order to get a perspective on it – not simply a theoretical viewpoint but
“an indissoluble linking of understanding [compre ́hension] and action”
(MR 235 ). In theCritique, Sartre will describe “comprehension” as the
“totalizing grasp of any praxis [human activity in its sociohistorical
context] in so far as it is intentionally produced by its author or
authors” (CDRi: 776 ;CRDi: 190 , trans. emended).
Revolutionary thinking expresses a new humanism. The shout that
“we too are men,” which echoes among the revolutionaries, Sartre will
hear voiced on several occasions, not only by the economically exploited
but by the colonized and the racially oppressed. What is now at issue
and will continue to be is a conflict of “humanisms.” All of these forms
of injustice exhibit a kind of racist bias, as that plaintive cry attests.
Bringing the ontology of Being and Nothingness to bear on the
demands of an exploitative society, Sartre lays out the plan for his future
social theory: “It is the elucidation of the new ideas of ‘situation’ and
of ‘being-in-the-world’ that revolutionary behavior specifically calls for”
(MR 253 ). And because this new humanism is grounded on freedom
and not the recognition of historical necessity – as “Marxist economism
would have us believe” – its future is possible but not guaranteed.
“Precisely because man is free, the triumph of socialism is not at all
certain” (MR 253 ).
What is Literature?
Les Temps Modernes, like Sartre himself, was committed to politics,
literature and what the French callles sciences humaines, that we saw
included academic anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, linguistics,
history and, of course, philosophy.^37 Several of his major works appeared
initially either in part or entirely in the journal.What is Literature?was
serialized over six monthly issues. Despite its occasional errors of fact
and lax copy-editing (which seemed to concern Sartre less as the years
went on), this is recognized as a major piece of literary criticism.
(^37) For charts of the relative percentages of space accorded each field, including the other arts
such as cinema, music and theater, over the first four decades of the journal, see Howard
Davies,Sartre and “Les Temps Modernes”(Cambridge University Press, 1987 ), appendices
3 and 4 , 218 – 226.
252 Existentialism: the fruit of liberation