9781859844854-frontcover

Critique of Dialectical Reason

by Jean-Paul Sartre

Edited by Jonathan Ree

Translated by Alan Sheridan-Smith

Foreword by Fredric Jameson

Volume One of Sartre's intellectual masterpiece, introduced by Fredric Jameson.

At the height of the Algerian war, Jean-Paul Sartre embarked on a fundamental reappraisal of his philosophical and political thought. The result was the Critique of Dialectical Reason, an intellectual masterpiece of the twentieth century, now republished with a major original introduction by Fredric Jameson. In it, Sartre set out the basic categories for the renovated theory of history that he believed was necessary for post-war Marxism.

Sartre's formal aim was to establish the dialectical intelligibility of history itself, as what he called 'a totalisation without a totaliser'. But, at the same time, his substantive concern was the structure of class struggle and the fate of mass movements of popular revolt, from the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century to the Russian and Chinese revolutions in the twentieth: their ascent, stabilisation, petrification and decline, in a world still overwhelmingly dominated by scarcity.

Reviews

  • The work is a landmark in modern social thought...a turning point in the thinking of our time.

    – Raymond Williams, Guardian

  • The Critique is essential to any serious understanding of Sartre.

    – George Steiner, Sunday Times

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