of designating objects which are not mere things and agencies which
are not exactly people either” (CDR 2 nd edn., xxiii). This is the “anti-
dialectic” which Sartre mentioned in What is Literature? in which
“the dialectic [of History] is contested, penetrated, and corroded by a
kind of antidialectic which is still a dialectic.” I remarked earlier that the
basic dualism of Sartre’s thought was not so much one of consciousness
and the nonconscious as one of spontaneity and inertia (praxis and
the practico-inert). But we must recognize that it is practico-inert.
Exhibiting what we have been calling the “primacy of praxis,” the inert
spoken of here is the sedimentation of past praxes. And it imposes an
alienating or “othering” character on whatever it mediates.^8 Sartre
describes it as “simply the activity of others in so far as it is sustained
and diverted by inorganic inertia’ (CDRi: 556 ). Not raw nature, but
nature as modified by prior praxis, is the mediating factor. Praxis, on the
other hand, aims towardsameness, not staticidentity.
A major premise of Sartre’s new praxis philosophy is that “reciprocal
ternary relations are the basis ofallrelations between men whatever
form they might take” (CDR i: 111 ). The kind of binary formation
that abounded inBN, Sartre believes, “is the necessary ground for any
ternary relations, but, conversely, a ternary relation, as the mediation of
man amongst men, is the basis on which reciprocity becomes aware
of itself as a reciprocal connection” (CDRi: 109 ). In effect, it concretizes
an abstract duality. The nature of these reciprocities, whether negative
(struggle) or positive (cooperation) depends on the mediation of the
practico-inert or ofpraxisrespectively (seeCDRi: 113 ).
Sartre can now speak of two basic kinds of social reality, that of
the active group constituting thecommon fieldand that of effectively
separated though ostensibly united individuals forming what he terms
thepractico-inertfield. This is the field ofserialrelations based on the
mediation of such “worked matter” as natural languages, rituals of
(^8) Marx criticized Hegel for failing to distinguishalienation(of which he famously lists four
forms in his 1844 Manuscripts) fromobjectificationso that the former seemed as inevitable and
insuperable as the latter. Raymond Aron correctly levels the same objection against Sartre,
except that Sartre does seem to respect the distinction when it matters and simply slips into
“loose usage” when it does not. For examples of his distinguishing the two concepts and their
respective implications, seeCDRi: 366. For the gamut of opinions as to whether Sartre
identifies alienation with objectification, running from “clearly Yes” through “more Yes than
No” (Aron) to “emphatically No,” seeSME 242 ,n. 8.
340 Individuals and groups:Critique of Dialectical Reason