Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

ISSN: 0007-1773 (Print) 2332-0486 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbsp20

Sartres Dialectical Methodology

David Sherman

To cite this article: David Sherman (2017) Sartres Dialectical Methodology, Journal of the British
Society for Phenomenology, 48:2, 116-134, DOI: 10.1080/00071773.2016.1266797

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2016.1266797

Published online: 30 Dec 2016.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 54

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rbsp20

Download by: [University of Newcastle, Australia] Date: 10 February 2017, At: 23:14
THE JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY, 2017
VOL. 48, NO. 2, 116134
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2016.1266797

Sartres Dialectical Methodology

David Sherman
Department of Philosophy, University of Montana, Missoula, USA

ABSTRACT
Sartres intention in the Critique of Dialectical Reason is to establish
the heuristic value of the dialectical method when applied to the
social sciences. Toward this end, he furnishes an account of how,
on the basis of natural needs, rational choices, burgeoning social
ensembles, natural and social contingencies and unintended
consequences, human beings make their history. I shall argue that
his dialectical method, especially when modified, opens up
interesting possibilities for clarifying the two most important and
enduring meta-issues in the philosophy of social science: (1)
whether social phenomena should be explained in terms of the
beliefs, desires and actions of individuals or the rules and
practices of social institutions (Methodological Individualism or
Methodological Holism) and (2) whether social phenomena
should be explained in terms of causes, as in the natural sciences,
or in terms of what they mean in their social contexts, as in
hermeneutics and other interpretive approaches (Explanation or
Understanding).

The core of Sartres wide-ranging Critique of Dialectical Reason is its methodological

approach, which is expressed in his materialist dialectic, and the aim of the first volume
of the Critique is to establish the heuristic value of the dialectical method when
applied to the human sciences.1 After outlining Sartres materialist dialectic, I consider
how he steers between methodological individualism and methodological holism and
between naturalist explanation and hermeneutic understanding, which I take to be the
principal meta-issues in the philosophy of social science. My aim is to show that his dia-
lectical method, especially when modified, opens up interesting possibilities for clarifying
these issues.

1. The Structure of Sartres Materialist Dialectic

Because Sartre rejects the ontological claim that the natural facts about the world can be
reduced to the physical facts about it, he is not a metaphysical materialist, although as a
property dualist he is a naturalist. Because Sartre rejects the ontological claim that the
social facts about the world can be reduced to the physical facts about it, he is also not

CONTACT David Sherman david.sherman@umontana.edu Department of Philosophy, University of Montana, 32

Campus Drive5780, Missoula, MT 59812, USA
1
Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume One, 66. This work will subsequently be cited within the text as CDR I, page
number.
2016 The British Society for Phenomenology
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 117

a dialectical materialist. Sartre does see his materialist dialectic as a variation on historical
materialism, which expresses a social scientific claim about the central role that pro-
duction plays in history, and he states that he is in fundamental agreement with historical
materialism. This is a stretch, however, for one of the aims of the Critique is to address
certain methodological problems that he finds in historical materialism as it is expressed
in orthodox Marxism. Yet, Sartre is a historical materialist if it is seen as Marx and Engels
articulate it in The German Ideology: Men have history because they must produce their
own life, and because they must produce it moreover in a certain way.2
At the most general level, Sartre uses what he calls the progressiveregressive method.
This involves a phenomenological description of the subject followed by the regressive and
progressive moments. The regressive moment, which is analytic, examines the subjects
formal conditions of possibility, while the progressive moment, which is synthetic,
explores how the subject lives out both these formal conditions and the concrete con-
ditions (the history) that have delimited its development. These two moments constitute
the first and the second volumes, respectively. In the first volume, the one I consider,
Sartre articulates the natural foundations of human praxis and examines how social
ensembles both arise and evolve to meet the demands of reproducing our lives,3 while
in the second volume he explores the certain way that history has unfolded. Overall,
his aim is to give an account of how, on the basis of biological imperatives, rational
choices, burgeoning social ensembles, natural and social contingencies and unintended
consequences, human beings make their history (volume one), and how they live the
history that they have made, which explains how and why, within a historical framework
that becomes ever more constraining, they make the choices that they do (volume two).

1.1. The Foundational Concepts

As being-for-itself and being-in-itself are the abstract concepts that structure Sartres exis-
tential phenomenology and are progressively elaborated in its unfolding, praxis and the
practico-inert are the abstract concepts that both structure and propel his unfolding
materialist dialectic. Praxis, which corresponds to being-for-itself, refers to individual or
collective activity brought to bear on some area of concern to bring about some desired
end, while the practico-inert, which corresponds to being-in-itself, refers to the area of
concern on which praxis is brought to bear (material or social). While these dualisms
are homologous in that both refer back to the subjectobject relation, this modification
has the effect of substantially reconstituting this relation, and in a way that fruitfully
bears on the existential articulation of ego formation and the sociopolitical articulation
of materialism. As to the former, the subjectobject relation transcends the problems of
indeterminacy and stasis that afflicted the being-for-itself/being-in-itself relation in
Being and Nothingness. As to the latter, materialism is ultimately about individuals striving
to meet their needs rather than unfolding modes of production, which are the result of this
more basic process.
Because praxis reshapes the material world, and by reshaping the material world alters
the forms that future praxes will take, its relation to the material world is not static but
2
Marx, The MarxEngels Reader, 158.
3
Starting with a collection of isolated individuals he calls a series, Sartre moves through the group-in-fusion, the
pledged group, the organization, the institution and finally the State.
118 D. SHERMAN

