Word: desan
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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After a great deal of meditation, it is possible to understand what Sartre means, and then it generally becomes apparent that he could have said it far more clearly. Desan says in The Marxism of Jean-Paul Sartre, "Sartre's book is badly constructed; indeed, it is uselessly obscure and interminable. Our author is definitely at the point where he can afford to be non-conformist to the extreme, leaving just enough intelligibility so that the conformist might attempt the struggle to understand...
...publications by Desan and Odajnyk are clear and extraordinary studies of Sartre's views on Marxism. Desan, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown, has written what is largely a guide to understanding the Critique. Odajnyk instead compares the "systems" of Marxism and existentialism and deals with the weaknesses in each...
...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...