HUMANSTUDIES 1,201 --209 (1978)

REVIEW SECTION Translating Philosophy into Sociology HUGH J. SILVERMAN

SUNY at Stony Brook A review of IAN CRAIB,Existentialism and Sociology: A Study of Jean-PaulSartre. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1976.

Despite a variety of expositions, interpretations, and critiques of Jean-Paul Sartre's CYitique of Dialetical Reason (1960) and even more studies devoted to Being and Nothingness (1943), what has been lacking to date is a clear demonstration of how Sartre's philosophy might operate if applied to the theoretical practice of other disciplines. Applications of Being and Nothingness have become popular over the past few decades - especially in the areas of existential psychology, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism. As to the Critique of Dialectical Reason, some commentators have sought to extend its general perspective to political and legal theory. However, with the exception of a few studies, such as Raymond Aron's analysis of the Critique and Michael and Deena Weinstein's essay comparing Sartre with Barrington Moore and C. Wright Mills in Mary Wamock's collection, Existentialism and Sociology: A Study of Jean-Paul Sartre by Ian Craib occupies a rather unique place for the English reader in elaborating Sartre's relationship with sociology. Written by a sociologist, Craib's study is addressed primarily to sociologists. The summaries of Sartre's two major philosophical books reiterate accounts which have been made available by others in a wide variety of contexts. Sometimes these other discussions have integrated both works into a treatment of Sartre's literary and political writings; sometimes they have indicated two opposing accounts of human experience with the notion of a "radical conversion" as the moment of transition; and sometimes they have articulated a continuity between the early and later Sartre. Unlike the others, Ian Craib presents and assesses Being and Nothingness and the Cn'tique o f Dialectical Reason separately. At the same time, he applies these two very different versions of Sartre's position to sociological theory and practice. In order to accomplish his task of translating Reprints of this review may be obtained from the author at Dept. of Philosophy, SUNY

at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, N. Y. 11790.

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Sartre's perspectives into a sociological framework, Craib selects examples for reanalysis from the writings of contemporary sociologists such as Erring Goffman, Harold Garf'mkel, and Alvin Gouldner. How, one might ask, does a philosophy which begins as a theory of consciousness have any relevance to sociology at all? Being and Nothingness is an essay in phenomenological ontology. In a single chapter, Craib attempts to provide an overview of the whole enterprise. He begins by pointing to the existence of consciousness as being-for-itself negating things and other persons in the world by determining them as beings-in-themselves. A similar structure underlies the relationship between being-for-myself and being-for-others. By the objectification of being-for-myself through self-consciousness and being-for-others through the "look," Sartre is able to characterize relations with others according to the categories of love, hate, and indifference. Craib's restatement of these positions allows him to move to the significance of Sartre's existential phenomenology for sociology. The focus of this movement relates to the notion of an individual's projects (and ultimately what Sartre calls the fundamental project) which is formed in a situation but which freely surpasses the situation. Although Cralb cites Sartre's example of Genet to illustrate free choice developed out of a limited situation, he is more interested in substituting the sociologist for Genet. The sociologist is presented as "an ideal example of the Other as not-me-not-object, as the one who looks" (p. 24). In this respect, the sociologist is like the person who catches the Peeping Tom in the act of peering through the keyhole at other people. The sociologist is just as much a part of the situation as the Peeping Tom and those upon whom he is spying. By treating those whom he is studying as objects, the sociologist articulates his own freedom by the negating function (i.e., his consciousness) which establishes them as other-than-himself. Cralb takes this point one step further by showing that implicit in the sociologist's activity is the "possibility that those studied might 'look back,' reject the sociologist, transform him into an object" (p. 28). This turning of the tables is effectively exemplified by the sociology of race relations and of development. Another version of the same reversed relationship is exhibited by Francois Truffaut in his i~tlmSuch a Gorgeous Girl Like Me, in which a male sociologist interviews a female prisoner and subsequently finds himself imprisoned. When the framework of Being and Nothingness is juxtaposed with that of Goffman's Presentation o f the Self in Everyday Life, Craib's position becomes even dearer. Siding with Sartre, Craib offers a critique of Goffman's account of the self. For Goffman, the self is (1) something presented to the individual by a network of institutional relationships of which he is a part, and (2) something built by the individual and "presented" as a way of gaining acceptance from, or achieving domination by, others. In the second ease, the individual becomes an area of independent control. In the first case, the self is defined for the individual. It is a product of the other people who also participate with him in a "total institution," for example, a monastery, an armed service, or a mental hospital.

