Sartre on Intellectualism

Jean-Paul Sartre, was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy.

In this clip, Sartre discusses the characteristics of a "classic intellectual" and its relationship to Hegel's notion of the "unhappy conscience." Sartre believes that the classic intellectual accepts the concepts within himself as given, and applies his universal knowledge to particular instances for practical benefit.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Hegel
• Phenomenology
• Intellectualism
• Student Movement
• Universal
• Particular
• Inauthenticity

[Guaguanco11]

@TheKafkianProcess If I tried to read Gödel’s famous 1931 paper that proved the incompleteness theorem I probably wouldn’t understand it. Yet I would not classify it as incoherent babble. Instead I would readily admit that the failure was with me, and that if I was smarter, or concentrated harder, or read more background, I might get it. Most people who find Sartre incoherent are in the same position as me–they admit there are many things they don’t understand due to some failing on their part. 

[Guaguanco11]

@TheKafkianProcess (cont.) Hence your claim that we are egocentric people who classify everything we don’t understand as nonsense is false. Whatever mistake we might be making in our assessment of Sartre, it is not the mistake of inferring that Sartre is incoherent simply because we don’t understand him. This is so obvious that I wonder if your original comment was a serious attempt to criticize us or simply an outburst of empty rhetoric.

[HistoriaApologetica]

Part 6:...Flaubert, "The Family Idiot" which is 5 volumes in English and 3 in French. FYI, "Being and Nothingness" is still important and worth a look. Lastly, on the above clip, the classical intellectual's rebellion is still bourgeois because in it the intellectual does not contest his own class being and so continues, in spite of himself, to reproduce the capitalist division between mental and manual labor, and so in a Hegelian cunning of reason, helps in the expansion of capitalist relations

[HistoriaApologetica]

Part 5...ideas on the intellectual can be found in the collection of essays I cited in my first comment, "Between Existentialism and Marxism." The Seach/Critique Vol 1/ and Critique Vol 2 are essential and a life time's worth of work. Vol 2 was never finished and published after his death, with much of it being little more than notes. In an effort to do a study on the ability of his ideas to understand the life of another human he wrote a multi-volume study on Gustave Flaubert...

[HistoriaApologetica]

Part 4: ..."a ground" that is not guilty of a metaphysics of presence in his work, "The Critique." If this is the case, then Sartre made "post structuralism" obsolete before Derrida (who was brilliant, in a sort of evil genius kind of way) ever wrote on "presence." I realize that may not be intelligible and if so, I apologize. Sartre's ideas of the intellectual from this video clip (which is from the film, "Sartre By Himself" I believe although it has been 30 years since I last saw the film)...

[HistoriaApologetica]

Part 3: ..."ground for Marxism and Historical Materialism. It was, sadly, never read except by his closest friends and it was brutally misrepresented by Claude Levi-Strauss at the last chapter if "The Savage Mind." This representation became the commonly accepted wisdom on Sartre's thought. I don't know if this makes sense or not, but I think Derrida brilliantly crushed much of modern thought with his critique of a "metaphysics of presence." I believe that Sartre artifculated a "ground"...

[HistoriaApologetica]

Part 2 to Sammo 1357. I eventually went to the source and have been reading Sartre for years now. His major work is not "Being and Nothingness" which he wrote in the 1940s, but The Critique of Dialectical Reason. Like all his works, it is unfinished. The first part to the French version is published separately in English and is called "Search For A Method." I have been working on the "Critique" now for over 10 years, I kid you not. In it Sartre attempts to find an ontological "ground"...

[HistoriaApologetica]

Part 1 of response to Sammo 1357, I honestly thought I was talking more to myself, and no one was really interested. Sorry for leaving the three comments in a backward order, which I am certain didn't make them easy to understand at first. The short and sad answer in my opinion is that there is not a good secondary source on Sartre. Obviously many disagree with me, or they wouldn't write them. Roberto Unger, as a case in point, in my view has no understanding of Sartre (or Hegel).

[Sammo1357]

@HistoriaApologetica Thank you [:

[Sammo1357]

@HistoriaApologetica I have only started reading Sartre and what you explained is very interesting. Could you expand on it a little further? The concepts to me are new and I find it tricky to fully grasp what he is saying. (Or could you recommend particular works to read or videos to watch?)

[HistoriaApologetica]

...is only a partial and incomplete transcendence of his/her existence as a technician of practical knowledge. It still remains fundamentally a bourgeois negation. This view is brilliantly developed in the interview, "A Plea For Intellectuals" and his response to it is developed in "A Friend of the People." Both interviews can be found in English in the collections, "Between Existentialism and Marxism.

[HistoriaApologetica]

The classical intellectual comes to understand the contradiction within him of the universality of his/her knowledge and the particular interests which it serves, thus the contradiction between the universal and the particular within his/her being. This contradiction is, for Sartre, fundamentally a class contradiction, since in spite of claims of his existentialism, Sartre was a Marxist at the time of this interview. For Sartre, the revolt of the classical intellectual is only a partial...