Work · Jean-Paul Sartre
Search for a Method
Sartre asks how to understand a singular existence within social history without reducing it to an illustration of class categories.
Understanding the text
The essay precedes Critique of Dialectical Reason and becomes its introduction in the 1960 edition.
Key points
- 01
Progressive-regressive
Inquiry moves from conditions to projects and back from works to enabling situations.
- 02
Mediations
Family, childhood and institutions connect social structures with individual experience.
- 03
Marxism
Historical explanation loses force when everything follows from a ready-made formula.
How to read it
Follow the Flaubert example: being bourgeois does not yet explain why this person wrote these works.
Editions & sources
Summaries and key points are original editorial interpretations. They accompany reading the work and do not replace an edition of the text. Editorial method ↗