The theoretical and methodological foundation of Sartre's existential anthropology

Abstract

This research project aims to analyze the theoretical bases of existential anthropology developed by Sartre in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. Such study is an important element for the development of our post-doctoral research where we analyze L'Idiot de la famille (1971), the philosopher's last work, as an extension and deepening of such an anthropology. Examining the conceptual implications of the irruption of History in this phase of Sartrean thought, we seek to show how Sartre provides a philosophical foundation for anthropology based on the definition of man as praxis-project, historical being, and constituent Reason of dialectics. Thus, amidst a "structuralist moment" in which most of the French intelligentsia sought to get rid of its former post-war "maîtres à penser" by announcing, theoretically, the "death of the subject", Sartre, one of the greatest tutelary figures of the old generation of intellectuals, insists on a philosophy of man as a practical agent, as an individual who makes History while he is made by it. Our author, unlike a new generation of thinkers who reject dialectics and history, seeks in historical materialism and Hegelianism (as he understands them) the elements to affirm dialectical Reason as the foundation of all structural and historical anthropology. Thus, in order to unveil the specificity of the Sartrean approach, as well as its scope, we will turn to Lévi-Strauss's criticisms of Sartre's thought and the way in which he sought to answer them. Through this debate, we will see that the philosopher will defend, besides a conception of man as a praxis-project, the specificity of Philosophy against the rise of the "human sciences". (AU)