Two other publications from this period register this change in
Sartre’s political and ethical thought from an individualist ethics and
politics of authenticity to a more socially centered concern with the
concrete freedom of humans and the reconstruction of institutions:
the launching of the journalLes Temps Modernes(October 1945 ) and
the issuing ofAnti-Semite and Jew(Reflections on the Jewish Question
[ 1946 ]), which we discussed earlier.
In the programmatic “Introduction” to the initial issue ofLTM,
Sartre insisted that “far from being relativists, we proclaim that man is
an absolute. But he is such in his time, in his surroundings, and on his
parcel of earth.”^20 This is the dimension of “historialization” that has
been part of Sartrean “authenticity” since theWar Diaries,Truth and
ExistenceandWhat is Litrature?The writer must speak for his time and
address the problems of this situated absolute. The journal stands on the
side of those who wish to change both the social condition of the human
and the conception that he has of himself. Implicitly gesturing toward
historical materialism, Sartre sees a relation between these two goals.
He insists, first, that a feeling (sentiment) is always the expression of a
certain way of life and a certain conception of the world that is common
to an entire class or to an entire epoch; and, secondly, that its evolution
is not the effect of just any inner mechanism whatsoever but is the
effect of these historical and social factors” (Sitii: 21 ). It is in this
context that he introduces the contrast between theanalyticmethod
or spirit and thesyntheticor, as he shall now also call it, thedialectical.
The former insists on the “myth of human nature” whereas the latter
thinks holistically and developmentally. Articulating a theme that will
recur throughout his writings thereafter, Sartre associates the analytic
spirit with the bourgeoisie and the dialectical with the working class.
As he will observe in theCritique: “at a certain level of abstraction, the
class conflict expresses itself as a conflict of rationalities.” The former
thinks atomistically and is blind to socioeconomic class, whereas the
latter is totalizing and thinks in terms of solidarity (Sitii: 19 – 21 ).
Sartre draws upon this distinction, already employed inAnti-Semite
and Jewin another context, to form the methodological thesis for his
Critique of Dialectical Reason( 1960 ).
(^20) Sitii: 15 ;WL Introducing LTM, 254.
292 Means and ends: political existentialism