creative selfdefinition in the existential present. In his habitually inauthentic state, man was a 'passion inutile' [EN: 678], Sartre concluded, because constantly hankering after a condition that could never be attained. In the Cahiers, Sartre's idea of an ethical conversion facilitating the passage to authenticity involves conceptual evolution on a number
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of interlinking levels in relation to the position in L'Etre et le néant. The failure of consciousness's attempts to ground itself is presented as a key motivation for making the conversion. Sartre notes that the conversion 'peut naître de l'échec perpétuel de toute tentative du Pour-soi pour être.' [CM: 488] If Tauthenticité consiste à refuser la quête de l'être' [CM: 492], then, it is partly because this search repeatedly proves to be a fruitless one. The implications of this development can hardly be overestimated as it represents nothing short of a paradigm-shift in Sartre's account of man's ethical outlook on the world. Concomitant with this rejection of the project to be God is the transition which Sartre charts in the Cahiers from impure reflection to pure reflection. In L'Etre et le néant, the mode of thinking termed 'réflexion impure' (or 'complice') was that which accompanied and facilitated the project to be God. It was a central characteristic of our habitually inauthentic condition also playing an instrumental role in our capacity to live in bad faith for most of the time. In the first pages of the Cahiers, Sartre notes: 'je dois montrer comment une réflexion pure est possible à partir de la réflexion impure.' Since this transition is not automatic but requires a special effort on the part of the subject, '[i]l ne s'agit pas de montrer comment la réflexion pure sort de la réflexion impure mais comment elle en peut sortir.' [CM: 13] Once the failure of the project to be our own foundation is acknowledged, pure reflection involves our '[acceptation et revendication de la contingence.' [CM: 19] Rather than attempting to evade the reality of our condition as contingent beings, in pure reflection we are able to see this as an opportunity facilitating our freedom [CM: 19]. In the final chapter of L'Etre et le néant, 'Perspectives morales', Sartre had evoked the possibility of freedom coming to take itself as its own end, and he subsequently concluded a short text of December 1945 with the claim that pure reflection involved the 'constitution d'une liberté qui se prend elle-même pour fin.' [CM: 578]2 For Sartre, our acceptance of contingency and freedom in pure reflection unavoidably implies responsibility. An authentic ethical outlook, he argues, is based on the following conception of reality: 'une contingence absolue qui n'a que soi pour se justifier par 2
'Bien et subjectivité', published as 'Appendice I' of the Cahiers.
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assomption et qui ne peut s'assumer qu'à l'intérieur de soi' [CM: 498]. As we saw in chapter IV, the central idea here of taking entire responsibility for one's freedom had been a key feature of Sartre's 'morale' of December 1939 in the war diaries. Achieving authenticity for Sartre crucially involves a change of attitude towards the ontological category of being on the part of the individual subject. Rather than hopelessly persisting in its attempts to achieve full coincidence with the 'en-soi', in pure reflection the 'poursoi' recognises that it must concern itself with self-definition through doing rather than being. I cannot in good faith try to be courageous or noble, Sartre argues, rather as in L'Etre et le néant he had presented the attempt to be sincere as an instance of bad faith. Setting out with such intentions involves my seeking to 'faire que je sois sur le mode de l'en-soi, ce que je suis sur le mode du « n'être pas ce que je suis ».' [EN: 102] '[L'authenticité] découvre que le seul projet valable est celui défaire (et non d'être) [...] Le projet valable est celui d'agir sur une situation concrète et de la modifier dans un certain sens.' [CM: 491] Doing means action and, for Sartre, action means bringing about change so as to modify the concrete situation. Of a piece with radical left intellectual and political commitment, the concept of action, or praxis as he later termed it, was to take a prominent place in Sartre's thought in the 1950s. However, his insistence on doing does not amount to a refusal or repudiation of the ontological category of being. On the contrary, in authentic existence the free consciousness serves in part to unveil or reveal being. In L'Etre et le néant, Sartre had established that although being was antecedent to consciousness, there would nevertheless be no being, or objective reality, for man were it not for its perception by consciousness. In the Cahiers, this relationship between consciousness and being is maintained except that it is no longer in the interests of confirming the existence of being but rather in order to shed light and meaning on it. Sartre even goes so far as to suggest that being allowed consciousness to come into existence in order that consciousness would then confer significance and legitimacy on it. He refers to TEn-soi se dormant le Pour-soi pour se reprendre au lieu de se perdre.' [CM: 499] The point is explained in more detail in the following passage: 194
[L]e Pour-soi surgit pour que l'Etre devienne Vérité. Par là le Pour-soi a une tâche de quasi-création puisqu'il extirpe des ténèbres de l'indifférentiation ce qui par essence y retombe toujours. Le Pour-soi est pure clarté de l'Etre. Il sauve l'Etre qui, en effet, ne sera jamais Pour-soi mais pour un existant qui est pour-soi. [CM: 500]
In contrast to the inauthentic project to be one's own foundation, in which consciousness attempted to subsume itself in being, Sartre sees this post-conversion relationship between consciousness and being as free of alienation: Ce rapport, s'il est saisi dans sa pureté après la conversion, n'est ni appropriation ni identification. L'Etre est autre que le Pour-soi et se dévoile comme irréductiblement autre. Et le Pour-soi se saisit dans le dévoilement comme irréductiblement en exil pat rapport à l'Etre. [CM: 500]
Neither consciousness nor being, then, sacrifices itself to the other because neither can be assimilated to the other. Their relationship is hence one of complementarity. In revealing being, consciousness unveils an already existing objective reality: 'Ce dévoilement est le dévoilement du concret' [CM: 503]. Its creative role consists in conferring meaning on it for human reality: 'Agir c'est poser que l'Etre a un sens: à travers l'instrumentante de l'action, l'Etre se dévoile comme pourvu de sens [...]. Et fondamentalement on agit pour que l'Etre ait un sens.' [CM: 502] Clearly, for Sartre, action or doing is central to the process of revealing the meaning of objective reality. In Qu 'est-ce que la littérature ?, a work contemporaneous with the Cahiers, he offers the following succinct formulation of the point: 'Pour nous le faire est révélateur de Y être' [QL: 236]. We will examine the unity which Sartre postulates in this work between literature's capacity to reveal the world to the reader and the project to transform capitalist society through revolutionary political action in chapter IX. Once the ethical conversion has been undergone, consciousness's rejection of the project to be its own foundation means that it stops attempting to evade contingency by grounding itself in a fixed, already existing self. This change of attitude not only involves a transition from impure to pure reflection but also signals a fundamental questioning of that type of behaviour which, for the early Sartre, is 195
quintessential^ inauthentic, namely the 'sérieux'. Rather than modelling her thoughts and values on already existing objective realities, values and social conventions, the authentic individual recognises fully the creative role which her inalienable ontological freedom gives her in relation to her situation. In the Cahiers, Sartre introduces the concept of play ('le jeu') as a substitute for the 'sérieux', offering the following definition: 'il est rupture avec l'esprit de sérieux, dépense, anéantissement, passage à l'aspect fête. La fête en effet c'est la libération de l'esprit de sérieux, la dépense des économies, la ruine de la hiérarchie' [CM: 388]. Play involves freely creating without falling back on existing values. The authentic individual must create her own values in the existential present whilst and through acting, or doing.3 The rejection of the project to be one's own foundation and of the 'sérieux' opens up the possibility of intersubjective relationships which are not fundamentally alienated as they were in L'Etre et le néant. In this work, relations with others consisted in attempts to objectify the other through the glance so as to achieve a position of psychological dominance. With the rejection of the project to be God, and the passage to pure reflection in the Cahiers, the impulsion to dominate others is dispersed and relations of reciprocity become possible. This is not to say that Sartre departs definitively from all aspects of the view of the human condition set out in L'Etre et le 3
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Linda Bell, in Sartre's Ethics of Authenticity (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989) p. 114, rightly questions the assumption held by certain commentators that choosing and acting are separate events for Sartre. T o choose a value is to act, in appropriate circumstances, on that choice; similarly, to act is to make value choices', Bell argues. For Sartre, an intellectual choice is itself, in appropriate circumstances, an act. Sartre's statements regarding this matter in La Transcendance de l'ego confirm Bell's interpretation. Sartre argues that just as playing the piano or writing are actions, so are doubting, reasoning, or forming a hypothesis. In the latter cases, 'l'action n'est pas seule ment l'unité noématique d'un courant de conscience: c'est aussi une réalisation concrète.' [TE: 52] This conception of intellection is indicative of the extent to which Sartre's philosophical outlook as a whole is oriented towards action, or 'doing', and is entirely of a piece with his conviction, also expressed in La Transcendance de l'ego, that consciousness is without interiority and is hence by its very nature in the world. For Sartre, consciousness is constantly making choices which impact on the world and for which it is entirely responsible.
néant. In many places, the ontology of the earlier work resurfaces in paraphrases or reformulations, as for example when Sartre claims that 'on voudrait fonder tout' [CM: 157]. Yet the greater explicit focus on questions of ethics, in conjunction with the process of intellectual and personal evolution triggered off by his conversion to a politicised conception of ideas and history, has clearly stimulated conceptual developments in Sartre's thinking by the time of the Cahiers.4 The central ethical claim, that a conversion to an ethics of délivrance and salvation [EN: 463] is possible, had of course been announced in L'Etre et le néant, but its elaboration was being reserved for a future work. In the first pages of the Cahiers, Sartre reiterates that 'Z, 'Etre et le néant est une ontologie d'avant la conversion' [CM: 13] thereby setting the central positions of that work apart from those he is currently defining. Indeed, the conversion itself is presented in the Cahiers as involving more fundamental and longer-lasting changes in the individual subject than had been implied by the 'brusques réveils de cynisme ou de bonne foi' [EN: 85] which, in L'Etre et le néant, were said to halt momentarily the flow of habitually inauthentic conduct. Once the impulsion to dominate others psychologically subsides following the conversion, the possibility of relations of reciprocity 4
Scanzio (op.cit.) underestimates somewhat the extent to which Sartre's ontology itself has evolved by the time of the Cahiers. 'La Morale', Scanzio concludes, 'ne fera [...] pas basculer l'ontologie, mais apprendra à vivre la condition humaine une fois les résultats de l'ontologie phénoménologique compris et acceptés'; 'l'ontologie demeure dans toute sa vérité' (p. 132). Scanzio separates ontology from ethics to some extent, suggesting that only the latter really evolves between L'Etre et le néant and the Cahiers. The drawback of his reading is that it overlooks the extent to which the evolution in Sartre's ethical claims, in conjunction moreover with his increasingly explicit adoption of key principles of Marxist political philosophy, unavoidably also implies conceptual development in his ontology. For instance, the considerably greater emphasis on doing, or action, in the Cahiers ties in with his adoption of the Marxist concept of 'praxis' at around the same time, the concept making fre quent appearances in Qu'est-ce que la littérature? Given the importance the concept of praxis was to take in Sartre's later philosophy, ultimately replacing that of consciousness, it is clear that by 1947-8 Sartre's ontology itself must have been in evolution, and not just his ethics.
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manifests itself in a number of interlinking ways, all of which involve recognising rather than attempting to capture the freedom of the other. The authentic individual, rather than trying to objectify the other through the glance, makes appeals to him and in return accepts his appeals with the aim of entering into relations of greater reciprocity and solidarity. Sartre offers the following definition of this key concept of the appeal: [L]'appel est reconnaissance d'une liberté personnelle en situation par une liberté personnelle en situation. Il se fait à partir d'une opération proposée, c'est-à-dire donnée par l'appelant à l'appelé, au nom de fins à vouloir et à construire [...]. Il est appel à une opération commune, il ne s'appuie pas sur une solidarité donnée mais sur une solidarité à construire par l'opération commune. [CM: 285]
The act of appealing to the other, Sartre argues, involves revealing, or unveiling, the concrete situation: 'L'appel est dévoilement d'une situation et c'est sur la base de ce dévoilement qu'il espère incliner la volonté de l'autre à vouloir ce qu'il veut.' [CM: 285] This statement might appear to suggest that hoping to convince the other to aid one's project by revealing the situation to him risks being a one-sided affair and hence the basis for a new form of ascendancy over the other's freedom. Yet Sartre argues that this is not the case because of the reciprocity inherent in the appeal itself: 'L'appel est [...] promesse de réciprocité: il est sous-entendu que celui que j'appelle peut m'appeler' [CM: 295-6] The appeal to the other is in effect a two-way process which involves my expecting the other to understand and attempt to facilitate my project but also presumes that I must do the same for him. '[L]'aide est déjà contenue dans l'appel' [CM: 296] and the appeal hence implies the 'compréhension totale des fins et de la situation de l'autre' [CM: 295] at the same time as it is itself seeking to be understood. When appealed to, i'autre me transcende de toute sa liberté mais vers ma fin' thus demonstrating generosity towards me. 'Mais ce don est lui-même une demande à être compris à son tour.' [CM: 293] For the Sartre of the Cahiers, these ideas of the appeal, understanding and generosity point not only to the possibility of an ethics of reciprocity but to a genuine intersubjective solidarity. The 198
concept of solidarity has traditionally been a mainstay of left-wing politics, and Sartre underlined its importance in the theory of revolution he proposed in the second part of Matérialisme et révolution [MR: 180, 217], In the discussions of this concept in the Cahiers, ontology, ethics and left political theory intersect in ways which reveal the coherence of Sartre's overall theoretical position at this time, as the following statement demonstrates: [L]'appel en lui-même, tout en étant relation de personne à personne, contient l'esquisse d'un monde où chaque personne pourrait en appeler à toutes les autres. Souvent pourtant cette structure est masquée par la mauvaise foi, même si l'appel est sincère; on en appelle à son égal et dans une société à castes ou à classes, cet appel tend à renforcer les liens de caste ou de classe. Il faut donc qu'un appel authentique soit conscient d'être dépassement de toute inégalité de condition vers un monde humain où tout appel de chacun à chacun soit toujours possible. [CM: 296-7]
Appeals to the other, then, are habitually obstructed by the inequality of people's conditions of life in class society, and authentic appeals are by their very nature part of the project to transcend this inequality. In short, authentic ethical relationships presume and are part of the project to bring about a socialist society. In the light of the relationship which we established between inauthenticity and ideology in the pejorative sense in chapter III, the link which Sartre makes here between bad faith and class society is also worth noting. Making an appeal to someone whose conditions of life are not equal to one's own because of the structure of class society involves bad faith, Sartre argues. In such a case, rather than uniting people the appeal only alienates them from each other further. Sartre's remarks on this matter clearly suggest a coherence between inauthenticity and life under capitalist society. An authentic ethics of reciprocity and solidarity, by contrast, is intimately connected to the socialist political project, he argues. It is probably for this reason that Sartre strongly suggests in the Cahiers that the underprivileged of society attain authenticity more easily than individuals belonging to other social groups. He opens the section devoted to the ethical conversion with the reflection that 'elle est virtuellement possible chez tous les opprimés.' [CM: 488] The fact of being undernourished and inadequately provided for
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materially, Sartre argues, gives the underprivileged a non-thetic awareness of the reality of their condition as subjects in the world. They have 'une compréhension ontologique de l'existence comme absolue de la subjectivité' [CM: 488], that is an understanding of the fundamental existential nature of the human condition. It was of course the attempt to escape this existential dimension of subjectivity which, as we saw in chapter III, was at the basis of inauthentic tendencies such as the desire to give oneself a foundation in the world and the 'sérieux'. Moreover, Sartre had consistently presented the bourgeois owning class as the social group most likely to demonstrate these inauthentic tendencies.
Historicised and Politicised Ethics: the Influence of Merleau-Ponty and Trotsky on Sartre's Cahiers pour une morale and Les Mains sales Sartre's reflections on the dialectics of history and his nascent ethics of authenticity are formulated concurrently in the Cahiers, there being little by way of formal separation of these areas in the text. It might ostensibly seem that Sartre is holding two largely unrelated theoretical discussions in parallel with each other here. The question of how the subject and history interact dialectically does not at face value appear to be closely thematically linked with the rejection of the project to be God and the possibility of relations of intersubjective reciprocity. In reality, however, these two discussions are related nevertheless and an overall coherence can be perceived in the conclusions Sartre reaches. The link lies in the field of ethics, but can only be appreciated fully in the light of the paradigm shift which is taking place in Sartre's thinking during these years. By 1947-8, Sartre is progressing towards a philosophical world-view which is politicised and historicised in the far-reaching and foundational way that is characteristic of Marxism. The key influence on his thinking in this regard had been MerleauPonty and the work Humanisme et terreur in particular, as he later
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acknowledged [S IV: 215]. At the core of Merleau-Ponty's reflections in this work and other writings of the immediate postwar years lay the question of the legitimacy of the Marxist belief in the class struggle as the underlying motor of historical change. This Marxist principle, with which Merleau-Ponty was undoubtedly in sympathy, had been perceived by certain Marxist thinkers not only as a fundamental truth of history but also as implying an ethical stance that was distinct from that of conventional morality. Trotsky was perhaps the most notable advocate of this idea that the Marxist world-view was not an amoralism, as scientistic Marxists and Marxism's liberal critics would have it, but rather was founded on an alternative conception of morality. He argued the point forcefully in Their Morality and Ours (1938), and Merleau-Ponty drew heavily on this and other works of Trotsky in Humanisme et terreur. It is undoubtedly through MerleauPonty's interest in Their Morality and Ours that Sartre first encounters and subsequently comes under the influence of the Marxist alternative conception of morality. In the years up until the writing of the Cahiers, the influence of Trotsky's ideas on Sartre was more oblique than in the case of Merleau-Ponty yet important nevertheless. Throughout the 1930s, Sartre and Beauvoir had been aware of the Trotskyist critique of Stalin's regime, and Trotsky himself had held some fascination for them. 'Nous avions la plus grande estime pour Trotsky' [FA: 156], Beauvoir would later recall, also singling out his autobiography as having made a lasting impression on them in the first years of the 1930s: 'Parmi les ouvrages non romanesques qui comptèrent pour nous pendant ces deux ans, je ne vois que Ma vie de Trotsky, une nouvelle traduction d'Empédocle d'Hôlderlin, et Le Malheur de la conscience de Jean Wahl qui nous donna quelques aperçus d'Hegel.' [FA: 59] It is only in the Cahiers, however, that Sartre's philosophical world-view, under the influence of Merleau-Ponty, becomes perceptibly aligned to the Marxist ethical outlook. Trotsky's account of this alternative approach to ethics in Their Morality and Ours was an exposition of a theoretical world-view shared by much of the nonStalinist left and hence should not be taken for his own entirely distinctive ethical theory. Yet the sophistication and clarity of his argument make Their Morality and Ours something of a benchmark in 201
Marxist writing on morality in this period. Sartre's Cahiers contain a nine-page discussion of the work, but its influence on his thinking can be perceived much more broadly in the blend of historiography, ethics and politics which characterises his reflections throughout. Its influence is also vital to Sartre's play Les Mains sales (1948) whose central action, the assassination of a revolutionary political leader, had in any case been inspired by the murder of Trotsky in 1940 [FA: 209-210].5 In what follows, analysis of Their Morality and Ours and the impact Marxist and Trotskyist ideas had on Merleau-Ponty's Humanisme et terreur will pave the way for an examination of the development in Sartre's ethical thinking towards Marxism in the Cahiers and in Les Mains sales. Writing at a time when Stalin's dominance stood unchallenged in the USSR and the liberal democratic western states were looking increasingly powerless in the face of the fascist threat, Trotsky set out in Their Morality and Ours (1938) to correct a number of common misapprehensions about Marxist ideas and politics. First, the Stalinist regime, far from being the heir to Bolshevism, was a political monstrosity bringing 'to the highest tension, to culmination [...] all those methods of untruth, brutality and baseness which constitute the mechanics of control in every class society'.6 Second, the accusation of 'amoralism' levelled at Marxism and Bolshevism by liberal democrats was founded on a limited and historically naive conception of morality. Marxism's liberal critics, Trotsky argued, failed to see that sets of moral values were relative to their historical context and to the stage the class struggle had reached. The bourgeois democratic conception of morality was that which corresponded to the era of progressive capitalism. As this era came under threat from the rise of the working class, however, a new type of morality came into focus which Trotsky termed 'the morality of proletarian revolution.' [TMO: 380] This conception, founded on the class struggle, the dialectical materialist 5
6
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Ian Birchall, in his Sartre Against Stalinism (Oxford: Berghahn, 2004) pp. 856, provides a detailed and convincing examination of the evidence substantiating the link with the assassination of Trotsky. Their Morality and Ours, in The Basic Writings of Trotsky (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1964) ed. Irving Howe p.384 (hereafter TMO).
view of history and the goal of a future socialist revolution, was mistakenly charged with being an amoralism because it did not acknowledge the principles of bourgeois morality. Trotsky, following Marx, presented the moral norms of the capitalist era as an indispensable part of and support to the dominant ideology propagated by the bourgeoisie: The ruling class forces its ends upon society and habituates it into considering all those means which contradict its ends as immoral. That is the chief function of official morality. It pursues the idea of the "greatest possible happiness" not for the majority but for a small and ever diminishing minority. Such a regime could not have endured for even a week through force alone. It needs the cement of morality. [TMO: 377]
Official morality, Trotsky argued, was composed of moral precepts which, in their obliviousness to most people's real conditions of life, were abstract and formalistic. These precepts were presented as norms with universal applicability, but did not stand up to the challenge posed by real circumstances. What the idea of timelessly valid moral norms overlooked was the class-divided nature of society. Most people identified more strongly with their social class than they did with society as a whole. The working class was more concerned with how to conduct itself in the face of bourgeois exploitation than it was with a set of universal moral norms applicable to all men. The formalism and abstraction of official modes of thought in bourgeois-dominated society was to become a key theme in MerleauPonty's Humanisme et terreur. Political liberalism, Merleau-Ponty argued, guaranteed individuals the freedoms accorded by civil liberties, but in a class-divided society such freedoms remained formal rather than real because the concrete circumstances of the working class obstructed their genuine exercise. The morality and humanism of capitalist society were deceptive because they did not consider man's condition in the real circumstances of his life: La prétendue "morale" du capitalisme est une mystification [HT: 134] [...] l'humanisme des sociétés capitalistes [...] ne descend pas du citoyen jusqu'à l'homme, ne supprime ni le chômage, ni la guerre [HT: 190]
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As citizens, then, people had rights enshrined in law but as ordinary men and women they were prey to the limitations imposed by unemployment, and were the victims of the wars waged by their governments. At the heart of Trotsky's discussion of morality in Their Morals and Ours lay the age-old question of ends and means. More precisely, did attaining one's political ends justify employing whatever means necessary, including those condemned by conventional morality such as lying and violence? The importance of this question to the Marxist conception of morality cannot be overstated as it unites matters of ethical conduct with the historical dialectic which, in classic Marxist thought, guides the class struggle towards the ultimate victory of the working class over capitalism. Trotsky noted that one of the principal reasons for Bolshevism being charged with amoralism was its endorsement of the maxim 'the end justifies the means'. If the working class was to succeed in its struggle for social justice, its actions could not be limited to those condoned by the principles of conventional morality. Such abstractions, in their blindness to the working class's underprivileged condition, guaranteed only the maintenance of the status quo, obstructing the possibility of real change: A society without social contradictions will naturally be a society without lies and violence. However there is no way of building a bridge to that society save by revolutionary, that is, violent, means. The revolution itself is a product of class society and of necessity bears its traits. From the point of view of "eternal truths" revolution is of course "anti-moral". But this merely means that idealist morality is counter-revolutionary, that is, in the service of the exploiters. [TMO: 387]
For Trotsky, conventional sins such as committing acts of violence and lying were 'an inseparable part of the class struggle' [TMO: 387]. Trotsky's justification of revolutionary violence was later reaffirmed by Merleau-Ponty who argued that bourgeois democracies were also violent, contrary to the principles of their professed moral code: La révolution assume et dirige une violence que la société bourgeoise tolère dans le chômage et dans la guerre et camoufle sous le nom de fatalité. Mais toutes les révolutions réunies n'ont pas versé plus de sang que les empires. Il
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n'y a que des violences, et la violence révolutionnaire doit être préférée parce qu'elle a un avenir d'humanisme. [HT: 115-6] Nous n'avons pas le choix entre la pureté et la violence, mais entre différentes sortes de violence. [HT: 117-8]
However, for Trotsky as for Merleau-Ponty, it was not the case that any moral act in the service of the future revolution was permissible: Permissible and obligatory are those and only those means [...] which unite the revolutionary proletariat, fill their hearts with irreconcilable hostility to oppression, teach them contempt for official morality and its democratic echoers, imbue them with consciousness of their own historic mission, raise their courage and spirit of self-sacrifice in the struggle. Precisely from this it flows that not all means are permissible [...] the great revolutionary end spurns those base means and ways which set one part of the working class against other parts, or attempt to make the masses happy without their participation; or lower the faith of the masses in themselves and their organization, replacing it by worship for the "leaders". [TMO: 396]
In any case, Trotsky continued, for the Marxist dialectical view of history there was no marked separation between means and ends because they were both part of the same historical process. MerleauPonty was later to expand and elaborate on this idea in his defence of the Marxist conception of morality in Humanisme et terreur. Explicitly quoting Trotsky's claim, Merleau-Ponty argued that the very categories of ends and means were foreign to Marxism: Ces deux notions, en bon marxisme, sont "relativisées", fin et moyen peuvent échanger leurs rôles [...] il y a un processus révolutionnaire dont chaque moment est aussi indispensable, aussi valable donc que l'utopique moment « final ». [HT: 137-8]
Marxism's claim, Merleau-Ponty argued, was that rather than constantly looking ahead to an ultimate future end, the revolutionary working class would undertake courses of action which, as long as they did not undermine its own interests as a class, naturally contributed to the dialectical progression of society towards the overthrow of capitalism. In reality, Merleau-Ponty's account of the relationship between means and ends in the dialectical view of history went some
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way towards smoothing over what, in Trotsky's text, had to a degree remained an area of theoretical difficulty. Trotsky acknowledged that advocating a moral outlook which permitted only those moral acts which united and furthered the cause of the revolutionary working class did not provide a complete blueprint for moral conduct. Such an outlook '[did] not, of course, give a ready answer to the question as to what is permissible and what is not permissible in each separate case. There can be no such automatic answers', he conceded [TMO: 396].7 In effect, Trotsky was recognising that the principles of the new proletarian morality were lacunary with respect to certain kinds of moral conduct. And from this it implictly followed that not all kinds of moral act, or 'means' in the terms of the Marxist debate, could be said to be part of the historical dialectic postulated by Marxism. Certain acts might not cohere entirely with desirable political ends in the historical dialectic. Trotsky's claim that means and ends were each an integral part of the historical dialectic highlighted the fundamentally ethical character of the Marxist view of history. Was it morally acceptable to lie? Yes, Trotsky argued, if by this means the cause of working class in its struggle against bourgeois dominance was advanced. The underlying justification for this argument was the Marxist conviction that the ultimate victory of the working class would ensure a socialist revolution benefiting the majority rather than the privileged few. This was a profoundly moral conviction because it was founded on the idea that the highest social good consisted in an egalitarian distribution of wealth and opportunity. In Trotsky's account, the dialectical movement of history, comprising a constant interrelation of subjective and class action on the one hand and desired political outcomes on the other, was presented as an intrinsically moral affair. Although the Marxist world-view involved rejecting conventional morality, then, it was in its own way 7
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In an attempt to camouflage the difficulty, Trotsky could only add somewhat evasively: 'Problems of revolutionary morality are fused with the problems of revolutionary strategy and tactics. The living experience of the movement under the clarification of theory provides the correct answer to these problems.' [TMO: 396]
moral to its roots. In making these claims, Trotsky was acting as a spokesman for much of the non-Stalinist left at the time.8 The Bolshevik revolutionaries, and Lenin first and foremost, he continued, were motivated in their political actions to a high degree by moral considerations: The "amoralism" of Lenin, that is, his rejection of supra-class morals, did not hinder him from remaining faithful to one and the same ideal throughout his whole life; from devoting his whole being to the cause of the oppressed [TMO: 395]
In his analysis of Their Morals and Ours in the Cahiers Sartre, who considers the work as a whole 'fort mais court' [CM: 167], singles out this assessment of Lenin for criticism. Trotsky's statement, Sartre argues, reveals his unwitting dependence on the criteria of bourgeois thought. 'Quel est le bourgeois démocrate', Sartre objects, 'qui ne félicitera pas un savant, par exemple, ou un religieux d'être resté toute sa vie fidèle au même idéal?' [CM: 168] The remarks which follow in Sartre's notes are at something of a tangent and his criticism of Trotsky is insufficiently substantiated. It is a sound criticism never-
8
Under the spell of the PCF's official theoretical doctrine of diamat from the late 1930s onwards, many communists' thinking with respect to morality did not go much further than its firm rejection. If dialectical materialism was the science of history, so this line of reasoning went, questions of morality were entirely superfluous. However, although the staunchly pro-Stalinist line of the PCF at the time is beyond doubt, the temptation to view the thinking of party intellectuals and members monolithically should nevertheless be resisted. In a piece of 1946 entitled 'La Politique et la morale' (Les Grandes Editions Françaises, 1947), communist deputy Pierre Hervé argued forcefully that com munist politics were founded on a moral world-view: 'Une grande morale nous soutient,' he claimed echoing Trotsky, 'celle qui s'exprime aujourd'hui à travers tous les pays et exige de nous de libérer la société du profit, de supprimer les classes [...] celle qui quotidiennement se traduit dans la vie, la lutte, les aspirations [...] de tous ceux qui nous font confiance.' (p.22) This moral outlook, as Trotsky had argued, contrasted with the conventional moral ity of bourgeois democratic society, being characterised by its symbiotic relationship with the historical process: 'nous n'admettons pas de système moral supérieur à l'histoire, de morale à fondement théologique' (p.20); 'notre morale est historique et sociale' (p.21).
