farewell essay, ostensibly a comment on Malraux’sLe Muse ́e imaginaire
but taken to be his response toWhat is Literature?was considerably
more moderate in tone. Let us again select several examples from his
“Ultra-Bolshevism” chapter that raise issues which Sartre will address
in theCritique.
One: Merleau-Ponty argues that Sartre cannot achieve a genuine
(Marxian?) dialectic because he lacks a concept of what Luka ́cs after
Weber called “objective possibility” to provide the negative dimension
(counterfinality?) as well as themediationto negate that negation. Conse-
quently, he leaves us with pure fact and arbitrary decision – Voluntarism
(where pure action is simply force). “He never evokes the basic Marxist
hope of resolution intrue action, that is to say, action fitted to internal
relations of the historical situation, which await nothing but action to
‘take,’ to constitute a form in movement. In other words, Sartre never
speaks of revolution, for the truth to be made is in Marxist language
precisely the revolution” (Adventures of the Dialectic 122 ).
For a brief rejoinder, Sartre might have cited a text that we recognize
fromCommunists and Peace: “It is history which shows some the exits
and makes others cool their heels before closed doors” (CP 80 ). This will
be elaborated both inSearch for a Methodand in theCritique, but it was
available to Merleau-Ponty if he had read that text more carefully.
One gets the impression that he read this and other essays in the light
ofBeing and Nothingness, where objective possibility is clearly absent.
We shall see an entire section of “Search” devoted to “The Problem
of Mediations.”
Two: what distinguishes Sartre from Marxism most obviously is
his philosophy of the Cogito versus Marx’s philosophy of praxis,
but what distinguishes them fundamentally, Merleau-Ponty insists, is
their respective philosophies oftime: “Sartre’s entire theory of the Party
and of class is derived from his philosophy of fact, of consciousness,
and beyond fact and consciousness, from his philosophy of time”
(Adventures of the Dialectic 105 ). It is the pointillism of time, its unex-
tended “moments” that make Sartrean conversion a constant possibility
and while rendering fundamental “choice” an absolute beginning
(Adventures of the Dialectic 129 – 132 ).
Now Sartre had been mentioning “praxis” for years, though it came to
the fore with the concept of a literature of praxis inWhat is Literature?
(WL 194 ff.) And it is mentioned occasionally in theNotebooks, though
320 A theory of history:Search for a Method