Jean-Paul Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason Volume Two
Morton, Brian
Books CRITIQUE OF DIALECTICAL REASON: VOLUME Two, by Jean-Paul Sartre. Translated by Quintin Hoare. Verso, 1991. 467 pp. $60. In the late 1950s, Jean-Paul Sartre decided that it was necessary...
...q FALL • 1991 • 603...
...The book also contains speculations about class struggle, about the rise of Stalinism, about whether history has any meaning, and so on...
...COSELL: Steamboat Green is already in his corner, waiting for James "the Hitman" Harris to emerge from the dressing room...
...COSELL: We saw a great fight here tonight, and I'm sure all the viewers at home will join me in thanking Jean-Paul Sartre for his very perceptive comments...
...Neither will rise very high, neither will fall very low...
...Thus the violence which, in every fight, takes hold of him and hurls him against an enemy brother, was in its origin the same violence that moves from the oppressors to the oppressed, then back from the latter to the former, and makes it possible to call the opposition between classes a struggle...
...This astonishing second volume, now available in English for the first time, is sure to lead to a reassessment of his place in intellectual history...
...COSELL...
...COSELL: Very interesting thought, Jean-Paul...
...But it does not strike them as necessary to wonder whether these organized rifts in the social fabric are, in themselves, a totalization of all rifts in that same "society...
...How would you describe the Hitman, Jean-Paul...
...For it is now clear that, whatever his shortcomings as a philosopher, novelist, and playwright, Sartre was the greatest boxing commentator of all time...
...But even this qualifies them in terms of the hierarchical ensemble: they represent the first rungs . . . of the ceaseless to-and-fro movement which makes up the world of boxing...
...In the world of philosophy, Jean-Paul Sartre, you are a true heavyweight champion, and I want you to know I mean that very sincerely...
...SARTE: Neither of the two men now fighting will go very far...
...In the late 1950s, Jean-Paul Sartre decided that it was necessary to rethink his entire philosophy...
...SARTRE: However, we cannot deny that, for most spectators, things do not go further...
...The Hitman tries a jab, but it misses...
...Every struggle . . . is the incarnation of all others...
...He's waving, he's clowning, he's confident—I've never seen him in better shape...
...What's your feeling about tonight's bout, Jean-Paul...
...SARTRE: What is more, his destiny is written there, his sad destiny as a boxer and a man . . . he bears traces on his face of the violence of others...
...Every fight retotalizes boxing and all other fights...
...Writing for twenty hours a day, taking amphetamines to spur himself on, Sartre wrote the two enormous volumes of the Critique of Dialectical Reason...
...from the fundamental violence of the oppressed to the singular and alienating objectification of that violence in and through each of the participants...
...We're hearing a few boos from the crowd...
...The incarnation as such is at once unrealizable, other than as a totalization of everything, and irreducible to the pure abstract unity of what it totalizes...
...The crowd is on its feet...
...And a tremendous roar goes up from the crowd: Hitman Harris has entered the ring...
...The boxers circle each other—they both look a little green, a little unready...
...COSELL: And there's a tremendous right to the head by the Hitman...
...In the section that follows, I use excerpts from Sartre's discussion of boxing to show how much he might have added to "ABC's Wide World of Sports," if he had been a color commentator alongside Howard Cosell...
...All of Sartre's remarks are actual quotations...
...I haven't seen this kind of punching power in years...
...And this necessary totalization of their bout, on the basis of all the immediately preceding and immediately following bouts (those already announced by the press), finds its concrete and retotalizing signification in the very place this bout occupies on the program...
...In the first fifty pages of this volume, as a prelude to his study of the dynamics of social conflict, Sartre brilliantly examines the dynamics of conflict in the boxing ring...
...The second volume of the Critique of Dialectical Reason will be read as long as men punch each other in the face...
...At least it is not necessary for the aficionados: but perhaps this is because they are themselves the fight in progress...
...Hitman Harris has won a technical knockout...
...Or, in other words, whether the social ensemble is incarnated with the multiplicity of its conflicts in such a singular temporalization of negative reciprocity...
...Green is refusing to leave the ring—the disappointment is very clear on his face...
...What do you think, Jean-Paul...
...But I do know that Sartre's reputation, once so uncertain, is now secure...
...And if everything were not present and transcended, the singular invention—the unique and concrete reality that is this punch, delivered on this day, in this hall, in front of this audience—would not even be possible...
...SARTRE: Everything is given in the least punch: from the history of the one who delivers it to the material and collective circumstances of that history...
...It's a question that, frankly, I don't know how to answer...
...They want blood...
...And the referee steps in and stops the fight...
...The crowd is going crazy...
...SARTRE: Our first inquiry has allowed us to establish a minimal intelligibility...
...SARTRE: The bout in which the two beginners are embroiled, each a victim at once of his own blunders and the other's, has a reality all the more striking in that such domination of the laborers by their labor, by producing their future before the eyes of all (they will vegetate at the foot of the ladder or abandon the profession), causes it to be seen and touched as a signification and as a destiny...
...The only question that remains, after one has read Sartre's discussion of the Sweet Science, is why he frittered away his talent for so many years at other pursuits...
...These mediocre but solid boxers who know their job will continue indefinitely to fight supporting bouts on evenings when others are playing the star roles...
...Rather than quote him out of context, I thought the best way to convey a sense of Sartre's genius was to place his observations in a real-life setting...
...SARTRE: A lone exploited individual who from childhood has been unable to solidarize with the workers...
...602 • DISSENT Books COSELL: Interesting thought, Jean-Paul...
...COSELL: Yes indeed, and we're looking forward to quite a struggle tonight, as the bell rings for round one...
...from the general indictment of capitalist society to the singular determination of that indictment by the boxing promoters...
...Another staggering right to the head by the Hitman...
...What a tremendous uppercut...
...Green is staggered...
...Not a very impressive opening round, is it, Jean-Paul...
Vol. 38 • September 1991 • No. 4
