“without an ego.” But let me repeat that this is a problematic concept
that Sartre appears to have abandoned in his later years.^21
Authenticity and historyThe general direction of our philosophical biography is “toward the
concrete.” Such was the direction ofBeing and Nothingnessand such
has been the vector of Sartre’s thought ever since. This continues in
his account of authenticity, a multifaceted concept, as we have been
observing. One of these aspects that plays a particularly crucial role
in rendering concrete the authentic individual is what Sartre calls
historialization. Inspired by Heidegger’s concept of “historicity,” in
Sartre’s usage, it denotes action as revealing/unifying “Being frommy
point of view” (NE 486 ). Historialization entails a kind of Nietzschean
embrace of my life and my epoch to the fullest rather than seeking refuge
in a high-altitude overview (conscience de survol) of the era. In Sartre’s
words: “It is not a matter of choosing one’s age but of choosing oneself
within it” (WL 195 ). But in his case, this is pursued under the aspect of
freedom – the maximization of possibility for self and others. It amounts
tocommitmentto addressing the ethical problems of one’s situation,
now expanded to include the society in which one lives, with its socio-
economic conditions, its present issues and its possibilities as Sartre
challenged the writer inWhat is Literature?
But in that same text he raises the political dimension of his approach
to art: “Freedom of writing implies the freedom of the citizen. One does
not write for slaves. The art of prose is bond up with the only regime in
which prose has meaning, democracy. When one is threatened, the other
is too. And it is not enough to defend them with the pen,” he writes,
(^21) When asked by Contat and Rybalka in 1971 whether his previous remark was not tantamount
to saying that pure or nonaccessory reflection inBeing and Nothingness– which is a
requirement for authenticity – was impossible, Sartre replied: “You know that I never
described this kind of reflection; I said it could exist, but I only showed examples of
accessory reflection. And later I discovered that nonaccessory reflection was not different
from the accessory and immediate way of looking at things but was the critical work one can
do on oneself during one’s entire life, throughpraxis”(L/S 121 – 122 ;Sitx: 104 ).If we accept
this easy dismissal of an apparently entrenched, major concept, we might salvage its
cognitive function by replacing it with “comprehension,” which Sartre will describe as the
nonreflective awareness of praxis (seeSFHRi: 102 – 104 ). Indeed, Sartre seems to be doing
just that.
Notebooks for an Ethics 273