dynamic. Yet, most forms of praxis do not realize their projects in the way that they intend:
instead, they generate counterfinalities (unintended consequences), which must be
tackled by future praxes. The counterfinalities that constitute and endlessly accrete to
the practico-inert, and thus condition future praxes in ever more limiting ways, are inse-
parable from the dialectic that is history itself. Furthermore, the forms that praxis takes are
not indeterminate. The reason is not just that praxis implies we are first engaged in the
world, for how to engage in the world is no more determinate than how to choose
ones self-orienting initial project within Sartres existential phenomenology. Praxis is
determinate, rather, because unlike being-for-itself it must be explained in terms of two
phenomena that are more basic, need and scarcity. Everything is to be explained
through need, which is the first totalizing relation between the material being, man, and
the material ensemble of which he is part (CDR I, 80), and tied to need is scarcity, the
transcendence of which eclipses the existential project of being God as mans fundamen-
tal project (CDR I, 137). Scarcity is the basis of the possibility of human history and all
struggle lies in some concrete antagonism whose material condition is scarcity in a par-
ticular form (CDR I, 125, 113).
Sartre is on to something important here, but he fails to adequately develop the relation
between need and scarcity themselves. In the Critique, it would seem that need is exclu-
sively a natural phenomenon while scarcity is exclusively a social one, but this cannot
be right, and from both perspectives. Scarcity is also a natural phenomenon, and when
subsequently asked about it, he stated that society comes after scarcity, [and that] the
latter is an original phenomenon of the relation between man and nature.4 However,
this corrective is equally one-sided, and this indicates that a distinction must also be
made between natural and social scarcity. Similarly, as Hegelian-Marxism contends,
need is also a social phenomenon, even if it arises from what Sartre calls a biological
statute. This indicates that a distinction must also be made between natural and social
needs. Obviously, there is a complicated dialectic not only between needs and scarcity
but also between the natural and social constituents of each, which become progressively
intertwined. This has a considerable bearing on the way that the larger dialectic between
needs and scarcity plays out.
One last remark about scarcity is in order. Sartre claims that scarcity is a basic feature of
the human condition, which puts him at odds with Marxism: the historical process is
constituted in the field of scarcity and even the socialization of production does not
put an end to it except possibly through a long dialectical process of which we cannot
yet know the outcome (CDR I, 139). Yet, he does distinguish between absolute scarcity
and relative scarcity (CDR I, 15253n), which concerns the distribution of scarcity
within class-based societies, and this gives him a critical standpoint from which to ques-
tion the particular social forms that scarcity assumes.

1.2. The Scope and Nature of Dialectical Reason

Sartre rejects dialectical materialism because it takes the dialectic to be an a-priori law of
nature that operates beneath the empirical laws discovered by the natural and the social
sciences, which exhibit it. This dialectic is not open to verification at all (CDR I, 28),
4
Sartre, Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre, 32.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 119

and it misconstrues both scientific reason and dialectical reason in terms of both their
scope and their nature.
As to their scope, scientific reasons object domain is the natural world and dialectical
reasons object domain is the sociohistorical world. As to their nature, the difference
between scientific reason and dialectical reason is also distinct. Scientific reason functions
externally and analytically, and it seeks unification: the natural scientist takes herself to be
external to her object domain, which she divides into smaller parts to attain a better under-
standing of the phenomenon, and she tries to unify her findings under the smallest set of
laws possible. Conversely, dialectical reason functions internally and synthetically, and it
seeks totalization. Self-consciously or not, each person uses dialectical reason when acting
or comprehending: the person is internal to his object domain, which he expresses and
expresses itself through him, and he brings together and transcends the constituted
object domain that he encounters by reconstituting it through his own praxis, which rep-
resents a (his particular) totalization of it. For Sartre, totalization is the pivotal dialectical
concept, for it constitutes the developmental movement of dialectical reason. It seeks the
most rigorous synthesis of the most differentiated multiplicity, and with the social scien-
tist it leads (ideally) toward a better understanding of the ever-changing whole, which
must include within itself its own reflexive retotalization (CDR I, 4647). Yet, crucially,
the unity of these ongoing totalizations never attains totality, and here Sartre breaks with
the totalitarian impulse in prior dialectical accounts.5
At first blush, then, the division of labour between scientific reason and dialectical reason
is clear. Yet, matters are more complicated, because science is a social enterprise, and Sartre
does not underrate the epistemic obstacles that confront the natural scientist: Matter is a
changing reflection of exteriority and interiority only within a social world which it sur-
rounds completely and penetrates in so far as it is worked and thus the monism of mate-
riality starts from the human world and situates man in Nature (CDR I, 18081), which
is not to deny that everything really takes place in the physico-chemical universe (CDR I,
333). Three succinct points are in order. First, Sartre does not rule out the possibility that
science can attain objective knowledge of the natural world qua exteriority, which
means conditioned on our cognitive ability to know it rather than the sociocultural
peculiarities of the natural scientist, as social constructivists hold. Second, Sartres
monism of materiality is like the hermeneutic space of reasons, but because it is materialist
and diachronic instead of idealist and synchronic it is stronger explanatorily, for it shows
how the space of reasons came to be by recovering the natural component this linguistic-
centric approach purges. Third, the qualifier that everything really takes place in the
physico-chemical universe relates to the ontological issue and is consistent with the prop-
erty dualism of Being and Nothingness. Sartres phenomenology, which was supposed to
open up dialectical thought, is thus not ontologically incompatible with it.

2. Framing Sartres Materialist Dialectic within the Philosophy of Social

Science
I now consider how Sartres materialist dialectic fares on two core meta-issues in the phil-
osophy of social science: (1) whether social phenomena are ultimately explainable in terms
5
A significant exception here is Adorno, who was formulating his concept of negative dialectics around this time.
120 D. SHERMAN

of the beliefs, desires and actions of individuals or in terms of the rules and the practices of
social institutions (Individualism or Holism) and (2) whether social phenomena are
ultimately explainable in terms of causes, as in the natural sciences, or in terms of what
they mean in their social contexts, as in hermeneutics and other interpretive approaches
(Explanation or Understanding).

2.1. Conceptual Framing

To frame these issues conceptually, I draw on the work of Martin Hollis,6 who poses four
ideal typical social scientific approaches based on the four combinations of these two core
issues:
Explanation Understanding
Methodological holism Systems Games
Methodological individualism Rational agents Social actors

Hollis says that each of these four approaches is unstable, and in my view he is right.
This calls into question the strategy of starting with one of them as a methodological
first to which social phenomena can be reduced, but it does not preclude theoretical pro-
gress altogether, and I shall argue that a dialectical method such as Sartre offers provides
the basis for it.

