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Rethinking Sartre: A Political Reading
This work reexamines Sartre's phenomenology from the perspective of contemporary debates in political theory with particular attention to the reemergence of theories of human nature. For Sartre, any construct that stood between the self and its direct encounter with the world was suspect. Sartre's version of direct realism is a strong refutation of the "new essentialism" that has emerged in recent years as a back-door invocation of theories of human nature. This book provides an account of the major ideas that inform the new essentialism and that serve to further identify it as other than what it claims to be, a scientific grounding of human behavior. Instead, from the perspective of Sartre's realism it is exposed as an abstract ideology. One aspect of this new essentialism has been its encouragement of ideological claims about human essences, historically and culturally derived attributes of individuals that, it is alleged, define individual human existence itself. Thus human freedom is diminished even while essentialist categories such as male aggression become an overlooked underpinning for political ideology.

Sartre's later philosophical account of why essentialist theories of human nature are particularly damaging in relation to political theory is explained with an eye towards the current global danger wherein ideologies of human nature are increasingly masked as religion. Sartre's philosophy insists that the full exposition of human freedom and agency must be established first for only then can the life of history and culture enhance and not detract from the actualization of humanist goals. It explicates this concept first, through a study of Sartre's early article on Intentionality, and then the larger work, Transcendence of the Ego. A detailed account is given of Sartre's direct realism in which the intentional structure of consciousness emerges as evidence against essentialist claims of human nature.

Professor Carney's analysis considers the way Sartre develops the concept of Intentional
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Rethinking Sartre: A Political Reading
This work reexamines Sartre's phenomenology from the perspective of contemporary debates in political theory with particular attention to the reemergence of theories of human nature. For Sartre, any construct that stood between the self and its direct encounter with the world was suspect. Sartre's version of direct realism is a strong refutation of the "new essentialism" that has emerged in recent years as a back-door invocation of theories of human nature. This book provides an account of the major ideas that inform the new essentialism and that serve to further identify it as other than what it claims to be, a scientific grounding of human behavior. Instead, from the perspective of Sartre's realism it is exposed as an abstract ideology. One aspect of this new essentialism has been its encouragement of ideological claims about human essences, historically and culturally derived attributes of individuals that, it is alleged, define individual human existence itself. Thus human freedom is diminished even while essentialist categories such as male aggression become an overlooked underpinning for political ideology.

Sartre's later philosophical account of why essentialist theories of human nature are particularly damaging in relation to political theory is explained with an eye towards the current global danger wherein ideologies of human nature are increasingly masked as religion. Sartre's philosophy insists that the full exposition of human freedom and agency must be established first for only then can the life of history and culture enhance and not detract from the actualization of humanist goals. It explicates this concept first, through a study of Sartre's early article on Intentionality, and then the larger work, Transcendence of the Ego. A detailed account is given of Sartre's direct realism in which the intentional structure of consciousness emerges as evidence against essentialist claims of human nature.

Professor Carney's analysis considers the way Sartre develops the concept of Intentional
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Rethinking Sartre: A Political Reading

Rethinking Sartre: A Political Reading

by John C. Carney
Rethinking Sartre: A Political Reading

Rethinking Sartre: A Political Reading

by John C. Carney

Overview

This work reexamines Sartre's phenomenology from the perspective of contemporary debates in political theory with particular attention to the reemergence of theories of human nature. For Sartre, any construct that stood between the self and its direct encounter with the world was suspect. Sartre's version of direct realism is a strong refutation of the "new essentialism" that has emerged in recent years as a back-door invocation of theories of human nature. This book provides an account of the major ideas that inform the new essentialism and that serve to further identify it as other than what it claims to be, a scientific grounding of human behavior. Instead, from the perspective of Sartre's realism it is exposed as an abstract ideology. One aspect of this new essentialism has been its encouragement of ideological claims about human essences, historically and culturally derived attributes of individuals that, it is alleged, define individual human existence itself. Thus human freedom is diminished even while essentialist categories such as male aggression become an overlooked underpinning for political ideology.

Sartre's later philosophical account of why essentialist theories of human nature are particularly damaging in relation to political theory is explained with an eye towards the current global danger wherein ideologies of human nature are increasingly masked as religion. Sartre's philosophy insists that the full exposition of human freedom and agency must be established first for only then can the life of history and culture enhance and not detract from the actualization of humanist goals. It explicates this concept first, through a study of Sartre's early article on Intentionality, and then the larger work, Transcendence of the Ego. A detailed account is given of Sartre's direct realism in which the intentional structure of consciousness emerges as evidence against essentialist claims of human nature.

Professor Carney's analysis considers the way Sartre develops the concept of Intentional

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780761836889
Publisher: University Press of America
Publication date: 04/18/2007
Pages: 156
Product dimensions: 6.06(w) x 9.11(h) x 0.43(d)

About the Author

John Christopher Carney is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Manhattanville College. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Philosophy from New School University. His areas of study are political philosophy, phenomenology, and critical theory. This work and his previous publication, The Phenomenological Argument for the Existence of God (2001), reflect his varied interest in Eastern and Western philosophies and their subsequent political consequences. He is currently at work on a book on the Solidarity Movement in Poland.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Acknowledgments
Chapter 2 Rethinking Sartre
Chapter 3 Intentionality
Chapter 4 The Issue of the Subject and the Debate with Husserl
Chapter 5 What is Bad Faith?
Chapter 6 Political Theory and Alienation
Chapter 7 Sartre's Account of Social Evil in The Flies
Chapter 8 Satre's Philosophy of Political History
Part 9 Bibliography
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Related Subjects

Philosophy
Current Affairs & Politics
European & American Philosophy
Political Theory & Ideology
Major Branches of Philosophical Study
French Philosophy
20th Century French Philosophy
Political Philosophy
Philosophy
Current Affairs & Politics
European & American Philosophy
Political Theory & Ideology
Major Branches of Philosophical Study
French Philosophy
20th Century French Philosophy
Political Philosophy

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