trying to find their way around Denmark with a map of the world
on which the country appears as the size of a pinhead. Raymond
Aron, who considered Sartre “the most Germanic of French philoso-
phers,” called theCritique“a sort of baroque monument, overwhelm-
ing and almost monstrous.”^3 Still, he devoted his Gifford lectures
( 1962 and 1965 ) and a year-long course at the Sorbonne ( 1966 – 1967 )
to the book. And it has been rightly called “a landmark in modern
social thought ...a turning point in the thinking of our time”
(Raymond Williams in the Guardian). Significantly, Claude Le ́vi-
Strauss, who devoted the final chapter of his famousThe Savage
Mindto theCritique, also lectured on the text. As the leading struc-
turalist-anthropologist of his day, he and the movement which he
represented were forces to be reckoned with. Sartre used a number of
structuralist code words like “signifier” and “synchronic/diachronic”
in theCritique, both to show that there was considerable room for
structure in his thought (though he located it in the realm of the
practico-inert and limited its method to analytic reason) and especially
to defend the primacy of free organic practice, which is the existential
nonnegotiable of Sartre’s praxis philosophy.
After considering Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Sartre’s feeble
social ontology inAdventures of the Dialectic,onecanimagineSartre
writing theCritiquewith Merleau-Ponty’s book at his side. Whether it
be the dialectical notion of time or the use of “interworld” or any of
the other expressions and ideas fromAdventures that are adopted
and/or “corrected” in theCritique, this major work can be seen as a
response to his former friend and colleague atLTM.Ofcourseitis
more than that. But the “actuality” of this phenomenon helps to
situate the text and Sartre’s writing it “at full gallop” (with the aid
of drugs to support the intensity of his work).^4 So let us consider
several of the terms that Sartre introduces in the process of grounding
a dialectical, structural anthropology – and the theory of history that
it supports.
(^3) HDVxix.
(^4) On the drugs Sartre used to support his intense work schedule, seeLifeindex, s.v. “Sartre,
drugs taken by.” Most frequently mentioned, in addition to alcohol and tobacco, was
Corydrane (a mixture of aspirin and amphetamines). For years available over the counter,
Corydrane was banned in France as a toxic product in 1971.
336 Individuals and groups:Critique of Dialectical Reason