Céline Marty, ’Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason’

’Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason: a social theory of the subject useful to criticise contemporary capitalism’ A paper from the Royal Holloway Centre for Continental Philosophy’s Sartre Now! Workshop, April 4th 2022, by Céline Marty (Université de Franche-Comté). Abstract This paper argues that Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason presents many methodological thesis useful for current critics of capitalism. The philosophical work of André Gorz, who was very close to Sartre, shows how Materialist Existentialism can criticize the assignment of the subject and its reduction to his social function - especially to its job - and extend the understanding of the subject to other material conditions of his existence (his communities and his means of living). In Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre intends to adjust his concept of freedom with concrete social reality. He thus aims to epistemologically ground Marxism, “the philosophy of our time”, through the metaphysical and epistemological theory of Existentialism. He criticized the Marxists of his time, especially Lukacs, for not explaining how individuals make history, for lack of a theory of the subject. The philosophy of history must clear up why individuals take collective action. Therefore Sartre constructs a theory of praxis which is alienated by contact with others’ praxis and matter, i.e the reified product of the other praxis. The “practico-inert” is the passive and anonymous form of individual alienation. Individuals can only overcome alienation through the collective action of the “groups-in-fusion” in which individuals are brought together by a common cause. May 1968 would have embodied this group-in-fusion. This colossal philosophical work is little read and commented on today, although its Materialist Existentialism is fertile for social philosophy. It allows indeed for the justification of a social theory based on the subject. It is the only atom of social reality which then constitutes collective action, social groups and classes, but which retains its freedom and can always extract itself from it. In my doctoral research on André Gorz, I show how he inherits Marxist Existentialism from Sartre. Existentialism serves to justify the updating and adaptation of political project of emancipation to real subjective aspirations, which exist without always being translated into concrete projects by unions or political parties. His existentialism is methodologically nourished by the “sociology of the actor”, developed in France by Alain Touraine, which opposes the functionalism of the Frankfurt School. Gorz particularly criticises Habermas for reducing the subject to its social function in the capitalist system, i.e his job. This prevents him from perceiving and explaining the subject’s feeling of being out of step with his job and the resulting aspirations, in particular the desire to develop autonomous activities that are not reduceable to economic activities. In 1980 Gorz in Farewell to the Working Class suggests that a ’non-class of non-workers’ has recently emerged as a result of recent transformations in industrial production, which has reduced the working class and led to the emergence of employees or part-time workers. They do not recognise themselves in their jobs and refuse to be assigned to them, as Sartre’s barista is, despite himself, in Being and Nothingness. They claim different aspirations than those satisfied by employment. This paradoxical class continues to grow today, which raises the question: what can the Existentialist criticism of current capitalism and the Existentialist project of emancipation be today?