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theless: the permanence and stasis implied by the idea of a lifelong fidelity to a single ethical ideal is out of keeping with a thoroughgoing dialectical conception of reality in which all phenomena, including individuals' thought processes, are subject to movement and change. Sartre goes on to elucidate the principal themes of Their Morals and Ours and although, as in the above case, he sometimes complains that Trotsky does not take his reflections far enough philosophically, it is clear that he is sympathetic to Trotsky's argument as a whole. With respect to the dialectic of means and ends, Sartre observes that 'Trotsky soutient d'une part que toute fin devient moyen selon le processus dialectique [...] et d'autre part il profile une fin absolue qui en fait est le fond sur lequel paraît chaque fin particulière.' [CM: 168— 9] Sartre sees in the idea of an ultimate end, which for Trotsky is the goal of socialism, a reformulation of the Kantian city of ends. The ultimate end serves as an ethical ideal for Trotsky which once attained, Sartre perceives, will signal the end of moral wrongs. 'Dans le cas de Trotsky', observes Sartre, i a société sans classes une fois réalisée, c'est un fait permanent qu'on ne ment plus, parce qu'il n'y a plus de motifs pour mentir.' [CM: 170] For Trotsky, then, lying is a symptom of the structures of class society and will cease to be necessary once all social classes have been abolished. Sartre's character Hoederer in Les Mains sales defends precisely this conviction during his disagreement with Hugo over questions of political strategy: Le mensonge, ce n'est pas moi qui l'ai inventé: il est né dans une société divisée en classes et chacun de nous l'a hérité en naissant. Ce n'est pas en refusant de mentir que nous abolirons le mensonge: c'est en usant de tous les moyens pour supprimer les classes.9
Sartre goes on to argue that there is a certain idealism in Trotskyist politics. Although Trotskyists are passionate opponents of Stalinism, they refuse to side with the political right to hasten its overthrow in the manner of Koestler because such a move would weaken the political strength of the working class. And yet, in reality the majority 9
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Les Mains sales p. 193 (Gallimard, 1948) (hereafter MS).
of the working class for whose interests they militate identify with the Stalinist PCF. Trotskyists hence find themselves in a political no man's land, defending a position which is out of kilter with political realities. Sartre's observations about Trotskyist political idealism are more a neutral statement of fact than a criticism as such. After all, Sartre's own politics at this time were in reality very close to this brand of political idealism. In 1948, he took an active role in the 'Rassemblement Démocratique Révolutionnaire' (R.D.R.), a newly formed political group which responded to the escalating tensions of the Cold War by advocating a middle way between the two superpowers and a non-Stalinist form of left popular democracy. The group's manifesto text of February 1948, signed by Sartre, Rousset, Altmann amongst others, set out the R.D.R.'s alternative political vision thus: Entre les pourrissements de la démocratie capitaliste, les faiblesses et les tares d'une certaine social-démocratie et la limitation du communisme à sa forme stalinienne, nous pensons qu'un rassemblement d'hommes libres pour la démocratie révolutionnaire est capable de faire prendre une vie nouvelle aux principes de liberté, de dignité humaine en les liant à la lutte pour la révolution sociale.10
Although unambiguously critical of Stalinist communism, the authors made it clear that the R.D.R. was not setting out to rival the base of working class support in the PCF but rather to complement it. PCF members, and indeed members of the S.F.I.O. could remain in their parties and also participate freely in the R.D.R. Whatever the evils of Stalinism, then, the PCF-supporting French working class could not be abandoned in favour of an alliance with the political right. This project to fight for the interests of the working class as critical fellowtravellers of the PCF proved unworkable and the R.D.R. came to an end in 1949. Sartre would later recount its failure and ultimate demise in his obituary for Merleau-Ponty [S IV: 223-4]. In the polarised political climate of the Cold War, the R.D.R. was perceived by the PCF as a rival political group which would draw working class sup10
'Appel du comité pour le Rassemblement Démocratique Révolutionnaire', re printed in Contât and Rybalka op.cit. p. 197
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port away from the Party. It consequently treated the R.D.R. as a political enemy and attacked it from the outset, which led to internal disagreements and divisions. In reality, the project of a political middle way was idealistic in the circumstances of the time. Sartre suggests that Merleau-Ponty, who had joined the R.D.R. principally to be supportive of him, had perceived that it was unworkable from the start. 'Merleau découvrit-il avant moi notre erreur', ponders Sartre rhetorically, 'et qu'une pensée politique ne s'incarne pas facilement, à moins d'aller au bout d'elle-même et d'être quelque part reprise par ceux qui en ont besoin ?' [S IV: 223-4] The failure of the R.D.R. lay in its attempt to defend political ideals whilst turning a blind eye to the concrete realities of the situation, and in its lack of a base of support amongst the working classes who were very largely affiliated to the PCF. In Sartre's Cahiers, the influence of the Marxist historicised and politicised conception of ethics is perceptible in his presentation of the historical dialectic and the ethical ideal of socialism as aspects of a synthetic totality: 'La morale doit être historique' [CM: 14]; 'La morale aujourd'hui doit être socialiste révolutionnaire' [CM: 20]; 'La fin de l'Histoire ce serait l'avènement de la Morale' [CM: 95]; 'la dialectique est un effort pour introduire la morale dans le but concret.' [CM: 175] Sartre, like Trotsky, is sceptical of the inherently abstract character of traditional morality which fails to recognise individuals' unequal conditions of life. He argues that a more concrete conception of morality is one which considers moral acts in their situational contexts:11 11
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Thomas C. Anderson, in his Sartre's Two Ethics pp. 44-52, offers an in-depth account of the more concrete view of human reality of the Cahiers than that depicted in L'Etre et le néant, and of Sartre's insistence on a concrete morality. However, Anderson presents the idea of a concrete as opposed to abstract morality as a merely parallel development to Sartre's increasing sympathy with Marxism, because he remains faithful to the commonly-held view that Marxism and morality have little to do with each other. His apparent unawareness of the case Trotsky and others made for Marxism's alternative conception of morality means that he fails to see the important ways in which the idea of a concrete morality in Sartre's Cahiers is in fact drawn directly from a debate within Marxist philosophy itself. He is consequently also unable to perceive the vital
Il n'y a pas de morale abstraite. Il n'y a qu'une morale en situation donc concrète. Car la morale abstraite est celle de la bonne conscience. Elle suppose qu'on peut être moral dans une situation foncièrement immorale. [CM: 24]
The immoral situation to which Sartre refers is of course that in which the working classes are exploited by the bourgeoisie. Individuals' morality and their situation in society are fundamentally interconnecting, he suggests, echoing Trotsky's conviction that the only acceptable morality is that which is linked to the working class's struggle for social justice. Trotsky, echoing Marx, had presented official morality as a vital component of the ideological superstructure of capitalist society which encouraged people's acceptance of the existing power structure [TMO: 377]. His characterisation of this type of morality as abstract in character was consistent in particular with Marx's and Engels' view of ideology as intrinsically abstract in The German Ideology. Sartre does not make any explicit connection between conventional morality and bourgeois ideology in the Cahiers. However, his references to ideology in the contemporaneous work Qu'est-ce que la littérature? draw considerably on the early Marxian conception of ideology, as we saw in chapter III. It hence becomes clear that Sartre shares Trotsky's Marxian hostility to the bourgeois tendency towards abstraction in thought. His view of bourgeois ideology and its supporting morality is indistinguishable by this time from that of the classic Marxist tradition. However, if Sartre's early Marxian tendencies lie in his connection between the idea of a concrete morality founded on the class struggle and the historical dialectic. Given the frequency of discussions centering on the dialectics of history in the Cahiers, these lacunae clearly constitute a major obstacle to Anderson providing a comprehensive account of the work as a whole. The lack of awareness of the Marxist historicised and politicised conception of morality inevitably prevents the appropriate connections being made between the different areas of Sartre's reflections. Anderson's approach to the Cahiers is representative of that which has prevailed in the criticism since the work's posthumous publication in 1983. Indeed, there has been a mistaken tendency to see the Cahiers as an assemblage of tangentially related areas of theoretical enquiry rather than as a globally coherent intellectual synthesis of ethical, political, and historiographical issues.
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refusal of bourgeois abstractions, it should be remembered that this refusal could be perceived in his early works long before he engaged in any discussions centering explicitly on ideology or morality. Indeed, in some of his earlier works the concept of inauthenticity, in those instances where bad faith involved flights into abstraction, substituted for the Marxist concept of ideology in the pejorative sense. Let us briefly return to the scene in L'Age de raison where Jacques pretends not to realise that the money his brother Mathieu is requesting is to be used for an abortion and attempts to assert his own superior position by elevating himself above the reality of the situation [AR: 128]. In this case, Jacques' movement towards abstraction is an instance of the 'sérieux' on the one hand, and at the same time can clearly be read as an expression of both bourgeois ideology and bourgeois morality. The latter two phenomena are indissociable. Prior to feigning not to understand that Mathieu has an abortion in mind, Jacques had responded to the news of Marcelle's pregnancy by asking facetiously, 'Alors? A quand le mariage?' [AR: 128] We are then informed that 'Jacques refusait d'envisager honnêtement la situation [...] son esprit s'évertuait à trouver un nid d'aigle d'où il pût prendre des vues plongeantes sur la conduite des autres.' [AR: 128] Here the idea of marriage is used symbolically to represent the conventional morality of bourgeois society to which Jacques subscribes but Mathieu does not. And through the act of posing his provocative question, and hence avoiding having to offer Mathieu financial assistance, Jacques elevates himself above Mathieu's situation thus indicating the important and powerful idea of himself as a bourgeois which his social status as a lawyer has allowed him to cultivate. Jacques' moral conventionality and full identification with bourgeois ideology form a coherent unity and a united front against the non-conformist Mathieu. Their unity lies in the fact that they are both presented as involving a movement towards abstraction from the real. Hence, even in as early a work as L 'Age de raison, written some years before Sartre had given any explicit indication of his views on ideology, in certain instances his representations of inauthenticity apparently stand in for the classic Marxist critique of bourgeois ideology and morality. With respect to the rejection of bourgeois abstractions, it is also worth recalling Sartre's search for authenticity during the first months 212
of 1940. As we saw in chapter IV, Sartre ultimately realised that even being fully lucid about his own inauthenticity as a bourgeois was not enough to ensure the passage to authenticity. In the absence of a genuine adaptation of his ethical practice to his principles and an honest recognition of his being-in-the-world, his thinking remained trapped in the inauthentic tendency towards abstraction from the real characteristic of his bourgeois past. Without realising it, what Sartre was intuiting for the first time here in fact echoed the Marxian critique of philosophical idealism and formalistic thinking. Sartre's idea that ethical conduct and principles must accord with each other paraphrased the classic Marxist insistence on the unity of practice and theory. In the second of the 'Theses on Feuerbach', Marx had claimed: 'The question whether human thought can attain to objective truth is not a theoretical but a practical question. Man must prove the truth [...] of his thinking in practice.'12 It was hence not enough for Sartre to reject his bourgeois past but continue to enjoy the material privileges of a bourgeois. The only way to be authentic, he ultimately realised, was to live in accordance with his principles. Principles could not exist independently of concrete realities without falling into formalistic ineffectualness. By the time of the Cahiers, in 1947-8, Sartre is coming to the view that a genuine coherence between ethical principles and practical conduct depends on conceiving of the latter as revolutionary political activism. He now thinks that defending ethical values of the traditional sort whilst turning a blind eye to the blatant inequalities of society is indefensible. He is hence sympathetic to Marxism's situating of ethics in the working class's struggle for social justice. Only by attempting to bring class division and oppression to an end can there be any hope of achieving coherence between ethical principles and the realities of practical conduct. At the level of ontology, this commitment to revolutionary politics is complemented by his conviction in the Cahiers that an authentic outlook on the world consists in engaging in action, or doing, rather than in trying to give oneself a foundation. In pure reflection, once the attempt to achieve lasting coincidence with being, or to be God, has proven fruitless, conscious12
The Portable Karl Marx (New York: Penguin, 1983) ed. Kamenka pp. 155-6
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ness realises it must define itself through action and in so doing bring about change in concrete worldly situations. It is consciousness's ultimate rejection of its project to be God which is also at the basis of the relations of reciprocity with others which are possible after the conversion. In the Cahiers, Sartre's post-conversion intersubjective ethics is formulated in parallel to his nascent historical dialectic and his endorsement of the Marxist politicised and historicised conception of ethics. The coherence between these apparently contrasting approaches to ethics principally lies in the idea of solidarity which is central to both. In the case of the former approach, intersubjective solidarity is implied by the the appeals one person makes to the other, and the values of understanding and generosity which they involve. In the case of the Marxist conception of ethics, solidarity of this sort is indispensable to the revolutionary politics of the working class upon which its struggle culminating in socialism is founded. Indeed, unity of intention and aims amongst members of the working class were traditionally always conceived by Marxists as crucial to effective political action.13 Sartre's ethical ideal of authenticity in the Cahiers and the ethical ideals underpinning the Marxist politics to which he subscribes are hence interdependent and indispensable to each other. In effect, Sartre presents the refusal of inauthentic conduct on the part of the subject as the basis for a conversion both to relations of reciprocity with others and to socialist politics at the same time.14 The overall coherence of Sartre's position does not, however, exclude there being certain tensions notably between his fidelity to the 13 14
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The importance of class consciousness to the working class being effective politically was a recurring theme in Lukâcs' History and Class Consciousness. Sartre's overall position in the Cahiers is thus firmly within the parameters of left thought. Sonia Kruks rightly corrects Jeanette Colombel's erroneous claim that the work reveals a Sartre who, whilst having broken with the alienated ethics of L'Etre et le néant, has not yet come under the influence of Marxism. Colombel considers this latter development regrettable. (Kruks 'Sartre's Cahiers pour une morale: Failed Attempt or New Trajectory in Ethics?', in W. McBride Existentialist Ethics (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997). Kruks is responding specifically to Colombel's 'post-Marxist' reading of the Cahiers in her 'Sartre: morale et Création', presented at the Groupe d'Etudes Sartriennes, Paris, June 1983).
project of formulating an ethics in the traditional sense and his newfound awareness of the foundational Marxist conception of ethics. These tensions, which have sometimes been misinterpreted and exaggerated in the critical literature,15 nevertheless problematise the positions advanced in the work to some extent. Trotsky's Their Morals and Ours reaffirmed the classic Marxist tendency to discard altogether the traditional approach to ethics. Ethics were a function of class struggle and would cease to be an issue once socialism had been achieved. In the meantime, the only ethics of any importance were those which underpinned the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie. That Sartre continues in the Cahiers to want to conceive of questions of ethics not just as part of the historical dialectic but also at the level of intersubjective relationships is evidence that he is not entirely won over to this view. His existentialist emphasis on subjective responsibility leads him to feel there are ethical problems thrown 15
Kruks, in the aforementioned article, mistakenly conceives of the tensions in Sartre's position in the Cahiers as existing principally between the ontology of L'Etre et le néant and his qualified endorsement of Marxist historical dialectics, rather than pertaining between traditional ethics and Marxist ethics, the latter ostensibly challenging the former. 'Deeply fissured,' argues Kruks, 'by the still wholly unresolved tension between Sartre's early ontology and his growing appreciation of the significance of Marxism, [the Cahiers] oscillate between the perspective which each implies.' (McBride p.235) What Kruks fails to recog nise is the extent to which there has been a development in Sartre's ontological position, notably with respect to ethics, between L'Etre et le néant and the Cahiers. It is true that the Sartre of the Cahiers retains some of the basic ontological claims of L'Etre et le néant, but as often as not they appear in the text as an expression of the inauthentic outlook against which he is now setting his ethics of authenticity. And there is not an 'unresolved tension' between Sartre's ontology-based authentic ethics on the one hand and his subscription to Marxist-influenced historical dialectics and ethics on the other of such propor tions that the work can only 'oscillate' between the two. Although it is true that the formal setting out of these approaches in the Cahiers suggests such a tension, what Kruks and others do not perceive, due to a lack of sufficient knowledge of Marxist ideas, is the global coherence of Sartre's thought at this time. Only a knowledge of the crucial relationship between historical dialectics and the Marxist conception of ethics permits a full and accurate awareness of the place of Sartre's ontology-based ethics of reciprocity within the parameters of the socialist historical, political and ethical project.
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up by subjective agency which cannot be explained solely in terms of the historical dialectic. His remark in the first pages of the Cahiers, 'Absurdité et nécessité d'une morale' [CM: 15], indicates the ambiguous position that he will maintain throughout. He recognises along with the Marxists that the project to formulate an ethics in the traditional sense is absurd, agreeing with them that such an ethics is impossible in a grossly unequal society. And yet he feels that their subsumption of all ethical issues in the class struggle peremptorily writes off questions which remain vital all the same. He had argued in the second part of Matérialisme et revolution that retaining an emphasis on subjective agency and responsibility was indispensable to the very revolutionary struggle which radicals advocate. As we saw in chapter I, the question of classic Marxism's stance with respect to the role of subjectivity is more complex than Sartre thinks at this time. The vast majority of non-mechanistic, non-scientistic Marxist theorists explicitly acknowledged the indispensable role played by individuals in the historical process. However, the position specifically with respect to ethics set out by Trotsky was largely representative of classic Marxist theorising on the matter.16 Hence Sartre, whilst increasingly sympathetic to the Marxist conception of ethics, corrects its reductiveness in relation to intersubjective ethics by continuing to give consideration to the sort of questions which had been the province of traditional writings on ethics, such as the nature of generosity and understanding as opposed to alienated relationships characterised by attempts to dominate the other. What I have tried to show is that he in fact comes up with a synthesis of the two positions, as he will later do with respect to subjective agency and history in the Critique de la raison dialectique. He sketches out ethical claims which harmonise with the socialist ideal which, for Marxists, is the ethical foundation of the working class's struggle for emancipation. Sartre's position was to remain ambiguous with respect to ethics for many years to come. In Saint Genet, he would remark that 'toute 16
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Eugene Kamenka begins his Marxism and Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1969) with the observation that the classic Marxists neglected ethics in the traditional sense. They 'distinguished themselves in this field', he goes so far as to argue, 'mainly by their philosophical dilettantism and consequent naïveté' (p.l).
Morale qui ne se donne pas explicitement comme impossible aujourd'hui contribue à la mystification et à l'aliénation des hommes. Le « problème » moral naît de ce que la Morale est pour nous tout en même temps inévitable et impossible.'17 In the late 1940s and 1950s, however, it would seem that Sartre saw this ambiguity as fundamentally debilitating to the project of writing an ethics, which may go some way towards explaining why the Cahiers were never completed as a published work. He was perhaps not yet able to see, as he would later do at the time of the Critique, that the ambiguity of his position was precisely its strength, that his points of divergence from classic Marxism might complement and improve Marxism^rom within. Many of the central ethical and political preoccupations of the Cahiers are to be found in Sartre's play of the same period, Les Mains sales. The political implications of the play were misunderstood by many in the late 1940s and 1950s. The polarised reactions of the PCF and the right-wing press, the former hostile and the latter favourable, contributed to the widely-held view that Les Mains sales was an anticommunist play. The play's politics were in reality much more complex and ambiguous than this. Whilst many took Hugo, the confused bourgeois communist convert, for the hero of the play and the mouthpiece for Sartre's political stance, Sartre himself stated at the time that Les Mains sales did not advocate any one political position. It was a play about politics which highlighted the inevitable problems implied by political action itself.18 He was later to suggest that he was most in sympathy with the position of the character Hoederer: c'est l'attitude de Hoederer qui seule me paraît saine [TDS: 249] Je m'incarne en Hoederer. Idéalement, bien sûr; ne croyez pas que je prétende être Hoederer, mais dans un sens je me sens beaucoup plus réalisé quand je pense à lui. Hoederer est celui que je voudrais être si j'étais un révolutionnaire, donc je suis Hoederer, ne serait-ce que sur un plan symbolique. [TDS: 259]
Hoederer, the assassinated revolutionary political leader, was clearly modelled on Trotsky and it is notably through his characterisation that 17 18
Saint Genet (Gallimard, 1952) p.212 Un Théâtre de situations p.248 (Gallimard, 1973) (hereafter TDS).
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Sartre's synthesis of authentic ethics and Marxist historiography and ethics receives its clearest formulation. Hugo attempts to give himself a foundation in the world through embarking on the project to assassinate Hoederer. Olga remarks, following his initial failure to carry out the assassination, that 'le Parti n'a pas été créé pour te fournir des occasions d'héroïsme',19 an abrasive summing up of Hugo's motivations, and in particular his desire for self-affirmation, or being. By contrast, Hoederer incarnates Sartre's conviction that authenticity is founded on doing rather than the quest for being. He is fully aware that his opponents in the Party are planning to have him assassinated but remains selflessly determined to see through to conclusion the deal with the political right he has been working for [MS: 130-1]. Politics, he tells Hugo, is not about engaging in courses of action for the purposes of self-affirmation but about getting things done because the political situation requires it: Tu as voulu te prouver que tu étais capable d'agir et tu as choisi les chemins difficiles: comme quand on veut mériter le ciel [...] la Révolution n'est pas une question de mente, mais d'efficacité; il n'y a pas de ciel. Il y a du travail à faire, c'est tout. [MS: 218]
Hoederer's insistence on action in the context of political struggle harmonises with the definition of generosity as a realisation of the ends of the other set out in the Cahiers [CM: 293]. He believes that a deal with the political right will ensure that thousands of lives are spared and that the working class ultimately triumphs over political liberalism. And he is willing to risk losing his own life for the sake of the greater common good. He also demonstrates generosity in his relations with Hugo. Hoederer understands that Hugo is an insecure young man and, in spite of having been informed of Hugo's assassination plan, he promises he will assist his passage to maturity: 'Si j'échappe à leurs pétards et à leurs bombes,' he tells him, 'je te garderai près de moi et je t'aiderai.' [MS: 215] Hoederer also conforms to Sartre's vision of authentic ethics in his refusal to give credence to political principles which are not intimately linked with political practice in situation. The basis of the 19
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Les Mains sales p.168 (Hereafter A/S).
dispute between Hoederer and Hugo of 'Tableau' 5, scene 3 is the fact that Hugo interprets Hoederer's plan to form an alliance with the political right as a betrayal of Party principles. Hoederer retorts that Hugo's thinking is abstract and ineffectual, trapped in an intellectual purism which has nothing to do with the concrete realities of political decision-making. For Hugo, the Party's sole objective is to 'faire triompher nos idées, toutes nos idées et rien qu'elles.' [MS: 191] When Hoederer objects that not allying with the political right will result in the loss of thousands of lives, Hugo can only quip: 'On ne fait pas la révolution avec des fleurs. S'ils doivent y rester...' [MS: 195] The Party's political principles, he believes, must be safeguarded at all costs. In response, Hoederer argues that the abstract nature of Hugo's thinking is much more an expression of the anarchism of a bourgeois intellectual than it has anything to do with the proletarian struggle: Tu n'aimes pas les hommes, Hugo. Tu n'aimes que les principes. [MS: 195] [...] tu es un destructeur. Les hommes, tu les détestes parce que tu te détestes toi-même; ta pureté ressemble à la mort et la Révolution dont tu rêves n'est pas la nôtre [...][MS: 196]
In the characterisation of Hugo, the abstraction of bourgeois thinking goes hand in hand with that of the metaphysical materialist worldview underpinning Stalinist Marxist politics which Sartre had attacked in the first part of Matérialisme et révolution [MR: 140, 144, 166]. In both cases, the concrete realities of individuals' situational contexts, and hence the nature of real political decision-making, are transcended by an idealist 'pensée de survol*. Hugo also demonstrates the 'sérieux' which Sartre had previously attributed to revolutionaries [C: 394-5, MR: 162] in that he subscribes to the objectivist view of history which Stalinists derive from their mechanistic brand of dialectical materialism. He argues that Hoederer is 'objectively' a traitor, thus abdicating his own subjective responsibility to judge for himself. 'Objectivement,9 he informs his wife Jessica, '[Hoederer] agit comme un social-traître.' [MS: 177] Sartre had argued in Matérialisme et révolution that it was just such thinking amongst communists which hindered rather than aided the revolutionary cause, and had advanced 219
an existentialist-derived theory of revolution as an alternative for left activists. In many ways, Hoederer incarnates this alternative approach, accepting fully his freedom to make political decisions and taking responsibility for them. He refuses simply to follow a pre-defined political agenda derived from principles which, in their abstract universality, are detached from the concrete situation of the moment. Hugo's intellectual purism leads him to cling to the tenets of traditional morality. The idea of lying to Party comrades is unacceptable to him under any circumstances because he understands the political struggle only in terms of abstract ethical ideals: Je n'ai jamais menti aux camarades. Je [...] A quoi ça sert de lutter pour la libération des hommes, si on les méprise assez pour leur bourrer le crâne? [MS: 192]
Hoederer's arguments and actions conversely embody the Marxist conception of morality, based on the class struggle underpinning the historical dialectic. He believes that it is acceptable to sacrifice the principles of conventional morality if it is politically expedient to do so in the interests of the proletarian struggle. Les Mains sales hence stages in a number of complementary ways an opposition between dialectical Marxism and Trotskyism on the one hand and the bourgeois and Stalinist world views on the other. However, this opposition is far from clear-cut as Sartre's characterisations in places suffer from inconsistencies and incoherences stemming from certain persisting areas of confusion in his political thinking at the time. Although clearly modelled on Trotsky, Hoederer advocates a political line which contrasts significantly with the politics of Trotsky. As Ian Birchall observes, Hoederer's desired pact with the political right amounts to an attempt to form a popular front, that is an alliance with the political right in which communists compromise their socialist agenda but participate in government. Trotsky never advocated a popular front but rather a united front in which different workers' parties join together to combat the right more effectively.20 Furthermore, for all that Sartre was later to insist that it 20
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Birchall op.cit. p.87. However, it is not certain that Hoederer is as willing to compromise his left political agenda as BirchalPs reading suggests. His remarks
was Hoederer rather than Hugo who represents his own theoretical and political position, the fact that Hugo is the play's protagonist and that it is through his experience that the battle of ideas takes place, suggests that he is the real hero of Les Mains sales, not Hoederer. In his interview with Sartre of 1964, Paolo Caruso returns numerous times to this difficulty, arguing that the public's misinterpretation of the politics of Les Mains sales is understandable in the light of the play's structure and portrayal of Hugo [TDS: 257-260].
Sartre's Use of the Concept of Ideology in the Neutral and Positive Senses Explicit references to ideology are rare in Sartre's writings before around 1946. We saw in chapter III that prior to this time, Sartre's concept of inauthenticity substitutes on occasions for the Marxist concept of dominant ideology, otherwise known as ideology in the pejorative sense. When he does come to employ this concept of ideology explicitly in the postwar years, and most notably in Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?, it is in a way that is strongly reminiscent of the early Marxian usage which appears notably in The German Ideology. In Geuss' study The Idea of a Critical Theory, two other basic models of ideology are identified in addition to the pejorative type, namely ideology in the 'descriptive' sense (which I shall hereafter refer to as to Hugo on the matter suggest that he considers an alliance with the right a necessary short-term strategy which will lead ultimately to the outright victory of the political left: 'Une minorité, voilà ce que nous devons être. Une minorité qui laissera aux autres partis la responsabilité des mesures impopulaires et qui gagnera la population en faisant de l'opposition à l'intérieur du gouvernement. Ils sont coincés: en deux ans tu verras la faillite de la politique libérale et c'est le pays tout entier qui nous demandera de faire notre expérience.' [MS: 189] Moreover, in his account of Their Morality and Ours in the Cahiers, Sartre's observation that Trotskyists always refuse to ally with the political right [CM: 171] demonstrates that he was not in reality as confused about Trotskyist polit ics as Birchall suggests.
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the neutral sense of ideology) and ideology in the 'positive' sense.21 We will now turn to the appearances made by these concepts in Sartre's works of the 1940s. On 6 March 1940, Sartre notes in his war diary, with reference to the political situation of the time, 'nous sommes à un tournant, car la victoire seule décidera de la valeur de notre idéologie ou de l'idéologie nazie.' [C: 537]. A few days later, on 12 March, his reflections on the relations between individual subjects and their historical context lead him to assert that 'la description du développement concret d'une idéologie à partir de données politiques devrait s'accompagner d'une monographie d'un des personnages importants de l'époque, pour montrer l'idéologie comme situation vécue et constituée en situation par un projet humain.' [C: 584] In these statements it is apparent that for the Sartre of 1940 the concept of ideology does not have an intrinsically pejorative character. Rather than serving to mystify the oppressed of society, in these statements 'ideology' is assumed to be a broad, value-neutral phenomenon somewhat akin to a 'world-view' or even a 'culture'. In Geuss's schema, such a concept of ideology is a particular type of 'ideology in the descriptive sense'. It is characterised by being comprised of bundles of beliefs, attitudes, and so on, that are shared by a group or community and 'generally have some coherency - although it is very hard to say in general in what this coherency consists - the elements in the bundle are complexly related to each other, they all somehow 'fit', and the whole bundle has a characteristic structure which is often discernible even to an outside observer.'22 In the postwar years, and up until the Critique and beyond, Sartre would continue in places to employ the concept of ideology in this neutral sense, or in closely related neutral senses.23 In a rather tense discussion with Merleau-Ponty in 1956 at a colloquium in Venice, for instance, he was to refer to Marxism as 'une idéologie
21 22 23
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Geuss op.cit. pp. 4-12, and pp. 22-26. Geuss op.cit. p. 10 In his account of ideology in the 'descriptive' sense (pp. 4-12), Geuss estab lishes a number of conceptual distinctions whose relationship to Sartre's use of the concept of ideology would require more in-depth examination than is appropriate to our discussion here.
culturelle', also remarking that 'les cultures sont aussi des idéol,24
ogies. The use of the concept of ideology in the 'positive' sense dates back, in left political debate, to Lenin's What is to be Done? (1902). Lenin argued that without assistance from members of a vanguard party (many of whom might be of bourgeois origin), the working class would never be able to develop a form of consciousness adequate to fight for its own interests effectively. The appropriate proletarian world-view had to be introduced into the working class from an external source. This argument involved positing a new form of working-class consciousness as an ideology which would counter the freedom-limiting effects of the existing dominant ideology. Ideology was conceived positively as a weapon in the working class's struggle for social justice. In History and Class Consciousness, Lukâcs was famously to champion this positive view of ideology, presenting working class consciousness as vital to the historical dialectic leading towards socialism. '[T]he fate of the revolution (and with it the fate of mankind),' he argued, 'will depend on the ideological maturity of the proletariat, i.e. on its class consciousness.' [HCC: 70] Trotsky's view of the historical dialectic was also an endorsement of the Leninist view of ideology. In Their Morals and Ours, the moral dimension of the proletarian-led dialectic crucially involved the idea of a proletarian world-view that was battling to supplant that of the bourgeoisie. Marxism's analysis of bourgeois ideology had always presented the phenomenon as mystificatory in nature. Ideology was not only insidious because it consisted of beliefs and values foisted upon the exploited to ensure their obedience, but involved a distorted view of reality. Classic Marxists had habitually made an opposition between ideology and truth, the former being the illusions of bourgeois thought whereas the latter was located in the dialectical materialist science of history. Lenin's notion of an ideological counterforce incarnated in the class consciousness of the working class appeared to complicate this distinction. Was this positive type of ideology a vehicle for the Marxist truth of history or, as ideology, did it too involve distortion of reality? In his analysis of What is to be Done?, Eagleton supports the 24
Contât and Rybalka op.cit. p.301
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former reading: 'Ideology [...] has now become identical with the scientific theory of historical materialism', he argues with respect to Lenin's claims. 'The 'ideologist' is no longer one floundering in false consciousness but the exact reverse, the scientific analyst of the fundamental laws of society and its thought formations.'25 This reading of Lenin had also been that of the Lukâcs of History and Class Consciousness, who reaffirmed the Leninist view of ideology in his own theory. The working class, Lukâcs argued, 'always aspires towards the truth even in its 'false' consciousness' [HCC: 72].26 Ideology, then, did not stand in opposition to truth because in the case of working-class false consciousness it was the vehicle for the truth of history. The concept of ideology in the positive sense makes its first appearance in Sartre's writings in the closing paragraph of Matérialisme et révolution. Sartre suggests that the theory of revolutionary activism which he is proposing is not simply a theoretical but also an ideological alternative to the PCF's reliance on the doctrine of materialism. The communists cling to an outmoded theory because they are afraid of the divisions which might result from adopting 'une idéologie nouvelle', he argues [MR: 225]. Sartre does not embark on any discussion of the nature of ideology, but there is good reason to suppose that he, like Lenin and Lukâcs, implicitly subscribes to a conception of the phenomenon as a vehicle for the truth rather than as distorting. He suggests that his brand of revolutionary humanism might be expressive of a broader philosophical truth: l'humanisme révolutionnaire apparaîtra non pas comme la philosophie d'une classe opprimée, mais comme la vérité elle-même [...] et il deviendra manifeste pour toutes les bonnes volontés que c'est la vérité qui est révolutionnaire. Non pas la vérité de l'idéalisme, mais la vérité concrète, voulue, créée, maintenue, conquise à travers les luttes sociales par les hommes qui travaillent à la libération de l'homme. [MR: 224]
25 26
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Eagleton Ideology. An Introduction p.90 Note that Lukâcs uses 'false consciousness' synonymously with 'ideology', in this case proletarian ideology. Eagleton, by contrast, remains faithful to the more common Marxist usage of the formulation 'false consciousness', taking it to be the product of bourgeois ideological dominance.
