Sartre : Revolution

• Contextualise the period


  1946
• Notion of man as a perpetual free agent


  • His primary social actions should maximise individual liberty
• Crude materialism


  • 3 way perspective: God nor any other form of transcendence exists / Mind can be reduced to matter / The world can be reduced to a system of objects law-governed by relationships
• People are fundamentally free
• Theory on Revolution


  1. Revolution always based on class and solidarity within one's class

  2. Aims for a new order

  3. A revolution is a movement of human transcendence, aiming to go beyond a given social situation, towards another end (eg class-less society)

  4. Only humans can bring about this change
• If the individual were to transform society, he would also have to transform himself by overcoming feelings of inertia and fear and setting his own transcending freedom
• Suggests that his own existentialism might be the philosophy to replace discredited materialism
• Humans must adopt a philosophy of transcendence as the foundation of revolution theory (this must involve an abandonment of casual thinking)
• "if the worker discovers the relation between cause and effect": '"it is not by submitting to it that will transcend the material state" instead this needs to be "define the state from within the future"'
• Revolutionary dynamic of history resides not in the laws of nature, but human transcendence (dialectic is not determinism)
• A revolutionary has to be a worker who was oppressed by a dominant class
• Revolutionary should always "go beyond the situation in which he is placed" towards a "radically new situation"
• Any attempt to revolutionise should be underpinned by an idea of a new ideology (what are people actually moving towards?)
• Freedom that is properly grasped is a "necessary condition" of intentional action
• Revolution is always based on class solidarity
• the revolutionary should "go beyond the situation he is in, towards a radically new situation"
• "a state of the world can never produce class consciousness"
• "any set of values in favour of new values"
• Paragraph 1 : REVOLUTION IS A MOMENT OF HUMAN TRANSCENDENCE
• Paragraph 2 : EXISTENTIALISM TO REPLACE DISCREDITED MATERIALISM
• Revolutionary must be an oppressed worker :

  emphasis on the importance of lived experience to create revolutionary change
• Importance of individual freedom to create social change :

  relates to existentialist philosophy, emphasises radical resistance and existentialist commitments
• Must involve true change :

  existentialism - devotion to principles