2.2. Historical Framing

Sartres methodological commitments were rare among philosophers trying to rebuild
Marxisms foundations in the 1960s. His allegiance towards a dialectical approach, in par-
ticular, contrasted with the reconstructive projects of Analytic Marxists (G.A. Cohen, Jon
Elster, John Roemer) and Structural Marxists (Louis Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas), who
shared only their hostility toward it. Yet, because Sartres approach mediates the extremes
that structure the two social scientific meta-issues, it outstrips their approaches, for by
embracing one extreme to the exclusion of the other, as both Analytic Marxists and Struc-
tural Marxists do with the individualismholism and explanationunderstanding issues,
crucial aspects of both issues are ignored. The individualism or holism and explanation
or understanding disputes persist because such positions fail to see that both extremes
in each duality must be part of any judicious social scientific approach.
Like the Analytic Marxists, Sartre thinks that we must begin with the beliefs, desires and
actions of rational agents to make sense of social phenomena, and therefore, like them, he
favours methodological individualism and explanation. In one vital respect, however,
Sartres dialectical account has a clear advantage. Because it takes scarcity (and, ultimately,
need) to be the driving historical force and offers a developmental story, Sartres dialectical
account has the theoretical resources to explain both the formation and the nature of the
rational agents beliefs and desires. Conversely, because it is committed to state-of-the-art
methods of analytical philosophy and to positivist social science,7 Analytic Marxism sees
the rational agents beliefs and desires as the explanans, which reifies them. It does not
6
See Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Science, 92.
7
Roemer, Analytical Marxism, 34.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 121

explain how these beliefs and desires are conditioned by the existing (capitalist) social
order, and therefore it fails to draw the correct conclusions from its social scientific
analyses.
Like the Structural Marxists, Sartre thinks that a persons beliefs, desires and actions are
sociohistorically conditioned, but here the similarities end: he thinks that the individuals
beliefs, desires and actions are underdetermined instead of overdetermined and that when
the individual is viewed epiphenomenally (as with Structural Marxisms holism) the exist-
ing state of affairs is reified. Moreover, the extreme form of methodological holism offered
by Structural Marxism on the explanationunderstanding issue is confused. While Althus-
ser talks in scientific terms, which implies explanation, his science is unclear; and when
he talks of causality, it is in the context of structural causality, which implies understand-
ing and the kind of ideological approach that he rejects. In any case, Structural Marxism is
inadequate explanatorily, for while beliefs, desires and actions can be reduced to the rules
and practices of social institutions, changes in the social institutions cannot be explained.
With all extreme forms of methodological holism there is a succession of immobilities,
and this does not tell us what would be most interesting: how each thought is constructed
out of these conditions, or how men pass from one thought to another. To do that [they]
would have to interpose praxis, therefore history.8

3. Sartres Concessive Methodological Individualism

Sartre describes his materialist dialectic as a dialectical nominalism (CDR I, 37), and
while he is committed to some kind of methodological individualism, this phrase exhibits
the deep tension that pervades the Critique. Yet, this tension is its strength and should not
be surmounted by fiat, for it captures complexities about human beings that should not be
juggled out of an explanation of social phenomena to achieve what all reductivists view as
an adequate explanatory account.

3.1. Methodological Individualism in Sartres Materialist Dialectic as it Stands

Sartre explains all social phenomena by referring back to the beliefs and desires of individ-
uals, whose individual praxes involve the labour that is required to meet their natural
needs (CDR I, 7994). He thus initiates his interpersonal dialectic with two isolated
labourers (a road mender and a gardener), and with himself watching them from his
window. For Sartre, his own perception as the Third unifies these two isolated labourers
in accordance with their objective meaning (i.e. what their actions mean in the social
context) and with his own project: he stands in a relation of interiority with them
(and, ultimately, with all others within the social field). This relationship is marked by reci-
procity, in which each individual is a Third that reconstitutes the social field through his
own distinctive totalization of it. Depending on the constitution of the social field, individ-
uals can cooperate (exchange) or struggle (violence) with one another, but struggle wins
out because of scarcity (CDR I, 95121). Struggle conditions the forms that both individ-
ual and collective praxes assume, which impacts the practico-inert field, engenders coun-
terfinalities, and limits the forms that future praxes can assume. The practico-inert field is
8
Sartre, Replies to Structuralism, 11016.
122 D. SHERMAN

constituted not merely by natural counterfinalities but also by social counterfinalities,

which instantiate these distorted praxes as social processes. Sartre calls this praxis-
process: it is the substance of social life, and reflects, crudely, the movement from a
nature-dialectic to a culture-dialectic (CDR I, 341).
As Sartre moves through larger and more relationally complex ensembles, individuality
becomes more determinate and relationally complex, as is reflected in the three generic
moments of individuality that he offers. After starting with the organic individual
(the road mender and the gardener), who engages in free but isolated material praxis,
Sartre moves to the common individual, who is common because of his renunciation
of free praxis to pursue the collectives common project. These moments correspond,
crudely, to methodological individualism and to methodological holism. However,
beyond the organic and the common individual is the concrete individual, who
expresses a more determinate form of individuality: the common individual is defined
as a historical and concrete individual insofar as his action was an unforeseeable
moment of the common undertaking, which evidences the creative freedom in the
common individual (CDR I, 461). For Sartre, an individuals actions are never only a
function of either his material needs or his commonality. By virtue of this transcendent
moment, Sartre is a methodological individualist, albeit a weak or concessive one,9 as
it is society that furnishes both the context within which the individual acts and the
impetus for his actions.
Thus, although the entire historical dialectic rests on individual praxis (CDR I, 80), it
is no less the case that the concrete individuals praxis is delimited (but not overdeter-
mined) by the way that the entire historical dialectic has unfolded, which means that it
must be understood with reference to his social institutions. As Sartre describes it, the
double movement that structures his entire regressive investigation is comprised of
the exteriorization of the interior and the interiorization of the exterior (CDR I,
71). It is here that Sartres concessive methodological individualism differs from methodo-
logical individualisms more extreme forms (e.g. Analytic Marxism and the Austrian
School of economics). The individual with whom the more extreme forms of methodologi-
cal individualism begin and end is abstract, while the individual toward whom Sartres dia-
lectic builds is relatively concrete. This difference has important theoretical and practical
implications.
As a theoretical matter, Sartre can offer a more robust social scientific account than
more extreme methodological individualists because of this comparative concretion,
which manifests his ability to accommodate the truths in methodological holism
without adopting it outright. In fact, he can draw on methodological holism while avoid-
ing its most basic problem, its recourse to functional explanations. Sartre can thus agree
with Jon Elsters claim that the problem with functional explanations, which hold that
all institutions or behavioural patterns have a function that explains their presence, is
that they postulate a purpose without a purposive actor or a predicate without a
subject.10 He can give the microfoundations that Elster demands because, explanatorily,
social actions ultimately refer to individual needs rather than to class imperatives, which

