Mind the Gap: Sartre's Anarchy of Thought and Freedom

One of the most fruitful and central insights of Sartre is that consciousness must be understood as pure openness. This means that consciousness cannot be thought of as interiority, as my consciousness, but as an absolute and impersonal condition which is nothing more than the intentional relation to objects that are not consciousness itself. Since consciousness has no foundation (Gr.: an-archè, literally: 'no origin') it must be absolute; it is the necessary and sufficient condition of itself. Consciousness is identical to itself, yet is a nothing, the gap that makes objectification possible. Being precisely the condition of possibility of every aspiration, it escapes meaningful content. The consequences of this elegant and seemingly simple idea are quite radical and can be found not only in Sartre's philosophical, literary and dramaturgical work, but also in his relationships and engagements. While existentialism and marxism are both objects of Sartre's philosophical reflection and he hesitantly relates himself to them, it could be argued with him that he had always been an anarchist. In my research project I want to understand Sartre's anarchism by thematizing the related concept of freedom.

When Sartre speaks of la réalité humaine, he speaks, depending on the context, of pour-soi, conscience and liberté. In his early works (up to and including L’être et le néant) he identifies man as freedom. Freedom is the condition for meaning and is in itself unconditioned; l'homme est condamné à être libre. It is only in his later works, starting with Réflexions sur la question juive going on to Critique de la raison dialectique, that Sartre starts to incorporate contingent conditions of freedom (what he calls le pratico-inerte) in his philosophical reflection. In his development as a Marxist he seems to open up the possibility to speak of a gradation of freedom. Is the décalage that was so central in his early works in this context still thinkable? If so, how does he reconcile this with Marxism? And what does Sartre mean when he says that he has always remained anarchist?