Sartre considers his alternative theory of revolutionary activism - the 'idéologie nouvelle' - and the working class's political struggle to be indissociable and expressive of the concrete truth. Theory and political practice hence constitute one single movement, as they do in Marx's philosophy. They are both constitutive of the historical dialectic leading towards the socialist revolution. And it is this progression towards socialism founded on the idea of the class struggle which, for Sartre now as for Marxists, is the truth of history. In Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?, there are numerous mentions of ideology, Sartre's usage oscillating between the Marxian concept of dominant ideology, a neutral or descriptive sense, and the positive sense where ideology is conceived as a weapon in the political struggle. Sartre's remark that 'les idéologies sont liberté quand elles se font, oppression quand elles sont faites' [QL: 161] marks out the basic distinction between the positive and pejorative types of ideology as he understands it from his existentialist and libertarian perpective. In the case of the positive type of ideology, Sartre thinks, individual subjects freely contribute to the construction of a new ideological world-view which will serve their interests, whereas a dominant ideology is imposed on them by an external source thereby alienating them. We will examine the conception of committed literature which lies at the heart of Sartre's Qu'est-ce que la littérature? in chapter IX. For the purposes of our present discussion, it suffices to note that Sartre's increasing insistence on commitment from 1945 onwards was from the outset intimately connected to his socialist politics. In Qu'est-ce que la littérature?, Sartre explictly implicates writing in the political struggle for socialism: 'nous devons militer dans nos écrits en faveur de la liberté de la personne et de la révolution socialiste.' [QL: 21 A] He presents this political role which he envisages for writing as important to the building of a new revolutionary ideology which we can only assume is that oîMatérialisme et révolution: Si nos souhaits pouvaient se réaliser, l'écrivain du XXe siècle occuperait, entre les classes opprimées et celles qui les oppriment, une situation analogue à celle des auteurs du XVIIIe entre les bourgeois et l'aristocratie, à celle de Richard Wright entre les Noirs et les Blancs: lu à la fois par l'opprimé et par l'oppresseur, témoignant pour l'opprimé contre l'oppresseur, fournissant à l'oppresseur son image, du dedans et du dehors, prenant, avec et pour
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l'opprimé, conscience de l'oppression, contribuant à former une idéologie constructrice et révolutionnaire. [QL: 239 my italics]
For the Sartre of Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?, writing has a vital role to play as a part of the political struggle and, as such, serves an ideological function. Its representation of society is an act which, through revealing the world to the reader, will incite him or her to take action: si la perception même est action, si [...] montrer le monde c'est toujours le dévoiler dans les perspectives d'un changement possible, alors, dans cette époque de fatalisme, nous avons à révéler au lecteur, en chaque cas concret, sa puissance de faire et de défaire, bref, d'agir. [QL: 288]
References to ideology are curiously absent from Sartre's Cahiers, written contemporaneously with Qu'est-ce que la littérature? The coherence, however, between the conception of authentic ethics and the historical dialectic leading to socialism in the Cahiers and the positive conception of ideology in Matérialisme et révolution and Qu'est-ce que la littérature? is evident. Sartre's rejection of the inauthentic ontological vision of L'Etre et le néant in the Cahiers in favour of an ethical outlook based on the ideas of doing, pure reflection and contingency opens the way for an intersubjective ethics of reciprocity and solidarity. The ideas of doing, or praxis, and of intersubjective solidarity prove vital both to Sartre's alternative theory of revolution and to the view that history is progressing towards the ultimate defeat of capitalist hegemony. For Sartre, as for Marx, Lukâcs and Gramsci, the actions of individual subjects are vital to the historical dialectic but they must act in a coherent, unified way in order to succeed. This need for solidarity means that a revolutionary theory, or class consciousness, shared by all is indispensable. Armed with such an ideological weapon, the working class can gain the necessary strength and unity to bring about major and lasting change to the social and economic structure of society. Ultimately, then, the progression in Sartre's thought towards an authentic ethics, the struggle for socialism, and a positive concept of ideology in the postwar years is one and the same movement. Whereas the inauthentic ethical outlook on life charted in the ontology of L'Etre et le néant had been of a piece with self-affirmation, intersubjective alienation, 226
and the oppressive functions of bourgeois ideology, by 1947-8 Sartre has arrived at a global synthesis of the following theoretical positions: an authentic ethics emphasising action and solidarity, Hegelo-Marxist historiography, socialist politics, and a conception of ideology as a weapon in the political struggle against bourgeois dominance.
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Part Three: Writing and Politics
Introduction
We will now turn our attention to Sartre's aesthetics and, more specifically, to the political and ethical content of his literary works and to his conception of the role of writing. My account in chapter VIII focuses on Sartre's pre-war stance in this regard, refracting it through the lens of his personal and textual relationship with Paul Nizan. Chapter IX is primarily centred on explaining the relationship between Sartre's postwar view of writing and his radical left political commitment. However, I also elucidate in greater detail the ethical content and political implications of the pre-war Sartre's literary works in this chapter, emphasising the continuities between his postwar conception of writing and literature and his pre-war literary practice.
VIII. Les Petits camarades: Personal, Political and Literary Issues Which Defined the SartreNizan Relationship
Many years after the period they spent together at the Ecole Normale, Raymond Aron remarked that he could not speak about Sartre at that time without also discussing Paul Nizan.1 In his preface to the 1960 re-edition of Nizan's Aden Arabie, Sartre recounts that he and Nizan were so close as to be mistaken for each other on occasions by others, as when, in a chance encounter with the two at the Gallimard office in 1939, Léon Brunschvicg mistook Sartre for the author of Les 1
Interview with Aron in Le Nouvel Observateur no.592, 15 March 1976, p.86
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Chiens de garde [S IV: 141]. 'Depuis dix-huit ans qu'il durait, ce confusionnisme,' Sartre explains, 'il était devenu notre statut social et nous avions fini par l'accepter. De 1920 à 1930, surtout, lycéens puis étudiants, nous fumes indiscernables.' [S IV: 142] The story of the Sartre-Nizan relationship is one of a complex set of interrelating issues spanning the years of their youth and the 1930s but also stretching as far as Sartre's intellectual and political positions of the 1940s and beyond. Some have seen in Sartre's progression towards political commitment in the postwar years an unacknowledged embracing of positions earlier defended by Nizan.2 It has even been suggested that the spectre of Nizan loomed in Sartre's mind right through until old age.3 For all that the young Sartre and Nizan appeared indissociable to many, in reality there were many areas of divergence between them. From their time at the Lycée Henri IV, Sartre saw their friendship in more exclusive terms and was more possessive than Nizan who also maintained other close friendships. The taciturn and ironic Nizan held a genuine fascination for Sartre at this early stage and would continue to do so for years to come. The son of a depressive railway engineer, the young Nizan by contrast was often too absorbed in personal difficulties stemming from his modest and troubled family background for this fascination to be fully reciprocal. In a short story of the period, La Semence et le Scaphandre, Sartre depicts his own feelings of frustration and jealously in the face of the inconstancy of his friend.4 As he was later to explain in the aforementioned preface, Nizan would simulate the sudden disappearances and drunken stupors 2
3
4
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Walter Redfern Paul Nizan (Princeton University Press, 1972) p. 122. Each chapter of Pascal Ory's Nizan. Destin d'un révolté (Editions Ramsay, 1980) opens with a quotation from Sartre as an epigraph. Ory thereby suggests that certain of Sartre's postwar positions merely echoed ideas advanced by Nizan. Patrick McCarthy, 'Sartre, Nizan and the Dilemmas of Political Commitment' pp. 191-205, in Sartre After Sartre (Yale University Press, 1985) ed. Frederic Jameson. McCarthy's article opens with the bold claim that 'Paul Nizan haunted Sartre from the day he entered the classroom in Henri IV until the last years of Sartre's life.'(p.191). Sartre. Ecrits de Jeunesse (Gallimard, 1990) eds Contât et Rybalka, pp. HOIST
of his father, vanishing without warning for days on end only eventually to be found drunk in the company of strangers [S IV: 145, 162, 165]. Sartre makes it clear that at the time he had not understood Nizan [S IV: 142]. He would interpret Nizan's silences and sudden absences more as symptoms of violent mood swings than as indicative of the profound personal crisis which Nizan was undergoing. Sartre suggests that he was nevertheless aware of the gravity of Nizan's plight when the latter departed for Aden. However, when Nizan published Aden Arabie a few years later, Sartre did not take Nizan's vociferations against the bourgeois education system seriously [SIV: 149]. They represented a challenge to Sartre's memories of their time at the Ecole Normale, and he hence preferred to pass Aden Arabie off as 'un tourbillon de paroles légères' [S IV: 149]. This point is corroborated by Beauvoir in her memoirs: 'nous goûtâmes la virtuosité de Nizan sans attacher assez d'importance à ce qu'il disait', she notes [FA: 94]. Following his return from Aden, Nizan was soon married and a father. A short while later, following their success at the 'agrégation', he and Sartre obtained teaching posts in Bourg-en-Bresse and Le Havre respectively and hence saw each other less frequently. However, it was principally Nizan's adhesion to the Communist Party which drove a wedge between the two friends. Sartre explains Nizan's decisions to get married and to join the party, both taken shortly after his return to Paris in 1927, as symptoms of the same personal malaise. Nizan sought an escape from the existential anguish resulting from his unhappy childhood in the companionship and solidarity of married and party life [S IV: 149, 173/4]. Sartre, by contrast, was not only a resolute bachelor but had committed himself to a future of producing literature, seeing in writing itself a means to personal salvation [SIV: 147]. There were not the kind of class conflicts in Sartre's family background that there were in Nizan's, and Sartre hence did not feel the urgency to participate in the political struggle as Nizan did. 'Je détestais qu'il fît de la politique parce que je n'avais pas le besoin d'en faire' [S IV: 147], Sartre notes. Nizan was scornful of Sartre's belief in his fundamental and inalienable freedom, and Sartre was disdainful of Nizan's materialist convictions seeing them as a leading to an implacably deterministic view of the world: 'il sentait le poids 233
physique de ses chaînes, je ne voulais pas sentir celui des miennes.' [S IV: 147] As a teenager, Sartre mistakenly believed that Nizan shared his whole-hearted commitment to writing. Nizan, he recalls, was more precocious than himself as a young writer but was not consumed as he was by a sense of the magic and the all-importance of words. In Les Mots, the mature Sartre would present his own early fixation with language and literature in part as a symptom of his privileged social origins and conditioning. In the preface to Aden Arabie, Sartre suggests that Nizan's difficult personal history led him, whilst still a teenager, to reject the bourgeois intellectual myth of the objectivity of knowledge and the pre-eminence of language. Nizan's own personal experience had taught him not only that ideas and language, although vital, were nevertheless secondary, but also that their elevation to a pre-eminent status was part of the social elite's apparatus of control: 4 la magnification du Verbe', comments Sartre, 'profite directement aux grands de ce monde; on enseigne aux hommes à prendre le mot pour la chose [...] Nizan comprenait cela: il craignait de perdre sa vie en rassemblant des souffles de voix.' [S IV: 165] Although a talented young writer - indeed he was to publish more prolifically than Sartre during the 1930s - it was not long before Nizan was to find in the anti-idealist tendencies of Marxism a world-view which vindicated his own scepticism about the structures and intellectual discourse of bourgeois society. The divergences between Sartre and Nizan became increasingly apparent in the course of the 1930s both with respect to their intellectual interests and, more noticeably, at the level of their involvement in active politics. Nizan was fully implicated in all the major left debates and causes of the 1930s. To cite only some of the more notable of his activités, he made a lengthy stay in the Soviet Union in 1934, attended the International Writers' Congress of the same year in Moscow with Gide and Malraux, was a member of the AEAR (Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists), and made numerous trips to Spain during the Civil War as a war correspondent. It is well known that Sartre's involvement with active politics and political debate during the 1930s by contrast was minimal. He spent a politically uneventful academic year in fascist Berlin in 1933-4 and neglected to vote in the Popular Front elections of 1936. His intellectual interests, notably in 234
phenomenology, literature and theories of the imagination, were not the most obvious candidates for reconciliation with political commitment. Similarly, although a number of the theories which he elaborated during this time shared common ground with radicalism, such as his 'esthétique d'opposition' [FA: 93] and bad faith, their potential as aspects of a coherent left political position was not yet sufficiently developed to be immediately perceptible. In the 1930s, Sartre looked upon Nizan as the model communist who represented everything the Party stood for, contrasting this image with his own political inactivity: 'Je le tenais pour le communiste parfait, c'était commode: il devint à mes yeux le porte-parole du Bureau Politique.' [SIV: 181] These contrasts notwithstanding, Sartre's and Beauvoir's retrospective accounts of these years tend to make too stark an opposition between a political activist Nizan on the one hand and an apolitical imaginative writer-intellectual Sartre on the other, as Patrick McCarthy rightly points out.5 Such an opposition is distorting of both Nizan and Sartre in the 1930s, effacing as it does both the complexity of the relationship between ideological and aesthetic issues in Nizan's oeuvre and also the the genuine and in many ways subtle political awareness which Sartre did in fact possess at the time. Our examination of works by both authors in this chapter will seek to encourage a more nuanced view of their respective positions. Nizan's La Conspiration, for instance, far from being a mere vehicle for communist ideology, demonstrates immense subtlety in its handling of political and social issues as do works by Sartre such as L'Enfance d'un chef and L 'Age de raison. The particular interest of analysing the SartreNizan relationship does not lie in the enumeration of the areas of divergence between the two. It lies rather in the attempt to explain how two thinkers whose respective positions were contrasting throughout the 1930s nevertheless demonstrated underlying similarities and shared significant areas of common ground. The fact that the Sartre of the postwar years turned to left political commitment with the conviction he demonstrated suggests that he was not as distant from Nizan during the 1930s as it seemed. The temptation to see in Sartre's progression towards political commitment during the 5
McCarthy op.cit. p. 195
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1940s a mere reiteration of positions earlier advocated by Nizan should be resisted however. Rather as Sartre was to become a fellowtraveller of the communists of the PCF from 1952-1956 'en raisonnant à partir de [s]es principes et non des leurs' [S VI: 168], his awakening to politics during the 1940s and the particular terms in which he formulated his various positions emanated principally from the conjunction of his own earlier intellectual tendencies and his wartime experience, not from any conversion, sudden or otherwise, to the ideas of his deceased friend. Moreover, any assimilation of Sartre's left commitment of the postwar years to the ideas of Nizan in the 1930s overlooks the fact that, to some extent, the left politico-intellectual stances of both writers can only be understood in relation to the broader context of left theorising and political practice in the period. Nizan and Sartre were each distinctive voices on the intellectual left in the 1930s and 1940s respectively, but their various convictions and positions did not for all that exist in a theoretical or politico-social vacuum. Many of their positions - notably their positions in relation to politics, but also to a lesser extent aesthetic matters, and even ethics can be traced to the Marxist tradition. Their work hence needs to be situated in a broader politico-social, theoretical, and cultural context. This chapter will open with an examination of the intertextual dialogue about political issues which can be traced in the works of Sartre and Nizan in the latter part of the 1930s. This examination will initially focus on Nizan's critique of Sartre's intellectual and political stance conveyed through the character Lange in Le Cheval de Troie. An enquiry into the various subtle replies that Sartre offers in La Nausée, L'Enfance d'un chef Erostrate, and L'Age de raison to Nizan's recriminations will follow. In these works, Sartre discreetly defends himself against Nizan's charge that his apolitical intellectualism could potentially drift into reactionary and fascist political leanings. At the same time, La Nausée and notably L 'Age de raison contain barbs aimed at Stalinist communism which are evidently directed at least in part at Nizan. The question arises to what extent Sartre and Nizan each genuinely misunderstood the real import of the stance of the other, and to what extent they were deliberately seeking to caricature the other in the manner of a friendly intellectual rivalry. Our examination of Sartre's and Nizan's intertextual dialogue will 236
focus in particular on the ways in which their ideas are conveyed through characterisation, Nizan's Lange and Sartre's Brunet being the clearest examples of the staging and caricaturing of the ideas of the other.
Intertextual Politics in the Novelistic Writings of Sartre and Nizan Sartre and Nizan remained important intellectual presences for each other throughout the 1930s, despite their relationship growing more distant than it had been during their student years. Although Nizan's active political commitment widened the areas of divergence between the two, in the writings of each the powerful alter ego figure of the other is frequently perceptible. In both Sartre's and Nizan's texts, where reference is made explicitly to the other it is humorous and satirical in character, as with the ridiculous 'commandant Sartre' character of La Conspiration? and i e général Nizan' alluded to in L'Enfance d'un chef [EC: 197]. There is however a wider-ranging and considerably more complex intertextual dialogue between Sartre's and Nizan's works in which the world-view of each writer is staged and subjected to an in-depth critique. Nizan's Lange in Le Cheval de Troie opens this dialogue and the dramatic force of his characterisation as a solitary anarchist figure who ultimately assists the fascists establishes the centrality of political issues from the outset. In her memoirs, Beauvoir indicates that it was evident to Sartre at the time that Lange was modelled on himself. However, she minimises the impact which this event might have had on him: 'Nizan affirma d'un ton nonchalant mais avec fermeté que c'était Brice Parain qui lui avait servi de modèle. Sartre lui dit avec bonne humeur qu'il n'en croyait rien.' [FA: 271] Beauvoir's brisk account suggests that Sartre reacted to Nizan's characterisation of him as tending towards fascism with
6
Paul Nizan La Conspiration (Gallimard, 1938) p. 113
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jocular insouciance. Jacques Lecarme has challenged this reading, arguing that Sartre was in reality more troubled by the event than Beauvoir suggests, perhaps even to the point of being mildly traumatised.7 For Lecarme, the publication of Le Cheval aggravated the crisis of adulthood which Sartre was undergoing at the time. In this regard, it is worth noting that even many years later in his preface to the reedition of Aden Arabie, Le Cheval is the only full length work of Nizan's which Sartre omits to mention, perhaps wanting to avoid highlighting an episode in his relationship with Nizan which he still considers regrettable. Lecarme rightly sees in the protagonist of Sartre's Erostrate, Paul Hilbert, a sort of re-writing of Nizan's Lange: Sartre presents through Hilbert a depoliticised and more psychologically troubled version of Lange. However, Lecarme's acknowledgement of this intertextual relationship does not extend as far as explaining how Sartre's characterisation of Hilbert is part of an answer to the criticisms which Nizan had voiced through his characterisation of Lange. It is this aspect of the intertextual dialogue between Sartre's and Nizan's novelistic works of the late 1930s which will constitute our initial focus. I will argue that it is through protagonists such as Paul Hilbert, Lucien Fleurier, and to a lesser extent Antoine Roquentin and Mathieu Delarue, that Sartre replies to Nizan. The basis of Nizan's objections to Sartre had essentially been his rejection of the politically uncommitted stance of the liberal intellectual.8 Whilst Sartre's characterisations confirm in important ways his lack of political commitment at the time, I will nevertheless argue that they constitute not only an intellectual but also a political riposte to Nizan, Sartre apparently feeling the need to answer the charges put to him by his old friend. Lange is the only character in Nizan's novelistic writings who is unambiguously based on Sartre. A former student of the Ecole 7
8
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Lecarme advanced this argument in a paper entitled 'Le crime de M. Lange. Sartre dans le texte de Nizan', presented at the Groupes d'Etudes Sartriennes colloquium of 23rd June 2002. In On a raison de se révolter (Gallimard, 1974), Sartre describes his position of the mid 1930s thus: 'A ce moment-là, je ne faisais pas de politique. Cela signifie que j'étais un intellectuel libéral de cette République des professeurs' (p.23).
Normale, Lange is a teacher in a provincial high school. Neither a right-wing nor a left-wing sympathiser, he is deeply sceptical of the humanistic basis of politics and the idea of concerted human action in general. Since the passing of Christian certainties and the failure of capitalism to fill the void, man must accept the fact that he is entirely alone, Lange believes: 'Un homme d'aujourd'hui est aussi solitaire qu'une étoile', he declares during the town Prefect's dinner gathering. 'Pascal était un enfant qui jouait à la solitude. Ce n'était pas sérieux: quand il avait assez joué, il avait Dieu. Nous sommes plus sérieux que Pascal: nous n'avons que le néant pour compagnie [...]. Le capitalisme n'est pas une civilisation: une civilisation, c'est ce qui noie ou détruit la solitude humaine [...]. Aujourd'hui, il n'y a rien que le néant de l'homme seul.'9 This passage sets out and caricatures certain key Sartrean ideas and does so in a manner which is quite representative of Nizan's critique of Sartre through the characterisation of Lange in Le Cheval as a whole. Nizan accurately homes in on the importance of the loss of religious faith to the genesis of Sartre's overall outlook.10 However, he parodies Sartre's theory of i'homme seul', founded on the idea that a clearer perception of reality is afforded to solitary individuals [FA: 56, 172], as he also does Sartre's concepts of the 'néant' and of the 'sérieux'. Nizan's Marxist humanism leads him to equate the 'néant' with complete nihilism. Rather than being an ontological category, the 'néant' is tantamount to an outright rejection of the human and social world. Hence, Lange is described as 'pareil à une pierre, impénétrable, orgueilleux d'être une pierre, dur, distinct, séparé'.11 Furthermore, Nizan subverts Sartre's concept of the 'sérieux' by suggesting that Lange, and hence Sartre himself, is 'sérieux' 9 10
11
Nizan Le Cheval (Gallimard, 1935) p. 101 Years later, in Les Mots, Sartre would present this aspect of his early develop ment as vital to much of his thought and wnting up until the 1950s. Having ceased to believe in God at the age of twelve, he unwittingly transferred his religious faith to literature which he henceforth saw as the path to personal salvation. His faith was hence transposed and transfigured rather than rejected. c [L]'athéisme est une entreprise cruelle et de longue haleine' (Les Mots p.204), he remarks, indicating that it would not be before the early 1950s that he would finally get beyond this quasi-mystical, neo-religious world-view. Nizan op.cit. p. 162
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in his very affirmation of his solitary individuality. This suggestion is reaffirmed in a later passage in which Lange is described in terms which directly correspond to Sartre's concept of bad faith: '[Lange] s'occupait moins de ses passions que de ses attitudes. Il se souciait moins d'être que de se poser.'12 Lange is scornful of people who gather together in groups, as is apparent notably from his reaction to the communist meeting in the square outside the town theatre. However, his scorn is mixed with a voyeuristic fascination with regard to a phenomenon whose radical otherness he cannot fully penetrate rationally but seems distantly to sense the value of, namely human solidarity. It is difficult not to see the following passage as a reference to Sartre's taste for spectating large crowds without participating: La foule était mouvante, elle avait un cœur, une vie: il la méprisait, mais il sentait en même temps qu'il l'enviait et il la haïssait d'être enviable. Cet univers de l'unité humaine, il en saississait l'ampleur, la simplicité, l'abond ance, il y était, mais ignorant ses secrets [...]. C'était comme l'eau, il n'aimait pas nager.13
Lange's solitary voyeurism also manifests itself in a tendency to sexual perversion and flights into the imaginary. He likes to follow women in the street and tries to imagine the lives they lead. Nizan's narrator informs us that Lange 'ne pouvait aimer que des femmes humiliées',14 an unpleasant reference to his own and Sartre's contrasting attitudes to sexuality.15 In one incident, Lange stands outside his girlfriend's bedroom window, watching her get undressed. Finally, rather than calling in to see her, 'il s'éloigna, regardant les rues avec sa tête pleine de livres.'16 Parodying Sartre's preoccupations of the
12 13 14 15
16
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/ta/p. 168 Ibidp\62 Ibidp .109 In his preface to Aden Arabie (Maspero, 1960 [1931]), Sartre notes that Nizan, unlike himself, was only interested in young women who were virgins (S IV: 143). Nizan op.cit. p. 109
time, Nizan's reference to books here symbolises psychological escapism through the abstraction of the imaginary.17 Pushing the parody of Sartre to the limit, Nizan presents Lange ultimately drifting into assisting the fascists during their street fight with the communists. Lange's wariness of the crowd of workers originated in a deep-seated fear of identifying with a social collectivity and of committing to any form of meaningful action. When he ultimately finds himself swept away in a crowd of fleeing, defeated fascists, he suddenly feels an actor rather than a spectator for the first time. This development is crystallised by his happening upon a revolver with which he proceeds to shoot at the workers. 'Je suis sauvé', he declares, the act of shooting finally reconciling him with action in general, and producing in him a feeling of exaltation which the narrator describes as 'aussi forte qu'une satisfaction sexuelle.'18 These scenes bring to an apogee Nizan's multifaceted and merciless attack on Sartre's world-view in Le Cheval. At one fell swoop, Nizan rejects all the principal aspects of Sartre's outlook, clearly suggesting that they can lead to reactionary political sympathies and practices. Lange's lack of interest in active politics is presented as concomitant with a generalised nihilism. His tendency towards the imaginary is portrayed as tantamount to an idealist evasion of the concrete realities of life. Moreover, this idealist leaning is presented as symptomatic of a rationalism and a tendency towards abstraction which the materialist Nizan clearly judges excessive and hence erroneous. Nizan's staging of Lange criticising Pascal is far from coincidental. Lange's wariness of the crowd of communist workers partly originates in his rationalist fear of real conditions and emotions. 'Il possédait les clefs des univers bourgeois', the narrator informs us. 'Ils étaient faits d'idées, et les idées, ils les pénétrait, les idées sont toujours déchiffrables [...] Lange finissait toujours par parvenir au centre d'un système [...] Mais cette 17
18
There can be little doubt that Nizan was critical of Sartre's and Beauvoir's tendency to extol the virtues of literature and the imaginary. In La Force de l'âge, Beauvoir describes one of her meetings with Nizan of the early 1930s thus: 'Nizan s'étant un jour courtoisement enquis de mes occupations, je lui répondis que j'avais commencé un roman. «Un roman d'imagination?» demanda-t-il d'un ton un peu narquois qui me vexa beaucoup.' (p. 173) Nizan op.cit pp. 174-5.
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foule n'était pas un système, elle vivait. Comment aborder sa force et sa passion? L'intelligence ne servait à rien'.19 Remaining true to himself, Lange refuses to sing the International with the crowd, not wanting to compromise his independence: 'on n'est pas pascalien à ce point-là',20 he quips. As the events of the narrative unfold and the characterisation of Lange develops, Nizan will strive to show the practical impossibility such rationalist, idealist detachment. When Lange ultimately gets swept away in the crowd of fascists, circumstances undermine his capacity for rational detachment to such an extent that he 'n'avait plus une pensée dans la tête'.21 And the particular significance of his picking up the revolver lies in its concrete and practical character: 'Pour un homme comme Lange qui ne maniait guère que des livres, c'était sa réconciliation avec l'outil'.22 When he finally shoots, it is as if he has suddenly found a sense of plenitude which had long been repressed in him: 'Lange fut entraîné dans le mouvement du monde, il vivait, il refaisait partie comme les autres de la machine, des batailles, il ne contemplait plus, il connaissait la passion.'23 From Nizan's perspective, however, this awakening to the realities of life comes too late because Lange has by this time already drifted inadvertently over to the wrong side, that of the fascists. The sting in Nizan's attack on Sartre lies in the suggestion that only active commitment to the communist struggle against fascism is a sure way of preventing such a disastrous outcome from transpiring. For Nizan, in the polarised political climate of the 1930s,
19 20
21 22 23
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Ibid pp. 162-3. Ibid p. 163 In this regard, it is interesting to note a significant line of filiation from Pascal's cntique of rationalism to Marxist philosophy's critique of idealist abstraction. In recent intellectual debate, Pierre Bourdieu's critique of the assumption that there could be 'pure ideas' free of social determinants was often - quite justifiably - interpreted as a Marxist line of enquiry. Bourdieu himself, however, liked to stress that his thought was as much influenced by Pascal as by Marx, and indeed explicitly linked his own concepts to Pascalian thought in his Méditations pascaliennes (Seuil, 1997). IbidpMl IbidpMl IbidpA74
it is not possible to remain an apolitical spectator or bystander. One must choose one's side and join the fight. The characterisation of Lange is such a perspicacious and yet cruel critique of Sartre that it is difficult not to imagine that it originated in some deep-seated and malicious impulsion on Nizan's part to be done with his alter ego of old. Moreover, it is difficult to see how Sartre, who was already in a period of personal crisis at the time, can genuinely have reacted to Nizan's novel in as light-hearted a way as Beauvoir suggests. Lecarme's alternative reading hence seems the most plausible. In the following years, the protagonists of Sartre's own novelistic writings both confirm and answer Nizan's portrayal of Lange in a myriad of ways. First, the vast majority of Sartre's protagonists are solitary, individualistic male characters as Lange is, a fact which, given their autobiographical basis,24 confirms the basic outline of Nizan's portrayal of Sartre. Indeed, two of Sartre's most wellknown characters, Antoine Roquentin and Mathieu Delarue, in many ways corroborate Nizan's view of Sartre more than they offer a response to it. Many of the themes which Nizan had incorporated into the portrayal of Lange, and which we know to be key early Sartrean themes, can be identified clearly in their characterisations: existential anguish; a sense of detachment from their social contexts and from ontological reality itself; an apoliticism which manifests itself in quasi-anarchist libertarian tendencies; a cold intellectualism or rationalism; a hostility towards humanism, be it of the communist or other varieties; and a tendency towards projection into the imaginary. Roquentin and Delarue also confirm Nizan's identification of another central early Sartrean theme in his portrayal of Lange, namely the extreme difficulty of committing to any meaningful form of action. Throughout much of La Nausée, Roquentin does not see any point in engaging with the world through action and is on occasions scornful of those who do. Delarue similarly does not commit to any particular cause or course of action although he conversely feels troubled by his inability to do so. His inability to commit to the 24
Years later, in Les Mots (pp. 192-3), Sartre was to confirm that auto biographical basis of certain characters in his plays and novels. 'J'étais Roquentin' (p.203), he notes.
