because that is who he was but because that is who he made himself
to be in circular Incarnation.^21
The Intelligibility of History
The editor of this volume, Arlette Elkaı ̈me-Sartre, observed that “since
History [with a HegelianH] is born and develops in the permanent
framework of a field of tension engendered by scarcity, reflecting on
its intelligibility involves first answering the preliminary question: are
struggles intelligible?” (CDRii:x). The opening example of the boxing
match viewed from either an evolving macro perspective or “com-
pressed “ into an increasingly micro focus was meant to illustrate
the “dialectical” intelligibility of interpersonal relations in their socio-
historical context. We have discussed this combination of historical
materialism (Marxism) and existential psychoanalysis in Sartre’s method
since the mid 1940 s. By the time he wrote the “biography” of Jean
Genet ( 1952 ), we saw that Sartre was willing to admit: “I have tried to
do the following: to indicate the limit of psychoanalytic interpretation
and Marxist explanation and to demonstrate that freedom alone can
account for a person in his totality (SG 584 ). Of course, we have stressed
Sartre’s growing sense of social conditioning on our choices (their “bases
and structures”). As his attention turned to the positive role of the
“givens” of our situated being in limiting and fostering our choices,
non-Marxist considerations entered the picture. Thus, he could acknow-
ledge in an interview in 1975 that without a fundamental ontology, he
could not have raised the social problem in the way he did in theCritique:
That is really where I differ from a Marxist. What in my eyes represents my
superiority over the Marxists is that I raise the class question, the social question,
starting from being, which is wider than class, since it is also a question that concerns
(^21) In an interview before the second volume of theCritiquehad been written ( 1969 ), Sartre
predicted that “all the notions which will emerge from the second volume will be rigorously
applied to our own history; my aim will be to prove that there is a dialectical intelligibility of
the singular. For ours is a singular history...What I will seek to show is the dialectical
intelligibility of that which is not universalizable” (BEM 54 ). From another perspective, he
suggests: “I will simply try to show the dialectical intelligibility of a movement of historical
temporalization” (BEM: 52 ) He sums up his project from another, complementary position:
“My aim in the second volume of theCritiquewas precisely a study of the paradoxical object
which is an institutional ensemble that is detotalized” (BEM 56 ).
The Intelligibility of History 353