9
Susan James uses the adjective concessive to characterize her methodological holism in The Content of Social
Explanation.
10
Elster, The Case for Methodological Individualism, 45455.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 123

are merely a heuristic for making sense of the actions of individuals. Thus, when Elster
asserts that the working class might not have revolted because of a collective action
problem, Sartre can agree. Without something more, such as sociocultural norms, it is
rational on his account for individuals not to risk their capacity to meet their own
most basic needs when either (1) a course seems to be open to them to accomplish
what they want without taking the risk (Free Riding) or (2) there is reason to think that
others may not take the risk (Prisoners Dilemma). Of course, Sartre did not pursue
these rational choice issues at the time, but given his position that every praxis takes
account of its area of ignorance, reckons on probabilities, makes wagers, and takes
risks (CDR I, 237), his account can accommodate them.
While the question of whether the correct starting point for explaining social phenom-
ena is the individual or society is theoretical, proponents of methodological individualism
have often been spurred by practical rather than theoretical worries. The Austrian Schools
methodological individualism manifests this phenomenon. For the Austrian School, indi-
vidualism is preferable methodologically because of unintended consequences, which
shows the epistemic opaqueness that is the human lot, and ultimately the view that cen-
tralized decision-making on behalf of the collective will deprive individuals of their
freedom, all of which augurs against rational planning. As was indicated, Sartre is also con-
cerned with unintended consequences counterfinalities are the basic problem in his dia-
lectic and his commitment to individual freedom carries over from his existentialism.
Yet, unlike Austrian School theorists such as Hayek, Sartres methodological individualism
arises from theoretical concerns, and it does not militate against rational planning. This is
because, rather than beginning with an abstract individual in an indeterminate context,
homo oeconomicus, who is free by fiat, Sartre begins with the concrete individual,11
whose freedom may be oppressed by conditions that have arisen from prior free actions
and the counterfinalities they generated. Practically speaking, then, it may be both rational
and freedom-enhancing for these concrete, historically engendered rational agents to
come together to pursue some form of rational planning, for undertaken democratically
rational planning can play a substantial role in ameliorating these conditions, even
given our epistemic limitations.
Despite these comparative advantages, Sartres concessive methodological individual-
ism has a number of problems. Three interrelated problems, in particular, are relevant
here.
First, it is methodologically inappropriate for Sartre to begin his interpersonal dialectic
with two contemporary labourers representing the moment of organic individuality, and
by doing so he generates conceptual confusion. In particular, because his regressive analy-
sis is meant to establish the conditions of possibility of our contemporary social world,
which is constituted by ideologically complex individuals, he should have built toward
these individuals diachronically rather than posit them synchronically. As Sartre concedes,
their isolation is a sociohistorical characteristic, and he would also concede that as
members of our world they are ideologically complex. Yet, by introducing them as
organic individuals, he bypasses essential developmental work: while he shows how

11
As indicated, in his regressive or analytic analysis (volume I) Sartre argues to, rather than starts with, the concrete indi-
vidual, but in the progressive or synthetic analysis (volume II), the concrete individuals beliefs, desires and actions are
the object of analysis.
124 D. SHERMAN

collectives form in response to the material needs of individuals, he does not do the same
for how consciousness is formed in this process, and how it then bears both on these col-
lectives and on the productive process. Organic individuality, in which unadorned indi-
viduals work the natural world to meet their basic natural needs, does not exist in our
social world, and by attributing it to two contemporary individuals, he obscures the move-
ment of his materialist dialectic on the subjective side, and thus the interplay of the various
factors that go into constituting our social world. Sartres culture-dialectic is merely a
distilled dialectic of collective politico-economic life.
Sartre should have introduced these organic individuals at the start of a State of
Nature story rather than as our contemporaries. As a fiction, a State of Nature story is
fact-defective, but if it is not also law-defective, which is to say that things could have
developed as the story tells it (i.e. such a process was possible), the fiction is conceptually,
if not historically, enlightening12: it demonstrates what could and could not operate as an
explanation of the phenomenon in question. In other words, because the State of Nature
fiction differentiates historical fact from functionalist abstraction, we can determine what
functional role ideology may have played in the development of Sartres materialist dialec-
tic. This determination is helpful because even if ideology now goes far beyond this func-
tion, it matters that the process through which the contemporary social world came to be
could be explained in terms of it. On Sartres account, however, we cannot fathom this
development, and this spurs methodological holists such as Foucault to say that his iso-
lated, organic labourers are always already ideologically overdetermined. It was incumbent
on Sartre to show how, starting with the organic individual in the State of Nature, con-
sciousness could have developed so as to reinforce the developmental process that he
offers.
Second, because Sartre pays little attention to the development of consciousness within
his materialist dialectic, he distorts the prevailing relationship between consciousness,
need and the material world. For Sartre, needs motivate praxis, praxis reworks the material
world to meet these needs (producing counterfinalities) and the reworked material world,
which is the practico-inert, conditions the way that individuals, by virtue of their (class)
relation to the practico-inert, are conscious of the world. Ultimately, then, consciousness,
and thus interpersonal relationships, are formed on the basis of needs, which are socially
expressed as an (economic) interest: It is at the practico-inert level that sociality is pro-
duced in men by things as a bond of materiality which transcends and alters simple human
relations (CDR I, 304). I think that Sartre is basically right, but I also think that he over-
states his case.
Thus, when Sartre chides Hegel for ignoring matter as a mediation between individ-
uals (CDR I, 113), I agree with him. Hegels dialectical approach analyses the unfolding of
concepts, and even when it does look at questions of natural need and interest, they are
questions for (not imperatives of ) a form of consciousness. For Hegel, as for hermeneu-
tical approaches that draw on him, concepts mediate consciousness, and thus interperso-
nal relationships, all the way down. Such an approach evades the moment of natural need,
as well as the way that it is manifested as an interest, and even if natural need is common to
all individuals, it is individual in nature (i.e. unlike conceptual holism it is common in a
bottom-up way). However, when Sartre says that whatever form of consciousness Spirit

12
See Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, 3133.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 125

may assume, it is the mediation of matter which determines this form in every concrete
case (CDR I, 113), he goes too far the other way. Even if natural needs and the interests
that they generate are baked into and condition our sociocultural forms, they do not over-
determine the relationships between individuals all the way up the line. Over time, ever
more complicated sociocultural forms have emerged, and these forms, through the con-
cepts and institutions that they generate, mediate (without overdetermining) our
natural needs and interests. This is a truth for which Sartres so-called culture-dialectic
cannot account.
These first two problems point to Sartres failure to account for sociocultural
mediations within his materialist dialectic, the first one up the developmental line and
the second one within our existing social world. However, even if Sartre had accounted
for these sociocultural mediations, it would have made little difference because of the
third problem with his account: he retains the phenomenological idea of apodictic cer-
tainty, which is mismatched with his materialist dialectic. While he aims to distance
himself from Husserls view of apodictic certainty, which remains on the level of pure,
formal consciousness apprehending itself in its formality, the notion that it is necessary
to find our apodictic experience in the concrete world of History is no less mistaken.13
Apodictic certainty is associated with the idea that timeless essences can be immediately
intuited, while dialectical comprehension, which sees all knowledge as sociohistorically
mediated, rejects an immediate, certain apprehension of the social world.14 In other
words, here as before, Sartre flattens the epistemological hurdles that might impede the
rational agents ability to deliberate on how best to meet his needs and interests. There
is no recognition that beliefs can be distorted by sociocultural influences, and that this
can have a significant effect on the forms that the rational agents (and collectives)
praxis assumes.
In the next subsection, I shall consider how Sartres methodological individualism fares
after the sociocultural mediations for which he has not accounted are factored into his dia-
lectic and the idea of apodictic certainty is discarded.

