Sartre’s least-favoured principle delegitimizes elite rationalizations of inequality

Evidence

As an idea, this is astoundingly simple and refreshing. At a stroke, it wipes out the weasely cant indulged in by the advantaged — all those convenient claims that the poor ‘deserve’ their fate, or that the rich are entitled to the disproportionate wealth that accumulates upon them, or that inequality and suffering should be accepted as inevitable parts of life. For Sartre, if the poor and disadvantaged do not believe such arguments, they are wrong arguments. This is similar to what one might call the Genet Principle: that the underdog is always right. From now on, like Jean Genet, Sartre submits himself joyfully to the alienated, downtrodden, thwarted and excluded. He tries to adopt the gaze of the outsider, turned against the privileged caste — even when that caste includes himself. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 858

Categorization

• XREF: Genet Principle echoes the reader’s interest in standpoint and outsider perspectives; ties to existentialism’s treatment of shame and the Other. — connects to: Sartre’s least-favoured principle faces problems of identifying who qualifies — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 859; Sartre’s invented-value ethics lacks the general evaluative power of Kantian universalization — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 188; Neoliberal rationality makes inequality normal and normative in democracy — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 63 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Sartre’s least-favoured principle faces problems of identifying who qualifies #complicates (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 859
• Sartre’s invented-value ethics lacks the general evaluative power of Kantian universalization #expands (0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 188