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"Mortification," the process whereby the individual is debased and treated as an object, leads to either a demoralization and loss of self or a response by which a new self is created. When a new self is created (Goffman's second type), the individual incorporates ("colonizes") his situation to mesh with his own construction of it. When the individual accepts the definition which the institution has given him, a type of submission ("conversion") takes place. In both cases, Goffman's self is an entity or substance of some sort which can be "mortified," "demoralized," or "constructed." With the assistance ofSartre's phenomenological ontology, Goffman's account of the substantive self can be revised and reanalyzed. Indeed, throughout his book, Cralb takes interpretations of social circumstances by already canonized sociologists and "reanalyzes" them in a different way. In so doing, Cralb represents himself as the medium by which Sartre's work can be translated into a sociological theory. Thus Goffman's twofold definition of the self as substantive is reinterpreted as an empty unity, a nothingness and a pure consciousness negating a situation in order to pursue a new self beyond it. The 'T" is therefore never substantive unless reflected upon and accepted as the thing which is defined by others, in which case it becomes a "me." In Sartre's terms, the self which I possess (the transcendent self) is not the self which I pursue and freely project in the act of negation. In the asylum, which Goffman has treated at length, the self is institutionally defined to the extent that the individual's fundamental project appears cut off from its situation and alienated from the formal structure in which it arises. Craib only cites Goffman in order to establish the relevance of a theory of the self to sociology and to show that some apparent similarities occur between Goffman's account and that which Sartre would offer. However, Sartre in his early phase would not accept the self's inability to nihilate (negate by being conscious of) its institutional self-definitions, even in an asylum. The "fundamental project" must necessarily still be operative. Neither the self as object-for.others nor the self as object-for-itself is sufficient for a description of the "true" self. In effecting a transition to the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Craib turns to the work of Harold Garfinkel (especially the 1967 essay "What is Ethnomethodelegy?"). Craib reports three examples: (1) workers at the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center coordinating with the coroner's office to determine whether or not a death was suicide; (2) investigators assessing what patients were selected for treatment among those who came in contact with a UCLA clinic; and (3) students examining common misunderstandings arising out of dialogues between husbands and wives. In each case, Craib demonstrates the role of Garfmkel's concern for "reflexivity," where "to describe a setting is at the same time to constitute it." Garfinkel concerns himself with the problem of how individuals make a particular setting rationally accountable. The study of rational accountability involves an examination of the "taken-for-granted assumptions," the implicit structuring of a situation, and possible ways in which a setting might

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have been ordered otherwise. This "ethnomethodotogical indifference" underlies productive rule-guided activities, but is also open to "practical sociological reasoning" itself. Although sociologists distinguish between "product meanings" and "process meanings" in the domain of common understanding, they both consist of "an inner-temporal course of interpretive work" (p. 69). Distinguishing between the "what" and the "how" of particular social activity does not as such touch upon the language necessarily employed in the situation. For Garfmkel, however, the words employed in the establishment of a procedure and course of action are precisely what need to be examined. From the claim that ethnomethodological studies are directed at formal structures and that they abstain from judgments of adequacy, value, importance, necessity, practicality, success, or consequentiality, the analogy has been drawn between ethnomethodological indifference and the phenomenological reduction. Yet in focusing primarily upon the words spoken rather than on the objects and situation in question, Garfmkel demonstrates his concern with the constitution of the rationality of language. Alfred Schutz provides the counterpoint. Developing his position out of Husserl's transcendental phenomenology, Schutz studies the phenomenon of rationality in the life-world as manifested after the phenomenotogical reduction. Thus Schutz is critical of Sartre for not allowing cooperation to appear as a fundamental aspect of the life-world. Sartre simply does not account for the "common-sense" knowledge which serves as the basis for scientific and other types of knowledge. Garfinkel however goes even further than Schutz. Although he argues for a notion of rationality like Schutz' concept of "common sense," he restricts his formulation of ethnomethodological indifference to the domain of language. As such, Garfinkel is even more distant from what Craib calls a "critical sociology" than Schutz since his realm of concern is limited to language. Yet what distinguishes them both from the Sartrean problematic is the assumption of a unified field of common understanding upon which all knowledge is forged. For Sartre, transcendent to the life-world are the essences which a consciousness can and must negate in its very function of being aware of objects. For Sartre, change is always a condition of human action. Empirical studies are by their very nature inadequate to a full account of human experience. As Craib summarizes, "it is through the understanding of the Other's project and situation that we move on to reflexivity... The act of understanding involves a movement back to the situation and forward to the projected change in the situation and each is grasped in the same movement. Each act of understanding, however, takes place in the course of a project of the one who understands, and it is itself a project aiming at a state of having understood as a pre-condition for further action" (p. 88). Before he is able to move on to the Critique of Dialectical Reason, the author asserts the fundamental principles of a philosophical sociology. A philosophical sociology will help to account for (1) what is under investigation, (2) what is sought after, and (3) the movement which enables a reflexive understanding of

