Odajnyk's book is less specifically about Sartre, since he has "developed" some of Sartre's arguments in comparing existentialism with Marxism. Yet it is also more original and more exciting, for it deals directly with the problem that obsessed Sartre: is there some way of reconciling commitment to individuals and to one-self with commitment to a militant party advocating radical change?
Sartre's Attempt Fails
Both Desan and Odajnyk think that Sartre's attempt at reconciliation fails, although for somewhat different reasons. Odajnyk's logic is the more direct of the two: having compared a system of Marxism with a system of existentialism, he examines Sartre's "union" and concludes that Sartre has sacrificed the essential tenets of existentialism.
Desan identifies more closely with Sartre. His criticism is more sympathetic: he wishes to emphasize that although the Critique does not succeed, it is a work of great importance. In the coarsest terms, the argument of both men is that existentialism emphasizes means (the individual) while Marxism emphasizes ends (the social system). One cannot, Odajnyk argues, combine coherently these two philosophical extremes. One must accept one or the other, or choose a philosophy such as liberalism, in some form, that views life as a series of compromise between individual and society.
Sartre had said to the Marxists: my system has the individualist appeal that yours lacks, while yours provides a blueprint for the life of action mine implies. Let us combine. The fact that Sartre's proposed union does not seem to be philosophically possible does not make it any less worth studying. For while Marxism and existentialism may be incapable of coexisting in a real society, they coexist constantly in the imaginations of young people today. Many of these people are activists. Their programs often reflect this attempt at union. If they ever succeed in gaining some social power, what was of philosophical interest becomes of immense practical importance. Which will succeed, the socialist or the individualist elements in their philosophy? The answer is far from clear. For if Sartre fails by turning from existentialist liberalism to Communism, it can also be argued (as Sartre does in "Reply to Albert Camus," reprinted in Situations), that existentialists who do not make this choice fail worse. Sartre made this argument when he pointed out to Camus that Camus had not hesitated to oppose Hitler in 1941:
There it was simply a question of preventing the Hitlerian madness from destroying a world where solitary exaltation was still possible for a few, and you were agreeing to pay the price for your future exaltations. Today, it is different. It is no longer a matter of defending the status quo, but of changing it. This is what you will not accept, unless accompanied by the most formal guarantees. And I suppose that if I believed, with you, that History is a pool of filth and blood, I would do as you, and look twice before diving in. But suppose that I am in it already, suppose that, from my point of view, even your sulking is the proof of your historicity.
Walter and Jean-Paul Sartre have a good argument there, to which Camus, or someone like me, might reply "it is not the fact of your actions, but the nature and direction of your actions that we disapprove of. We sulk not because we agree with what our governments are doing, but because we think the Communists have not discovered a better, or even as good, a solution."
Inaction, Sartre would point out, is tantamount to acceptance of the status quo. Sartre does not choose Communism because he always One could reply again, expressing incredulity that an existentialist can