3.2. Methodological Individualism in Sartres Materialist Dialectic as Modified

With the sociocultural mediations and without the idea of apodictic certainty, Sartres view
takes on numerous holistic insights. This is appropriate, for the actual question in the
methodological individualismmethodological holism debate is a relative one: how
robustly should we interpret the contention that all social phenomena are to be explained
by the beliefs, desires and actions of individuals?
At the extremes, both methodological individualism and methodological holism are
either trivially true or patently false in terms of this question. Methodological individual-
ism is trivially true if it says that without the beliefs, desires and actions of individuals there
would be no social phenomena, and if methodological holism denied this (i.e. if it were
based on a discrete macro-subject), it would be patently false. Conversely, methodological
individualism is patently false if it says that the beliefs, desires and actions of individuals
13
CDR I, 35. Sartre retains apodictic certainty because he thinks dialectical reason can only be discerned by directly experi-
encing its existence through its intelligibility, independent of any empirical discovery (44). Why it cannot be discerned
inductively on the basis of empirical discoveries he does not say.
14
For an analysis of Sartres ambivalence, see Flynn, Praxis and Vision.
126 D. SHERMAN

are causa sui (i.e. the expression of unqualifiedly free self-determining agents), and meth-
odological holism is trivially true if it holds only that the beliefs, desires and actions of
individuals are not causa sui but are a manifestation of the sociocultural world. The
better questions are why privilege methodological individualism, what can it mean
between these two extremes and what does this mean for social explanation? As I have
modified it, Sartres dialectical methodology addresses these questions in a relatively satis-
fying way. I shall consider them in turn.
First, although the individualismholism dispute ordinarily presents like the serpent
with its tail in its mouth, as the State of Nature heuristic indicates, it begins and ends
with the beliefs, desires and actions of individuals, which is why methodological individu-
alism must be favoured. Phylogenetically and ontogenetically, individuals precede society.
Through their developing beliefs, desires and actions, individuals constitute the interest-
driven collectives that constitute society, uphold these collectives and the larger society
while they incrementally transform them, and ultimately bring these collectives and the
larger society down. Nevertheless, this is not to deny that the substance of the individuals
beliefs, desires and actions is the substance of society, or that this substance constitutes the
objective interests that individuals tend to act on, or even that this substance can appear to
overdetermine the individuals beliefs, desires and actions in accordance with systemic
imperatives, which are the claims that methodological holists should be making.
Of course, it is here that Sartres account of methodological individualism differs
sharply from the way that I have modified it. Without the sociocultural mediations and
with apodictic certainty, each praxis uses the whole of culture and becomes both synchro-
nic and diachronic (CDR I, 55). Culture, as well as the praxes that it produces, is thus only
for the individual rather than being the substance of the individual: it is only a part of the
practico-inert, which praxis uses instrumentally. Sartres agent, therefore, is basically the
rational agent of rational choice theory. By incorporating the sociocultural mediations
and rejecting apodictic certainty, I have made this agents standpoint more problematic.
The individual is the substance of his culture, and there is no way for him to get
beneath the natural attitude. Still, even with these changes, I agree with Sartres
emphases on natural need and critical reflection, although with the individual in society
they now primarily manifest themselves in the last instance. Ordinarily, the beliefs,
desires and actions of individuals are informed by society. But regardless of how tightly
wound a societys epistemic bonds are, individuals have needs in a way that collectives
do not, and societies must minimally meet these needs if they are to survive. The move-
ment of history reflects their failure to do so. Moreover, critical reflection, aided by the
dialectical intelligibility that is the Critique itself, illuminates the nature of social life,
thereby enabling individuals to approach it differently. These two moments constitute
the truth of methodological individualism.
Second, Sartres account of methodological individualism, as modified, not only pro-
vides the microfoundations that more extreme methodological individualists require
but also, by virtue of its dialectical approach, provides the basis for mediating analyses
pitched at the social and the individual levels. By virtue of its dialectical approach,
Sartres account opens up the possibility for showing how social wholes can be derived
from the actions of individuals, how the terms that are used at any given level of analysis
morph and how new terms emerge, and finally how social theories can be reduced to indi-
vidual theories. In this way, to use J.W.N. Watkins term, Sartre is, in principle, able to
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 127

supply a rock-bottom explanation of social phenomena.15 However, unlike the rock-

bottom explanations of such methodological individualists, which tend to drain the expla-
natory power from social scientific analyses by reducing them to a positivistic listing of the
beliefs, desires and actions of individuals, Sartres dialectical approach opens the possi-
bility for showing how collective interests, collective praxis and even (when modified) col-
lective self-understandings emerge, and how these influence, without thereby
overdetermining, the beliefs, desires and actions of individuals.
Third, when it is completely reduced to the beliefs, desires and actions of individuals,
methodological individualism foregoes the generalizations that are the gist of the social
sciences, and thus is not really in a position to explain. It may trot out what appear to
be the causal factors culminating in the social phenomenon to be explained, but this con-
fuses a description of causes with an explanation, which makes clear why a social phenom-
enon would probably have occurred even without the specific individuals and occurrences
that precipitated it.16 Sartres dialectical approach, which situates the individuals beliefs,
desires and actions in the logic of an unfolding organizational framework that delineates
his objective interests, but ultimately grounds them in his most subjective interest, meeting
his needs, gives this macro-level explanation. Conversely, when it is completely reduced to
the social whole, methodological holism foregoes the specifics (the beliefs, desires and
actions of the specific individuals that constitute society), and in effect gives a-priori expla-
nations. Such an approach tends toward a tautologous functionalism, for all social
phenomena can be explained in terms of the function they perform for reproducing a
given institutional structure even before they occur. Social phenomena are far more
complex than this implies, as neither individuals nor societies are one-dimensional, and
this is particularly so when sociocultural matters are taken into account. Sartres dialectical
approach avoids all frictionless macro-level explanations, for whatever objective ten-
dencies might exist, the social phenomena that arise must in principle be open to a detailed
micro-level explanation.
Ultimately, then, while Sartre methodologically privileges individualism in both the
first and the last instances, he also incorporates the idea of objective interests, which
are essential to most holistic accounts. Therefore, his account can no more be strictly
reduced to methodological individualism than to methodological holism. By rejecting
strict reduction in either direction, his approach seems to sacrifice too much explanatory
power, but sacrificing what one cannot justify is no sacrifice. Instead, it constitutes an
insight that opens the way for richer empirical inquiries and better-grounded sociological
generalizations, each of which depends on the other.

