Abstract
Thomas Flynn's work on Sartre and Foucault, the first of a two-volume project, offers a unique opportunity for examining an existential theory of history. It occasions rethinking existential-social categories from the vantage point of the poststructuralist turn. And it contributes to developing existential variants of critical theory. The following questions guide me in each of the three above areas. First, how is human history intelligible, given not only our finite sense of ourselves but also claims that we have reached the end of history? Second, with the poststructuralist eclipse of dialectics, can we render existential categories in social terms and vice versa? Third, critics decry grand theorizing even in fallibilist reason, e.g., of Habermas, while others are worried by the normative deficits of poststructuralist nominalism, e.g., of Foucault. Can existential variants of critical social theory, anticipated before Sartre by Marcuse, split the difference?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
de Beauvoir, S. (1974). The Second Sex. Trans. H.M. Parshley. New York: Vintage Books.
Butler, J. (1987). Variation on Sex and Gender: Beauvoir, Wittig and Foucault. In Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell (Eds.), Feminism as Critique, pp. 128–142. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge.
Camus, A. (1956). The Rebel. Trans. Anthony Bower. New York: Alfred A. Knopf and Random House.
Camus, A. (1960). The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Trans. Justin O'Brien. New York: Knopf.
Caputo, J.D. (1997). The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Catalano, J.S. (1986). A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's ‘Critique of Dialectical Reason’, vol. 1, ‘Theory of Practical Ensembles’. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx: the State of Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge.
Flynn, T.R. (1997). Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason. Volume I: Towards an Existentialist Theory of History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House.
Foucault, M. (1980). The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, Vintage Books.
Habermas, J. (1992a). In P. Dews (Ed.), Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with Jürgen Habermas. London: Verso, revised and enlarged ed.
Habermas, J. (1992b). Jürgen Habermas On The Legacy of Jean-Paul Sartre. Interview conducted by Richard Wolin. Political Theory 20 (3): 496–501.
Havel, V. (1990). The Power of the Powerless. Trans. P. Wilson. In J. Ladislav (Ed.), Living in Truth: Twenty-Two Essays Published On the Occasion of the Award of the Erasmus Prize to Václav Havel. London: Faber and Faber.
Huntington, P.J. (1998). Ecstatic Subjects, Utopia, and Recognition: Kristeva, Heidegger, Irigaray. Albany, NY: The SUNY Press.
Kierkegaard, S. (1980a). Concept of Anxiety. Trans. Reidar Thomte in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, S. (1980b). The Sickness Unto Death. Ed. and Trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, S. (1983). Repetition. In Fear and Trembling and tiRepetition. Trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, S. (1992). Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments”. 2 Vols. Ed. and Trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lévinas, E. (1990). Difficult Freedom. Trans. Seán Hand. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Marcuse, H. (1955). Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, H. (1969). Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press.
Marcuse, H. (1991). One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, new Introduction Douglas Kellner. Boston: Beacon Press.
Martin, B. (2000). The Radical Project: Sartrean Investigations. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Matuštík, M.J. (1993). Postnational Identity: Critical Theory and Existential Philosophy in Habermas, Kierkegaard, and Havel. New York, London: Guilford Press.
Matuštík, M.J.B. (1998). Specters of Liberation: Great Refusals in the New World Order. Albany, NY: The SUNY Press.
Matuštík, M.J.B. (2001). Jürgen Habermas: A Philosophical-Political Profile. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
McBride, W.L. (1991). Sartre's Political Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
McBride, W.L. (1995). Sartre's Debts to Kierkegaard. In Martin J. Matuštík and Merold Westphal (Eds.), Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity, pp. 18–42. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Poster, M. (1993). Foucault and the Problem of Self-Constitution. In John Caputo and Mark Yount (Eds.), Foucault and the Critique of Institutions, pp. 63–80. University Park: the Penn State University Press.
Ramsey, E.R. (1998). Long Path to Nearness: A Contribution to a Corporeal Philosophy of Communication and the Groundwork for an Ethics of Relief. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Sartre, J. (1974). Kierkegaard: The Singular Universal. In Between Existentialism and Marxism. New York: New Left Books.
Sartre, J. (1976, vol. 1; 1991, vol. 2). Critique of Dialectical Reason. Vol. 1. Trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith. London: New Left Books. Vol. 2. Ed. Arlette Elkaim-Sartre. Trans. Quintin Huare. New York: Verso Books.
Sartre, J. (1995). Anti-Semite and Jew (1946). Trans. George J. Becker. Preface by Michael Walzer (pp. v–xxvi). New York: Schocken Books.
Schrag, C.O. (1989). Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Westphal, M. (1993). Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Beck Matuštík, M. Existential Social Theory After the Poststructuralist and Communication Turns. Human Studies 25, 147–164 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015500509943
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015500509943