The Notion of Collective Authenticity in the Problem of Method

Collective authenticity in The Problem of Method takes two forms. First, collective authenticity may be understood as the class struggle towards the establishment of a society based on brotherhood and freedom. Second, collective authenticity may likewise be understood as the inevitable result of such a struggle. However, before we proceed with the elaboration of such a point, it would be better to point out first the influence of Hegel and Marx in the development of late Sartrean thought. We recall that such topic was not discussed in the second chapter of this thesis and its discussion is reserved for the current chapter.

The influence of Hegel to Sartrean thought is not a direct influence; it came through Marx. Although such an influence is already evident in his early notion of existence as something in the making, the fact remains that it is in his later tenet on collectivity that the influence of Hegel is most evident. The first Sartrean thought which has been derived from Hegel is the view that if there is to be any Truth in man's understanding of himself, it must be a Truth which becomes. Truth is thus something which emerges. In this passage, we find an obvious trace both of Hegelian dialectics and the Marxist tenet of the knowability of man.

The second thing in Sartre which can be traced back to Hegel is the claim that what Truth must become is a totalization. We find in Hegelian dialectics that the synthesis is a totalization of the truth found in both the thesis and the antithesis. In the same manner, we find in Sartre asserting that the Truth in man is a Truth not just about his existence but also about the situations surrounding his existence. This we will understand better when we come to discuss Sartre's notion of political freedom.

It may seem tautological to point out certain influences of Marx to Sartrean thought for the simple reason that Sartre even explicitly claimed that Marxism is the philosophy of our time. Still, it would best serve our discussion if we point out the fourfold Marxist influence to Sartrean thought. First, we find in Sartre the idea that the mode of men's lives in past and present societies is directly determined by the mode and the relations of production and the socio-economic structures which have been built upon them. Anybody familiar with early Sartrean thought might be tempted to immediately conclude that Sartre has abandoned his tenet on the absolute freedom of the individual and clothed himself with this typically deterministic Marxist thought. Second, Sartre argues that the consideration, that the human being's attempt to solve the problem of production has taken the form of building up a class society, entails the interpretation of history as being in large part the history of the class struggle.

As a necessary consequence, man will not have true political freedom so long as class distinctions remain. Third, it is the dominant class which dictates the dominant ideas and values of the period. Moreover, the individual expresses his class in his creative work as in everyday behavior. Finally, following Marx, Sartre holds that while history is not a progression towards some distant perfection, it nevertheless displays certain inevitability in its broad outlines. This position is typically dialectical in nature since it argues that through a perennial negation of the negation, history is seen as a development. With this introduction, let us now proceed with the late Sartrean discussion of the notion of collective authenticity as imbedded in The Problem of Method.

Hazel Barnes, in her introduction to The Problem of Method, affirms that it is in this book that Sartre fulfilled his promise of establishing an ethics. We recall that in his Being and Nothingness, Sartre is pessimistic about the realization of authenticity. He sees a twofold obstacle to such a realization, namely, the intrinsic contradiction in man which makes impossible the realization of ontological authenticity, and the inauthentic environment that deters the achievement of psychological authenticity. Says Barnes:

But we will have to grant that Sartre has fulfilled his promise - to show how the free individual described in Being and Nothingness may commit himself meaningfully in the world.

Moreover, "the ethics of a philosophy of freedom is not possible in a society where men are not free." Collective authenticity then is achieved in a society which respects the freedom of the individual:

But a society which through economic oppression or terror does everything to thwart the individual's creative act, which turns constructive ends into disastrous counter-finalities, leaves man his freedom only as an abstraction. Psychological freedom and political freedom are inextricable even though they are not identical… Thus it is because that men are existentially free that Sartre demands for them a political and practical freedom.

That man is free, then, is the starting point of the Sartrean struggle for collective authenticity. Indeed, it is possible for man to fight for his political freedom if he is not free and does not recognize his freedom in the first place. Moreover, for a society to suppress the freedom of the individual, it is necessary that such a society seeks its justification in the false premise that man is not free. As Sartre says, "To be sure, man can only be enslaved because he is free."

We also recall that in his earlier writings, Sartre tends to absolutize the freedom of the individual by claiming that in all instances, man is confronted with choices. At the extreme, we can always choose whether to submit or die. However, the Sartre in The Problem of Method does not consider the submit-or-die choice as one. Hence his untiring claim for political freedom.

Collective authenticity likewise consists in the project man indulges himself into. The social environment necessarily affects the being of man in such that it defines the possibilities of each individual. That which is possible for one individual may be impossible for another; and it is society which determines such possibility:

Each man is defined negatively by the sum total of the possibles which are impossible for him; that is, by a future more or less blocked off. For the underprivileged classes, each cultural, technical, or material enrichment of society represents a diminution, an impoverishment; the future is almost entirely barred. Both positively and negatively, the social possibles are lived as schematic determinations of the individual future. And the most individual possible is only the internalization and enrichment of the social possible.

Faced with an environment that tends to suppress his freedom, the authentic man engages himself in a project towards the elimination of this obstacle:

Man defines himself by his project. This material object perpetually goes beyond the condition which is made for him; he reveals and determines his situation by transcending it in order to objectify himself - by work, action or gesture.