4. Sartres Dialectical Methodology, Explanation and Understanding

As Sartre methodologically privileges individualism over holism, but only in a mediated
way, he privileges explanation over understanding, which signify making sense of
social phenomena in causal terms, as with all other entities in the natural order, and
making sense of them in terms of meaning, as with all other issues of interpretation
within our hermeneutic horizon. I start by considering the relation between explanation
15
Watkins, Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences, 106.
16
Miller, Methodological Individualism and Social Explanation, 402.
128 D. SHERMAN

and understanding in Sartres thought as he offers it. I then consider how this relation fares
with the modifications I made to it in the last section, positing the emergence of a complex
sociocultural order that does not directly descend from or mirror praxis instrumental
incursions into the natural world and discarding apodictic certainty.

4.1. Explanation and Understanding in Sartres Materialist Dialectic as it Stands

As already indicated, Sartre starts from the rational agent, which implies that he is com-
mitted to explanation and to methodological individualism. His commitment to expla-
nation, which, like methodological individualism, is clearest in the first and the last
instances, is suggested in two ways. First, as stated earlier, he says that everything is
to be explained through need or, more precisely, praxes meant to meet our needs,
whose material condition is scarcity, in a particular form (CDR I, 80, 113). Praxis
is naturalistically grounded, and viewed from the point of view of exteriority the
living body obeys all the exterior laws (CDR I, 81). Second, as also stated earlier, he
pays little attention to the sociocultural, which is the domain of understanding. From
the perspective of his methodological individualism, this means that he pays little atten-
tion to the individual qua social actor, who must negotiate the web of rules, norms and
practices (games) that both constitute and are constituted by our sociocultural insti-
tutions. For the social actor, all praxes are moves within a sociocultural reality (form of
life), and this includes praxes that aim to meet our natural needs. Conversely, for
Sartres rational agent, every praxis is primarily an instrumentalization of material
reality (CDR I, 161), which is made and remade by the results of prior material
praxes. Thus, beginning with the countless praxes of rational agents (qua organic indi-
viduals) trying to meet their needs in a natural world marked by scarcity, ever-larger
systems arise and history unfolds, all of which is explained by our existence within
the natural order.
As far as it goes, this description fits within a causal account, and thus social phenom-
ena are theoretically predictable, which is the mark of explanation. Yet, even on Sartres
unalloyed account, matters are not so straightforward. For Sartre, the material reality
on which the rational agent works is saturated with meanings, and these meanings,
although initially derivative, start to give reasons for action that are not easily reduced
to their natural antecedents. As was indicated earlier, while Sartre does not admit it,
needs increasingly come to be socioculturally rather than biologically inflected (albeit
not all the way down), and this is the upshot of his dialectic. Under these conditions,
an increasing preponderance of the praxes that seek to realize our needs are not material,
and thus an increasing preponderance of social phenomena are not well explained by his
reductive account. Moreover, not only is material reality saturated with meanings, but
these meanings go all the way down: materiality is indissolubly linked to the meanings
engraved in it by praxis and matter does not appear anywhere in human experience.
Rather, a social and material unity confers the unity of an event on something.
Thus, the monism which starts from the human world and situates man in Nature is
the monism of materiality and this monism can transcend the following true but contra-
dictory propositions: all existence in the universe is material [while] everything in the
world of man is human (CDR I, 18081).
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 129

Sartre wavers here between explanation and understanding, or whether social phenom-
ena should be understood from an external or an internal perspective. Yet, before inves-
tigating this problem, what he means by meaning must be clarified. As the difference
between the external perspective of the natural order and the internal perspective of
our hermeneutic horizon captures the difference between explanation and understanding,
there is a difference within understanding between what can be called the inside stand-
point and the outside standpoint, which coincide with the practical agent and his
culture. For Sartre, meaning is related to the inside standpoint, the standpoint of the
agent, while meanings that are inscribed in the practico-inert, the cultural standpoint,
are merely significations. Meanings are, therefore, phenomenologically grounded.
They represent the interpretations of innumerable agents engaged in their manifold
praxes, while significations constitute the sociocultural context within which these trans-
cending meanings arise and actions are undertaken. Roughly, meanings stand in the same
relationship to significations as consciousness stands to the self in his existential phenom-
enology: as consciousness transcends the self that always already orients it, meanings
transcend the significations that always already orient them.
So, if on Sartres dialectical account significations go all the way down, and if in keeping
with its unfolding logic sociocultural needs emerge whose meanings are not directly redu-
cible to biological imperatives, where does the explanationunderstanding controversy
stand? Does this modify, however inadvertently, Sartres economism, under which
meaning and signification are understood as epiphenomenal in relation to matter, as
reflected in his claim that every supposed superstructure is really already contained in
the base, as a structure of the fundamental relation of men to worked matter and to
other men (CDR I, 249n). While formulations holding that matter is the only spur to
praxis or changes in significations move in lockstep with changes in material conditions
are now too restrictive, the basic structure of his account does not change much, and
explanation keeps its primacy. This is because, even with these modifications, Sartre
retains his commitment to the methodologically forward-looking, instrumentalizing
rational agent with the undisputed preference structure. Three related points bear men-
tioning in this regard.
First, as with other methodological individualists who privilege the rational agent
(rather than the social actor), the rational agents undisputed preference structure does
not bother Sartre, for he assumes that it does not arise from systemic imperatives of
which the rational agent is not aware. The problem of ideology or false consciousness
does not arise, for although there are ideologists who attempt to mystify economic
relations (CDR I, 19), all people are, or at least can be, apodictically certain of their
praxes: It is possible for anyone to comprehend himself in his action both from the
outside and from within (CDR I, 225). Second, even if significations go all the way
down and sociocultural needs arise that surpass biological imperatives, the rational
agent still reflects an abject view of the human being: he is still just an opportunistic cal-
culator, only now with a qualitatively wider array of interests to be factored into his cal-
culus. Third, this abjection is reflected in Sartres claim that values are the alienation of
praxis itself, and thus are only reifications bound up with the structures of the practico-
inert: If a liquidation of these structures is to be possible, he says, values will disappear
with them, allowing praxis in its free development to be revealed as the sole ethical relation
between people in so far as together they dominate matter (CDR I, 24849n). Sartre
130 D. SHERMAN

