Toward Rediscovering Sartre

Thomas R. Flynn Sartre and Marxist Existentialism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984

Thomas Flynn reopens worked-over ground when he takes up the question of Sartre's relation to Marxism. However, the path he chooses into this ground-the notion of collective responsibility-is novel and serves well the project of bringing out the key issues involved in any assessment of the relation of Sartre's existentialism to his "Marxism," and, additionally, manages to offer a certain interpretation of Sartre's project as a whole. Flynn divides his presentation into three parts. The first part examines the key existentialist notions of freedom and responsibility as developed in Being and Nothingness (BN). The development of Sartre's social theory from transitional works such as Anti-Semite and Jew and certain essays from Situations V through the Critique of Dialectical Reason (CDR) is laid out in part two, in which Flynn also pieces together what he believes to be a coherent of collective In the theory responsibility. ' third part, he judges Sartre's social theory to be " 'Marxist' existentialist," and expresses several reservations about its success. In building his case for the primacy of Sartre's existentialism, Flynn argues for a compatibility between the basic categories of BN and CDR. The central category of the latter work, praxis, is found by Flynn to assume the former work's key notions of individuality, freedom, and responsibility. He goes on to argue that in Sartre's social theory there is "a non-negotiable primacy of individual praxis" (93). This primacy is traced out in both the social ontology and epistemology of the social theory enabling the latter to be characterized as "dialectical nominal-

219 220 ism." Ontologically, social phenomena, such as groups, are not entities, but consist of "relations" among individuals. Social phenomena have their irreducible structures and intelligibility, but their reality is "inter- individual reality." Flynn characterizes this situation as "emergentism." The transition from individual to social is effected through the Third, whose function it is to establish a commonality between two people who can then come to reciprocally accept one another as "the same." As Sartre puts it: "reciprocal ternary relations are the basis of all relations between men ..." (CDR, 111)1. The individuals who by their praxis constitute social phenomena "live" and "comprehend" these phenomena. Individual praxis is not a thing and Sartre's existential humanism, Flynn argues, is carried over into his social theory from its basis in the pre-reflective cogito of the early Sartre to its equivalent in the later Sartre-the "comprehension" praxis has of itself. "The epistemological primacy of praxis turns on Sartre's thesis that praxis is fully comprehensible to itself, a claim made on behalf of the pre-reflective cogito in his earlier work" (106). Both pre-reflective cogito and comprehension are seen to have inhabiting them the "presence to self which is the basis for freedom in the ontology of BN. Praxis is free, even though its freedom is now explicitly based upon the structural and "objective possibilities" of the situation. Flynn thus argues that even when praxis is constituted into serial impotence by collective phenomena- such as class?praxis is always responsible for its situation. This responsi- bility is collective insofar as each individual "comprehends" its situation to be like that of others in the same situation. As commonly lived and constituted, the situation is grasped in comprehension to be dependent upon praxis. On the basis of this comprehension, individuals can affirm their commonality into the solidarity of the "we". But in either case, seriality or group, there is collective responsibility. After Flynn makes his case for the primacy of the existential in Sartre's social theory, he expresses his reservations, which are basically two. While Flynn has demonstrated that Sartre's social theory hinges on the notion of "relations," he finds that Sartre has no theory or ontology of relations, leaving relations with a secondary or derived status. Also, Sartre does not recognize degrees of responsibility. Everyone-alienated worker and capitalist tycoon, their respective families, relatives, etc.- are equally responsible for the social situation. This is tantamount to saying, in Flynn's estimation, that no one is responsible and it leads him to judge that Sartre, early and later, has been inexorably gripped by insuperable Cartesian dichotomies. In order to retrieve what he per- ceives to be valuable in Sartre's analyses, Flynn offers a sympathic chapter, "Collective Responsibility and the Ethical Imagination" in