Abstract

Certain orthodox claims about the relationship between the early and the later Sartre have been widely established among Sartrean scholars. First, there is the consensus that Being and Nothingness represents Sartre's ontology as opposed to the later works which represent his social philosophy. That there is presumably a split in Sartre's authorship leads to a second popular claim, which identifies a theoretical gap between the early ontology and the subsequent social philosophy. Critics argue back and forth over the bridge-ability of the gap, while the assumption of a gap goes unchallenged. For these critics, the pressing problem in Sartreanism is as follows: given Sartre's doctrine of radical freedom in Being and Nothingness, and given his subsequent alignment with Marxism, how really free is the human project? ;My dissertation starts out with this orthodox question, but ends up with some very unorthodox conclusions. I begin with an investigation of Sartre's meaning of project, and argue that Sartre does not use the term simply in its conventional sense, as most critics assume, but in a highly stipulative manner to denote the ontological structure of existence. Properly speaking, the For-itself exists as project. I then analyze what it means to exist as project and conclude that one arrives at a full account of project only by tracing its development from Being and Nothingness to the later works. To be project is to exist as a dialectical relation between freedom and materiality, where Sarte gives an account of freedom in Being and Nothingness, and completes that ontology in the later works with an account of materiality. ;This reading discredits the popular interpretation of Being and Nothingness as representing Sartre's complete ontology, and the later works as merely marking his emergence as a social philosopher. I argue that Sartre's authorship is, from start to finish, a voluminous work in ontology. This reading also discredits the orthodox presupposition of a Sartrean gap. I propose that, if we treat the later Sartre primarily as an ontologist and the notion of materiality as constituting the ontological structure of the For-itself, then it is not clear that a theoretical gap exists in Sartreanism after all