Critique of Dialectical Reason
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Featured: A Scheme for abolishing all Words is one of the wittiest and smartest comments on semantics. (Illustration: extreme close-up from the movie "The Big Swallow" (1901), produced and directed by James Williamson (1855-1933) |
Critique of Dialectical Reason, originally Critique de la raison dialectique (1960), was the last of Sartre's major philosophical works: it attempted to reconcile Marxism and Existentialism. 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. He preceded this with complex explanations of groupings of increasing sophistication, ranging from a queue at a bus stop to institutions.
A second and incomplete volume with emphasis on the Stalinization of the Bolshevik revolution was published in French in 1985 and in English in 1992.