seems to think that modern ethics is ideological in a pejorative sense, but that with its dis-
appearance and the disappearance of the practico-inert to which it is tied, a true ethics,
based on material need, will arise. This begs too many questions to consider, and I
would only say that he rightly reconsidered his ethical views after the Critique.
All of this implies that while Sartre has overcome the decisionism innate to his existen-
tial phenomenology by substituting concrete praxis (impelled by a scarcity of the resources
required to meet natural needs) for the abstract for-itself, he keeps the same lacklustre view
of the self and the sociocultural world that in no small part constitutes it. For Sartre, then,
even if sociocultural needs emerge, and even if the meaning of material needs are filtered
through the sociocultural, the sociocultural still reflects socioeconomic imperatives and
the social actor reflects the cipher-like rational agent, who functions as a throughput
between external inputs and a maximizing output.17 While the world that praxis
engages is sedimented with the significations of previous praxes, and contemporary
praxes are meaningful because of the way that they transcend these sedimented significa-
tions to maximize the agents interests, the content of meaning is the stuff of interests. It is
shaped by instrumental considerations and therefore can be derived more or less unpro-
blematically from the way that the rational agent attempts to maximize his interests within
a given practico-inert field constituted by a given assemblage of significations. Obviously,
with the emergence of sociocultural needs, which become progressively distant from bio-
logical needs, reduction becomes more complicated, but even for many naturalists, expla-
nation does not require reduction, for causal relations at the natural level do nothing to
illuminate social phenomena. In sum, then, the reasons for praxis can still more or less
unproblematically be viewed as its causes, and explanation retains its prerogatives over
understanding.

4.2. Explanation and Understanding in Sartres Materialist Dialectic as Modified

With the two modifications that I have offered adding emergent sociocultural insti-
tutions that mediate the individuals relation to socioeconomic considerations (for
which matter is only an emblem) and eliminating apodictic certainty (which otherwise
enables the individual to bracket all sociocultural interpretations) the social actor
appears to outstrip the rational agent, and thus understanding appears to outstrip expla-
nation. However, what this means for making sense of social phenomena is not yet clear,
for understanding can be interpreted in more or less extreme ways.
At the extreme, understanding means not only that the rules and practices of sociocul-
tural institutions overdetermine the way that the individual qua social actor navigates his
form of life, but also that all human endeavours, including the natural sciences, are socially
constructed all the way down. All phenomena, including natural ones subject to causal
language, are thus only a question of interpretation. But to move from the purely rational
agent to the purely social actor is to lurch from pillar to post, from the cipher that Amartya
Sen calls a social moron to a social automaton.18 This position is not tenable for two
reasons. First, it cannot make sense of well-established findings within the natural
sciences, which refute the relativistic conclusions that follow from a thoroughgoing
17
Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Science, 196.
18
Sen, Rational Fools, 336.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 131

commitment to understanding. Second, the rules and practices of sociocultural insti-

tutions are underdetermining as regards the social actor, not overdetermining, as with
the relationship between the system (which conjoins holism and explanation) and the
individual.19 The social actor must bring something more to bear, and this something
more, which extreme forms of understanding reject, reconstructs these rules and practices.
Sartre thus understates the problem that confronts structuralists when he says that they
cannot account for sociohistorical change. In fact, they cannot even account for the move-
ment within a form of sociocultural life.
As was just suggested, a less-extreme, more plausible account of understanding con-
cedes that the rules and practices of sociocultural institutions underdetermine the individ-
uals actions. Individuals must therefore determine how to traverse these
underdetermining rules and practices, and in this process they reconstitute them. Yet,
this more nuanced conception of understanding engenders its own problems. To begin
with, unlike homo economicus, who resolves conflicting desires on the straightforward
basis of utility maximization, homo sociologicus does not have a reconciling higher-
order criterion that resolves internal conflicts between competing social rules and practices
or between its socioculturally generated self-understanding and rules and practices that
this self-understanding leapfrogs or lags behind. It is not clear, in other words, on what
basis homo sociologicus determines how to address these conflicts. The most promising
option is that the individual qua rational agent pursuing his socioeconomic interests
within the spaces between these competing rules, practices and self-understandings
comes into play. Such an account is less-extreme and more plausible, but it further com-
plicates the relation between understanding and explanation, because how to combine
backward-looking, rule and practice following homo sociologicus and forward-looking,
utility maximizing homo economicus is unclear.
These are the challenges posed by Sartres dialectical account with the modifications
that I have made to it. Indeed, on any truly dialectical account, the makeup of the socio-
economic and of the sociocultural changes over time, and the course of these changes is
determined both by the continuing development within each of these domains and by
the continuing interaction between them. This suggests not only that making sense of
what makes most sense of social phenomena changes over time but also that there can
be no final parsing of the socioeconomicsociocultural relation. But if this is the case,
understanding seems to assume primacy, for parsing itself occurs within a hermeneutic
horizon in which this task is always already interpretative. This seems to bring matters
back to an extreme form of understanding, but it need not, because the naturalist who
would vindicate explanation still has a move. This move builds on the State of Nature
heuristic that I offered and conforms structurally to my approach to the individualism
holism dispute.
It will be recalled that although the State of Nature fiction is fact-defective, it can still be
conceptually enlightening if it is not law-defective, and this was the case with the indivi-
dualismholism dispute. From the standpoint of this fictional developmental account,
holisms appeal for making sense of social phenomena emerged, but its emergence con-
ditioned rather than displaced individualism, with the result that in the first and last
instances individualism holds. From this standpoint, interpretations appeal for making

