Organized Freedom and Progressive Reflection
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Abstract
The present article provides an account of the chapter of volume one of the Critique of Dialectical Reason entitled “The Organization.” It is guided by the following questions: In what ways is the organization an advancement over the group in fusion and the statutory group? How does the organization contribute to the progressive dimension of Sartre’s progressive-regressive method? What is the status of the future within organized groups? It develops Sartre’s theory of power, rights, and duties, and shows that these concepts exist independently of the Polis. This makes possible a contrast with Plato and allows us to develop the implicit Sartrean concepts of moderation and justice in this chapter. I further show the internal structures and functioning of the organized group, Sartre’s concept of personal identity in such action, and the manner in which the future becomes concrete in such articulated action orientated toward an ultimate, collective aim.
Contributor Notes
Dr. Cameron Bassiri is a Professorial Lecturer at American University. He completed his PhD at the New School in the spring of 2013 and wrote his dissertation on the problems of unity, time, wakefulness, and sleep in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. He taught at George Washington University from 2010 to 2016 and has taught Sartre in several of his courses. Moreover, he has overseen two independent studies on the late Sartre, one on volumes four and five of Sartre’s The Family Idiot, the other on volume one of the Critique.