principle, as we can see. It also gives the lie to Aron’s insistence that
Sartre defends a methodological and, it would seem, an ontological
“individualism” in social philosophy as well, for this would link him
with the individualism of bourgeois “analytic” reason, from which he
had sought to free himself at least sinceAnti-Semite and Jew. Sartre calls
his “third alternative” “dialectical nominalism,” an appeal to the dia-
lectic to save the primacy of free organic praxis while insisting on the
relative autonomy of social phenomena.^18
The humanist theme surfaces here when Sartre dismisses the Marxist
version of universalizability as an abstract skeleton with a structuralist
framework, and claims that as a result it has “entirely lost the meaning
of what it is to be a man” (SM 83 ). He concludes this chapter, however,
by reminding his critics that his aim is not to reject Marxism in favor of
an idealist humanism, but simply “to reconquer man within Marxism”
(SM 83 ).
“The Progressive-Regressive Method”For years, Sartre had been employing the “regressive method” of
“critical analysis,” arguing Kant-wise “from a fact or state of affairs to
conditions of its possibility.” He used it inThe Imaginary, for example,
to convey his insights more easily to a public still relatively unfamiliar
with the phenomenological method (seeImaginary 179 ). In theprevious
chapterofSearch for a MethodSartre cites “a simple and faultless
method for integrating sociology and history in the perspective of a
materialist dialectic” (SM 51 n.). It involves several phases:
(a)Descriptive. “Observation but with a scrutiny guided by experience and by a
general theory.” We might call this the “phenomenological” phase, using that
term in its broad descriptive sense.
(b)Analytico-Regressive. Analysis of reality. Attempt todateit precisely.
(c)Historical-Genetic. Attempt to rediscover the present [reality], but elucidated,
understood, explained.
(SM 52 n.)
Sartre endorses this project with one small addition: “We believe that
this method, with its phase of phenomenological description and its
(^18) For a discussion of the distinction between methodological and ontological holism and
individualism with regard to Aron’s position, seeSFHRii: 315 n. 58 andSME 126 ff.
Marxism and existentialism 329