later described in theCritiqueas “simply the translucidity of praxis
to itself ” (CDR i: 74 ). Because prereflective consciousness is future-
oriented, it fits well with Sartre’s notion of the dialectic. InSearch for
a Methodhe will speak of the “dialectical determination ofrealtempor-
ality (that is, of the true relation of men to their past and their
future)”...explaining that “dialectic as a movement of reality collapses
if time is not dialectic; that is, if we refuse to recognize a certain action
of the future as such” (SM 92 n.).
Three, and finally: toward the end of his lecture Sartre proposes a
“synthesis of the contemplative and nondialectical consciousness of
Husserl, who alone leads us to the contemplation of essences, with the
activity of the dialectical project – but without consciousness, and hence
without foundation – that we find in Heidegger, where we see, on the
contrary, that the first element is transcendence” ( 132 b).^7 But it seems
that Sartre is becoming more Hegelian in the discussion when he
reaffirms in response to an intervention by Julien Benda: “When I said
that thecogitoas an instantaneous truth does not achieve truth properly
so called, and that, in agreement with Hegel, truth properly so called has
become, it is clearly understood that I agree with you: truth is becoming”
( 135 b). But he turns pragmatic at this point and warns that if one should
need a totality of becoming in order to judge, “we would fail precisely
for lack of criteria.” Citing the question of whether Hitler was right or
wrong, he concludes:
We have an absolute need for criteria both for action and for life in general. We need
a starting point: this is true, that is false; we need certitudes. It is impossible that a
man should operate on the basis of a simple moral probability when he asks other
men to give their lives, as he might have done during the war or the occupation.
I believe we have need of both: a becoming truth and, nevertheless, a certitude
such that one can judge it. And I believe thatif one reintegrates temporality into the
categories, that is, if one notices the grasp of consciousness by reflection is not the
grasp of a snapshot, but of a reality which has a past and a future, then a temporal
truth is possible, often probable, but it sometimes carries an apodicticity which does
not depend on the totality of history or the sciences.
(CSKS 135 b– 136 a, emphasis added)
This is an example of what I have called Sartre’s “two epistemologies,
the one a phenomenological epistemology of vision, modeled on
(^7) See Jean-Paul Sartre,TE 41 and 66.
318 A theory of history:Search for a Method