19
The remainder of this paragraph and the next one draw heavily on Hollis.
132 D. SHERMAN

sense of social phenomena also emerged, but its emergence conditioned rather than dis-
placed explanation, with the result that in the first and last instances explanation holds. In
the State of Nature, praxis is geared to meet natural needs, and through the many layers of
interpretation that constitute our hermeneutic horizon these natural needs (and our bio-
logical reactions to them) still reveal themselves:
Without the original tension of need as a relation of interiority with Nature, there would be
no change, and conversely, there is no common praxis at any level whose regressive or des-
cending signification is not directly or indirectly related to this original tension. (CDR I, 349)

I do not want to push this similarity too forcefully, for there is an important dissimilarity.
For Sartre, with the individualismholism relation, the social whole emerges from the
actions of individuals, who become progressively embedded in and shaped by their own
creation, and then, because of the imperatives that continuously spur praxis, reshape
the social whole in turn. Because this account goes solely to the production of the
human world, which is structured by the relation between these two terms, a dialectical
methodology is entirely appropriate: indeed, in my view, it is required. With the expla-
nationunderstanding relation matters become far more complicated, although in one
respect it incorporates a similar dynamic: the human world, which is comprised of the
countless significations that make up our hermeneutic horizon, emerges from the count-
less meanings conferred by individuals engaged in material (i.e. biologically grounded)
praxes, and these individuals become increasingly embedded in and shaped by the signif-
ications that make up the hermeneutic horizon that they have generated, which they then
reconstitute through their transcendent meanings. Yet, crucially, all of this goes only to the
human world.
The problem here is that meaning-conferring individuals and the social whole in whose
significations they are embedded are both more fundamentally embedded within the
causal order of the natural world. For Sartre, while there are dialectical relations within
these orders, between individual meanings and collective significations within the
human world and between praxes spurred by natural need and a physical environment
progressively reshaped to meet these needs within the natural world, the relation
between these orders is unclear. There is no direct relation between our interpretation
of the meanings generated in the human world and our explanation of the causal relations
that exist in the natural world in which it is embedded. These orders involve two comple-
tely different levels of analysis, and whether social phenomena should be made sense of in
terms of understanding or in terms of explanation is more a reflection of the kind of
account that one wants to give than of their comparative epistemological merits.
Nevertheless, in making sense of social phenomena, explanation is still primary, but
only in the first and the last instances, and this is because in the first and the last instances
needs are in the foreground. In the first instance, as the State of Nature heuristic indicates,
there is our direct interchange with nature as biological organisms driven to sustain and
reproduce ourselves. And, in the last instance, these needs typically override sociocultural
considerations (even when they have arisen from them), for when there are crises that
threaten our capacity to meet these needs, human beings are more likely to break with
the rules and practices of sociocultural life and act in ways that are envisioned to meet
them more directly. Under these conditions, the rational agent ascends in relation to
the social actor, and actions become more predictable. Crucially, although human
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 133

beings can be expected to try to meet their natural needs at first, they commonly then turn
their sights on the institutions that produced this condition of deprivation, and the socio-
political actions that arise from this situation are anything but predictable. Sartres group-
in-fusion both arises in response to a condition of deprivation and typifies this sub-
sequent unpredictability, as his example, the storming of the Bastille and its aftermath,
amply attests.
Of course, even in between the first and the last instances, when the rules and practices
of sociocultural life are largely functioning because needs are largely being met, human
beings qua social actors largely comply with these rules and practices. That is, they are
largely predictable, subject to the indeterminacies involved in complying with these
rules and practices. However, even if largely predictable, the social actors actions
cannot be viewed like the rational agents actions, for his meaningful actions do not
flow from the self like the rational agents maximizing actions flow from his preferences.
The social actors actions are both generated within and undertaken on the basis of the
space of sociocultural meanings, and they can be grasped only in terms of it. These
actions cannot be explained in terms of causes, but must be understood in terms of
reasons (even if in theory reasons must be reducible to causes). Furthermore, predictability
varies across sociocultural spaces, and this variability (assuming needs are met) is based
upon the extent to which the existing rules and practices allow or encourage people to
creatively pursue their lives. In between the first and the last instances, sociocultural
interpretation seems to get the last word.
The upshot here is that when needs are met and individuals are given more sociocultural
latitude, human actions become less predictable, and this diminished predictability testifies
to a greater degree of practical freedom. This is Sartres ultimate value in the Critique (as
opposed to the freedom to choose, or phenomenological freedom, which is his ultimate
datum in Being and Nothingness). For Sartre, as for all who employ a dialectical method,
there is not a hard and fast distinction between the facts revealed by the social sciences
and the values of philosophy, which interpenetrate one another. Thus, while it is the goal
of the social sciences to garner facts, these facts must not be taken at face value, for this
would sanitize as fact those values generated by a sociocultural form of life that could
have been otherwise. For Sartre, this is a form of positivism, and for Positivists, prediction
is possible only to the extent that the current order of succession re-enacts a previous order
of succession, and so the future repeats the past (CDR I, 23).20 Thus, the social sciences
must be carried out reflexively and prospectively, and even the predictability they pursue
must be considered in this light. Unlike the natural sciences, in which predictability is a
clear achievement, in the social sciences just what is predictable and what its predictability
actually implies is an open question that must be analysed on a case-by-case basis.

References
Elster, Jon, The Case for Methodological Individualism, Theory and Society, 11, no. 4 (1982):
45382.
Flynn, Thomas, Praxis and Vision: Elements of a Sartrean Epistemology, Philosophical Forum 8
(1976): 2143.
Hollis, Martin, The Philosophy of Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

20
Positivism here means wrongly using the methodologies of the natural sciences with the social sciences.
134 D. SHERMAN

James, Susan, The Content of Social Explanation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
Marx, Karl, The MarxEngels Reader, ed. R. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978).
Miller, Richard, Methodological Individualism and Social Explanation, Philosophy of Science, 45,
no. 3 (1978): 387414.
Roemer, John, Analytical Marxism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, trans. Hazel
Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1956).
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Replies to Structuralism: An Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre, Telos 9 (1971):
11016.
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre, in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, ed. P.
Schilpp (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Press, 1981).
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume One: Theory of Practical Ensembles, trans.
Alan Sheridan-Smith (London: Verso, 2004).
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume Two: The Intelligibility of History, trans.
Quintin Hoare (London: Verso, 2006).
Sen, Amartya, Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioural Foundations of Economic Theory,
Philosophy & Public Affairs 6, no. 4 (1977): 31744.
Watkins, J. W. N., Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences, The British Journal for the
Philosophy of Science 8, no. 30 (1957): 10417.
Williams, Bernard, Truth and Truthfulness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).