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pregnant Marcelle is an ongoing preoccupation throughout and is presented as one dimension of a more general malaise which also includes his persisting political apathy. And yet, both of Sartre's characters ultimately find solutions to the problem which contrast greatly with Lange's inadvertent siding with the fascists and hence can be interpreted as a reply of sorts to Nizan's charges. In the closing pages of La Nausée, Roquentin begins to see in the idea of writing an imaginary work the possibility of escape from existential concerns and inaction. Unlike his critical study of Rollebon, this work would be '[u]ne histoire, par exemple, comme il ne peut pas en arriver, une aventure.' [N: 250] In his review of La Nausée of 1938, Nizan not only congratulates Sartre on an excellent first novel but sees in the work a clear step in the direction of radical political commitment, almost as if to atone for having misrepresented his friend's politics in Le Cheval de troie: [...] par ses derniers pages, La Nausée n'est pas un livre sans issue. M. JeanPaul Sartre qui, tout au long de son livre, fait le tableau d'une grande ville bourgeoise, où il me semble reconnaître Le Havre, avec un humour féroce et un sens violent de la caricature sociale, a des dons trop précis et trop cruels de romancier pour ne pas s'engager dans les grandes dénonciations, pour ne pas déboucher totalement dans la réalité.25
There is nothing surprising in Nizan's identification of Sartre's acute satirising of the bourgeoisie, nor in his evident desire to see this lead to a fuller, more explicitly politicised realism. After all, La Nausée contains as much anti-bourgeois sentiment as Nizan's own novelistic writings, and Sartre's potential as a politically radical author is hence evident. However, Nizan's suggestion that the closing pages of the novel are part of this movement towards politics is noteworthy. For the escape from inaction which Roquentin seeks through writing a fictional work stages Sartre's belief in the possibility of attaining personal salvation through producing literature [FA: 34]. Viewed from the perspective of classic Marxism, with its scepticism of intellectual abstractions, such apparent aestheticism is of doubtful political 25
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'La Nausée de Jean-Paul Sartre', included in Pour une nouvelle culture éd. Susan Suleiman, p.286
efficacity. How then is Nizan's approving reference to the last pages of La Nausée to be explained? There can be no doubt that Nizan was fully aware of Sartre's idea of salvation through art. Indeed, the following passage in Le Cheval seems almost to anticipate the fictional work which Roquentin plans to write: Quand [Lange] songeait à des livres qu'il pourrait écrire, il imaginait un livre qui décrirait uniquement les rapports d'un homme avec une ville où des hommes ne seraient que des éléments du décor, qui parlerait d'un homme seul, vraiment seul, semblable à un îlot désert.26
Nizan's inclusion of the concluding pages oï La Nausée amongst the reasons why the novel as a whole is not 'sans issue' politically is best explained with reference to his approach to critical writing on the one hand, and also as indicative of the subtlety of his view of the relationship between aesthetics and politics. In his book reviews and criticism of the 1930s Nizan displayed the tendency, as did Sartre,27 to select subjects for discussion which allowed him to explore issues which were of particular significance for the development of his own thought. Hence, his short piece of 1936 on the work of Eugène Dabit, for instance, in which he applauded the idea of a 'littérature de problèmes',28 was clearly an opportunity for him to set out his own ideas about how committed literature should be written. In cases where Nizan felt globally sympathetic to an author's work but nevertheless had some reservations, he would on occasion slightly modify the author's claims in places in accordance with his own ideas. There is the notable case of his favourable review of Louis Aragon's Pour un réalisme socialiste?9 remarked upon by Reynald Lahanque,30 in which 26 27
28 29 30
Nizan op.cit. pp. 105-6. Sartre's articles devoted to the American novelists Dos Passos and Faulkner, for example, proved to be crucial elements in the development of his own concep tion of narrative technique. Nizan 'L'œuvre d'Eugène Dabit', reprinted in Suleiman op.cit. pp. 212-3. Nizan in ed. Suleiman op.cit. pp. 176-9. Reynald Lahanque 'Aragon, Nizan et la question du réalisme socialiste', included in Paul Nizan Ecrivain eds. Bernard Alluin and Jacques Deguy pp. 105-118. See pp. 110-112. Lahanque points out that Nizan, whilst ostensibly summarising Aragon's account of socialist realist literature, in reality bypasses
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Nizan, whilst applauding Aragon's manifesto text, refrains from assenting to Aragon's naïve optimism about the USSR and discreetly reformulates his account of socialist literature in accordance with his own views on literature. Nizan's interpretation of the concluding pages of La Nausée is best seen as to some extent an example of this kind of critical procedure. More importantly, however, his interpretation is a testimony to the sophistication of his understanding of the relationship between politics and aesthetics. Although critical of the abstractions of philosophical idealism Nizan, like Marx before him,31 did not hold a reductive view of the aesthetic. He accorded a high priority to the capacity of literature to convey an ideological message but was critical of any crude harnessing of aesthetics to politics in the manner of certain socialist realist novels.32 Contrary to such left functionalist tendencies, Nizan believed that the specifically aesthetic qualities of fictional works, such as particular narrative techniques and the nuances of characterisation, played a vital role in the process of politically enlightening the readership. Hence, it is ultimately not as surprising as it at first seems that Nizan, who was in any case a novelist himself, is not dismissive of Roquentin's resolution to write a fictional work but rather sees in this decision a first step towards engaging in other forms of action in the future. As in the case of Roquentin, Mathieu Delarue's reconciliation with action also contrasts greatly with Nizan's caricature of Sartre through the character Lange, and a number of salient intertextual relationships can be identified at this level between Sartre's Chemins de la liberté and Le Cheval de Troie. Whereas Lange is disdainful of the communist workers of Villefranche, Delarue, who is Sartre's most autobiographical creation in Les Chemins, expresses regret about his inability to commit himself to the communist cause. Sartre seems keen
31 32
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Aragon's faith in the irrepressible optimism of socialist realism and presents a very contrasting view of socialist literature: 'Ce qui s'oppose au pessimisme bourgeois, c'est beaucoup moins un optimisme satisfait qu'un héroïsme tra gique qui voit le mal qu'ont les hommes à transformer leur réalité.' (Suleiman éd. op.cit. p. 178). Eagleton Marxism and Literary Theory pp. 1-2,45-7. For an in-depth account of socialist realism, see Michel Aucouturier's Le réalisme socialiste.
to make his own left political sympathies explicit and yet to explain his reasons for remaining politically inactive: 'Je ne peux pas m'engager,' Delarue explains to the communist Brunet, 'je n'ai pas assez de raisons pour ça. Je râle comme vous, contre les mêmes gens, contre les mêmes choses, mais pas assez.' [AR : 150] In 'La Dernière Chance', the closing instalment of Les Chemins de la liberté, Sartre will portray Delarue ultimately arriving at a politically limited but authentically committed form of action, namely organising the escape of prisoners from the prison camp. His first significant breakthrough at the level of action is made prior to this however, during his extremely brief involvement in military action in La Mort dans l'âme. Interestingly, rather as Lange's departure from inaction is connected to his picking up the revolver, so Delarue's rifle also serves as a catalyst which opens up the possibility of action and permits a much needed sense of release: [...] il tira [...] sur toute la Beauté de la Terre, sur la rue, sur les fleurs, sur les jardins, sur tout ce qu'il avait aimé. La Beauté fit un plongeon obscène et Mathieu tira encore. Il tira: il était pur, il était tout-puissant, il était libre. [MA: 245]
The characterisation of Delarue hence relates rather ambiguously to Nizan's Lange in Le Cheval de Troie. There are divergences in the portrayal of their political leanings which are to some extent belied by the similarity of the contexts and imagery employed to describe their evolution towards committed action. The theme of departing from passivity and inaction which Nizan had so skilfully depicted in Lange is also central to the characterisation of the protagonists of Erostrate and L'Enfance d'un chef as is that of the subsequent difficulty of action. Paul Hilbert's planned assassination attempt on passers-by in the street is motivated not only by his entrenched dislike of his fellow men, but equally by the desire to make his mark on history through an act of violence in the manner of Erostrate.33 In the case of Lucien Fleurier, action is similarly a form of self-affirmation, at once a means to and a confirmation of a feeling
33
Erostrate, in Le Mur, p.88 (hereafter E).
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of personal maturity following a long period of adolescent self-doubt and searching for a sense of personal identity. It is through his portrayals of Hilbert and Fleurier that Sartre answers most resolutely the charges which Nizan put to him, these two characters in effect constituting a multi-faceted and effective riposte to Nizan's Lange of Le Cheval de Troie. Sartre's riposte is subtly devised, consisting principally in reproducing and exaggerating Nizan's caricature of himself through his portrayals of Hilbert and Fleurier. That is, through the characterisations of these two protagonists Sartre presents a caricature or reductio ad absurdum of Nizan's caricatural Lange. By staging characters who are extreme versions of the persona which Nizan had foisted upon him, Sartre, as the author of Erostrate and L'Enfance d'un chef succeeds in distancing himself implicitly from that caricature. The strategy is in essence a simple one: Sartre writes about sexual voyeurism and deviancy, misanthropy, and misguided fascist political leanings in order to dissociate himself from these tendencies. This process of authorial distanciation is ostensibly complicated by the profoundly ironic character of Sartre's narrative style in these two short stories. In neither text is the author's disapproval of the protagonists' thoughts and actions immediately apparent. The first person narration technique is employed in Erostrate, and in L'Enfance d'un chef the narrator's perspective is so close to that of Fleurier as to be almost indissociable from it. Only close scrutiny of the texts, a knowledge of Sartre's own views at the time, and the extreme character of some of the attitudes expressed permit a full awareness of the fact that he is staging attitudes of which he is himself critical. Ultimately it is this extremism exhibited by Hilbert and Fleurier which cuts through the veneer of verisimilitude and reveals the ironic tone of the whole, thereby dissociating the author from his characters. In Le Cheval, Nizan portrayed Lange tending strongly towards sexual voyeurism. In the case of Paul Hilbert, the voyeurism of the solitary individual seeking a means of escape through the imaginary is inflated into a thoroughly perverted attitude towards sexuality. Sartre portrays Hilbert's sexual perversity as a considerably more pervasive phenomenon than that of Lange. It is closely linked in the narrative with his misanthropy, his nihilism and his pronounced 248
tendency towards abstract violence in the interests of self-affirmation. These themes collectively constitute the central focus of the narrative as a whole. They are initially united in the scene in which Hilbert forces a prostitute to parade around a hotel room naked at gunpoint. He had purchased his revolver a short time earlier and Sartre's description of his attitude to the weapon pushes the evident phallic symbolism intended by Nizan in Le Cheval to its ultimate extreme. Once in the trouser pocket, the revolver 'se réchauffait au contact de mon corps. Je marchais avec une certaine raideur, j'avais l'allure du type qui est en train de bander et que sa verge freine à chaque pas. Je glissais ma main dans ma poche et je tâtais Y objet? [E: 81] Here, as throughout Erostrate, the revolver is not simply a phallic symbol but rather substitutes for the phallus. Sartre confirms this substitution very clearly in the passage which follows: 'De temps en temps, j'entrais dans un urinoir [...] je sortais mon revolver, je le soupesais [...]. Les autres, ceux qui voyaient, du dehors, mes pieds écartés et le bas de mon pantalon, croyaient que je pissais. Mais je ne pisse jamais dans les urinoirs.' [E: 81] The replacement of the phallus with the revolver places violence rather than sexuality at the heart of the narrative from the outset. The revolver soon becomes Hilbert's principal means of asserting himself with respect to others. But it is in essence an abstract violence, that of an individual who, in his fear of others, chooses the solitude of the imaginary in order to preserve a feeling of his own selfimportance. It is this fundamental need which lies at the basis of his choosing to achieve sexual gratification in voyeuristic isolation. Rather than physically having sex with the prostitute, he procures a feeling of powerfulness from humiliating her whilst he remains entirely uncompromised: 'j'étais là, tranquillement assis dans un fauteuil, vêtu jusqu'au cou, j'avais gardé jusqu'à mes gants, et cette dame mûre s'était mise toute nue sur mon ordre et virevolait autour de moi.' [E : 84 my italics] When she protests and moves to dress herself, he pulls out his revolver: 'Alors j'ai sorti mon revolver et je le lui ai montré. Elle m'a regardé d'un air sérieux et elle a laissé tomber son pantalon sans rien dire.' [E: 85] What follows effectively amounts to a symbolic rape, Hilbert's gun substituting for the phallus, and he achieves sexual satisfaction without there being any physical contact whatsoever. His sexual pleasure is a derivative of his asserting power 249
over the other, which is an aspect of a more broadly violent attitude towards society. The pervasiveness of this violent attitude is made explicit a few pages later when Hilbert announces his intention to shoot passers-by in the street in a letter which he sends to one hundred and two established French writers. 'Vous avez l'humanisme dans le sang' [E: 89], he tells them rather presumptuously, Sartre seizing the opportunity to deride bourgeois humanism. Describing himself conversely as 'un homme qui n'aime pas les hommes' [E: 90], Hilbert proceeds to set out the reasons why he is going to commit murder. 'Voila trente-trois ans que je me heurte à des portes closes au-dessus desquelles on a écrit: « Nul n'entre ici s'il n'est humaniste. » Tout ce que j'ai entrepris j'ai dû l'abandonner' [E: 91], he explains. The exaggerated claims of this letter, the narcissistic self-importance of its author, and the ridiculousness of it being punctiliously addressed to precisely one hundred and two writers, clearly indicate that it is the work of a psychologically unbalanced individual. Sartre hence pushes the anti-social nihilism of Nizan's Lange to the extreme, thereby implicitly distancing himself from that characterisation as a portrait of himself. The moment at which Hilbert finally puts his plan into action, despite his initial abortive attempts and the ultimately botched result, is the moment in the narrative when abstract violence situated at the level of the imaginary is to become a reality which impacts directly on the outside world. By actually using his revolver and committing an act, he is to make the transition to the real. Prior to this time, he has only fantasized about using it, regretting, for instance, the fact that he had not shot the prostitute in the stomach while he had the chance [E: 86]. He is now to venture out of his own private world by taking concrete action. In the event, however, this attempt fails, Hilbert ending up shooting only one man rather than half a dozen, and he carries out this act almost by accident and in a state of fear, not with calm premeditation [E: 97]. This failure to make the leap to concrete action is a metaphorical representation of the gulf which, for Hilbert, separates the imaginary world he inhabits and real circumstances. At this point in the narrative, a complex intertextual relationship between Erostrate and Nizan's Le Cheval can be perceived. Sartre presents 250
Hilbert ultimately drifting into an engagement in concrete action as Lange does. Lange had no particular intention of siding with the fascists but ends up fleeing with them and shooting at the communists all the same. Hilbert, conversely, is clear about his intentions but cannot carry them out, and when he does shoot someone the act is divorced from any particular intention.34 Sartre hence corroborates Nizan's critique of the solitary individual who lives in the imaginary, implicitly acknowledging the dangers of being divorced from concrete reality. However, Lange succeeds in making the leap from the imaginary and private realm to that of the real, the act of shooting reconciling him with concrete reality. The passage to action gives him an immense feeling of satisfaction. Indeed, the force of Nizan's attack on Sartre lies precisely in the fact that Lange does manage to escape the confines of the imaginary, but he does so only to end up on the wrong side politically. Sartre stages Hilbert conversely failing to make the leap successfully. He does not emerge triumphant from the act of shooting as Lange does, and ends up locking himself in a café toilet, an outcome which expresses metaphorically his retreat back into the private world of his own thoughts. In short, Sartre portrays Hilbert as a pathetic character, a deranged, complexed, practically ineffectual individual, thereby rewriting the end of Le Cheval de Troie. The political significance of Erostrate as a reply to Le Cheval is conveyed at two interrelating levels. First, by portraying Hilbert as passionately disliking his fellow men to such an extent that he intends to murder them at random, Sartre effectively caricatures Lange's anti-social nihilism. Secondly, Hilbert's failure to carry out his plan and inability to assert himself in the real world reveal him to be a psychologically disturbed character, a fact which entirely deflates the force of the anti-humanist and anti-social views which he has been espousing throughout. This effect of deflation implicitly undermines the
34
Sartre was later to reproduce this type of scenario in his depiction of Hugo's murder of Hoederer in Les Mains sales. Like Hilbert, at the moment when Hugo commits murder, the act is severed from any particular intention. The gulf between the imaginary and private field on the one hand and the concrete and public field on the other is central to Hugo's act and is one of the principal causes of the difficulty he subsequently experiences in ascribing meaning to it.
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seriousness of Lange's expression of the same views in Le Cheval. In both of these ways Sartre, as the author of Erostrate, succeeds at one and the same time in dissociating himself both from his own character Hilbert and also from Nizan's Lange. Sartre employs the same technique to achieve an effect of authorial distanciation in L'Enfance d'un chef. In the case of the characterisation of Lucien Fleurier, it is notably through staging the themes of existential anguish, the need for action in the interests of self-affirmation, and above all the dangers of drifting towards fascism, that Sartre exaggerates the tendencies of Lange, thereby deflating Nizan's critique of himself. In L'Enfance d'un chef Sartre depicts the theme of existential anguish through the adolescent Fleurier's search for a sense of identity. Fleurier's self-questioning becomes so acute that at one point he arrives at the conclusion that he does not exist: '"Je n'existe pas." Il fermait les yeux et se laissait aller: l'existence est une illusion' [EC: 176]. Generalising this insight to the rest of humanity, Fleurier concludes that nobody else exists either and he decides to communicate this truth through a philosophical treatise: i e monde était une comédie sans acteurs. Lucien [...] songea à écrire un Traité du Néant, et il imaginait que les gens, en le lisant, se résorberaient les uns après les autres' [EC: 176]. In this passage, Sartre ironises his own phenomenologico-ontological interests, but pushes the ridicule so far, reducing existential questions to symptoms of a teenage identity crisis, that they ultimately remain very largely uncompromised. In Le Cheval, Nizan had deformed the concept of the 'néant', equating it with an all-encompassing nihilism on Lange's part, and was elsewhere to equate phenomenology with triviality.35 Through self-irony, Sartre ostensibly applauds Nizan's mocking attitude towards questions of phenomenology and ontology, but through injecting humour into Nizan's caricature he undermines its force. He proceeds to link this humorous parody of Nizan's caricature of himself with a characteristic affirmation of the importance of action and, once again, the motif of 35
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In La Conspiration, an irritated Rosenthal tells Pluvinage: 'Ne tournons pas autour de l'histoire [...]. Ni Laforgue ni moi ne t'avons demandé de venir pour échanger des idées sur les vacances, la pluie ou la phénoménologie allemande.' (pp. 218-9).
the revolver. Mme Fleurier, the narrator tells us, keeps a small revolver in a drawer. Lucien, considering the possibility of suicide, 6le prit et le tourna longtemps entre ses doigts [...] On ne pouvait pas compter sur un traité de philosophie pour persuader aux gens qu'ils n'existaient pas. Ce qu'il fallait c'était un acte, un acte vraiment désespéré qui dissipât les apparences et montrât en pleine lumière le néant du monde.' [EC: 178] For Lange, as for Hilbert and Delarue, the firearm serves as a catalyst facilitating a long pent-up desire for self-affirmation in the world. In the case of Fleurier, the significance of the revolver as a symbol of action is ultimately inverted so as to caricature only more ostentatiously the equation of the 'néant' with total nihilism. In a bout of narcissistic adolescent romantism, Fleurier imagines 4un jeune corps saignant sur un tapis, quelques mots griffonnés sur une feuille: « Je me tue parce que je n'existe pas. Et vous aussi, mes frères, vous êtes néant! » Les gens liraient leur journal le matin; ils verraient: « Un adolescent a osé! » Et chacun se sentirait terriblement troublé et se demanderait: «Et moi? Est-ce que j'existe? »' [EC: 178] Suicide presents itself to the fundamentally insecure Fleurier as the only act by which he can make his mark on the world. Sartre hence presents his protaganist asserting himself through an entirely negative act, one which is in the service only of complete nihilism. As we have seen, in the case of Nizan's Lange the act of shooting at the communists is, initially at least, as much about being reconciled with concrete reality through the revolver as it is a political act. Lange hence drifts into siding with the fascists rather than joining them intentionally, Nizan wanting to show that not being actively committed to the communist cause can have disastrous consequences. In L'Enfance d'un chef Sartre inflates Nizan's critique by portraying Fleurier's reemergence from existential self-doubt as coinciding with his consciously and willingly joining the political right. Following an episode in which Fleurier participates in a brutal physical assault on a communist immigrant, he resolves that he must actively commit himself to the fascist cause as his associates have done: * Je ne peux pas continuer, pensa-t-il, à les suivre dans leurs équipées en amateur. A présent [...] il faut que je m'engage!' [EC: 232] From this point onwards in the text, Fleurier's fascist politics announce a newfound 253
self-confidence and mark the end of his existential doubts and selfquestioning. In this way Sartre pushes Nizan's caricature of himself further than Nizan had done. Moreover, as with the psychologically disturbed Hilbert, he presents a protagonist who, whilst undeniably conveying certain of his own ideas in the text, is so evidently not an autobiographical creation36 that an authorial distance is maintained throughout. Sartre hence implicitly dissociates himself both from his protagonist Fleurier, staging his thoughts and actions as examples of reprehensible conduct,37 and also from Nizan's caricatural portrayal of him inadvertently drifting towards fascism. It is worth pausing a moment to note the considerable subtlety of the political content of L'Enfance d'un chef, a fact which certainly 36
37
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Fleurier is the son of a bourgeois factory owner, a mediocre student, and ultimately proves to be fundamentally conventional in all his basic values. He hence contrasts in a very evident way with Sartre's own biography, unlike Roquentin and Delarue. In this regard, L'Enfance d'un chef is anticipated in Sartre's oeuvre by the early short story 'L'Ange du morbide'. In this piece of 1923 Sartre's protagonist Louis Gaillard, a 'médiocre' (Contât and Rybalka op.cit. p.502) as is Fleurier, turns 'tout l'élan de sa jeunesse vers le morbide' {Ibid p.502), entering into a courtship with a woman suffering from tuberculosis. Ultimately however, when the woman suffers physical convulsions he finds her unbearably repulsive and definitively walks out on her. 'Il oubliait la douceur réelle de cette femme, son vrai caractère, il lui semblait qu'un autre être, effrayant et mystérieux s'était glissé en elle, quelque chose comme l'ange du morbide, de ce morbide qu'il avait tant recherché.' Having checked that the woman has not contaminated him, Gaillard 'rompit avec tous ses anciens amis et se maria avec une Alsacienne rose, blonde, bête et saine. Il n'écrivit jamais plus et fut décoré, à cinquante-cinq ans, de la Légion d'honneur, brevet incontesté de « Bour geoisie»...' (Ibid p.505). In these closing sentences of the short story, Sartre makes no secret of his contemptuous disapproval of the actions of his protagonist thereby dissociating himself as the author from them. L'Enfance d'un chef mirrors the basic outline form of 'L'Ange du morbide': the mediocre protagonist Fleurier is caught up for much of the narrative in psychologically challenging but potentially interesting issues, only to reject them outright when easy although thoroughly reactionary solutions present themselves. In both stories, the outcome constitutes a dramatic reversal of sorts as the perspective of Sartre's narrator has been closely wedded to that of the protagonist throughout. Only at the end, then, does the full extent of the ironic tone of the narrative as a whole become fully clear.
gives the lie to any easy opposition between the Nizan and Sartre of the 1930s, the latter's lack of active left commitment all too often being equated with naïve political unawareness. In La Force de l'Age, although Beauvoir presents herself and Sartre as politically uncommitted during the 1930s, she is keen to show that Sartre in particular nevertheless kept well abreast of political events. Sartre's anti-fascism is a recurring theme throughout the memoir. Beauvoir suggests that in the early 1930s Sartre did not share the political left's complacent dismissal of the idea of a potential war [FA: 171]. During a trip to Italy in 1934, the presence of fascists in the streets had provoked a strong reaction from him [FA: 178]. By 1936 Sartre, who was an assiduous though impressionistic reader of the newspapers [FA: 168], was openly pessimistic about the future in the light of events in Germany and Spain [FA: 313]. The Spanish Civil War is described by Beauvoir as 'le drame qui pendant deux ans et demi domina toute notre vie' [FA: 315], and appears to have provoked a real awakening in their political awareness: Tour la première fois de notre vie, parce que nous prenions profondément à cœur le sort de l'Espagne, l'indignation n'était plus pour nous un exutoire suffisant; notre impuissance politique, loin de nous fournir un alibi, nous désolait.' [FA: 331-2] Finally, in the aftermath of the events in Austria and Czechoslovakia, Sartre, critical of the policy of appeasement, thought it necessary to fight Hitler [FA: 383,407]. In L'Enfance d'un chef, Sartre's depiction of a certain right-wing French political and social milieu of the interwar period is notable for the acuity of observation and the thematic coherence which it demonstrates. In the characterisation of Lucien Fleurier, Sartre brings together the world-view of the bourgeois owning class, extreme rightwing, anti-semitic and racist politics, reactionary French nationalism, and the bourgeois democratic affirmation of individual rights. These characteristics are presented as constituting a coherent unity and are also synthesised with certain specifically Sartrean antipathies such as bad faith and the belief in personal maturity as a value in itself. The deftness with which Sartre interweaves these themes in the text is a testimony to his perspicacity as a political observer. Fleurier's father serves not only as a role model for him with respect to bourgeois leadership in industry, but also more discreetly as a vital ideological 255
support to his right-wing politics. M. Fleurier voices support for his son's involvement in the activities of a nationalist group [EC: 229], and Lucien is subsequently appreciated by his associates for his 'histoires juives qu'il tenait de son père' [EC: 230]. It is under the influence of André Lemordant, Fleurier's other important role model, that he gets actively involved in politics. Lemordant awakens Fleurier's interest and admiration as much by his personal gravitas as by his political ideas. To Fleurier, who feels insecure and without a definite sense of identity, Lemordant seems 'mûr' and 'un adulte de naissance', just as Fleurier would like to appear himself [EC: 217]. Lemordant directs Fleurier to reading the right-wing nationalist writings of Maurice Barrés [EC: 224] and invites him to political gatherings. The 'sérieux' which Fleurier admires in Lemordant is of the same type as that which his father displays as factory boss and in his relations with the workers. M. Fleurier demonstrates the tone of voice he affects when addressing employees [EC: 164] and, in a fine example of Sartrean bad faith, justifies his ownership of the factory with the evidently suspect claim that the workers depend on him for their well-being. 'Voilà ce que j'appelle, moi, la solidarité des classes', he concludes, explicitly dismissing the idea of the class struggle [EC: 210]. In these passages, Sartre is keen to suggest that socio-economic dominance and inauthenticity go hand in hand. There is an explicit thematic link in the text between the 'sérieux' which Fleurier admires in his father and the newfound strength of his own anti-semitic convictions. Just as he had been intimidated as a child by the idea of his father working in his office, he thinks his dislike of the Jews would similarly belittle others. He imagines that '[o]n disait en baissant la voix: "Lucien n'aime pas les juifs", et les gens se sentaient paralysés, les membres transpercés d'une nuée de petites fléchettes douloureuses.' [EC: 242] It is hence through his anti-semitism and political activism that Fleurier gradually begins to find the maturity, 'sérieux', and sense of personal identity he has been searching for throughout the narrative. Both of these commitments are entirely supported by his bourgeois father. Moreover, Sartre presents Fleurier's passage to maturity as involving a reverence for the idea of legal rights. Trying to persuade him to sign a petition, Lemordant insists that he should have his say. 'Quand il 256
entendit "tu as le droit de dire ton mot", Lucien fut traversé par une inexplicable et rapide jouissance.' [EC: 223] Later, when he has finally come to understand what it is to be a bourgeois leader, we learn through Sartre's use of free indirect discourse that '[d]es générations d'ouvriers pourraient [...] obéir scrupuleusement aux ordres de Lucien, ils n'épuiseraient jamais son droit à commander; les droits, c'était, par-delà l'existence, comme les objets mathématiques' [EC: 243] Here, as throughout much of L'Enfance d'un chef the perspective of Sartre's narrator is so close to that of the protagonist as to render deeply ironic the tone of the narrative. Indeed, the irony is on occasions so deep-seated and deceptive that the reader, if unaware of Sartre's left political sympathies and not particularly astute politically, can easily overlook the real point that Sartre is making. Consider the following passage which immediately follows the moment at which Fleurier commits himself actively to Lemordant's group: - Ça y est, dit Lucien en souriant. Maud parut flattée; personnellement, elle était plutôt favorable aux idées de gauche, mais elle avait l'esprit large. « Je trouve, disait-elle, qu'il y a du bon dans tous les partis. » [EC: 233]
At face value, the reader might simply take Maud's position as an expression of an apolitical attitude to life. However, were Sartre's authorial stance with respect to her views to be assumed to be neutral or uncritical, the reader would have fallen prey to the deeply ironic tone of the passage. In reality, Sartre indirectly characterises Maud as a fool in this passage, because she apparently believes that it is possible to set aside political tendencies and commitments completely. People's qualities, she believes, can be judged entirely independently of their politics. Sartre conversely wishes to communicate precisely the opposite message to the reader: it is simply not plausible to support left-wing ideas and at the same time tolerate the politics of the extreme right. In this, Sartre adopts the left stance of Nizan but his oblique voicing of such a view, through the use of irony, allows him to avoid actively committing to it. In fact, Sartre's use of a palpably platitudinous expression, 'elle avait l'esprit large', guarantees him the authorial distance from his character which is sufficient to communicate the ironic tone of the passage as a whole. Elsewhere in
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L'Enfance d'un chef however, the irony is more oblique still and therefore harder to detect. It hence operates in such a way as to put the reader to a sort of test: the reader is drawn into the mental world of the protagonist Fleurier, but must constantly see beyond it in order to draw the appropriate conclusions.
