Sartre's Philosophy of Social Existence

Sartre's Philosophy of Social Existence is a critical interpretation of Jean-Paul Sartre's phenomenology of social existence and the dynamics of group-formation. It seeks to trade the foreshadowing of a theory of individual action in the practical field of social existence in Being and Nothingness and sees a continuity between this work and Sartre's Critique of Rational Dialectic (1960). The movement in Sartre's thought from the abstract freedom of consciousness to concrete freedom and individual praxis is illuminated in relation to his description of a complex social dialectic. It is shown that as Sartre develops an account of social group-formation he admits determinations and necessities that undermine his attempt to preserve the idea of free individual praxis.