Critique of Dialectical Reason, (French: Critique de la raison dialectique) (1960), (Volume I: Theory of Practical Ensembles)[1] was the last of Jean-Paul Sartre's major philosophical works. It attempts to use Existentialism as a foundational contribution to Marxism as described in Search for a Method, both of which were written as a common manuscript of some 755 pages with Sartre intending the Critique to logically precede Search.[2]
The second volume, while based on a manuscript which is widely held to be "incomplete", is the more substantive part of the overall work, published posthumously in French in 1985 and in English in 1992.
Sartre is quoted as having said this was the principal of his two philosophical works for which he wished to be remembered.[3][4]
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In his works prior the the Critique, and its prelude Search for a Method, Sartre analysis and finds the essential nature of Man to be a being "condemned" to freedom, responsible fully in the final analysis for his choices, contingent but essentially undetermined. In the Critique he approaches this being from the other direction, as a social being who is the agent and result of "totalisation", the sum of human development as it is manifest at a given time.
By using events of the French Revolution and other historical occasions (including the notion that the endowment by Europeans of certain metals with a "precious" value led inexorably to slavery), Sartre attempted to show how what we call class is a special instance of a human grouping, or rather several levels of human groupings (seriality). He preceded this with complex explanations of groupings of increasing sophistication, ranging from a queue at a bus stop to institutions.
Excerpts from Sartre's work:
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