The Politics and Aesthetics of Nizan Sartre's riposte to Nizan's cruel caricature of him in Le Cheval de Troie is not limited to these self-defensive characterisations in Erostrate and L'Enfance d'un chef In the novels comprising Les Chemins de la liberté?* and briefly in La Nausée, he goes on the offensive pointing up the failings of Stalinist Marxism. The following statement is drawn from Roquentin's tirade against humanism in La Nausée. It is difficult not to interpret it as an attack which is aimed at least in part at Nizan: L'écrivain communiste aime les hommes depuis le deuxième plan quinquennal; il châtie parce qu'il aime. Pudique, comme tous les forts, il sait cacher ses sentiments, mais il sait aussi, par un regard, une inflexion de sa voix, faire pressentir, derrière ses rudes paroles de justicier, sa passion âpre et douce pour ses frères. [N: 167-8]
There is no doubt that Nizan definitely had something of the terse sobriety of this description, and Sartre's specific designation of the 38
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My analysis of Les Chemins de la liberté in this regard will be restricted to L'Age de raison (Gallimard, 1945). In my view, only this first novel of the series can genuinely be interpreted as including a direct critique of Nizan's politics. Written in 1939-40, it is the only novel of the series which was produced prior to Nizan's death, and before Sartre's now legendary awakening to history and politics. Although Sartre continued to stage and problematise communist ideas notably in La Mort dans l'âme and Drôle d'amitié, I think it less likely that during the war and postwar years, when these later novels were written, the political and intellectual tensions that characterised his relationship with Nizan remained as acute for him as they had been up until 1940.
communist writer, rather than the communist humanist tout court, only confirms the implied association. Roquentin's remarks on 4 [1]'humaniste dit "de gauche'" concludes with a snide comment which would equally seem too close for Nizan's comfort: 'c'est aux humbles qu'il consacre sa belle culture classique.' [N: 167] It is through the characterisation of the PCF activist Brunet in Les Chemins de la liberté, however, that Sartre offers his most direct riposte to Nizan.39 With Mathieu Delarue evidently being an autobiographical creation, his waning friendship with the communist Brunet reproduces the basic structure of Sartre's friendship with Nizan. In L'Age de raison, Delarue's reservations about committing himself politically and his inability to engage in meaningful forms of action are presented as matters of personal regret, Sartre offering an auto-critique of sorts. However, in comparison to the characterisation of Brunet, the portrayal of Delarue is a sympathetic one. Through Brunet, Sartre points the finger at Nizan via a character portrait which, whilst not as unambiguously derisive as Lange in Le Cheval de Troie, is nevertheless caricatural. Brunet, who has adopted communist ideology without reservation, is sectarian, 'sérieux', at times condescending, and demonstrates on occasions a tendency towards a certain anti-intellectualism in the manner of vulgar leftism. In view of Sartre's limited knowledge of Marxist philosophy in the 1930s which, as we saw in chapter I, hardly extended further than its assimilation to Stalinist doctrine, it is interesting to ponder to what extent he was able to separate accurate depiction from caricatural distortion in this staging of Nizan's ideas and character. Apparently making an over-simple opposition between real conditions and political practice on the one hand and non-committed intellectual pursuits on the other, Brunet is portrayed perceiving Mathieu as an 'abstrait' [AR: 146]. Mathieu seems only to confirm this dichotomous separation of base and superstructure first by accepting Brunet's criticism, and secondly by repeatedly associating Brunet with concrete reality. 'Toi tu es bien réel,' Mathieu tells him. 'Tout ce que tu touches à l'air réel.' [AR: 146] The narrator communicates in more detail 39
William Redfern, in his Paul Nizan (1972) p.207, considers Brunet to have been inspired by Nizan.
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Mathieu's perception of Brunet: 'un homme droit, fermé, sûr de soi, terrestre, réfractaire aux tentations angéliques de l'art, de la psychologie, de la politique, tout un homme, rien qu'un homme.' [AR: 147] As we shall see, the complexity of the relationship which Nizan posits between the aesthetic and the political is evidence of the inaccuracy of this portrait, and Sartre must surely have realised that he was caricaturing his friend's world-view and character in this passage. Yet, elsewhere he occasionally draws on personal characteristics of Nizan as if deliberately to establish a direct link between the latter and his character Brunet. When Mathieu invites Brunet to have a seat in one of his armchairs, for instance, Brunet declines the offer retorting that 'tes fauteuils sont corrupteurs' [AR: 142]. This idiosyncratic use of the adjective 'corrupteur' is in fact drawn directly from Nizan's idiolect. In her memoirs, Beauvoir recalls that upon his return from the USSR in 1934, Nizan described his stay there as 'extrêment corrupteur' [FA: 236]. All the evidence points to the conclusion that although Sartre stages Nizan's ideas and personality in L'Age de raison in a knowingly and deliberately caricatural way, he nevertheless had not accurately understood what Nizan represented and stood for at the time. Years later, in his preface to Aden Arabie, Sartre reflects on the growing distance between the two during the 1930s and the opacity of Nizan for him: 'Nos chemins n'ont cessé de s'écarter l'un de l'autre, voilà le vrai; il aura fallu beaucoup d'années et que je comprenne enfin ma route pour que je puisse aujourd'hui parler sans erreur de la sienne.' [S IV: 150] In his review of La Conspiration of 1938, Sartre identifies the novel's basic political dynamics, detecting the critical attitude of its author towards his leading characters,40 but either does not perceive or refuses to accept the relationship between the political and the aesthetic which lies at the heart of Nizan's novelistic writing. In La Conspiration, Sartre thinks, Nizan's communist ideological message intrudes on and ultimately vitiates his novelistic writing, 40
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'Je crois voir quelle grande sincérité de l'effort, de la souffrance physique, de la faim, Nizan opposerait à leurs parleries' [S 1: 28], writes Sartre, perceiving the Marxist grounds on which Nizan feels distaste for the bourgeois character of RosenthaPs and Laforgue's rebelliousness.
rather than being conveyed by it. 'Je ne pense pas que Nizan ait voulu écrire un roman', he goes so far as to claim. 'Un communiste peut-il écrire un roman? Je n'en suis pas persuadé: il n'a pas le droit de se faire le complice de ses personnages.' [S /: 29] Nizan's writing in La Conspiration, Sartre continues, is not a 'style de romancier, sournois et caché', but is rather 'un style de combat, une arme' [S I: 30] Sartre's remarks are misguided for a number of reasons. As CohenSolal argues,41 his interpretation of the politics of La Conspiration apparently works on the assumption that Nizan is a thoroughly conformist communist. What Sartre does not perceive is the development that has taken place in Nizan's political thinking by this time. He fails to see that La Conspiration is not a politically militant novel in the way that Le Cheval de Troie had been. Moreover, the politics of La Conspiration are expressed in a more oblique and indirect way than in Nizan's other novels, which means that Sartre's claim that Nizan's prose is a weapon rather than a novelistic prose style is undoubtedly an exaggeration. In fact, ironically, the 'sournois et caché' character which Sartre attributes to novelistic style characterises Nizan's approach very well in La Conspiration. Sartre's claim that Nizan's communist politics lead him to maintain too great a distance from his characters is clearly an indictment of the way Nizan employs the narrator. McCarthy argues that Sartre's assessment is untenable, Nizan's inclusion of frequent shifting points of view in La Conspiration, as in Le Cheval de Troie, clearly pointing towards the 'complice' concept advocated by Sartre himself.42 If Nizan's prose style does remain in some sense a weapon in the ideological battle, it is hence not in the direct and unmediated way that Sartre implies. The basis of Sartre's hazy grasp of Nizan's politics and inability accurately to judge Nizan's novelistic writings lay principally in his limited knowledge of Marxism during this period. Far from being the model Stalinist communist, as Sartre perceived him during these years, Nizan followed a political trajectory which is in fact best understood as a complex process of continuous development and change 41 42
Cohen-Solal, A. Paul Nizan: communiste impossible (Grasset et Fasquelle, 1980)p.226 McCarthy op.cit. p. 199
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from the late 1920s when he joined the PCF until his resignation from the Party following the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939. In the latter years of the 1920s through until around 1933, Nizan's position was characterised principally by his aggressive denunciations of bourgeois society and ideas, as his Aden Arabie (1931) and Les Chiens de garde (1932) attest. However, although ostensibly aligned with the sectarianism of the PCF, these works were greeted with some scepticism by Party intellectuals who saw them as lacking in theoretical weight. Nizan's trip to the USSR of 1933-4 was a turning point for him in many ways. Upon his return he no longer subscribed to the idealistic left-wing idea that a new and indomitable kind of humanism had been born in the USSR. Existential uncertainties and the solitude of death were the lot of Soviet citizens just as they were for people in western capitalist countries. His remarks about the USSR would henceforth be much more reserved than they had been previously. During the Popular Front period, a collaborative political attitude was the order of the day on the left, and Nizan's statements blended conciliatory discourse with his earlier politics of denunciation and sectarianism. From 1935 onwards, the necessity of mounting effective resistance to the spread of fascism was Nizan's central political preoccupation. In 1935-6, he was confident that neither the German nor Spanish fascist movements were strong enough to prevail. The events of 1937-9, from the dashing of Republican hopes in Spain to the Nazi-Soviet pact, proved this optimism ill-founded, Nizan's disillusionment growing from year to year. It is a testimony to Nizan's integrity and independence from the PCF's predominantly Stalinist mindset that he had the courage to resign from the Party after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact. If Sartre tended to view Nizan reductively as an orthodox Stalinist communist, it is because his knowledge of Marxist thought was not adequate to perceive accurately the ways in which Nizan often set himself apart from the party line, whilst all the while remaining faithful to the Marxist outlook.43 In his journalistic writing, Nizan 43
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The question of Nizan's communist orthodoxy or marginality has long been the subject of disagreement. Critical opinion has remained divided even in recent years, albeit without the polemical fire of earlier debates. Whereas such as McCarthy, Lahanque, and notably Cohen-Solal support the marginality thesis,
supported the party line on the whole, but his literary criticism and above all his novelistic writings reveal a distinctive and in many ways divergent vision. A good point of departure for an appraisal of this vision is Nizan's article of 1932 entitled 'Littérature révolutionnaire en France'.44 In this piece, the 'revolutionary literature' which Nizan advocates is favourably contrasted with 'proletarian literature', a conception of writing originating in the Soviet Union some years earlier which was explicitly workerist, that is to say by workers for
44
Michael Scriven is wary of what he sees as a 'tendency to overstate Nizan's implicit criticisms/disavowals of the Soviet Union. There is little evidence', he continues, 'to support the view that Nizan was anything other than a faithful, orthodox party member; a Stalinist in short.' (Scriven Paul Nizan: Communist Novelist (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988) p.40) Scriven acknowledges that Nizan was less idealistic about the USSR after 1934, but he points out that Nizan nevertheless continued to 'believe in the moral justice of the Soviet cause.' (p.36) In this latter observation Scriven is undoubtedly accurate, but when he infers from it that Nizan was hence an 'orthodox party member', he appears to underestimate the potential for questioning and doubt which such a position allowed. In the context of the PCF of the 1930s, for Nizan to publish even 'implicit criticisms/disavowals of the Soviet Union' indicates that privately he had strong reservations. Moreover, his 'implicit criticisms/ disavowals' were in fact indicative not of a departure from the French communist admiration for the USSR as such but of a clear divergence from elements of party doctrine which were in some cases central to the Stalinist vision. This divergence is nowhere clearer than in his conception of the relationship between aesthetics and politics which contrasts greatly with that espoused by Zhdanov at the Moscow conference of 1934. Novels such as Le Cheval de Troie and, in particular, La Conspiration were far from meeting the norms of socialist realism. Scriven acknowledges the particularity of Nizan's position on this matter {Ibid pp. 100-111), which makes his categorisation of Nizan as an orthodox communist difficult to understand. However, Scriven's reading does have the merit of implicitly defending the PCF of the 1930s against the now all too common dismissive and reductionist view that there was no room whatsoever for divergences and differences of opinion within the party. If Nizan was an orthodox PCF member, as Scriven claims, then the party must have been a broad church. Scriven seems to want to rehabilitate the image of the PCF to some extent in the light of a generalised tendency over many decades to associate its positions with only the most implacable and rigid aspects of Stalinist doctrine. Nizan in ed. Suleiman Pour une nouvelle culture p.34
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workers. Revolutionary literature, Nizan points out, can be written by workers or by writers of bourgeois origin. What matters is not the social origin of the author nor that the working class be the sole focus of his attention, but that he writes 'du point de vue du prolétariat révolutionnaire.'45 This means that his depictions of social reality should accord with and encourage the development of proletarian class consciousness. As such, his works will be part of the working class's struggle against the bourgeoisie. 'Toute littérature est une propagande',46 Nizan declares. What he terms 'les traditions spirituelles et formelles de la littérature bourgeoise'47 serve as a support to bourgeois hegemony, although their ideological function is often masked. Revolutionary literature counters this tendency, he argues, acting as an ideological weapon in the struggle against the bourgeoisie. In his review of Aragon's Pour un réalisme socialiste (1935), he would add that whereas bourgeois literature flees reality, revolutionary literature embraces it fully and attempts to depict it as it is.48 The revolutionary writer is not a supposedly neutral observer in the manner of the bourgeois critical realist, but is himself part of the political struggle. His depiction of the intolerable aspects of social reality is the first step towards taking cognizance of the possibilities for positive change.49 The conception of literature formulated by Nizan in articles such as these of the early to mid 1930s diverges considerably from the official communist conception of the time, namely socialist realism. However, it must be conceded that there is nevertheless little in the above claims which is constitutive of a distinctively Nizanian conception of literature. The distinction between proletarian and revolutionary literature had been a subject of debate amongst Soviet thinkers during the 1920s. Nizan's conception of revolutionary literature, and preference for it over the 'proletarian' type, echoes in many ways the in-depth and detailed discussion of the matter undertaken by Trotsky 45 46 47 48 49
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Ibidp36 Ibid p.34 Ibidp33 IbidpA76 Ibidp .177
in his Literature and Revolution (1925). Trotsky dismissed the idea of proletarian art, arguing that the working class was not in a position to initiate a new kind of culture alone as it was too uneducated.51 Revolutionary literature would require the participation of individuals who had assimilated the old bourgeois culture and were supportive of the proletarian struggle. Its role was to ensure 'the consolidation of the workers in their struggle against the exploiters.' [LR: 259] Nizan's claim that literature is propaganda is essentially a polemical formulation which is based on the well-established Marxist concepts of ideology in the pejorative and positive senses. Formulated in the language of ideology, Nizan's point is simply that bourgeois literature is a constitutive element of the dominant ideology upholding the social structure of capitalist society, whereas revolutionary literature contributes to the proletarian ideology which seeks to overturn that social structure. Nizan's concomitant idea that the revolutionary writer is an active participant in the political struggle reinforces the notion of a proletarian ideology, thereby showing the influence of Lenin and the early Lukâcs. Finally, Nizan's reference to 'les traditions spirituelles et formelles de la littérature bourgeoise'52 clearly involves characterising bourgeois literature and ideology as abstract and unreal in the manner of the Marx of The German Ideology. In these articles, Nizan was hence taking up the terms of an already established theoretical debate. His own distinctive vision at this time lies notably in the emphasis he places on novels showing the sombre and tragic sides of life prior to subtly leading the reader to see how such adversity can be overcome through a politics of communist solidarity. Revolutionary writers should describe reality 50
51 52
My intention is not thereby to suggest that Nizan was in reality some sort of covert Trotskyist. He was, after all, an active member of the PCF which took its lead principally from the Stalinist USSR. Publicly at least, Nizan's political statements did not extend further than indirect or implicit criticisms of Stalinist communist policy. I rather seek to show that his views on literature and aesthet ics nevertheless link up in important ways with those of non-Stalinist Marxist thinkers, Trotsky being amongst the most significant of them in this period. Leon Trotsky Literature and Revolution (London: Redwords, 1991 [1925]) chapters VI and VIII (hereafter LR). Nizan ed. Suleiman op.cit.p.33
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'de telle façon qu'elle apparaisse enfin telle qu'elle est, c'est-à-dire intolérable',53 Nizan argues. This emphasis is one of Nizan's main points of departure from the socialist realist approach which involved principally depicting scenes of contented and industrious communist citizens in a post-revolutionary situation. He re-joins the socialist realist conception, however, when he insists on revolutionary art being 'orienté sur l'avenir'54 and on its 'capacité de perspectives',55 that is its potential to show the way towards reaching a socialist solution. Yet Nizan does not believe that the revolutionary writer should convey to the reader the idea of the need for and value of socialism in any simple or direct way. At the Moscow conference of 1934, Zhdanov argued that the merit of literary works would be judged on the basis of their ideological 'correctness' rather than on their aesthetic qualities which were of secondary importance. Good literature was that which inspired the masses to believe in the superiority of socialist society over any other and induced in them patriotic feelings for the USSR. For Nizan, on the other hand, the revolutionary writer should not have to sacrifice aesthetic value to the political message. In his article of 1936 devoted to the œuvre of Eugène Dabit, Nizan claims that Dabit had correctly perceived 'le grand problème, qui consiste à faire passer la révolte dans l'art, sans détruire l'art.'56 Nizan considers that Dabit successfully overcame this difficulty in his problem-centred novels. Rather than merely alternating descriptive and didactically judgemental passages, 'Dabit avait recours à la ruse, qui consiste à conduire le lecteur à des conclusions qu'on ne lui a point expressément énoncées. Cette ruse est un autre nom de l'art.'57 Nizan clearly finds in Dabit both a source of inspiration and a kindred spirit as his own novels similarly lead the reader to political conclusions indirectly. In Nizan's novels, the aesthetic dimension becomes part of the political message he is trying to convey rather than being merely subordinated to it. The two fields work together in such a way that the reading 53 54 55 56 57
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IbidpMÔ Ibidp.252 Ibidp .177 Ibidem Ibidp.in
process ensures the gradual enlightenment of the reader to the needs and subtleties of the political situation. As Scriven puts it, 'Nizan's novels are not faithful mirrors of ideological correctness, but rather refracted and distorted artistic representations of a complex sociopolitical context. They are, in short, a fusion of ideology and aesthetics in a constantly evolving synthesis.'58 Of Nizan's novels, La Conspiration offers the best examples of this complex interdependency of aesthetics and politics which Nizan proposes as an alternative to the artistic banality of socialist realist fiction. In Le Cheval de Troie, its predecessor, Nizan had already employed the Dabit-style 'ruse' to good effect: his thematic juxtaposition of gradually developing relations of solidarity amongst the workers against a background of existential uncertainty, with the characterisations of the bourgeois leaders of Villefranche and of Lange, and with his neutral description of police brutality in response to the communist demonstration - all these elements combined lead the reader to accord the moral victory to the political left by the time she reaches the end of the novel. Though in reality defeated by the police, Bloyé and his associates have learnt the value of collective struggle against the forces of social oppression. Even the idea of death itself, symbolic of existential doubt throughout Nizan's fiction, is finally presented as bearable in the context of socialist struggle. In the closing pages of the novel, Bloyé suggests that it is not dying itself that is to be feared but dying without having committed one's life to a valuable cause: 'On peut détruire d'abord toutes les façons injustes de mourir, et ensuite, quand on n'aura plus affaire qu'à la mort dont personne n'est responsable, il faudra essayer aussi de lui donner un sens. Ce n 'est pas de mourir en se battant qui est difficile, c 'est de mourir seuV59 [my italics]. In La Conspiration, Nizan takes the 'ruse' of camouflaging his authorial position through fictional technique to a new level of sophistication. Indeed, the brilliance of this novel lies partly in the fact that, as a consequence, its political message ultimately remains ambiguous throughout much of the narrative. It is some time before the reader takes cognizance of the narrator's critical attitude towards 58 59
Scriven op.cit. p. 94 Le Cheval de Troie p.207
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Rosenthal's and Laforgue's plans to initiate a revolution. By changing narratorial focus periodically, in a similar albeit less marked manner to Sartre's technique in Le Sursis a few years later, Nizan creates a multi-perspectival effect casting personalities and events in a new light. Hence, the mature voice of Régnier's 'carnet noir', written in the first person, allows Nizan to pour scorn on Rosenthal's misguidedness, arrogance and naivety for the first time. 'Rosen me parle de son "plan"', Régnier notes. 'Stupide, inefficace, toujours improvisé, mais comme il faut que ces jeunes gens s'ennuient!'60 Prior to this, the narrator's outlook had been allied so closely to that of Rosenthal and Laforgue that only the occasional passing remark had permitted Nizan to dissociate himself from his characters.61 Similarly written in the first person, there is also Pluvinage's notably revealing account of the reasons which contributed to his betrayal of Carré. He describes in detail the frustration and enviousness he had long felt towards Laforgue and the now dead Rosenthal in such a way that the reader feels impelled to reassess the significance of all his previous appearances in the narrative. The ambiguities which are created by Nizan's fictional technique are complemented and emphasised by his evident desire to complicate the thematic contrasts of the novel and thwart any attempt on the part of the reader to draw easy conclusions. Indeed, the formal and thematic ambiguities of La Conspiration form a complex synthesis. When the odious Rosenthal embarks on an affair with his sister-in-law Catherine and is consequently spurned by his bourgeois family, Nizan's portrayal of him becomes subtly more sympathetic, despite his having grown indifferent to the ideal of political revolution by this time. Equally, whereas the reader might well have expected the embittered Pluvinage to be portrayed as a working-class hero figure who pulls the rug from under the feet of the young bourgeois charlatans, Nizan carefully avoids any such facile opposition. Although from a less prosperous and socially advantaged background 60 61
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La Conspiration p. 124 The closing sentence of chapter IV subsequently became the best known of them: 'Rosenthal publia dans la Guerre civile des pages qui n'avaient pas de chances sérieuses d'ébranler le capitalisme.' (p.64)
than Rosenthal and Laforgue, Pluvinage is petit bourgeois rather than working class and is portrayed in many respects rather negatively. He had been constantly possessed by an all-consuming jealousy with regard to Rosenthal and Laforgue to such an extent that even his decision to join the PCF had been motivated purely by the desire to assert himself against them. Moreover, taking his obsessiveness to the ultimate extreme, he ludicrously interprets Rosenthal's suicide as an act of provocation towards himself: 'Le suicide même de Rosen [...] m'a paru le dernier défi qui pouvait me venir de vous, le dernier acte inimitable que l'un de vous me proposait [...].' 62 In these ways, Nizan complicates greatly the transmission of any particular ideological message in La Conspiration. Although revolutionary and left-wing politics are frequently subjects of discussion in the narrative, Nizan's own Marxist convictions are hardly detectable in any obvious or unambiguous way. Indeed, as McCarthy points out, in La Conspiration, 'the Marxist awareness is most obviously present as irony.'63 When the reader sees beyond the narrator's predominantly neutral account of Rosenthal's and Laforgue's political projects thanks to the changes of focus and thematic contrasts in the text, this neutrality appears suspect and the narrator's tone ironic. This use of irony, by which Nizan dissociates himself from the naive, unrealistic, abstract and self-affirmatory political ambitions of Rosenthal and Laforgue, is in fact very similar to the technique employed by Sartre in Erostrate and L'Enfance dun chef. By staging the egotistical rebelliousness of bourgeois 'normaliens', Nizan succeeds in distancing himself from such an image of left political activism. Rather as Sartre had felt the need to defend himself indirectly against the charge that his non-committed political stance might lead him to fascism, it would seem that Nizan, as the author of powerfully denunciatory texts like Aden Arabie and Les Chiens de garde, felt it important to indicate that his own political stance was not that of a certain youthful intellectual rebelliousness. Ultimately, it is Nizan's subtle and pervasive use of irony in La Conspiration which constitutes the 'ruse' at once masking and reveal62 63
La Conspiration p.280 McCarthy op.cit. p. 198
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ing his own ideological stance. It is irony which permits him to present political themes in a questioning and unresolved manner such that they do not encroach debilitatingly on the aesthetic qualities of his fictional writing. Indeed, La Conspiration is successful in aesthetic terms precisely because of the political open-endedness which the ironic tone of the narrative permits. Sartre's similar use of irony, notably in the politically-oriented L'Enfance dun chef, places his writing, in this short story at least, in the 'problem-centred' category in the manner of Nizan and Dabit. Sartre conveys an anti-fascist political message in an oblique way, and it is this subtlety of narrative style which ensures that he, like Nizan, avoids falling into a political didacticism which would intrude on the aesthetic qualities of the writing. Sartre's and Nizan's use of irony is a feature of their novelistic writings which invites comparison with the conception of the novel articulated by the early Lukâcs in his Theory of the Novell In this work, Lukâcs argues that irony, which he considers the highest affirmation of freedom on the part of the atheist writer,65 is integral to novelistic structure because the writer inevitably knows more than his protagonist who is fundamentally a 'problematic individual'.66 There is a radical opposition between the protagonist's outlook and the world in which he finds himself, and a fundamental characteristic of the novel is its charting of the protagonist's journey to greater lucidity and self-knowledge. Lukâcs characterises the outlook of the protagonist as 'demonic' because he is on a quest for values which he can never attain fully. Amongst the texts we have discussed, the characterisations of Sartre's Lucien Fleurier and Nizan's Rosenthal in particular illustrate this conception of the novelistic protagonist well. Neither are positive heroes but are rather problematic characters in Lukâcs's sense: there is a disjunction between their perspective on the world and the view of it which the narrative induces the reader to constitute 64 65 66
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In La Force de l'âge, Beauvoir makes a brief allusion to the affinity between Sartre's fictional practice and the early Lukâcs's literary theory (p. 163). Georg Lukâcs The Theory of the Novel (MIT Press, 1971 [1920]): 'Irony [...] is the highest freedom that can be achieved in a world without God' (p.93). Ibidp.1%
for herself. Both Fleurier's adoption of extreme right anti-semitic politics and Rosenthal's urgings to revolution are of a fundamentally ironic character because Sartre's and Nizan's narratives otherwise show how misguided they are in their pursuit of such projects.
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IX. Committed Writing
It is widely accepted in the critical literature that Sartre's growing awareness of his own historicity and developing political thought during the war and its aftermath stimulated major changes in his views on aesthetics. Indeed, there can be little doubt that Sartre's conception of committed writing in particular evolved in important ways during this period. Yet, some commentators, taking their lead from the later Sartre's disparaging assessments of his pre-war political inactivity, have gone so far as to consider Sartre's insistence on commitment after the Liberation as evidence of a sort of paradigm-shift in his thought involving a rejection of his pre-war views on aesthetics, and in particular his conception of writing.1 LaCapra, for example, observes that whereas Sartre claimed in the closing pages of L'Imaginaire that 'il est stupide de confondre la morale et l'esthétique' [/: 371], in Qu'est-ce que la littérature? he expresses the wish 'que la littérature entière devienne morale et problématique' [QL: 290].2 It is tempting to take the latter statement, as LaCapra does, as evidence that Sartre has done a theoretical about-face in the years separating the two works. Developing and expanding on my claims of chapters V and VIII, I would like to propose a reexamination of this area. Whilst I would not dispute that a significant change had taken place in Sartre's thinking by the end of the war period, I feel that this assessment can nevertheless lead us to make an overly schematic opposition between an 'apolitical' pre-war Sartre and the politically committed writer of the postwar years.
