Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 The childhood of a genius
- 2 An elite education: student, author, soldier, teacher
- 3 Teaching in the lycée, 1931–1939
- 4 First triumph: The Imagination
- 5 Consciousness as imagination
- 6 The necessity of contingency: Nausea
- 7 The war years, 1939–1944
- 8 Bad faith in human life: Being and Nothingness
- 9 Existentialism: the fruit of liberation
- 10 Ends and means: existential ethics
- 11 Means and ends: political existentialism
- 12 A theory of history: Search for a Method
- 13 Individuals and groups: Critique of Dialectical Reason
- 14 A second ethics?
- 15 Existential biography: Flaubert and others
- Conclusion: the Sartrean imaginary, chastened but indomitable
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
13 - Individuals and groups: Critique of Dialectical Reason
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 The childhood of a genius
- 2 An elite education: student, author, soldier, teacher
- 3 Teaching in the lycée, 1931–1939
- 4 First triumph: The Imagination
- 5 Consciousness as imagination
- 6 The necessity of contingency: Nausea
- 7 The war years, 1939–1944
- 8 Bad faith in human life: Being and Nothingness
- 9 Existentialism: the fruit of liberation
- 10 Ends and means: existential ethics
- 11 Means and ends: political existentialism
- 12 A theory of history: Search for a Method
- 13 Individuals and groups: Critique of Dialectical Reason
- 14 A second ethics?
- 15 Existential biography: Flaubert and others
- Conclusion: the Sartrean imaginary, chastened but indomitable
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Volume i, Theory of Practical Ensembles
Sartre defends the published order of Search for a Method followed by Critique of Dialectical Reason in his preface to the first edition of the Critique:
I fear that the two works included in this volume may appear to be unequal in importance and scope. Logically, the second should have come before the first, since it is intended to supply its critical foundations. But I was afraid that this mountain of notes might seem to have brought forth a mouse … Moreover, since, the second work did in fact grow from the first, it seemed to preserve the chronological order, which, from a dialectical perspective, is always the most significant.
(CDR 2nd edn., annexe 821)Given that Sartre later described The Family Idiot as the sequel to Search for a Method, and in view of the numerous references to Flaubert that punctuate both SM and CDR, the question arises whether the progressive-regressive method introduced in SM and soon to be observed in The Family Idiot will map over the dialectic in the Critique – in effect, whether it is synonymous with or at least complementary to the method used in that work.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- SartreA Philosophical Biography, pp. 334 - 354Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014