Sartre’s Cartesian subject-object split produces his overestimation of matter
Evidence
From another point of view, this Manichaean and indeed in some ways pre-Socratic evaluation of matter is merely the result of the insistence, already basic in Being and Nothingness, on what we might call an arrested dialectic: on the absolute irreducibility of the contingent, of facticity, of what here is called matter. … From this untenable distinction comes the overestimation of matter (as a hypostasis of the object pole) as well as the confusion between alienation and objectification which, for Chiodi, ultimately stamps Sartre’s thought as un-Marxist. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 478
Categorization
- XREF: The ‘arrested dialectic’ diagnosis and the alienation-objectification confusion connect directly to Jameson’s Frankfurt-School lineage — this is the same critique Adorno levels at identity-thinking and that Lukács directs at reified consciousness. — connects to: Sartre rejected Cartesian dualism by treating material givens as meaning-sedimented facticities — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 63; Sartre divides being into free for-itself consciousness and inert in-itself matter — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 496; Spiritualism and materialism are two halves of one Cartesian dualism, not opposites — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 293 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Sartre rejected Cartesian dualism by treating material givens as meaning-sedimented facticities
#contradicts(0.90) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 63 - Sartre divides being into free for-itself consciousness and inert in-itself matter
#expands(0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 496 - The Cartesian cogito is the only absolute truth grounding all other knowledge.
#expands(0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 21 - Spiritualism and materialism are two halves of one Cartesian dualism, not opposites
#qualifies(0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 293