1
2
See for example Dominick LaCapra's A Preface to Sartre pp.56-7 and pp.5960, Ronald Aronson's Jean-Paul Sartre : Philosophy in the World p. 142, or Andrew Leak's 'Les Enjeux de l'écriture dans Les Carnets de la drôle de guerre: prolégomènes à une théorie de l'engagement', in Etudes Sartriennes F///(Publidix, 2001). LaCapra op.cit. p.59
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The Ethical Dimension of the Imaginary Sartre's pre-war attitude towards aesthetics, and hence his literary output during the 1930s, cannot be properly understood without consideration of L'Imaginaire. It is in this theoretical work that he proposes an account of the nature of the work of art on the basis of a lengthy examination of the imaginary field. In the critical literature, there has been a tendency to take the claims of this work as evidence not only that literary writing, for Sartre, had little to do with the real, and hence with morality and politics, but also that Sartre at this time strongly favoured the former sphere - the aesthetic - over the latter.3 I feel that Sartre's attitude towards the imaginary is globally more ambiguous than this reading suggests. On the one hand, in the 'Conclusion' to L Imaginaire Sartre does indeed present the imaginary as vital not only to the aesthetic sphere but also to the very freedom of consciousness itself. The disjunction of the imaginary from the real is the common ground upon which these claims stand. Yet, in the long fourth part of L'Imaginaire, entitled 'La vie imaginaire', Sartre presents the imaginary field much more negatively as an evasion of the real which conversely leads to an impoverished experience of life. Sartre argues that those who choose to live in the imaginary are opting for a mental world which is limited and safe because insulated from the unpredictability of the real. It is a world which, 'contrairement à ce qu'on pourrait croire [...] se donne comme un monde sans liberté: il n'est pas non plus déterminé, il est l'envers de la liberté, il est fatal.' [/: 327-8] Examination not just ofL'Imaginaire but also of Sartre's literary works of the 1930s themselves reveals the crucial importance of this negative dimension of the imaginary field. In what follows, I will establish a link between negative repre3
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In the relatively recent volume Existentialist Literature and Aesthetics (New York: Garland, 1997) edited by William McBride, for example, discussions of Sartre's pre-war novelistic works and novel cycle Les Chemins de la liberté do not involve consideration of his developing political thought during the same period. There is hence the implication that aesthetic issues need not be related to politics.
sentations of the imaginary, notably in the short stories of Le Mur and in La Nausée, and the early Sartre's evident preoccupation with inauthenticity in those same works, thereby questioning the supposed separation of the imaginary and ethics in Sartre's pre-war thought. Moreover, building on this, I will subsequently go on to argue that this conceptual association of the negative view of the imaginary with inauthenticity problematises the more positive view of the imaginary also set out in L'Imaginaire, and perhaps even Sartre's theoretical exposition of the nature of the aesthetic to some extent also. We saw in chapter II that in L'Imaginaire Sartre misleadingly suggests in places that consciousness's realisation of its own freedom and imaginative creation of aesthetic objects involve abstraction from the real in the manner of philosophical idealism. His use of the term 'transcendantaP appears to imply relations of verticality which he in reality does not wish to invoke, as does his arguing for a strict separation of the aesthetic object from its material analogon. In fact, for Sartre, our apprehension of say a painting or a symphony does not involve actually denying the physical qualities - the canvas and paints, or the musical instruments - which made those aesthetic constructions possible. He gives the example of looking at a portrait of Charles VIII [/: 351-2]. In order to see the picture as a portrait of Charles VIII, Sartre argues, I must cease to consider it as an object in the real world. The picture becomes a portrait of Charles VIII for me only through the imaginary. Yet, my capacity to see the picture as a portrait is nevertheless dependent on the physical object produced by the painter.4 Imagining for Sartre hence does not involve abstracting 4
Interestingly, as the portrait of Charles VIII is dependent on the painter's physical creation, a loose conceptual homology can be identified here with the classic Marxist base/superstructure model. Sartre conceives of the imaginary aesthetic object as enjoying considerable autonomy from the real-world object on which it is nevertheless entirely dependent, rather as Marxists speak of the relative autonomy and yet reliance of the superstructural, or cultural, field in relation to the economic base. Sartre is hostile to the idea of causal determin ation in the aesthetic field in particular, placing 'a great deal of interpretive weight on the analogon as a feeble point zero of contact' (LaCapra op.cit. p.57). However, his apparent intention to preserve the sanctity of the aesthetic field in relation to the real in L'Imaginaire is undercut by his philosophical realism in
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as such from reality but rather permits consciousness to confer meaning on the physical phenomena it encounters [/: 360-1]. In the case of the artwork, it is only through the imaginary that the subject gains an awareness of the work's aesthetic qualities because the physical properties of the analogon cannot, in and of themselves, Sartre contends, convey such qualities. Regarding the more negative dimension of the imaginary also discussed in L'Imaginaire, Sartre's focus is turned in particular to people, such as schizophrenics and people who daydream, who have opted to live in the imaginary as opposed to the real world. These people choose to escape from the real, fleeing into a more limited and private mental sphere which they can control. What such people find difficult about the real is 'son caractère de présence, le genre de réaction qu'il demande de nous, la subordination de nos conduites à l'objet, l'inépuisabilité des perceptions, leur indépendance, la façon même que nos sentiments ont de se développer.' [/: 282] To these uncertainties they prefer a life which Sartre describes as 'factice, figée, ralentie, scolastique' [/: 282]. Sartre stages this type of limited life confined to the imaginary most notably in his portrayals of Pierre and Eve in the short story La Chambre, and in his depiction of Hilbert in Erostrate. Pierre's psychological condition has led him to confine himself to his room where he claims to be prey to such phenomena as flying statues. He undoubtedly lives very largely in the sphere of a limited range of imaginary objects. It is Eve, however, who is ultimately the more central and interesting character of the story because she makes a much more perceptibly deliberate choice to abandon reality for the imaginary in an attempt not to lose contact with Pierre. She claims no longer to be able to endure the company of normal people: 'J'ai besoin de vivre là-bas, de l'autre côté de ce mur',5 she reflects, referring to Pierre's room. In this formulation, the
5
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matters of ontology. His acknowledgement of the painting both as an object in the world and as an indispensable condition of possibility for the aesthetic experience means that a causal relationship between the real and imaginary fields cannot be denied. '[U]ne image', Sartre writes, cne peut jamais apparaître que sur un fond de monde et en liaison avec le fond.' [/: 356] La Chambre, in Le Mur, p.62
'mur' evidently designates the physical wall separating Pierre's room from the rest of the flat but it also metaphorically represents the radical disjunction of the imaginary sphere from that of the real for Sartre.6 Eventually, when Pierre's statues supposedly appear, Eve decides to make the leap into the imaginary: '"J'ai peur des statues", pensa-t-elle. C'était une affirmation violente et aveugle, une incantation: de toutes ses forces elle voulait croire à leur présence [...] Dans son bras, dans son flanc et son épaule elle sentait leur passage.'7 However, Sartre lets it be understood through the narrator's comments that Eve's attempt to experience the statues as Pierre does is not particularly successful: 'elle se les représentait mal'; 'Eve ne pouvait pas voir tout cela'.8 The weakness of the images Eve forms accords with Sartre's conviction m L'Imaginaire there is a 'pauvreté essentielle des images'9 in comparison with perceptions of real objects. The weakness of the images also underlines the fact that Eve is deliberately deluding herself about the presence of statues in the room. In L'Imaginaire no explicit link between the imaginary and the concept of bad faith is established, but we know from Beauvoir's account that Sartre devised the concept of bad faith some years before L'Imaginaire was written.10 The concept can, I believe, be valuably introduced into the present discussion to illuminate further the negative dimension of the imaginary which Sartre discusses in 6
7 8 9 10
Indeed, Sartre's apparent desire to employ the term 'mur' both literally and metaphorically in La Chambre itself conveys, or at the very least closely parallels, the real/imaginary opposition upon which he insists. By its very nature, metaphoricity implies a rejection of real objects designated by the literal meaning of signifying terms in favour of a semantic construction in which there is an often radical disjunction of the signifier and the signified. The sphere of the signified in metaphors can be seen as closely resembling Sartre's concept ion of the imaginary: the metaphorical sense of a term requires the creative work of the imagination, but its point of departure is the literal sense designating the real - which serves as the analogon. Ibid p 13 Ibid p.74 Ibidp.281 According to the chronology established by Beauvoir, Sartre elaborated the concept of 'mauvaise foi' in the early 1930s [FA: 149]. L'Imaginaire was written in 1935-6.
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L'Imaginaire and instantiates in his fiction. It is clear from Sartre's discussion in L Imaginaire that he is critical of those who deliberately opt to live most of the time in the imaginary rather than the real. Not only are their images more limited and weak than perceptions, but such people are described as 'fleeing' reality, a term which Sartre would later employ to describe bad faith.11 In both cases, that of the imaginary and that of bad faith, the subject flees the reality or truth of the situation. This common ground would clearly seem to suggest that bad faith and the negative dimension of the imaginary are closely concomitant concepts in Sartre's thought. Eve's deliberate attempt to enter Pierre's imaginary world hence proves to be an instance of bad faith on her part. Moreover, despite not really being able to see the statues, she manages to convince herself briefly that she is experiencing their passage and is left trembling uncontrollably even after Pierre indicates that they have gone. What she momentarily achieves here is what Sartre calls in L'Etre et le néant 'la "foi" de la mauvaise foi' [EN: 104]: Sartre explains that although we have ourselves devised the lie with which we deceive ourselves about the reality of the situation, it is a lie which we nevertheless believe. There is a largely unarticulated conceptual link in Sartre's thought between this idea of 'la "foi" de la mauvaise foi' discussed in L'Etre et le néant and the idea of 'croyance' in the Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions. In the latter work, Sartre argues that we often undergo emotional reactions which we have ourselves generated in response to the specific situations that we are in. Our emotional reaction to a given stimulus is a sort of game but it is a game in which we nevertheless believe.12 When I tell myself that a bunch of grapes I am unable to pick is 'too green', or when I faint at the sight of a fierce animal approaching me, I experience an emotional response to my immediate situation which I have chosen in order to escape having to face an unpleasant truth. Sartre describes this type of response as a
11
12
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In Matérialisme et révolution, for instance, Sartre was to describe materialism as 'une des formes de l'esprit de sérieux et de la fuite devant soi-même.' (p. 162) Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions p.82
'conduite d'évasion' and as a 'fuite',13 which are precisely the terms he employs in L'Etre et le néant to describe bad faith. Later, in Matérialisme et révolution, Sartre will pour scorn on the Stalinist Marxist's blind faith in communist ideology. 'Mets-toi à genoux et tu croiras, dit Pascal' [MR: 173], he quips. In this case, the 'foi' of the political activist is similarly, for Sartre, an instance of bad faith because he has chosen it in order to avoid shouldering the personal responsibility which honest and free critical reflection about the political situation in hand places on him. He has adopted the communist world-view as his own without sufficient critical examination of its premises and then, in an emotional élan, induces himself to believe in it. It hence appears that there is a homology between Sartre's conceptions of emotional response and of subscription to ideologies respectively. In both cases, Sartre thinks that if the individual implicates himself too greatly he will be in bad faith because he will be attempting to deny his own freedom of thought. Rather than facing up to the reality of his situation and accepting full responsibility for his inalienable existential choices, he will have chosen to invest his free thought in a deterministic causal process. Emotion and ideology, then, for the early Sartre, both constitute potential obstacles to free rationality. The case of Paul Hilbert in Erostrate is similarly best understood when the link between the imaginary and the concept of bad faith is established. We saw in chapter VIII that Hilbert's mental world is very largely an imaginary one and that he fails to make the leap to concrete action. In his account of the negative dimension of the imaginary in L'Imaginaire, Sartre gives the example of a type of person who he describes as a 'rêveur morbide'. The 'rêveur morbide' with illusions of grandeur ('qui s'imagine être roi') constructs an imaginary world for himself in such a way as to guarantee a feeling of complete control over his life [/: 282^4]. Hilbert is undoubtedly an illustration of this type of individual. He has chosen from the outset to flee the real world into a private mental sphere which allows him to sustain a deluded view of his real situation in the world. As such, he is clearly inauthentic according to Sartre's ethical theory. Hilbert's ultimate fail13
Ibid pp. S3-A.
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ure to make the transition to the real underlines the conceptual association of the imaginary and inauthenticity because, in fact, his planned assassination attempt paradoxically points obliquely towards Sartre's ethics of authenticity and commitment of the postwar years. We saw in chapters VI and VII that for the Sartre of the 'Présentation des Temps modernes' and the Cahiers the concept of action, the rejection of the inauthentic project to be God, and the concept of authenticity form a unity. Had Hilbert managed to carry out his assassination plan, he would, like Nizan's Lange, have broken out of his private imaginary world and into the sphere of action and commitment. He would have attained a form of authenticity. When he ultimately takes refuge in the café toilet, by contrast, he symbolically returns to his private, essentially inactive world. Lucien Fleurier marks a departure from the characters we have discussed in that he succeeds in making the transition from passivity to action although, when he does commit himself, it is to fascism like Lange. At no point in L'Enfance d'un chef is Fleurier entirely lost in the imaginary sphere in the way that Pierre or Hilbert are. Yet the descriptions of his childhood and growing pains, which constitute the centrepiece of the narrative, reveal a tendency towards an imaginative attitude which aestheticises surrounding phenomena of the real world in diverse ways. For instance, at one stage Fleurier comes to believe that he and everyone around him are merely playing out roles. 'Papa et maman jouaient à être papa et maman', and Fleurier is in the habit of pretending to be an orphan called Louis [EC: 155]. When looking at his mother on one occasion, her real appearance becomes the basis for an imaginative aesthetic substitution: 'il avait l'impression qu'elle allait se transformer sous ses yeux en une bête horrible' [EC: 155]. The ironie tone of the narrative throughout L'Enfance d'un chef is such that the young Fleurier's aestheticisation of the real often reads like a send-up of the privileged social condition of the bourgeois child (Sartre's account of his own childhood years later in Les Mots would be to some extent reminiscent of this text in this respect). As he approaches adulthood and comes of age politically Fleurier begins to participate in right-wing antisemitic acts and his identification with the ideas of Barrés leads him to a nationalistic brand of no-nonsense realism which quells his earlier existential uncertainties. 280
We saw in chapter III how the example of the petit bourgeois couple admiring the portraits of the bourgeois leaders of Bouville in La Nausée was an illustration of Sartre's concept of bad faith. The socio-political dimension of this example led us to establish a parallel with the Marxist concept of ideology in the pejorative sense: the couple's bad faith, we argued, could also be seen as an instance of false consciousness. Returning to this example and reconsidering it in the light of L Imaginaire, it becomes apparent that the imaginary plays a vital role in the couple's bad faith. When the couple observe the portraits, rather than simply interpreting them as depictions of a number of middle-aged men, their imaginary projections induce them also to intuit a whole cluster of social values and to draw the appropriate conclusions from them: the men are socially important because bourgeois, and are therefore superior to themselves, and so on. The couple are in bad faith because they are deluding themselves about the real nature of the situation, namely the fact that the bourgeois class depicted in the portraits enjoyed unjustified power and influence over their own social class. But it is their projection into the imaginary which facilitates their self-delusion because it effects a disjunction from the real: projecting beyond the portraits which they perceive, the man and woman each end up forming a distorted mental picture of the actual situation. Hence, there would appear to be the potential for a cross-fertilisation of Sartre's concept of the imaginary with his representations of ideology in his literary works. The imaginary and ideology are concomitant concepts in early Sartrean thought, and they both can also be clearly linked with his ethical concept of inauthenticity. Turning once again to the concept of ideology in the pejorative sense, it is worth noting that the Marxist theoretical schema would be more charitable to the couple than is that of Sartre. According to Sartre's ethical world-view, the couple are in bad faith and believe their self-delusions, but fundamentally they must be aware that they are lying to themselves and are hence responsible for interpreting the portraits the way they do. The Marxist schema, by contrast, would encourage the identification of the ways in which the petit bourgeois couple are induced to react to the portraits in the way that they do by the bourgeois world-view, and would hence blame the bourgeoisie for 281
the couple's distorted ideas about class relations. Setting aside this area of divergence, a parallel can nevertheless be established between the role Sartre attributes to the imaginary (and his instantiation of it in this example) and the concept of false consciousness which Marxists would use to explain the couple's reaction. The concept of false consciousness involves an appearance/reality distinction which parallels closely Sartre's imaginary/real distinction. The Marxist idea of ideological incorporation, like the Sartrean conception of the imaginary, entails the claim that social and class relationships do not appear to people as they really are. The couple's assumptions about the relations between the social classes are nothing short of profoundly mystified. Viewed from the perspective of Sartre's imaginary/real opposition, a '"néantisation" du monde' [/: 354] has taken place, the couple implicitly rejecting the real at the moment that they confer signification on the portraits. What is common to both interpretive schémas is the insistence that the mistaken ideas of the couple constitute a kind of fiction. Analysis of the closing pages of La Nausée from the standpoint of the imaginary and its ethical dimension reveals Roquentin's decision to write a fictional work to have profoundly ambiguous implications. On the one hand, Roquentin's 'autre espèce de livre' [N: 249] instantiates the thematic association of the freedom of consciousness and the work of art established in L'Imaginaire's 'Conclusion'. Roquentin admires the songwriter of Some of these days and its vocalist because they have, he believes, ensured their personal salvation through the creation of an artwork. Although '[i]ls se sont peutêtre crus perdus jusqu'au bout, noyés dans l'existence', through creating this piece of music 'ils se sont lavés du péché d'exister.' [N: 249] Roquentin hopes that writing a literary work will do the same for him. However, his planned work is also a form of 'évasion' or 'fuite' from the unpleasant reality of his situation, namely the all-pervading contingency of the world around him. In an entry of December 2nd 1939 in the Carnets, Sartre indicates that he had abandoned his theory of salvation through art around the time that he gained a better grasp of ethics, under the influence of Scheler [C: 288]. Ethics, in other words, had come into conflict with aestheticism. Roquentin's project stages this conflict, the literary work both symbolising the freedom of 282
aesthetics and being an expression of a new type of bad faith on his part. What are the implications of our discussion of the negative dimension of the imaginary in L'Imaginaire for Sartre's conception of literary writing? Are we suggesting that, contrary to the account of the work of art expounded in L Imaginaire, the real and its corollary, ethics, were in fact central to Sartre's conception of literary writing in the late 1930s? Such a conclusion would be a simplification. After all, in the examples of the negative dimension of the imaginary in Sartre's works which we have highlighted, individual characters have been our focus, not the literary work as aesthetic object. The fact that Eve's imaginary projections, for example, are a case of bad faith on her part does not entail the claim that the reader's imaginary construction of La Chambre is an instance of inauthentic conduct. Nor that Sartre's writing oï La Chambre was an act intrinsically carrying ethical implications by dint of the fact that he was producing an aesthetic object. I hence do not wish to put into question Sartre's account of the work of art in L'Imaginaire, I do, however, believe it to be significantly problematised. First, for all that Sartre conceives of the aesthetic object as outside of the sphere of the real, he nevertheless infuses a considerable amount of ethical and even political content into his literary works of the late 1930s. There is hence a tension between Sartre's aesthetic theory and his literary practice. Moreover, one need only note the intense physicality of the descriptive content of a short story such as Intimité to detect the paradoxical nature of the assertion that the aesthetic is divorced from the real. One question begging is whether for the Sartre of L'Imaginaire the literary work is, as a text, just an aesthetic object. After all, his discussion of the work of art is very brief and the examples he gives concern painting and music, not writing. In Qu'est-ce que la littérature? he was to insist on the connection which signification ensured between prose writing and the real [QL: 25]. It may be that the account of the work of art in L'Imaginaire, if taken to include the literary work, distorts Sartre's actual view of the latter at the time. Sartre's strong tendency towards realism in matters of ontology during the 1930s would certainly harmonise with a conception of literary writing which was less purely aestheticist than the conception of the work of art expounded in 283
L'Imaginaire. I will return to this matter later and defend nevertheless the interpretation that the literary work is and remains for Sartre primarily an aesthetic object. Second, the conclusion to La Nausée is a different type of example from the others we have discussed, its implications for Sartre's conception of literary writing being further reaching. The particularity of Roquentin's planned escape into the imaginary is that he is the only character in Sartre's fiction who is actually a writer himself. He had initially been writing a historical study of Rollebon, and now, having long since abandoned that work, he is to embark on a work of fiction. In his case, the connection which we established between the imaginary and the ethical concept of inauthenticity also has direct implications for Sartre's view of literary writing: the planned literary work is itself the imaginary construction which will enable Roquentin to flee the real, and as such can be seen as an intrinsically inauthentic project. These paradoxes are indicative of the fundamental ambiguity of Sartre's position with respect to writing, ethics, and politics in the latter half of the 1930s. In short, there is a tension between Sartre's ontological realism, developing ethical theory, and growing political anxieties on the one hand and a certain aestheticism on the other which had carried over from his childhood and, as he explains in the Carnets, from the unhappy period following his departure from the Ecole Normale [C: 113]. In the closing pages oï La Nausée Sartre seems to be clinging onto his youthful hope that writing literature could counteract the absurdity and pointlessness of human life. The pre-war anxieties which form the subtext to L'Enfance d'un chef, however, suggest that even in 1938 Sartre sensed the inadequacy of such a vision. With concrete reality threatening to metamorphose from mere contingency and absurdity into totalitarian political domination, the need for a more ethically resolute stance was evident, and in December 1939 Sartre was to bury the idea of personal salvation through art once and for all in the Carnets [C: 114]. From that time on, he would see authenticity and reality-denying aestheticism as mutually exclusive.
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Towards Greater Commitment and Authenticity We have already examined Sartre's preoccupation with attaining the ethical ideal of authenticity throughout the Carnets. But what is to be said of the Carnets from the standpoint of Sartre's developing conception of writing? The particularity of this work lies in the way the diary form sets up a constant dialectic between the diverse events taking place in Sartre's daily experience and the general progression in his thinking. Sartre's documentation of and remarks about camp life with the other conscripts are interspersed with ethical, historio-graphical, and autobiographical reflections, the former, more practical field acting upon and influencing the latter conceptual field. The considerable influence of Sartre's interactions with fellow conscript Pieter on his developing conception of authenticity, for example, illustrates this dialectical relationship. Throughout the Carnets Sartre exploits the diary form to the full, this creating the impression that the act of writing has drawn closer to concrete reality than hitherto. Writing now seems to be a thoroughly worldly activity, and no subject is considered unsuitable or too insignificant for discussion. Writing, for Sartre, now takes on a multiple function. He writes to document, analyse, set out his ambitions, assess and criticise his own thinking both past and present, and urge himself on to attain his goals. In chapter VIII we looked at the way that Sartre's anti-fascist political commitment, although indisputable, was veiled to some extent by the pervasive use of irony in L'Enfance d'un chef. In the case of Sartre's two wartime plays Bariona and Les Mouches there is similarly a clear dimension of political commitment but it is camouflaged, now to escape censorship, by the use of allegory. In the context of the French defeat of 1940, however, the real significance of the calls to resist the oppressor which constitute the central action of both these plays was perfectly evident.14 It is from this time on that 14
In his review of Les Mouches in the clandestine resistance journal Les Lettres françaises Michel Leiris suggested that spectators of the play should follow Oreste's example by affirming their own freedom and committing themselves. ("Oreste et la cité", Les Lettres françaises, 12 December 1943)
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writing for Sartre takes on the dimension of being a political act. Bariona is the first of Sartre's texts which actively encourages commitment to a political project to change the world. It is the first tentative expression of the conviction that Sartre will articulate after the war that writing is intrinsically a form of action, and his first direct implication of the act of writing in the ideological battle. From 1943 Sartre participated in the 'Comité national des écrivains' (CNE) which was led by the communists, and the vociferousness of the anti-collaborationist articles which he penned that year for Les Lettres françaises leaves in no doubt the force of his political commitment during this period.15 It also reveals his developing dialectical cast of mind with respect to writing: from the outbreak of war onwards, Sartre conceives of writing as an activity taking place not only in a situational context but crucially in relation to it. His writing increasingly comments on and seeks to act upon that context, the political dimension of which is increasingly acknowledged. Réflexions sur la question juive, written shortly after the Liberation in 1944, develops the explicitly committed trajectory of Sartre's clandestine resistance articles. Sartre paints an unremittingly negative portrait of the anti-semite suggesting that he is guilty of the worst kind of inauthenticity: afraid of accepting his real nature as a free being in the world, '[1]'antisémite est l'homme qui veut être roc impitoyable, torrent furieux, foudre dévastatrice: tout sauf un homme.' [RQJ: 64] In the 'Présentation des Temps modernes' Sartre theorises explicitly for the first time his growing insistence on the dialectic between writing and the writer's situation in the world. He rejects the 'héritage d'irresponsabilité' [P: 10] of bourgeois writers which he presents as a corollary of the analytic mode of thinking [P: 19]. The writer, he argues, is not abstracted from reality but is '"dans le coup'", a phrase which he had used in March 1940 to describe the type of authenticity to which he was aspiring [C: 393]. 'L'écrivain', he continues, 'est en situation dans son époque: chaque parole a des 15
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There is the notable example of his polemical dismissal of Drieu which combines intellectual critique and personal slander. ('Drieu la Rochelle ou la haine de soi', Les Lettres françaises, no.6, April 1943)
retentissements. Chaque silence aussi.' [P: 13] It is evident from this claim that the responsibility which Sartre attributes to the writer is total, writing now being a corollary of the conception of subjective freedom which he was to expound a few months later in L'Existentialisme est un humanisme. Ethics is centre-stage once again, having been ostensibly sidelined in L'Etre et le néant, and the responsibility of the writer, like that of the non-writer, is vital to the shaping of the course which society will take. The writer, like non-writing subjects, is at once acted upon and acts upon society and as such is a part of the existentialist dialectic of history, the first clear signs of which can be glimpsed in this text and which will ultimately reach theoretical maturity in the Critique de la raison dialectique. Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? groups together and develops many of the aforementioned preoccupations. A lengthy and complex work, it is here that Sartre offers the most detailed exposition of his views of the immediate postwar years on prose writing, criticism, the changing function of literature throughout history, and the writer-reader relationship. The work culminates in an extended discussion of the role Sartre thinks writing should play in contemporary society. The global significance of the case Sartre makes lies in his extension of the ontological, ethical, and political synthesis in the contemporaneous Cahiers pour une morale to prose writing and its aesthetic appreciation. In Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? writing is presented as concomitant with the ideal of authentic ethical conduct sketched out in the Cahiers. Sartre also conceives of writing as a vital contribution to the political struggle for socialism which, for reasons which we will examine shortly, harmonises with the Marxist conception of ethics which we discussed in chapter VIL Sartre initially advances the claim that the signifying character of language ensures that, in the case of prose writing at least, it has a strongly utilitarian dimension and draws us closer to the objects of the real world. The prose writer uses language to designate objects and 'la nomination implique un perpétuel sacrifice du nom à l'objet nommé [...] le nom s'y révèle l'inessentiel, en face de la chose qui est essentielle.' [QL: 18] In the Cahiers, Sartre argues that the post-conversion consciousness which has rejected the project to be God confers 287
meaning on, or 'unveils' being [CM: 502-3]. In Qu'est-ce que la littérature? signifying prose language becomes an instrument in this process, allowing the writer to 'dévoiler le monde' [QL: 29]. The designation of objects is in no sense innocent, however, because nomination necessarily affects the way we understand the object. The prose writer is necessarily engaged in a form of action because he acts upon the reader's understanding of the world: 'Parler c'est agir: toute chose qu'on nomme n'est déjà plus tout à fait la même' [QL: 27]. Action for Sartre necessarily implies responsibility and commitment: 'à chaque mot que je dis, je m'engage un peu plus dans le monde' [QL: 28] His expression 'l'écrivain « engagé »' [QL: 28] implicitly suggests a distinction between the writer who willingly shoulders his commitment and the writer who in bad faith tries to ignore it, not a distinction between the politically committed writer and the supposedly apolitical writer. All prose writers are unavoidably committed by the very nature of the activity in which they are involved, Sartre believes, hence his reference to i e rêve impossible de faire une peinture impartiale de la Société et de la condition humaine.'[QL: 28] It is worth noting, however, that Sartre discreetly amalgamates two distinct dimensions of the concept of commitment here, namely the unavoidable commitment resulting from the nomination of objects in language on the one hand, and explicit commitment to a political cause on the other. It is not only writing that involves action in Sartre's view but also reading [QL: 67]. Reiterating the description of the work of art in L'Imaginaire, he defines reading as 'la synthèse de la perception et de la création' [QL: 50]. Reading involves both unveiling the objects designated in the text, and creating the 'totalité organique' [QL: 51] of the text in the imagination. Ultimately, the completed literary work is a collaboration between writer and reader and Sartre's account of the way the two relate to each other in the process of its creation is entirely coherent with his account of relations of reciprocity in the Cahiers. The writer's text, Sartre argues, is an appeal to the reader: 'l'écrivain en appelle à la liberté du lecteur pour qu'elle collabore à la production de son ouvrage.' [QL: 53] The reader's free participation in the creation of the work in response to this appeal is an act of generosity. It also involves implicitly recognising the creative freedom 288
of the writer. The writer-reader relationship is hence characterised by the mutual acknowledgement of the freedom of the other: 'plus nous éprouvons notre liberté, plus nous reconnaissons celle de l'autre; plus il exige de nous et plus nous exigeons de lui.' [QL: 58] The writerreader collaboration means that both carry responsibility for the work's creation and for the place it occupies in the world. Moreover, as it involves a mutual recognition of freedoms, the work itself becomes a demand for human freedom in general, Sartre argues, and hence by its very nature carries ethical implications: 'bien que la littérature soit une chose et la morale une tout autre chose, au fond de l'impératif esthétique nous discernons l'impératif moral.' [QL: 69] In the above thesis, Sartre suggests that the completed literary work is the highest expression of the ideal of an ethics of authenticity.16 His account presents the work as the optimum site of relations of reciprocity between individual subjects, and hence as a model for the mutual recognition of subjective freedoms in general. As such, it is also the basis for the broadening of intersubjective solidarity indispensable to the socialist project. The creative writer is thus portrayed as the epitome of authentic conduct, but the critic by contrast is presented as engaged in a thoroughly inauthentic project. The critic, 16
However, there does nevertheless remain a fundamentally inauthentic dimen sion to writing as Sartre describes it. We saw in chapter VII that Sartre argues in the Cahiers that, after conversion, consciousness confers meaning on being. Apparently pushing this claim one step further in Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?, Sartre argues that the writer appeals to the freedom of the reader in order to render himself essential to being: 'Ecrire [...] [c]'est recourir à la conscience d'autrui pour se faire reconnaître comme essentiel à la totalité de l'être; c'est vouloir vivre cette essentialité par personnes interposées' [QL: 67]. Hence, through writing, consciousness seeks to gain an essentiality which it otherwise lacks. The objection has often been made to Sartre's philosophy that for all he is critical of the tendency towards the 'sérieux', his own project as a writer was itself 'sérieux', whether it be his early desire to ensure himself personal salvation through literature or his later conviction that he could act on the world politically through writing. It is here in these passages of Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? that an explanation can perhaps be found for Sartre's lifelong project to write. When he claims that the writer seeks to 'se faire reconnaître comme essentiel à la totalité de l'être' [QL: 67], he suggests that when a person writes he is trying to establish for himself a foundation in the world.
