Sartre and the existential subject
pp. 11-31
in: , André Gorz and the Sartrean legacy, Berlin, Springer, 2000Abstract
I want to argue that the uniqueness of Gorz's social theory ultimately derives from the subtleties of his philosophical understanding of the person. If the study of society aims to be in any small way an emancipatory experience, then it is only reasonable that we demand of this study an appreciation of what emancipation – and indeed "society' – means to the person experiencing it. Gorz has responded directly to this demand by striving to formulate a social theory which remains astutely sensitive to the subject's lived encounters with the world, and it was existential phenomenology which provided him with the initial foundation for this endeavour. As we shall see in the next chapter, Gorz displays considerable affinity with Merleau-Ponty's efforts to furnish a richly textured, multidimensional account of the person's lived relationship to the world, but it was Sartre's more imposing theoretical framework and vocabulary, with its distinguishing classifications of in-itself and for-itself, being and transcendence, facticity and freedom, which exerted the strongest influence on him. So it is with Sartre, and his predecessor Husserl, that we must first begin.