Praxis and Subjectivity: On Sartre's "Critique of Dialectical Reason"

In his Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960) Sartre enters into a critical discussion with Marxism and looks for the fundaments of a true philosophical anthropology. Therefore, it is also a discussion with the social sciences. From the beginning to the end of the book Sartre uses the term 'praxis' to indicate any action made by an individual, who in his opinion is the only agent of history. Of course, individual praxis is in the first place the transformative action of the man who works, but it is also social behavior, political struggle, in short, any form of historical existence of an individual. In contrast with free praxis is what Sartre calls the practico-inert field, the "place of violence and shadows." In this place or this environment of human history the free praxis of individuals alienates itself and loses transparency to itself. In other words, interiority dissolves into exteriority and multiplicity. It is only the transition from individual praxis to the praxis or being of a group, especially the group in fusion, that makes possible the integration of multiplicity into unity, and the interiorisation of exteriority, to put it otherwise: the advent of subjectivity.