Jean-Paul Sartre's Anarchist Philosophy

William L. Remley is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Saint Peter’s University in New Jersey, USA. He has published several articles on Sartre including “Sartre and Engels: the Critique of Dialectical Reason and the Confrontation on the Dialectics of Nature,”(2012) and “le Juif et le Colon, Figures psychologiques chez Jean-Paul Sartre et Frantz Fanon” (2013).

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionPart One: What Is Anarchism?1. Anarchism: Toward an Understanding2. Anarchist Notions of Human NaturePart Two: The “Golden Age”: Nineteenth-Century Anarchism of Proudhon and BakuninIntroduction: French Political and Social Life 1815-18703. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: His Life and Political Philosophy4. Proudhon’s Thoughts on Authority and his Solution to the Problem5. Mikhail Bakunin and Revolutionary AnarchismPart Three: Jean-Paul Sartre and Twentieth-Century Anarachism: 1914-1960Introduction: French Political and Social Life 1914-19606. The Early Development of Sartre’s Political Anarchism7. The Evolution of Sartre’s Anarchism after World War IIPart Four: Sartre’s Political Manifesto: The Critque of Dialectical ReasonIntroduction: The Critique of Dialectical Reason8. From Collectives to Groups (and Back Again)9. The Institution: Sartre’s Concept of Sovereignty10. Institutionalized Sovereignty: Societies and StatesConclusion: Sartre the AnarchistBibliographyIndex

This original and welcome addition to the critical work on Sartre’s political philosophy sets it in the context of an analysis of historical theories of anarchism. Based on a close reading of some of Sartre’s most difficult texts up to and including the Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), it teases out the different strands which manifest themselves in these works and refuses to go along with accepted interpretations of Sartre’s relationship to Marxism.