Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason ranks with Being and Nothingness as a work of major philosophical significance, but it has been largely neglected. The first volume, published in 1960, was dismissed as a Marxist work at a time when structuralism was coming into vogue; the incomplete second volume has only recently been published in France. In this commentary on the first volume, Joseph S. Catalano restores the Critique to its deserved place among Sartre’s works and within philosophical discourse as a whole. Sartre attempts one of the most needed tasks of our times, Catalano asserts—the delivery of history into the hands of the average person. Sartre’s concern in the Critique is with the historical significance of everyday life. Can we, he asks, as individuals or even collectively, direct the course of our history? A historical context for our lives is given to us at birth, but we sustain that context with even our most mundane actions—buying a newspaper, waiting in line, eating a meal. In looking at history, Sartre argues, reason can never separate the historical situation of the investigator from the investigation. Thus reason falls into a dialectic, always depending upon the past for guidance but always being reshaped by the present. Clearly showing the influence of Marx on Sartre’s thought, the Critique adds the historical dimension lacking in Being and Nothingness. In placing the Critique within the corpus of Sartre’s philosophical writings, Catalano argues that it represents a development rather than a break from Sartre’s existentialist phase. Catalano has organized his commentary to follow the Critique and has supplied clear examples and concrete expositions of the most difficult ideas. He explicates the dialogue between Marx and Sartre that is internal to the text, and he also discusses Sartre’s Search for Method, which is published separately from the Critique in English editions.

During the Algerian War Jean-Paul Sartre reappraised his own philosophical and political thought and wrote it up as a critique of dialectical reason. In this first volume of his writings a new introduction has been added by Frederic Jameson.

At the height of the Algerian war, Jean-Paul Sartre embarked on a fundamental reappraisal of his philosophical and political thought. The result was the Critique of Dialectical Reason, an intellectual masterpiece of the twentieth century, now republished with a major original introduction by Fredric Jameson. In it, Sartre set out the basic categories for the renovated theory of history that he believed was necessary for post-war Marxism. Sartre's formal aim was to establish the dialectical intelligibility of history itself, as what he called 'a totalisation without a totaliser'. But, at the same time, his substantive concern was the structure of class struggle and the fate of mass movements of popular revolt, from the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century to the Russian and Chinese revolutions in the twentieth: their ascent, stabilisation, petrification and decline, in a world still overwhelmingly dominated by scarcity.

From one of the 20th century’s most profound philosophers and writers, comes a thought provoking essay that seeks to reconcile Marxism with existentialism. Exploring the complicated relationship the two philosophical schools of thought have with one another, Sartre supposes that the two are in fact compatible and complimentary towards one another, with poignant analysis and reasoning. An important work of modern philosophy, Search for a Method has a major influence on the current perceptions of existentialism and Marxism. “This is the most important philosophical work by Sartre to be translated since Being and Nothingness.”—James Collings, America

A reading of Sartre's later works, charting his transformation from existentialist to committed Marxist defender.

Focusing on the critical postures of Hegel, Marx, and a series of twentieth-century intellectuals, including Sartre, Adorno, and C. L. R. James, this book explores what dialectical thinking entails and how such thinking might speak to the lived realities of the contemporary political moment. What is revealed is not a formal method or a grand philosophical system, but rather a reflective energy or disposition—a dialectical spirit of critique—that draws normative sustenance from an emancipatory moral vision but that remains attuned principally to conflict and tension, and to the tragic uncertainties of political life. In light of the unique challenges of the late-modern age, as theorists and citizens struggle to sustain an active and coherent critical agenda, In the Spirit of Critique invites serious reconsideration of a rich and elusive intellectual tradition.