Sartre's second century

Sartre's Legacy in an Era of Obscurantism 203
down to the present day). Indeed, in his or her own time, no thinker of the
twentieth century had such global impact and influence. 4
However, despite the very extensive academic territory of Sartre
studies, the more general consensus would appear to be that his
philosophical approach has been entirely superseded, while there is no
doubt at all that the political causes he represented are in total eclipse.
With the collapse of any significant left-wing presence throughout the
world, an entire cliff of social and political experience has fallen into the
sea. Marxism, "the only humanistic philosophy committed to realising
itself in the world" 5 to which Sartre himself was committed, 6 and which,
for a number of years and in a variety of guises, dominated the intellectual
landscape in both East and West during the second half of the century, is
generally treated now as totally discredited, at least in its political
manifestations.
The vacuum created by the disintegration of the Marxist universe has
provided room for the flourishing and proliferation of all manner of
obscurantist superstitions, which certainly have always been around,
surviving in the cultural undergrowth, but during most of the twentieth
century held in check by the prevailing climate of rationalist discourse,
Marxist or otherwise, which monopolised intellectual respectability. Such
phenomena include varieties of fundamentalist religion, occasionally
staging well-publicised displays; and popular superstitions which never
died out anywhere in the world, whether in the scientifically committed
West—where, among other instances, populist newspapers continue to
carry their astrology columns—or even in the formally atheist former
Eastern Bloc where they revived and blossomed speedily enough after
1989.
What room then remains for Sartre's legacy? My argument is that
Sartre's Marxism 7 does in fact provide a viable and intellectually credible
alternative to the versions which have so spectacularly fallen apart, but
that is by no means all: his pre-Marxist philosophy is important as well.
Sartre's positions are uncompromisingly rationalist and throughout his life
(except possibly in his final years, with weakening mental powers), he
4 Though the jury may still be out on whether Simone de Beauvoir might not
equally, or better, deserve that accolade.
5 Aronson, Sartre*s Second Critique, 7.
6 Towards the end of his life he denied that he was any longer a Marxist, but by
that time his powers were failing significantly.
7 The somewhat fuzzy category in which Sartre's Marxism is generally placed is
that of "Western Marxism", developed mostly, but by no means entirely, by
thinkers unattached to the Marxist political movements.