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Sartre suggests, takes refuge from his own life in the contemporary world through studying the great literature of the past. Shying away from real passions and conflicts, his predilection for dead authors allows him to avoid taking sides in intellectual disputes. First, the matters on which those writers disagreed are no longer current and there hence appears to be no urgency to take a stand one way or the other. Second, the activity of the critic has a taming and domesticating effect both on the ideas discussed and on the critic himself who becomes as docile as his prose. He will tell us that i a pensée française est un perpétuel entretien entre Pascal et Montaigne', Sartre remarks. 'Par là, il n'entend point rendre Pascal et Montaigne plus vivants, mais Malraux et Gide plus morts.' [QL: 39] Dealing with contemporary writers might prove problematic as the critic would be obliged to implicate himself personally in currently controversial debates, so he prefers to limit his critical attentions to the great canonical writers. Although the concept of bad faith is not mentioned explictly in this discussion, Sartre's portrait of the literary critic bears all its hallmarks. The critic's conduct clearly exemplifies the idea of a 'fuite' or 'évasion' of the truth of the situation which Sartre sees as characteristic of bad faith. In this context, the truth in question for Sartre is the idea that writing inevitably involves the writer in a dialectic with his present situation. Sartre believes that the major writers of literary history demonstrated an awareness of this truth, but that the critic's own approach to writing is founded on a refusal of it, the prose he produces being alarmingly innocuous in its pseudoimpartiality. In short, the critic is lying to himself about his own situation in the world: he tries to hide behind intellectual history rather than accepting total responsibility for himself in his present situation, and he constructs a distorted view of the great writers of the past in an attempt to legitimate his own inauthentic project. In Sartre's account, it is as if the critic, like the 'rêveur morbide' [/: 283] described in L'Imaginaire, refuses the real world in the existential present, in favour of a timeless sphere which he has created for himself in which he can feel secure. His attentions are so exclusively centred on the past that he succeeds in insulating himself from the existential uncertainties of the present. By the same token, however, he also cuts himself off from the possibility for meaningful action. 290
The implications of Sartre's objections to critical writing are farreaching. They are part of a rejection of intellectual liberalism, a tendency in Sartre's own critical writing of the late 1930s, and which he had first explicitly distanced himself from in 'Présentation des Temps Modernes'. Many years later, in On a raison de se révolter, Sartre would link his lack of political commitment during the 1930s to the fact that he was an 'intellectuel libéral de cette République des professeurs' [ORR: 23] at the time. The German victory of 1940 had 'mis en déroute toutes mes idées qui s'inspiraient encore du libéralisme.' [ORR: 24]17 In Qu'est-ce que la littérature? Sartre, armed with a newfound sense of the importance of political commitment, is keen to show that this pre-war tendency has been exorcised from his thought. Moreover, his disparaging view of critical writing is of a piece in this regard with his rejection of the non-committed stance of nineteenth-century writers, whose world-view had also exerted a determining influence on his thinking during his youth. Sartre argues that despite a sometimes tense relationship with bourgeois society, the vast majority of nineteenth-century writers ultimately continued to address the bourgeois reading public. Many catered to the 'idéalisme, psychologisme, déterminisme, utilitarisme, esprit de sérieux' which the bourgeoisie expected of them and their works reflected and served to legitimate bourgeois dominance [QL: 123-4]. The best writers refused to do this and claimed to sever all contact with the bourgeoisie, and yet this refusal ultimately only amounted to an evasion into solitude: '[l'écrivain] invente qu'on écrit pour soi ou pour Dieu, 17
Sartre nevertheless exaggerates somewhat the extent to which his thinking during the 1920s and 1930s acccorded with the dominant liberal tendencies of the time. Like Nizan's literary criticism, Sartre chose as subjects for explicative criticism only those works by others which would allow him to further the development of his own philosophical and aesthetic vision at the time. Be it his approving articles devoted to Dos Passos, Faulkner, or Husserl's concept of intentionality, or his savage critique of Mauriac, Sartre wrote articles only on topics which enabled him to articulate his own tendencies, and his tone is rarely neutral. On this matter, Michel Contât has rightly remarked (during a paper entitled 'Sartre, la philosophie et l'université', at the 2005 'Groupe d'Etudes Sartriennes' conference) that the young Sartre did not read the works of others in order to explicate or teach their ideas but solely as a means to think and develop his own ideas.
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il fait de l'écriture une occupation métaphysique' [QL: 130]. The writer's rupture with the bourgeoisie hence remained only symbolic [QL: 129]. Moreover, his refusal to serve the bourgeoisie did not extend as far as political contestation. The writer 'est si loin de vouloir du mal à la bourgeoisie qu'il ne lui conteste même pas le droit de gouverner.' [QL: 130] Ultimately, Sartre argues, echoing Marx and Engels in The German Ideology, literature, 'du sein de sa révolte, reflète encore les classes dirigeantes dans ses structures les plus profondes et dans son « style ».' [QL: 150] Absent in literature from the nineteenth century onwards was the radicalism of the preceding century and Sartre laments the fact that the writer in bourgeois society never managed to 'faire passer la littérature de la négativité et de l'abstraction à la construction concrète' [QL: 151-2].18 In Sartre's view, the majority of nineteenth-century writers were hence political reactionaries because they refused to commit to the struggle against bourgeois dominance. Like the literary critics he lambasts, they were not willing to implicate themselves personally in the pressing social and political issues of their day.
From Inauthenticity, Intellectual Liberalism, and Abstraction to Contingency and Existential Uncertainty: the Case of Antoine Roquentin I will now return briefly to La Nausée and examine more extensively the implications of Roquentin's attitude with respect to writing as I believe that Sartre's portrayal of Roquentin the writer lays the ground for and subtly anticipates certain key aspects of the aforementioned 18
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The Marxian overtones implied by Sartre's opposition between abstraction and the concrete here is worth noting: whereas the non-committed writer whose works indirectly lent support to the bourgeoisie (and hence the 'esprit d'ana lyse') was involved in an 'occupation métaphysique' [QL: 130], committed writing (which Sartre had associated with the 'esprit de synthèse' and left politics in 'Présentation') is linked with 'la construction concrète' [QL: 151-2].
arguments in Qu'est-ce que la littérature? My analysis will focus notably on the pages prior to and following the famous portrait gallery scene in the centre of the novel. This scene constitutes a crucial turning point in La Nausée as the experience of observing the portraits of the bourgeois leaders catalytically triggers the change in Roquentin which he has been gradually feeling his way towards for some time. Subsequent to his departure from the Bouville museum, Roquentin adopts a new course on which he will remain until the final pages of the novel, the basis of which is his abandonment of the critical project he is working on and his rejection of bourgeois ideology. Throughout the first half of La Nausée, Roquentin's principal activity is the preparatory research he is undertaking for a critical work about the marquis of Rollebon. Sartre's portrayal of this critical project is ironic in tone, and his depiction of Roquentin's intention to write a book of this sort indirectly conveys the uncreativity and ineffectualness of the critic who he would later castigate in Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? The subject of Roquentin's study is presented as innocuously arcane to a degree bordering on the ridiculous: the marquis was such a relatively unnoteworthy figure in his day that Roquentin had first learnt of him only in a footnote buried away in a book on Mirabeau-Tonneau, and the majority of the documents relating to him are to be found in Bouville municipal library rather than in Paris [TV: 28-9]. There are clear indications that Roquentin's project is a fundamentally inauthentic one. He tries to hide behind the personage of Rollebon and the idea of writing a critical work in an attempt to stave off his existential uncertainties in the temporal present. He attempts, in other words, to escape having to face his real situation in the world: Au fond, qu'est-ce que je cherche ? Je n'en sais rien. Longtemps l'homme, Rollebon, m'a intéressé plus que le livre à écrire. Mais maintenant, l'homme... l'homme commence à m'ennuyer. C'est au livre que je m'attache, je sens un besoin de plus en plus fort de l'écrire [N: 29-30] M. de Rollebon représente, à l'heure qu'il est, la seule justification de mon existence. [N: 106]
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The period of Roquentin's study of Rollebon is one during which he is characterised by what Joseph S. Catalano has described as 'bad faith in the strong sense'.19 Indeed, his critical project is partly constitutive of this strong form of bad faith because he is not simply playing out a role, as Sartre thinks that we always inevitably do,20 but is using this role to hide from his freedom.21 In Qu'est-ce que la littérature? Sartre comments that 'la plupart des critiques sont des hommes qui n'ont pas eu beaucoup de chance et qui, au moment où ils allaient désespérer, ont trouvé une petite place tranquille de gardien de cimetière. Dieu sait si les cimetières sont paisibles: il n'en est pas plus riant qu'une bibliothèque. Les morts sont là' [QL: 33]. This comment is part of the portrait which Sartre paints of the bad faith of the critic and is anticipated a decade earlier by the portrayal of Roquentin in La Nausée. The Bouville library is the site of Roquentin's enquiries into the life of Rollebon but also becomes a refuge when his existential uncertainties and the contingency of the world outside grow too acute: Je suis entré dans la salle de lecture et j'ai pris, sur une table, La Chartreuse de Parme. J'essayais de m'absorber dans ma lecture, de trouver un refuge dans la claire Italie de Stendhal. J'y parvenais par à-coups, par courtes hallucinations, puis je retombais dans cette journée menaçante. [N: 119]
As the closing sentence of this quotation indicates, Roquentin's attempt to shelter himself from the contemporary world behind the reassuring presence of intellectual history is not entirely successful. As such, it prefigures Sartre's claim in L'Etre et le néant that although many people habitually live in bad faith they are nevertheless subject to 'de brusques réveils de cynisme ou de bonne foi' [EN: 85]. Indeed, as the narrative develops it becomes apparent that Roquentin, despite seeing the library as a refuge, is growing increasingly frustrated with his critical project devoted to Rollebon: 'Rollebon m'assomme' 19
20
21
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Joseph S. Catalano 'Good and Bad Faith: Weak and Strong Notions', re-printed in W. McBride Existentialist Ethics (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997) p.125 Sartre argues that 'il est indifférent d'être de bonne ou de mauvaise foi, parce que la mauvaise foi ressaisit la bonne foi et se glisse à l'origine même de son projet' [EN: 107]. Catalano op.cit. p. 125
[N: 33]; 'ce Rollebon m'agace. Il fait le mystérieux dans les plus petites choses' [N: 89]. This frustration ultimately culminates in a rejection of critical writing as such in favour of literary writing: 'il fallait plutôt que j'écrive un roman sur le marquis de Rollebon.' [N: 90]22 This movement towards greater authenticity on Roquentin's part is paralleled and ultimately facilitated by his rejection of bourgeois values and dominance. In the first half of La Nausée, an ill-defined feeling of alienation with respect to the bourgeoisie on Roquentin's part is perceptible. There is his notable encounter with Dr. Rogé, for example, who he perceives as the epitome of middle-aged selfsatisfaction, experience, and social superiority. Rogé accords himself the right to categorise Achille as 'un vieux toqué' [N: 101]: 'Le docteur a le droit de parler: il n'a pas manqué sa vie; il a su se rendre utile', Roquentin notes. 'Il se dresse, calme et puissant, au-dessus de cette petite épave; c'est un roc' [N: 105]23 It is in the portrait gallery scene in the Bouville museum, however, that Roquentin's animosity towards the bourgeoisie comes to a head. We have already discussed at some length in chapter III the ways in which Sartre's depiction of the portraits of the leaders of Bouville interweaves his concept of inauthenticity with bourgeois values. We also suggested that the portrait gallery scene can be read as instantiating the Marxist concept of ideology in the pejorative sense: the bourgeois 'sérieux' can be profitably interpreted as a textual representation of the concept of a dominant ideology, and the bad faith of the petit bourgeois couple can 22
23
Years later, Sartre would describe his lengthy study of Flaubert L 'Idiot de la famille as a 'roman vrai', thereby implicitly distancing his approach from the style commonly employed in biographical and critical studies. His formulation suggests that the approach he has taken involves a marriage of the aesthetic field (the 'roman') and the truth-seeking philosophical/theoretical field (the 'vrai'), both of which Sartre distinguishes from the sphere of criticism. I will discuss this distinction in the final subsection of this chapter. Clearly, Rogé personifies the bourgeois 'sérieux'. Roquentin's closing remark here is a noteworthily rare example of Sartre portraying the 'sérieux' as ai one and the same time characterised by a tendency towards abstraction from the real and towards substantiality: Rogé 'se dresse [...] au-dessus' and yet is also 'un roc'.
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be usefully read as an instantiation of the concept of false consciousness. When Roquentin leaves the portrait gallery, his parting 'adieu, Salauds' [N: 138] marks his definitive rejection of bourgeois values, ideology, and inauthenticity.24 It signifies at the same time a casting aside once and for all of the bad faith and false consciousness induced in the socially inferior classes. Roquentin's rejection of the bourgeois world-view, like his decision to abandon his critical project, is an important step in the direction of greater authenticity. What is of particular interest is the way in which these two watershed moments in Roquentin's experience coincide in the text such that there is a strong suggestion of thematic interdependency and coherence. Roquentin's final decision to abandon Rollebon is taken immediately after his rejection of the bourgeoisie: J'ai traversé le salon Bordurin-Renaudas dans toute sa longueur. Je me retournai. Adieu, beaux lys tout en finesse dans vos petits sanctuaires peints, adieu, beaux lys, notre orgueil et notre raison d'être, adieu, Salauds. Lundi Je n'écris plus mon livre sur Rollebon; c'est fini, je ne peux plus l'écrire. Qu'est-ce que je vais faire de ma vie? [N: 138]
It is as if the two forms of bad faith in the strong sense, namely that induced by critical writing and that encouraged by the bourgeois social paradigm, constitute a coherent whole in Roquentin's experience. Once Roquentin begins to question his own freedom-limiting docility with regard to intellectual endeavour and bourgeois dominance, his increasingly subversive attitude towards the one is encouraged by his questioning of the other and vice versa. There is, in other words, a sort of deconstructive dialectic at work in Roquentin's 24
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Such thematic overlaps implicitly problematise the commonly held view that there is little connection between La Nausée and Sartre's growing Marxist sympathies of the postwar years. Geneviève Idt, for example, in her study of La Nausée (Hatier, 1971, pp. 12-3), suggests that Sartre's negative portrayals of the bourgeoisie have 'rien de commun avec la lutte des classes'. This formulation is excessively forceful, foreclosing as it does on the possibility of identifying common ground with Marxist ideology theory.
gradual awakening to a more authentic type of existence. Moreover, Roquentin's dual rejection constitutes more than a paradigm-shift in his ethical outlook on the world as it also carries political implications which subtly link Sartre's world-view of the 1930s with radical thought. First, the implied rejection of the methodology and practice of the liberal intellectual writer shares important common ground with the Marxist world-view and approach to writing. Roquentin's paradigm-shift does not of course lead him to any form of political commitment but it does take him beyond an undialectical conception of writing characterised principally by the inactivity-in-the-world of the writer. As such, it opens the way for Sartre's postwar view that writing is a form of action carrying intrinsic political implications. For the post-Rollebon Roquentin, ideas can no longer be compartmentalised in the manner of the erudite intellectual historian because the writer is in situation in the world and his ideas must be part of an interactive process with the world in the existential present. Second, the implication of a coherence between the bourgeois world-view and the liberal intellectual itself carries Marxist overtones. Classic Marxists traditionally saw the lack of political commitment of the liberal intellectual as an attitude which, at the very least, lent implicit support to the bourgeois-run capitalist order. For Marxists, liberal writing, rather like idealist philosophy,25 involved the erroneous assumption that the sphere of knowledge enjoyed an independence from real conditions and practical activity. It was on this basis that liberals did
25
As we have already seen in previous chapters, for the early Marx these tendencies were characterised by their abstraction from the real which was concomitant with the bourgeois condition. In Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? (pp. 120-130) Sartre was similarly to describe the bourgeois condition and mindset as divorced from practical realities. Viewed in a Marxian light, Roquentin's simultaneous rejection of intellectual liberalism and the bourgeois mindset can in fact be seen as a distant descendant of Marx's assimilation of idealist philosophy and bourgeois ideology to each other in The German Ideology. Marx had similarly rejected both at once in the name of an insistence on the unity of theory and practice, which he articulated notably in the 'Theses on Feuerbach'. In so far as Qu'est-ce que la littérature? explicitly adopts the Marxian position, La Nausée is best understood as subtly anticipating Sartre's postwar stance.
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not see the need to commit to socially and politically progressive tendencies in their writings. What follows Roquentin's double rejection is nothing short of a rebirth as he reawakens to the world around him and to his place in it. Radical political implications notwithstanding, Roquentin does not veer suddenly towards left political commitment however, but rather towards a fuller recognition of the contingency of the phenomena he perceives and an acute awareness of the existential present. In a war diary entry of 22nd September 1939, Sartre was to state that '[v]is-àvis de Gauguin, Van Gogh et Rimbaud j'ai un net complexe d'infériorité parce qu'ils ont su se perdre. Gaughin par son exil, Van Gogh par sa folie et Rimbaud, plus qu'eux tous, parce qu'il a su renoncer même à écrire. Je pense de plus en plus que, pour atteindre l'authenticité, il faut que quelque chose craque.' Ironically Sartre, who laments the fact that he by contrast is 'ligoté à mon désir d'écrire' [C: 214], had in fact staged precisely this passage to greater authenticity in Roquentin's decision to abandon the Rollebon project. Once Rollebon is cast aside, Roquentin becomes acutely aware of the temporal present and of its relationship with existence: 'du présent, rien d'autre que du présent [...] La vrai nature du présent se dévoilait: il était ce qui existe, et tout ce qui n'était pas présent n'existait pas. Le passé n'existait pas.' [N: 139] He now realises that Rollebon had served as an alibi, a convenient excuse for not facing up to the reality of existing in the contemporary world: 'il avait besoin de moi pour être et j'avais besoin de lui pour ne pas sentir mon être'; 'Je ne m'apercevais plus que j'existais, je n'existais plus en moi, mais en lui' [N: 143]. 'Jamais plus', Roquentin notes, 'je ne me rendrai à la bibliothèque pour y consulter les archives.' [N: 142] As he grows acutely sensitive to the nature of existence, the phenomena he perceives appear increasingly contingent in character: [...] ce journal est-ce encore moi? tenir le journal existence contre existence, les choses existent les unes contre les autres [...] La maison jaillit, elle existe [N: 147]
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Taking cognizance of the real nature of existence is also presented as involving a movement away from abstraction,26 as the famous chestnut tree scene reveals: [...] l'existence s'était soudain dévoilée. Elle avait perdu son allure inoffensive de catégorie abstraite: c'était la pâte même des choses [N: 182] Cette racine, avec sa couleur, sa forme, son mouvement figé, était [...] audessous de toute explication. [TV: 185]
Roquentin now opposes things to words, preferring the former, and a rejection of the implicitly rational nature of language is suggested: 'Absurdité: encore un mot; je me débats contre des mots; là-bas, je touchais la chose'; 'le monde des explications et des raisons n'est pas celui de l'existence'; 'Cette racine [...] existait dans la mesure où je ne pouvais pas l'expliquer.' [N: 184] The more Roquentin observes the tree root, the more he has the sensation of being consumed by his awareness of it, almost as if he were one with the object itself: 'J'étais la racine de marronnier. Ou plutôt j'étais tout entier conscience de son existence' [N: 187] If, as Sartre was to claim in 1939, the possibility of 'losing oneself involves being able to give up writing after the fashion of Rimbaud, Roquentin undoubtedly succeeds where Sartre feels that he has not. In the closing pages of La Nausée, however, Roquentin returns to the project to write when he intends to set to work on a literary project. I have already argued that this conclusion can be read both as an affirmation of freedom and as a new type of inauthentic flight from the reality of the situation, there being both positive and negative dimensions to Sartre's conception of the imaginary. Elaborating on the implications of this ambiguity, we can see that on the one hand, the production of the literary work is a form of action which is more authentic than the Rollebon project. It does not involve Roquentin 26
This suggestion that a movement away from abstraction is central to a correct perception of the real lends credence to the link we made tentatively in footnote 24 between La Nausée and Marx's early thought. Although Sartre's rejection of the bourgeoisie in La Nausée does not extend as far as actual political contestation, the Marxian theoretical leanings which would be so evident in his postwar political writings can be clearly perceived even at this early stage.
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attempting to hide behind and justify his existence through intellectual history and, as an aesthetic project, it will imply much greater relations of reciprocity between himself as author and his readers. It is for these reasons in all probability that Nizan saw in the closing pages of La Nausée the potential for future political commitment, as we noted in chapter VIII. Roquentin's planned fictional work represents a reaffirmation of the possibility for meaningful action which his awakening to his situation in the world and in the existential present had opened up. On the other hand, there is also undeniably an escapist dimension to Roquentin's recourse to the imaginary which distances him only further from politics. It is as if Sartre, in his depiction of Roquentin's trajectory in La Nausée, felt able to go some way in the direction of conceiving of greater ethical and political freedom but was unwilling at this stage to advocate active commitment to any particular cause. Roquentin's rejection of the bourgeois world-view and of the Rollebon project are an affirmation of subjective freedom with respect to a dominant ideology and his own bad faith. Yet Sartre, still taken at this stage with the phenomenological world-view, does not seem to know what to do with that freedom once it has been acquired, rather as his character Mathieu does not throughout much of Les Chemins de la liberté. Hence Roquentin, having made his existential discoveries, ultimately retreats back into the safer sphere of the imaginary like Hilbert at the end of Eros trate.
Sartre's conception of contemporary writing in Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?: writing in support of the socialist revolution My analyses of Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?', both earlier in this chapter and in preceding chapters, have included the identification of ways in which Sartre's theoretical claims either directly descend from Marxist principles or share significant conceptual common ground with the Marxist defence of the socialist ideal. In this section I will 300
explore this area further, advancing the claim that the case Sartre makes for committed contemporary prose writing is better understood when considered in the light of a specific Marxist school of reflection on matters pertaining to writing and art, namely that which came to prominence under the Bolsheviks. In chapter VII, we examined the ways in which Sartre's burgeoning ethics of authenticity in the Cahiers formed a coherent whole with the Marxist conception of morality founded on the class struggle and the historical dialectic. The Cahiers of course remained unpublished until after Sartre's death and, for his readers of the late 1940s, it was in fact Qu'est-ce que la littérature?, written a short time before the Cahiers, that offered the only sustained exposition of the synthesis of ethics, ontology and left politics which Sartre was working towards. However, with literature being the focus of this work, the aesthetic field was introduced into this complex synthesis: the matter of the role that prose art, and its production by the writer, could play in the historical process came to the fore in Sartre's global position. The account of the role of writing and literature in the contemporary context which Sartre offers in the long closing chapter of Qu'est-ce que la littérature? is of an essentially prescriptive character. Sartre's primary objective in this chapter is to advocate an approach to writing which he believes is needed in the immediate postwar French context, not to offer a critical account of existing literary tendencies. This prescriptive approach itself exemplifies and emphasises the political dimension of the case Sartre makes for committed writing, his prose often reading like a manifesto for political action. Citing Malraux and Camus as possible models, and referring at length to the prose technique he employs in his own novels, Sartre advocates a 'littérature des grandes circonstances' [QL: 223]. By this, he has in mind an approach to prose fiction which stages the relationship between the individual, society and the historical process. The writer's technique, Sartre thinks, should reflect and convey this problematic, and he should implicate himself in it and the ethical questions it throws up through the very act of writing. The writer is himself historically situated and hence cannot abstract himself from his social context when he writes. The novels he writes should be 'romans de situation' [QL: 224] devoid of omniscient 301
narrators and predictable certainties. They should 'laisser partout des doutes, des attentes, de l'inachevé et réduire le lecteur à faire luimême des conjectures' [QL: 224-5]. Any event depicted should retain 'sa brutale fraîcheur, son ambiguïté, son imprévisibilité' for the reader who the writer should 'prendre à la gorge: que chaque personnage soit un piège, que le lecteur y soit attrapé' [QL: 226]. Ultimately, the reader should have the sensation of being thrown into the world and into history by words which are 'des tobbogans déversant les lecteurs au milieu d'un univers sans témoins, bref que nos livres existent] à la façon des choses, des plantes, des événements et non d'abord comme des produits de l'homme' [QL: 228]. In this final statement, the ultra-realist philosophical tendency of the early Sartre is clearly perceptible. This is evidently the same Sartre who, fifteen years earlier, had been drawn to phenomenology after Aron told him that it would allow him to philosophise even about the cocktail he was drinking [FA: 157]. And also the same Sartre who then proceeded to re-write Husserl's philosophy, postulating a transcendant rather than transcendental ego, in the interests of reaching a greater degree of realism free of idealist abstraction. The Sartre of 1947, whose central concept of situation now incorporates the historical, social and economic fields, wants readers to be confronted with the world they inhabit directly in all its complexity and take responsibility for themselves in it. This position marks a new conception of realism in Sartre's thinking - the Marxist paradigm having supplanted that of phenomenology - but a persisting belief in the fundamental truths which the external objects of the world can yield remains a common thread linking the two in Sartre's thinking. Just as the existential truth of the tree root in La Nausée could not be explained because it was beneath the rationality of language, Sartre now envisages conceiving of books themselves as objects in the world, that is as phenomena situated beneath the civilising rationality of language ('que nos livres existent] à la façon des choses' [QL: 288]). Books, Sartre believes, can only express the truths of the world by ceasing to be civilised documents of human culture. They must become one with the objects of the world, they must themselves take on the status of objects and be themselves part of the composition of the world in all its rawness and uncertainty. This conviction would 302
appear to be a case of Sartrean 'penser contre soi-même', however, because Sartre's mention of books here is evidently not a reference to books as actual physical objects in the world (the claim would be thuddingly banal) but rather to the discourse they contain. It would be a mistake to exaggerate the extent to which Sartre's politico-historical attitude towards writing in Qu'est-ce que la littérature? represents a radical departure from the position articulated in L'Imaginaire, at least with regard to the aesthetic dimension of literary writing specifically. In the later work, both writing and reading are presented as thoroughly worldly activities and yet, on the occasions that Sartre discusses the artwork as such, it is presented in very similar terms to those used in L'Imaginaire, The aesthetic object remains an imaginary construction which lies beyond the language that composes it on the page: i'objet littéraire, quoiqu'il se réalise à travers le langage, n'est jamais donné dans le langage; il est, au contraire, par nature, silence et contestation de la parole [...] le sens n'est pas la somme des mots, il en est la totalité organique.' [QL : 51] The text as work of art is gratuitous and an end in itself. In L'Imaginaire Sartre had cordoned ethics off from aesthetics. In Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? the act of writing carries ethical implications which subsequently come back into the equation in the act of reading because the text, by its very nature, induces the reader to take cognizance of his own freedom: 'L'œuvre d'art est gratuite parce qu'elle est fin absolue et qu'elle se propose au spectateur comme un impératif catégorique.' [QL: 233] There is an important area of conceptual coherence in early Sartrean thought between the beyond-language character of the work considered as an aesthetic object and the beyond-language character of the existential dimension of objects of perception. Just as the rationality of language is an obstacle to the apprehension of objects such as the tree root in La Nausée, so a rejection of merely signifying language is among the necessary conditions for the literary work as aesthetic object to come into being. In both cases, it is the positivistic implications27 of the designation of objects by words which is 27
Simont op.cit. p.86 reminds us that positivism was an 'objet d'aversion pour Sartre dès ses premiers écrits.'
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in question. In Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?, on the one hand Sartre fully recognises this dimension of linguistic usage, attributing to prose writing a utilitarian function which he considers valuable to a realist understanding of the world. And yet he neverthless also favours the kind of writing in which this dimension of language is flouted or problematised. At this level, the aesthetic field and the sphere of the existential reality of objects in the world are coordinate in Sartre's thought. Both literary works and the attempt to explain existential truth inevitably involve language, and yet the object sought is nonlinguistic. There is hence an important sense in which novels and philosophical treatises are of similar status for Sartre28 and are qualitatively different from, and preferable to, non-aesthetic (i.e. non-literary) and non-truth seeking (i.e. non-philosophical) prose discourse. The latter type of discourse - employed by such as critics remains caught in the positivist trap of prosaic language whereas literary and philosophical discourse invite the reader to adopt a pyschological attitude characterised by greater freedom of the imagination or by a greater ability to intuit fundamental truths about the world. Two further points are worth noting in this regard. First, what initially inspires Roquentin to seek solace in the imaginary at the end of La Nausée is not a book but music. Indeed, a passage of some length is devoted to discussion of the recording of 'Some of These 28
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In this regard, a link can also be established, moreover, between these two types of prose discourse and Sartre's conception of poetry. Sartre's famous dis tinction between poetry and prose involves the key claim that the utilitarian dimension of prose writing distances it further from the imaginary/aesthetic sphere than in the case of poetry. However, when the prose work is considered as an aesthetic object, it too becomes an imaginary construction according to Sartre's theory. Ultimately, the question is whether, for Sartre, literary prose works are qualitatively closer to non-literary prose works than they are to poetry or vice versa. The matter of the status of prose writing for Sartre lies at the heart of this question. Our discussion has highlighted the ambiguity of Sartre's position. I have sought unconventionally to develop the case for interpeting Sartre's conception of literary prose writing as tending towards poetry. That is, I have suggested that in the case of prose writing which constitutes a work of art and only in that case, there is the suggestion in Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? that the completed work as aesthetic object exists as an organic totality which is beyond the signifying language which composes it.
