remains to be seen. But it is already clear that the elements of its
conception are germinating in the young conscript’s mind. So let us
consider each in view of its contribution to his emerging political
(and ethical) thought.
Objective possibilityThis expression, formulated by Max Weber, denotes the extramental
phenomena that both limit and foster our actions. One of Weber’s
examples was that the firing of shots on a street in Munich served merely
to occasion a revolution that was objectively possible (waiting to
happen), whereas a similar incident elsewhere and at another time might
have gone unnoticed. In contrast, one might agree with Marx that the
Paris Commune failed because it was objectively impossible; that is, the
time was not yet “ripe.” In theWar Diaries, Sartre calls such objective
possibilities “exigencies,” denoting “objects that demand to be realized”
(WD 39 ). Marx had a keen sense of objective possibility and especially
impossibility, though he did not employ the term. Of its several uses, its
original meaning applies to the sociohistorical realm, where it refers to
the set of socioeconomic conditions that make some projects possible
and render others impossible. An application of Marxist theory to
Sartrean “situation” lies behind Sartre’s remark that “it is history which
shows some the exits and makes others cool their heels before closed
doors.”^19 By the time he makes that claim, inThe Communists and Peace
( 1952 ), Sartre is in league with the PCF, though, as ever, in his own way.
The point is that Sartre’s growing awareness of objective possibility
thickens his sense of “freedom” from a quasi-Stoic “freedom to think
otherwise” (what he called “freedom as the definition of man” in his
“Existentialism is a Humanism” lecture and which we have termed
“noetic” freedom) to a full-fledged notion of “positive” or “concrete”
freedom that requires the change of socioeconomic conditions which at
present limit one’s concrete possibilities. We recognize this as the think-
ing behind the claim made in Sartre’s famous but unfortunate public
lecture, “Is Existentialism a Humanism?” that no one can be concretely
free unless everyone is free.
(^19) CP 80.
Humanisms and the political 291