Sartre proposed the least favoured as the criterion for truth

Evidence

If a lot of people with incompatible interests all claim that right is on their side, how do you decide between them? In a paragraph of the final part of The Communists and Peace, Sartre had sketched the outline of a bold solution: why not decide every situation by asking how it looks to ‘the eyes of the least favoured’, or to ‘those treated the most unjustly’? You just need to work out who is most oppressed and disadvantaged in the situation, and then adopt their version of events as the right one. Their view can be considered the criterion for truth itself: the way of establishing ‘man and society as they truly are’. If something is not true in the eyes of the least favoured, says Sartre, then it is not true. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 857

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clear articulation of Sartre’s ‘eyes of the least favoured’ principle — a key concept worth having well-defined for orientation.
• XREF: Connects to standpoint epistemology and feminist strong objectivity; also echoes Rawls’ difference principle and the veil of ignorance. — connects to: Sartre’s least-favoured principle faces problems of identifying who qualifies — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 859