Days' which he is listening to for the final time in the café. It is only when he realises that he cannot escape reality in the manner of the songwriter and the singer that Roquentin falls back on the idea of writing a book, albeit it '[u]ne autre espèce de livre '[N: 249]: Est-ce que je ne pourrais pas essayer.. .Naturellement il ne s'agirait pas d'un air de musique...mais est-ce que je ne pourrais pas, dans un autre genre... ? Il faudrait que ce soit un livre: je ne sais rien faire d'autre. [N: 249]
Sartre suggests that our passage to the imaginary is easier and more direct in the case of a non-linguistic and non-signifying artform like music than in the case of literary writing. Prose writing by its very nature inhibits our passage to the imaginary and hence complicates our aesthetic appreciation of the text. Second, when Sartre argues that books - ie. prose discourse should take on the status of things in the world ('que nos livres existent] à la façon des choses' [QL: 228]), what is implied is the idea that philosophical discourse seeking to explain the phenomena of the world might have the capacity to be one with the world itself. The prose discourse of philosophy is employed to construct theories which, as conceptual totalities, can be considered beyond the signifying language employed to compose them. The 'truths' of philosophy hence can (rather idealistically) be seen as untrammelled by the mediating interface of language. When an attempt to explain the phenomena of the world in philosophy is considered to be successful, that is when a 'truth' is ascertained, it can hence be seen as a direct and unmediated intuition of the reality of those phenomena. Such a 'truth' is in a sense one with the phenomena themselves. The common ground shared by the text as aesthetic object and the text as opening onto the phenomena of the world is revealing of Sartre's approach to writing in general. For Sartre, a contemporary novel should at one and the same time invite the reader to take full cognizance of his freedom by inviting him into the imaginary sphere, and plant him squarely and inescapably in the world. Moreover, it is perhaps here in this paradoxical juxtapostion of the imaginary and the concrete that the idiosyncrasy of Sartre's left political writings of the 1940s (and indeed early 1950s) lies. The aesthetic dimension of prose
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writing remains an implicit premise for Sartre even in his non-literary texts. Hence, even in works with a specifically political focus, such as the second part of Matérialisme et révolution and later Les Communistes et la Paix, there is a propulsive élan in Sartre's prose style which betrays a persisting leaning towards the imaginary on his part. It is this dimension of such works which ensures that, regardless of their political subject matter, they seem to retain some sort of idealistic character. Sartre's broad lines of argument often seem somewhat removed from the mundane practical concerns typically addressed by political discourse.29 And yet, there is nevertheless a kind of purity to Sartre's dual impulsion towards the imaginary and the concrete phenomena philosophy seeks to explain which, in its transcendence of constraints, is of a piece with the violence of revolutionary left politics. In Sartre's political writings, the Utopian drive to transcend the constraints imposed by signification is concomitant with and indeed facilitates the expression of a somewhat idealistic belief in the possibility of radical political change. The coincidence of the imaginary and the concrete is part of the role Sartre attributes to writing in the political struggle. For Sartre, psychological movement towards the imaginary sphere via the text is 29
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This disjunction in Sartre's political writings clearly constitutes one of the key motivations for Merleau-Ponty's attack on Sartre in the final chapter of Les aventures de la dialectique, entitled 'Sartre et Fultra-bolchevisme'. When Merleau-Ponty objects that Sartre conceives of Marxist activism as 'création pure' (AD: 140), as 'tout volontaire' (AD: 142), and that he thinks 'en pur rationaliste\AR: 164), it is in part Sartre's persisting tendency towards the imaginary sphere and a certain resulting aestheticisation of political discourse that he is opposed to. Sartre's political activism bears little relation to actual political realities, Merleau-Ponty argues, because it is limited to 'l'action imag inaire' (AD: 248). For the Bolsheviks, violence was not pure but in the service of the truth, but this is not the case in Sartre's political writings: 'la vérité et la raison sont pour demain, et l'action d'aujourd'hui doit être pure.' (AD: 228) Merleau-Ponty hence concludes that Sartre's position is an 'ultra-bolchevisme'. In opposition to Sartre's tendency to synthesise the political and the aesthetic, Merleau-Ponty argues conversely that the two fields are best seen as separate: 'Reconnaître la littérature et la politique comme des activités distinctes, c'est peut-être enfin la seule façon d'être fidèle à l'action comme à la littérature' (AD: 279).
a precondition for the mutual recognition of freedoms on the part of writer and reader, and the relationship between writer and reader sets the example for ethical relations in general. The worldly dimension of the text, by contrast, reminds the reader of his social, historical and political situation. Sartre believes, in short, that through the act of reading the subject is reminded of being a freedom in situation. Sartre's ontological and ethical positions lead him to urge the reader to accept full responsibility for this freedom, and literature hence becomes an encouragement to the reader to take action. As such, it sets the example for all forms of struggle for greater freedom in society. Sartre argues that in the contemporary context of classdivided society, it is not possible for literature to play its full role as purveyor of freedom because the majority of people are too preoccupied with battling against oppression. He concludes that the future of literature is dependent on the overthrow of the structures of bourgeois society and the political liberation of the working class: 'il ne faut pas hésiter à dire que le sort de la littérature est lié à celui de la classe ouvrière.' [QL: 251] Socio-political freedom and the future of literature are hence interdependent, Sartre thinks. A socialist revolution overthrowing the oppressive structures of bourgeois society is what is needed to ensure their flourishing. In the immediate absence of such a revolution, writers should produce works which contribute to the revolutionary left struggle. It is Sartre's belief both in the interdependence of literature and the socio-political sphere and, above all, in the possibility of writing and culture to bring about positive social change which invites parallels between his literary theory and the Marxist view of literature which came to prominence at the time of the Bolsheviks. In his Marxist Literary Theory, Eagleton identifies four broad categories of Marxist theorising on art and literature which he labels 'anthropological, political, ideological and economic'.30 He places Sartre along with the other thinkers of the Western Marxist lineage in the third category, namely the ideological' one, arguing that they 'grant a remarkably high priority to culture and philosophy, and do so in part
30
Eagleton, Marxist Literary Theory p.7
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as a substitute for a politics that has failed.'31 Whilst this categorisation of Sartre is broadly speaking a fair one with respect to his attitude towards culture notably in the 1960s, it is clearly unsatisfactory in relation to his work of the 1940s. Be it the political commitment of works such as Bariona and Matérialisme et révolution or the theoretical case Sartre makes for contemporary writing in Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?, it is clear that Sartre does not think that the political struggle has failed at all. On the contrary, he believes that everything is still to be fought for and that cultural production has a vital role to play in bringing about positive change. In fact, the 1940s Sartre would be much more accurately placed in Eagleton's second category, namely that of the 'political' view of art and literature. Of this tendency, Eagleton notes the desire 'to shape state cultural policy or confound some opposing cultural-political tendency [...]. Cultural questions become, in part, code for much deeper political matters; where your stand on art reflects your position on the working class, on bourgeois democracy'.32 One of the major works of this tendency in Marxist theory is Trotsky's Literature and Revolution, written in 1922-3. Wide-ranging in its subject matter, clear parallels can be identified between, in particular, the argument of the work's closing chapters, entitled 'Communist policy towards art' and 'Revolutionary and socialist art', and the lengthy closing chapter of Qu'est-ce que la littérature? Literature and Revolution was of course written in postrevolutionary Russia, but Trotsky's belief that '[t]here is no revolutionary art as yet',33 and his desire to see it develop, invite comparison with Sartre's argument for which it is an important precursor. The category of 'revolutionary' art, for Trotsky, covers art which directly touches on matters pertaining to the revolution but it also includes 'works which are not connected with the Revolution in theme, but are thoroughly imbued with it'.34 Trotsky makes a distinction between revolutionary art and what he terms 'socialist' art, the former being a 31 32 33 34
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IbidpAO Eagleton op.cit. p.9 Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (London: Redwords, 1991 [1925]) p.258 Ibid $251
temporary but necessary phase whilst a socialist society is developing. Revolutionary literature, he argues, will necessarily involve an expression of animosity towards the exploiters of the working class whereas, '[u]nder Socialism, solidarity will be the basis of society. Literature and art will be tuned to a different key [...]. Art then will become more general, will mature, will become tempered, and will become the most perfect method of the progressive building of life in every field.'35 Trotsky hence envisages socialist art as the expression of the flowering of humanity under socialism, although not as a static, complacent phenomenon: socialist art will also contribute to the continuing work of socialist construction. Sartre's politicised concept of committed writing is a close relation of Trotsky's idea of revolutionary literature. Trotsky's claim that '[a]t present, one has to carry out great aims by the means of art'36 is undoubtedly echoed by Sartre's conviction that contemporary writers should work to raise the reader's awareness of the need for socialism: 'nous devons transformer sa bonne volonté formelle en une volonté concrète et matérielle de changer ce monde-ci par des moyens déterminés, pour contribuer à l'avènement futur de la société concrète des fins.' [QL: 273] Like Trotsky, who rejects the concept of 'proletarian' literature, Sartre is not in favour of the concept of literature written by the working class for the working class. He nevertheless regrets the fact that bourgeois literature has traditionally excluded the working class readership and advocates an approach which gives voice to the working class person's experience and political struggle: 'Opprimé, la littérature, comme négativité, pourrait lui refléter l'objet de ses colères; producteur et révolutionnaire il est le sujet par excellence d'une littérature de la praxis.' [QL: 250] Interestingly, Sartre explicitly cites the example set by the Soviets in this regard, probably harking back to the pre-Stalinist era: 'Nous savons [...] qu'il [l'ouvrier] discute, en Russie, avec l'écrivain lui-même et qu'une nouvelle relation du public avec l'auteur est apparue là-bas' [QL: 251]. Literature for Sartre, then, should inspire readers to take action to change society and should involve relations of collaborative 35 36
Ibidp.259 Ibidp.213
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reciprocity between writer and reader. As such, it is not only the ultimate expression of an ethics of authenticity but is also a vital part of the historical dialectic taking the class struggle as its basis. We discussed in chapter VII the influence which the Marxist conception of morality exerted on Sartre's thinking from 1947 onwards. In the closing chapter of Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?, writing is presented as a thoroughly moral affair ('morale et problématique' [QL: 290]) in part because it is now to be an indispensable part of the proletarian struggle. Sartre believes, like Trotsky before him, that the future socialist revolution should be the implicit premise underlying contemporary writers' literary projects. Writing, then, like ethics in the Cahiers is to take the route of the historical dialectic. '[I]l faut historialiser la bonne volonté du lecteur' [QL: 273], Sartre argues, meaning that the reader should be induced to take cognizance of the fact that appropriate ethical conduct towards others is not possible in the present socio-historical conjuncture. Only when the long-fought struggle for greater social equality culminates in a post-revolutionary socialist society will the reader be able to enjoy non-alienated ethical relationships with others. Trotsky's concept of revolutionary literature, like Sartre's, is prescriptive seeking as it does to encourage writers to join in the political fight. To extend our discussion of ideology in the positive sense included in chapter VII, it is this political role which the two theorists ascribe to contemporary writing which gives it a marked ideological dimension. In effect, they wish to integrate literature into the armoury of the proletarian class consciousness which Lenin and the early Lukâcs had argued was the motor for social progress. However, the subtlety of both Trotsky's and Sartre's conceptions of committed writing lies in their avoidance of any crudely functionalist view of literature nevertheless. Trotsky discusses at some length the matter of party policy with respect to cultural production. He is clearly aware of the difficulties inherent in attempts to subordinate aesthetics to political objectives, and adopts an ultimately ambivalent position on the question. On the one hand, he argues that literature which is pernicious to the revolutionary cause should not be tolerated by the party. And yet, he nevertheless insists that the aesthetic sphere cannot be reduced to the political and that the party should play only a limited 310
role in influencing cultural production: 'The domain of art is not one in which the party is called upon to command. It can and must protect and help it, but it can only lead it indirectly.'37 Art, then, is not politics, and cannot be judged according to the same criteria, or at least by no means exclusively so. Trotsky concludes that 'we ought to have a watchful revolutionary censorship, and a broad and flexible policy in the field of art, free from petty partisan maliciousness.'38 The objection might understandably be raised that such an ambivalent position on art could not realistically be taken as the basis for government policy in practice, but Trotsky's argument, though problematic, is not debilitatingly paradoxical. He simply means to stress that artists should align their global outlook to the revolutionary cause in its broad outlines, but that once they have adopted this basic premise the process of artistic production should be free and unpartisan. The ideological orientation of novels, for example, should be broadly speaking left-wing and progressive but their composition and formal construction is otherwise an aesthetic rather than political matter. Sartre's conception of committed writing is a skilful synthesis of aesthetics and politics which largely escapes the pitfall of reductionism, although at the cost of being rather ethically and politically idealistic.39 Sartre argues that the very nature of literature precludes the possibility of it being viably adapted to serve utilitarian ends. Literature is an affirmation of freedom on the part of writer and reader and 37 38 39
Ibid p.246 Ibid p.248 Certain observations which Sartre was to make in an interview of 1960 with Madeleine Chapsal confirm his idealistic tendency of the postwar years. When asked whether he undervalues literature, now prioritising politics, Sartre retorts that it would be 'plus logique qu'on m'accuse de la surestimer.' (Situations IX p. 15) After the war, he subsequently explains, 'on a pensé que aussi bien que les livres, les articles, etc., pourraient servir. Ça n'a servi à rien du tout.''(Ibid p.25) What is suggested here is that Sartre believed in the postwar years that writing could have a concrete impact on society. It was not that he under estimated the specificity of cultural production in relation to politics but rather the exact opposite. He thought that writing, by its very nature as an appeal to the readership, could genuinely influence the course which society would take. With the benefit of hindsight, he now realises that he had placed too much store by the capacity of literature to act on social and political problems.
311
is 'par essence hérésie' [QL: 256]. The work of art is an end in itself and resists instrumentalisation in the hands of those who might try to use it for their own purposes, be it the bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century or the PC apparatchiks of the postwar years. Sartre's preoccupation with the challenges facing the contemporary writer leads him to devote many pages in Qu'est-ce que la littérature? to the ills of communist party ideology and policy. From the point of view of aesthetics specifically, what troubles Sartre is not just the reigning dogmatism in the party but also the fact that many of the positions it adopts are conservative and reactionary. The party has ceased to be a revolutionary organisation, he objects, and has allowed itself to stagnate and congeal intellectually and politically. As such, it stands diametrically opposed to the project of the writer which is intrinsically to challenge such monolithic thinking by appealing to and encouraging the freedom of the reader.40 '[L]a politique du communisme stalinien', Sartre insists, 'est incompatible avec l'exercice honnête du métier littéraire' [QL: 254]. The writer's production of literary works necessarily involves contestation and is hence, for Sartre, a close relative of the revolutionary project: 'Dans un parti authentiquement révolutionnaire,' he argues, 'elle [l'œuvre d'art] trouverait le climat propice à son éclosion, parce que la libération de l'homme et l'avènement de la société sans classes sont comme elle des buts absolus, des exigences inconditionnées qu'elle peut refléter dans son 40
312
Sartre's objections to the communists are strong and in many ways wellfounded ones, although the commonly held assumption that PC cultural policy during the Stalinist period was never more than crudely Zdhanovist never theless requires re-examination. In a speech of June 1947 entitled 'Le Communisme, la pensée, et Tart', presented at the PCF annual conference, the party's cultural spokesperson Laurent Casanova discussed the role of intel lectuals and writers within the movement. The extent to which ideological considerations limited the freedom of communist writers had been exaggerated, he argued, replying indirectly to Sartre's charges (pp. 5-6). The position with regard to cultural production which Casanova proceeded to set out was far from naively functionalist, in fact being in reality much closer to that of Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? than the polemical debates of the time would seem to suggest. Although the PCF clearly did have an ideological agenda it wished to promote, Casanova argued, it recognised that artistic expression was the province of the specialists and could not be reduced to political objectives (p.8).
exigence' [QL: 261]. Producing literature and fighting for political liberation are hence concomitant, even mutually dependent, projects. The relationship between writer and reader sets the example for the type of ethical relationships which the political revolutionary is fighting for, and the revolutionary project offers literature the possibility of playing its true role as a purveyor of freedom to the full. It is Sartre's perception of such relations of interdependence which leads him to advocate that writers should militate in favour of the socialist revolution in their writings. That is, they should commit not just through the act of writing itself but also by voicing explicit political support for the revolutionary cause in the content of their works. It is at this point in his argument that Sartre himself harnesses aesthetics to political objectives. But he does so, like Trotsky, precisely not to limit aesthetic freedom but rather in the interests of bringing about a socialist society in which aesthetic freedom would flourish as never before and would act as guide to all other kinds of human freedom. Sartre's and Trotsky's conceptions of committed or revolutionary writing can hence only be considered functionalist in a highly qualified sense. Moreover, their belief in the ultimate preeminence of aesthetic freedom reveals them to be faithful descendants of Marx. Eagleton rightly argues that Marx's vision of a vast unleashing of human capacities after the socialist revolution is in many ways an aesthetic ideal.41 For Marx, post-revolutionary social life will be a realm of freedom, or what Eagleton terms 'an aesthetic existence'42 in which individuals are in a position to realise their full creative potential. Conversely, Sartre and Trotsky also share with Marx a scepticism of reality-denying aestheticism during the revolutionary period prior to socialism's full flowering. What Trotsky's attack on Shklovsky's formalist theory [LR: 191-212] and Sartre's criticisms of the surrealists [QL: 185-194] have in common is the conviction that such conceptions of literature which do not accord it the capacity to act meaningfully upon the contemporary world are unprogressive. The ethical and aesthetic ideal of a future socialist society cannot be real41 42
Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) p. 202 Ibid ?211
313
ised if writers fall prey to the escapist (and - for Sartre - inauthentic) temptation prematurely to divorce their writing from the historical dialectic. In the pre-revolutionary context, literature should continue, both in content and form, to express the need for political struggle. We have already seen in chapter VIII the subtlety with which Nizan, in his 'problem-centred' novels, conveys this ideological message to the reader. Sartre's own literary writings of the late 1930s, we concluded, though not politically committed in any obvious way, nevertheless in certain cases constituted a reply to the charge of apoliticism which Nizan had levelled at him. In reality, however, works such as La Nausée and L'Enfance d'un chef speak more loudly politically than this. As Nizan observed in his review of La Nausée, through the social critiques that they contain, these works take on a politically radical character themselves. To cite a further example, there is the episode in L'Enfance d'un chef where M. Fleurier explains to Lucien that he should learn the names of his employees. 'Lucien fut profondément remué', the narrator informs us, 'et, quand le fils du contremaître Morel vint à la maison annoncer que son père avait eu deux doigts coupés, Lucien lui parla sérieusement et doucement, en le regardant tout droit dans les yeux et en l'appelant Morel' [EC: 165]. Here in this brief passage, the 'sérieux' of the bourgeoisie and their social and economic dominance in relation to the working class are represented. Sartre suggests that for the young bourgeois Lucien, the significance of the foreman's accident is limited to the fact that it provides an opportunity to rehearse his future role as a factory boss. Lucien, in other words, is not socially conditioned to apply the rules of normal moral conduct to social subordinates, there being no indication that he is genuinely emotionally affected by or sympathetic to Morel's distressing news. Sartre's radicalism in such works is toned down by two principal, interlinking factors: his pervasive use of irony and his persisting tendency in the late 1930s to an aestheticism which corresponds to the positive dimension of the imaginary set out in L'Imaginaire. Sartre's use of irony in his works of the pre-war period is symptomatic of his hesitation to commit himself actively at this stage to a clearly defined political position. In the above example, rather than express his dislike of bourgeois dominance in a direct way, Sartre conveys his awareness 314
of unequal and ethically unjustifiable class relationships discreetly. First, he integrates revealing information about these relationships into a passage which is ostensibly focused on a different matter, namely Lucien's simulation of personal maturity. Second, the narrator's perspective is wedded to Lucien's such that we have to read beyond what is stated in the passage in order to understand its political significance. Such a use of irony allows Sartre to soften the force of the political content of his text because it encourages semantic ambiguity about the real implications of what is stated. And yet, it is paradoxically the irony itself which, as in Nizan's La Conspiration, is where the political awareness of the text lies: it is only when the reader takes cognizance of the gap separating what is stated from what is meant that she becomes aware of the radical political tendencies of the author. Sartre employs irony pervasively in works like La Nausée and L'Enfance d'un chef not only to avoid more explicit political commitment but also for aesthetic reasons. At this stage, he does not believe that he can express ethically defensible political views directly in his literary works without adversely affecting the aesthetic quality of the writing. Moreover, the aesthetic field retains for him an independence from the wordly concerns of ethics and politics at this time. At least, his theoretical account of the aesthetic field in L'Imaginaire clearly suggests such an independence, although two points should be noted in this regard. First, L'Imaginaire was written in 1935-6 and there is good reason to suppose that, in the light of the war in Spain and the looming menace of Nazism, Sartre's position on this matter had developed by 1937-9. Certainly, the anti-fascist import of L'Enfance d'un chef the work's ironic tone notwithstanding, is hard to reconcile with a conception of art which divorces aesthetics from the real and from morality. Second, Sartre's evident concern that aesthetic qualities should not be sacrificed to political and moral convictions - clearly one of the many ways in which he sets himself apart from the socialist realist writers of the era - was shared by Nizan, as we saw in chapter VIII. Sartre's avoidance of direct expressions of radical left political views in his literary works is hence not, in and of itself, enough to set him apart from Marxism. Ultimately, what does set the pre-war Sartre apart in this regard is the absence of 315
active encouragement to the left political struggle in his literary works. In Literature and Revolution, Trotsky argues that revolutionary literature 'cannot but be imbued with a spirit of social hatred' and should 'encourage the workers in their struggle against the exploiters'.43 Whereas both of these tendencies are subtly expressed in the novels of Nizan, only the former is present in Sartre's literary texts. In Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?, as in Literature and Revolution, the triumph of socialism is envisaged as a victory both for humanity as a whole and, more specifically, for literature which will have contributed to its advent and will henceforth be allowed to flourish as never before. In his analysis of Their Morals and Ours in the Cahiers, Sartre reads Trotsky's vision of socialism as a reiteration of the Kantian ideal of the city of ends [CM: 169]. Sartre is clearly in sympathy with this view of socialism, synthesising in Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? Kant's ideal with the Marxian emphasis on material conditions of possibility and the historical dialectic. Contemporary writers' output should, he argues, 'contribuer à l'avènement de la société concrète des fins' [QL: 273]. The true realisation of the Kantian ideal is dependent on altering the concrete historical situation: 'Si la cité des fins demeure une abstraction languissante, c'est qu'elle n'est pas réalisable sans une modification objective de la situation historique.' [QL: 272] Once socialism is achieved, a literature that is in constant dialogue with its readers will be possible. Sartre describes this literature as 'le monde présent à lui-même', 'la présence à soi reflexive d'une société sans classes', and 'la subjectivité d'une société en révolution permanente' [QL: 162-3]. In speaking about himself, the writer would also be speaking about his readers and vice versa, because literature would encapsulate all that was universally human. Such literature, which Sartre also claims would '[faire] la synthèse de la praxis et de Vexis, de la négativité et de la construction, du faire, de l'avoir et de l'être'. It would be a 'littérature totale' [QL: 238-9]. Rather as Sartre, like Trotsky, sees aesthetics and politics to be interactive and interdependent during the period of revolutionary struggle, he shares Trotsky's vision of a post-revolutionary society in 43
316
Trotsky op.cit.p.259
which political, aesthetic and ethical freedoms form a coherent whole. The emphasis in Trotsky's account is weighted towards the ways in which socialist art and literature would contribute vitally to the ever higher levels of coordination and internal harmony that man would achieve under socialism. However, these achievements rebound on the aesthetic in turn because they facilitate the development 4of all the vital elements of contemporary art to the highest point'.44 The vision of socialist society adumbrated by Sartre makes of political, aesthetic, and ethical freedoms a conceptual totality within which each type of freedom is an expression of the other types and vice versa. Literature becomes for Sartre the highest expression of an ethics of authenticity, and this type of intersubjective reciprocity is facilitated by the socialist revolution; the revolution was itself the outcome of the historical dialectic whose course literature, as a quintessential expression of freedom, helped to influence, and so on. Ultimately, it is not that Sartre's vision is simply reminiscent of Trotsky's specifically in this regard because both thinkers' socialist ideal is evidently derivative of that of Marx in the following key respect: Sartre and Trotsky share with Marx the fundamental belief that in an equal society free of deprivation man will be in a position to realise his full potential as an active, creative being. As Sartre's Cahiers pour une morale were not published in the late 1940s, Qu'est-ce que la littérature? represents a culmination point in his thinking at the time, uniting as it does the ethical, political, and aesthetic dimensions of his theoretical world-view. In many ways, it is entirely appropriate that this moment of global intellectual synthesis should take place in a work devoted to writing as it is clear that for Sartre, whose life revolved primarily around the project to produce books, the act of writing and the all-important writer-reader relationship were both the site of and the model for desirable ethical and political values in general. The written text, for the Sartre of Qu 'est-ce que la littérature?, is the place where the concrete and the imaginary meet, and the act of writing, as an encouragement to the greater freedom of the readership, contributes vitally to the forward movement of the historical dialectic. The writer-reader relationship sets the 44
Ibidp.284
317
example for ethical relationships based on the mutual respect of subjective freedoms, being for Sartre the highest expression of the ideal of authentic conduct. It is for these reasons that, in Sartre's conception of the nature and role of writing, the production of literature is presented as entirely coherent with and necessary to the achievement of intersubjective solidarity and the realisation of the political goal of socialism. We have seen, however, that the synthetic unity in Sartre's thinking that Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? conveys is not just a postwar development because it is in fact the outcome of developments in his thinking dating back certainly to 1940 and, in certain respects, to his intellectual positions of the 1930s. Sartre's early interest in depicting inauthentic conduct which was, in certain of its manifestations, a support to oppressive capitalist social relations, masked a developing global vision which, in its breadth and content, was in many ways harmonious with that of Marxism.
318
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Place of publication is Paris unless otherwise indicated.
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319
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324
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Index
Althusser, Louis, 19, 110, 159 Alienation, 100-1, 158-9,162 Authenticity, 85, 122-136, 192-200, 214, 219, 283-291, 295-9, 306, 316-7 Bad faith, 92, 97-9, 103, 105, 107, 108,276-9,292-5 Beauvoir, Simone de, 25, 56, 127, 181, 241,255,270 Being (En-soil 27, 28-9, 30, 87, 95-6, 149,194-7 Les Carnets de la drôle de guerre, 29, 30, 33, 72-6, 82, 89-92, 96, 98, 117, 119-120, 123-136, 145-8, 272,281,283,284,297 Cahiers pour une morale, 92, 125, 171, 179-189, 192-201, 207-8, 210-1, 214-6, 279, 286-8, 300, 315-6 Choice, 61-3,69 Class consciousness, 36 Class struggle, 35-6 Commitment, 114, 137-8, 140-1, 143-154,283-291 Conditioning, 66-70, 74-5, Consciousness (Pour-soi), 26-35, 42, 59-1, 69-72, 75, 79, 96, 101, 149,167,193-5 Conversion: ethical, 95, 193-4 Critique de la raison dialectique, 47, 67, 72-3, 131, 142, 170, 187, 222-3 Determinism, 34; social determinism, 36,69
Diamat (scientisitic Marxism), 37, 4 3 6, 48-9, 54 L'Enfance d'un chef, 82, 91, 94, 2478, 252, 253, 254, 255-8, 269, 279,283,313^,313 Ends and means, 204-6,208 Engels, Friedrich, 43, 46, 50, 72, 107, 156,211,291,296 Essentialism, 34, 65, 151, 164-7 L'Etre et le néant, 30, 49, 60-4, 74, 76-8, 86, 94-8, 100-2, 111, 123-7, 124, 139, 148-9, 160-1, 184,192-3,277,293 False consciousness, 69, 104-110, 120,280-1. See also: Ideology Facticity, 29, 30,32, 95, Freedom, 53, 59-70, 72, 74-5, 77, 79, 96, 101, 125, 133, 149, 153, 157-161,198,304,311 Generosity, 196-9 Gramsci, Antonio, 41, 47-9, 71-2, 109-110 Hegel, G.W.F. 42, 47, 50, 52, 182, 184-6 Heidegger, Martin, 89, 120, 136 Historical Materialism, 32, 33, 43, 44, 53, 159 Humanism: Marxist, 154, 158-9; Sartrean, 144, 148, 151, 160, 250 Husserl, 26-7,48, 79, 301 Idealism, 26, 28, 29, 31, 33, 37,43, 76, 79-83,156,296
329
Ideology: pejorative sense (bourgeois), 38, 69, 86, 102-116, 212-3, 222-3, 225, 265, 280-1; neutral sense, 73, 222-3; positive sense (proletarian), 222-7 L'Imaginaire, 34, 35, 60, 80-1, 272-5, 281-2, 287, 289, 302, 3 1 3 ^ Inertia, 42,49, 53, 158, 165 Intentionality, 26,27, 28 Inauthenticity, 86-7, 89-102, 102-110, 272-283, 291-299. See also: Bad faith and Le sérieux. Les Jeux sont faits, 35-6 Lefebvre, Henri, 37, 38, 50-4, 159, 173, Look (le regard), 100-1, 105, 198 Lukâcs, Georg, 37, 46-7, 70, 71, 159, 166, 176, 186-9, 214, 224, 270-1 Les Mains sales, 202, 208, 217-221 Marcuse, Herbert, 38, 163 Marx, Karl, 34, 37, 40, 41, 43, 45-6, 50-5, 72, 107, 116, 122, 156, 158-168, 176, 203, 211, 213, 225,265,291,296,312 Materialism, 25, 30-1, 32, 33-42, 46, 79; dialectical, 38, 39, 42-6, 5 2 4 Matérialisme et révolution, 33, 38, 53, 54-7, 68-9, 82, 113, 155-163, 165,168,199,216,219,305 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 47, 144, 171-180, 201-3, 205-6, 210, 305 Les Mouches, 108-110, 150-1, 284 La Nausée, 28, 33, 81, 89, 104-9, 113— 4, 123, 144-5, 156, 243-6, 258-9, 279-283, 291-299, 3014
330
Neoliberalism, 10-1 Nizan, Paul, 231-255, 258-270, 3134,313-4 Parti communiste français (PCF), 25, 37, 130, 207, 209, 224, 262-3, 265,311 Positivism, 31,41 Postmodernism, 9, 11-12 Praxis, 48,157, 194 Qu 'est-ce que la littérature? 27, 111114, 195, 197, 272, 286-293, 296,299-317 Rassemblement Démocratique Révo lutionnaire (R.D.R.), 130, 209210 Realism: philosophical, 79, 132-6, 301 Reciprocity, 87, Reification, 165-6 Responsibility, 49, 75, 126-7,153 Rights, 91, 97, 99 Revolution: political, 44, 68, 155-8, 160, 163, 203-6, 208, 218, 306317 Le sérieux, 34, 91, 96-8, 103-6, 108, 134-5,196,256 Situation, 59-70, 74-7, 98, 131, 1336,171,285 Spontaneity, 42, 165 Stalin, Joseph, 43-5, 202 La Transcendance de I 'ego, 29, 32, 80, 86, 133 Trotsky, Leon, 176, 183, 201-210, 215-6, 218, 220, 221, 265, 307310, 312, 315-316; Sartre's interest in, 56, 201, 208-9,218
Modem French Identities Edited by Peter Collier This series aims to publish monographs, editions or collections of papers based on recent research into modern French Literature. It welcomes contributions from academics, researchers and writers in British and Irish universities in particular. Modern French Identities focuses on the French and Francophone writing of the twentieth century, whose formal experiments and revisions of genre have combined to create an entirely new set of literary forms, from the thematic autobiographies of Michel Leiris and Bernard Noël to the magic realism of French Caribbean writers. The idea that identities are constructed rather than found, and that the self is an area to explore rather than a given pretext, runs through much of modern French literature, from Proust, Gide and Apollinaire to Kristeva, Barthes, Duras, Germain and Roubaud. This series reflects a concern to explore the turn-of-thecentury turmoil in ideas and values that is expressed in the works of theorists like Lacan, Irigaray and Bourdieu and to follow through the impact of current ideologies such as feminism and postmodernism on the literary and cultural interpretation and presentation of the self, whether in terms of psychoanalytic theory, gender, autobiography, cinema, fiction and poetry, or in newer forms like performance art. The series publishes studies of individual authors and artists, comparative studies, and interdisciplinary projects, including those where art and cinema intersect with literature.
Volume 1
Victoria Best & Peter Collier (eds.): Powerful Bodies. Performance in French Cultural Studies. 220 pages. 1999. ISBN 3-906762-56-4 / US-ISBN 0-8204-4239-9
Volume 2
Julia Waters: Intersexual Rivalry. A 'Reading in Pairs' of Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet. 228 pages. 2000. ISBN 3-906763-74-9 / US-ISBN 0-8204-4626-2
