Hegel and Sartre: The Search for Totality

Abstract

Sartre’s relation to Hegel’s philosophy was profoundly ambivalent. He was drawn to Hegel’s idea of the totality that would mediate the relations among all its parts and yet regarded such a totality as out of reach. At the level of consciousness, consciousness is unable to be the totality of consciousnesses that would provide a determinate meaning to present experience for the simple reason that consciousness is always surpassing itself towards its own future possibilities. With respect to interpersonal relations, Sartre argues that Hegel’s ideal of an “I that is We and a We that is I” is an equally impossible totality because the individuality of each subjectivity is constituted by its refusal to be the others. Finally, history as a closed totality is likewise impossible, not only because of the conflictual nature of interpersonal relations, but because each generation surpasses and negates the aims and accomplishments of its predecessors, often to the detriment of the earlier generation’s projects. In all cases, instead of a closed and unified totality, there can only be a “detotalized totality.” Inasmuch as Sartre agrees with Hegel that fully determinate meaning is possible only through the mediation of a totality, Sartre finds himself in the position of what Hegel calls the “unhappy consciousness,” a consciousness that defines itself through a totality that forever lies out of reach.