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the sociologist, those he studies, and the relationship between the sociologist and those he studies. Thus a philosophical sociology is devoted to an examination of the assumptions underlying any particular inquiry, the purposes of such a study, and the role of the sociologist in the investigation itself. Sartre contributes to this general task by indicating how any given study necessarily involves the freedom of consciousness distinguishing itself from the objectivity of a being-initself, the project implied, and the enactment of being-for-others as an object whether that object be the individuals under study or the sociologist studying individuals. What is lacking in a philosophical sociology of this sort is a full-bodied theory of social structures. Sartre himself recognized the limitations of his previous study and set to the task of rewriting Being and Nothingness in terms of largescale social interaction. In the Critique, Sartre extends what could at most account for three people (as demonstrated in the paradigm of the peeping Tom caught in the act of peeping). Doubtless, this is why one of his most successful early plays No Exit required only three characters to show that concrete relations with others meant treating the other as an object. Craib admits, with Aron, that the Critique is the result of Sartre's move from the ontological to the ontic, and he indicates that the relationship between being-for-itself and being-in-itself is parallel to praxis and the practice-inert in the more recent book. But Craib also asserts that this is only the beginning of the story. Indeed, he is much more detailed and precise in his presentation of the Critique than in his treatment of Being and Nothingness. With good reason too. The 1960 work is explicitly concerned with the type of domain which sociologists discuss regularly from their multiple and varied perspectives. Furthermore, like most of us who have written on the later Sartre, the text was read and interpreted only from the French. Craib seems to have had no access to the English translation which appeared the same year as his own book. Similarly, he seems not to have known of the selected translations of the Critique which have been available for a number of years in R. D. Cumming's The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (1965) - since he claims the nonexistence of any translation with the exception of Search for a Method. Existentialism and Sociology was Craib's doctoral dissertation, which may account for some o f the expository nature of the book. This fact should not, however, excuse several rather unusual transliterations from the French. The two most distinctive are the terms "depassing" and "alteriority," both of which recur frequently in the study. These renditions are too literal. The former highlights a special term, derived from Hegel's "aufheben,'" which goes under a variety of names. "Surpassing" is one I have used in translating Merleau-Ponty. "Supersede" and "overcome" would also suffice. The other term ("alteriority") is more specifically Sartrean and has usually been translated as "alterity." It describes the situation in which I sense my otherness as I participate in a series, that is, as I am "alone" in a line of strangers with whom I cooperate only through juxtaposition. Although solitary praxis is a theoretical possibility, Sartre claims that we

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are in fact already in a variety of series and hence we manifest our alterity. Praxis is a person's action on the world. Craib relates praxis to the Marxist notion of "labor" and the Weberian concept of "purposeful action." The movement of praxis renders the dialetical law intelligible, for praxis operates on a practiceinert entity in order to move toward a totalization of those entities or machines which it encounters. The praxis of the sociologist incorporates or totalizes that which the sociologist is studying into his own activity. This constitutes a dialectical approach rather than that of analysis which attempts to generalize rather than totalize. Craib cites Gouldner in particular as employing an analytic rather than a dialectical approach. The dialectical approach involves an investigation of what is not available to empirical research in its usual sense, for example, it includes the sociologist in the original totalization. To this extent, what I have stated here is not significantly different from Sartre's position in Being and Nothingness especially as Craib has applied it to the sociologist's position in his own enterprise. However, when this sociological praxis includes the production of a "Third" out of the praxis o f t h e group, and when this Third is collective, the'totalization in question is not simply that of an individual in relation to another, but rather the activity of a group which has overcome its seriality and moved toward a totalization. Such a totalization involves an overeorning of the whole group as practiceinert. In this case, the totalization is that of a group-in-fusion with its common project. In one chapter, Craib highlights what he takes to be the differences between the Cn'tique and the earlier work. He does so by focusing on the regressive-progressive method which Sartre outlined in Search for a Method (1957), the text which precedes the Oitique in the original French version. Because Search for a Method had already been translated into English separatdy, it is not reprinted in the new Sheridan-Smith translation of the Oitique. The regressive-progressive movement outlined therein is not readily understood. The regressive portion begins with the individual in his abstract praxis and studies the relationships of the self with other people and with the material conditions of his own time. These categories are not Historical as such until they are regarded from the progressive point of view. In the progressive movement the dialectical method is activated, in that the results of the regressive account are taken through their subsequent diachronie developments. This movement is teleological and involves a progressive integration and totalization of previous movements toward an end: History. In comparing Being and Nothingness with the Critique, Craib indicates a progressiveregressive movement within the regressive analysis of Sartre's own work. Both books, he notes, start with the individual consciousness: "The first book moves backward to the nature of this consciousness and the second forward to the world in which the consciousness is situated, one moves backward toward the absolute, one moves forward to historical relativity. Both find their fulf'dment in the study of the concrete and it is at this level that their unity is achieved"

