"Problems of Method" by Jean-Paul Sartre, summary

This philosophical work argues for the need to reconcile existentialism with historical materialism for the sake of bringing living humanity back into science. The thinker wrote this work in the fall of 1957 for a special issue of the Polish journal Twórczość and later published it in the French journal Les Temps modernes. The essay serves as a methodological prologue to the extensive two-volume work Critique of Dialectical Reason, the first volume of which was published in 1960.

Marxism and existentialism

Philosophy expresses the practical self-awareness of a class. Each era gives birth to a dominant system of thought. Since the seventeenth century, European culture has known three such periods: Cartesian, Hegelian, and Marxist. It is impossible to transcend the current horizon. Old social contradictions have not been resolved.

Later researchers become mere ideologists. Existentialism clings parasitically to the fringes of Marxism. The roots of this movement lie in Søren Kierkegaard’s polemic against Hegel. The Danish theologian rebelled against the transformation of individual suffering into a conceptual element of the absolute idea. The experience of pain eludes abstract systems. Karl Marx also reproached Hegel for confusing objectification with alienation, shifting the debate from theology to the realm of material production.

Karl Jaspers later transformed Kierkegaard’s rebellion into the subjective pessimism of the German bourgeoisie. The philosopher withdrew into contemplation of defeat. A completely different current developed in post-war France.

In the 1920s, university professors taught neo-Kantian idealism to their students. Reading Marx remained a dead letter. The real presence of workers turned the academic world upside down. The violence of history destroyed bourgeois optimism.

Having attracted the intelligentsia, modern Marxism froze. The Soviet bureaucracy severed theory and practice in favor of forced industrialization. Doctrine became an untouchable cult. Scholasticism replaced experience with ready-made decrees. The subsoil of Budapest was found guilty of Mátyás Rákosi’s subway plan. Party ideologists immediately labeled the 1956 uprising of Hungarian workers’ councils a conspiracy of global imperialism. Vibrant heuristic inquiry gave way to the terror of abstractions.

Intermediate links and auxiliary disciplines

Schematicians dissolve the uniqueness of phenomena. Paul Guérin reduces the Revolutionary War of 1792 to the trade rivalry between England and France. Brissot’s Girondins are transformed by the historian into blind puppets of Bordeaux shipowners. People’s political passions lose their substance. The petty bourgeois donned the toga of Cato, struggling to cope with the uncertain storms of history. This is not just a mask. The act is tied to a concrete drama.

Marxism knows formulas. Paul Lafargue or Roger Garaudy would call Paul Valéry a petty bourgeois. A poet vanishes under the pen of dogmatists. Valéry is a petty bourgeois, although not every petty bourgeois became a Valéry. The doctrine lacks supporting bridges.

The family forms the first link between the individual and the class. An adult worker is formed long before receiving his first factory paycheck. Psychoanalysis reveals the mechanism of a child’s early education.

Gustave Flaubert grew up in the shadow of his father, a Rouen surgeon. The doctor overwhelmed his family with his Voltairean skepticism. His older brother, Achille, eclipsed Gustave with his brilliant achievements. The boy sought refuge from the unbearable family rivalry through feigned passivity. Childhood seizures cemented his rejection of legal service. The child internalized his fear of death near the dissection room. The creator of "Madame Bovary" grew out of his early grievances.

Sociology studies immediate groups. People experience the influence of the work collective and the pressure of the neighborhood street. Kurt Lewin’s research is useful for its rich material. The American scholar fetishizes the current equilibrium of a small group, forgetting the past. The method lacks historical scope.

Abram Kardiner described the anxiety of the inhabitants of the Marquesas Islands. A shortage of women gave rise to cannibalism and polyandry. The scarcity of material resources determined family institutions through a chain of reactions.

The urban collective functions as a rarefied space. Every day, the average citizen encounters institutions, shop windows, coins, and ruins. In Rome, poverty coexists with luxury, visible to onlookers. In Paris, class neighborhoods are topographically divided.

Progressive-regressive method

Man makes history. Given circumstances shape people. The actor continually transcends the given situation for the sake of the future. A project connects material need with a goal. Scarcity propels the organism forward. Practice overcomes inert matter. A young black man hijacked a plane near London and died over the English Channel. A lone individual’s personal rebellion expressed the deep despair of oppressed colonies.

The past follows the deed. Flaubert built his destiny in a spiral. A literary recluse took revenge on his father by creating a masterpiece. The tools of the era impose boundaries on the individual. The Marquis de Sade defended the privileges of the fading nobility with the concepts of the bourgeois Enlightenment. A feudal lord transformed the cult of good nature into a hymn to crime.

In 1793, hungry Parisian sans-culottes stormed the National Convention, screaming for bread. The poor demanded fixed prices. Memories of the royal granaries pushed the people toward old monarchical measures. Legislators caved to the rebels. Maximum prices destroyed the food supply. Jacobins Maximilien Robespierre and Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne directed social anger toward finding hidden conspirators. Instead of satiety, the masses received the guillotine. Terror devoured the revolutionaries.

Historical fact possesses a unique character. Georgy Plekhanov ridiculed Napoleon Bonaparte’s role. The Russian Marxist asserted the insignificance of the conqueror’s character for the fate of French capitalism. The damage from Napoleon’s campaigns determined the economic stagnation of the Restoration era for fifteen years. Without this era, Victor Hugo would have become a different writer. Personality leaves an indelible imprint on the confluence of events.

The researcher moves like a shuttle. First, a regressive step leads the analysis away from the work and toward family drama and class context. Then, a progressive step reconstructs the project from the bottom up. Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary to spite his bourgeois surroundings. The audience of the Second Empire saw in the novel a cold protocol of morals. The writer alienates his work into the hands of other readers.

The human basis of science

Understanding is born from shared action. A friend gets up and opens a window in a stuffy room. Those around him instantly grasp the idea, without the need for abstruse abstractions. Objects serve as signs. Meanings are enshrined in tools. A person always chooses opportunity over material obstacles.

Existentialism defends the living flesh of practice from dogmatism. The alienation of the worker is not reducible to the soulless schedules of Polish ministries. Marxism will heal its internal anemia when it embraces the phenomenology of human choice. On that very day, independent existentialism will voluntarily dissolve into a unified anthropology.