Abstract

In this preface to his recent Critique de La Raison Dialectique, Sartre poses, and outlines an answer to, the question of the Critique, "Do we have today the means to constitute a structural, historical anthropology?" Distinguishing between "true" Marxism and that of Garaudy, Lefebvre, Lukacs and others, he accuses his contemporaries of explaining historical events by a rationalistic and fatalistic scientism in which the concrete existing subject gets lost. This un-Marxian "sclerosis" of Marxist concepts, says Sartre, is what accounts for the prominence of existentialism; once Marxist anthropology recovers its "human foundation" in the comprehension of existence, existentialism will be re-absorbed within the sought-for method. Convinced that "true" Marxism does not consider human existence to be merely an economic-historical event, Sartre is not aware that the envisioned anthropology may transform Marxism more than existentialism.--W. H. C.