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(p. 101). That Sartre can still publish his various essays under the title of Situations thirty years after the first volume appeared attests to this continued orientation toward the concrete. Translating these explicitly philosophical movements into sociological terms is the ultimate task of Craib's study. He does not wish to simply restate the positions which Sartre himself has taken. Yet in order to offer a sociological rendition of the Sartrean problematic, it is necessary to understand the various dialectical moments. Out of conditions of scarcity and need (particularly in cases where the material environment does not offer that which is necessary to satisfy basic needs), individual praxis arises. This praxis can take the form of miners who are in need of work but who, due to a scarcity of coal, cannot be hired, or that of a sociologist who follows issues central to sociology in the face of competition among sociologists and because of a need for acceptance (despite his own interest in alternative domains of concrete experience). Human praxis itself gives the material world a quasi-human quality, but the totality resulting from praxis on the practiceinert is still a practice-inert totality whether it be that of mine workers or of sociologists. To highlight the point further, consider the most effective example presented and "re-analyzed" by Craib into Sartrean terms: Gouldner's Wildcat Strike (1954). Spiedman, an engineer in the gypsum plant, is devoted to the Company. However, he is moved around to different jobs within the plant because of his "'sadistic rationalism" which is intensified by his desire for acceptance by top management. His sweating and authoritarian attitudes indicate a merging of the Company with Spiedman as a "machine." His very ego is a machine and the plant as a whole constitutes a detotalized totality in which Spiedman is a being-outside.himself-inthe-thing. He is practice-inert both for himself and for the other workers who hate him. In the collective, of which the plant is an example, interpersonal relationships are mediated by matter. The collective, however, is divided up Into series. In the series, the identity of the individual is defined by alterity, by his otherness from everyone else comprising the series. Each worker, attending to his own function in the gypsum plant, establishes his alterity in relation to the others. In effect, each worker exhibits a sort of "marginality" in the series: nobody actually belongs to the series. Each member of the series (with his marginal status) goes beyond the series and becomes part of the group through the activity of an outside agent. Spiedman In the gypsum plant becomes the outside agent. He initiates the movement of totallzation by the constitution of an "organized group" whose praxis is opposed to him as a practico4nert machine. Unlike the "group-in-fusion," the organized group does not recognize its own praxis. Sociologists, for example, when they begin to work as sociologists, enter an organized group of sociologists. As an "organized group," they rarely, if ever, become a group-in-fusion exerting their praxis consciously. However, the research team, at the more restricted level, does operate as a group-in-fusion. Similarly

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when the workers at the gypsum plant recognize that the Company, as presented to them through Spiedman, is a Third and when they become aware of themselves as an organized group, then the wildcat strike becomes possible in the form of the praxis of a group-in-fusion. This class praxis, which Craib describes in Sartrean terms (although the example is derived from a main-line sociologist, i.e., Gouldner), incorporates the praxis of the group-in-fusion in opposition to the "sovereign" which is located elsewhere. When the praxis of the group-in-fusion is seen in relation to other groups.in.fusion, the regressive account can be regarded progressively as the praxis of a whole, i.e., the class praxis, in its historical development. Similarly, the sociological field as practico-inert is operated upon by sociological praxis resulting in a sociological totality. The totality constitutes then the university discipline known as sociology. The sociologist will continually grasp himself as Other and others as exterior to him. But instead of simply subordinating himself to the practico-inert, he can interiorize the demands of the practico-inert in order to "further the understanding and praxis of some social formation" (p. 213). In this respect, Craib sees the sociological project as one with possibilities. The sociologist can overcome the series and practico-inert totality in which he Finds himself. A significant portion of the enterprise, however, is to first understand, with the aid of the Sartrean philosophy, how the sociologist can interpret his own situation. As Cralb notes, a philosophy such as that of Sartre cannot be applied piecemeal. It must be understood in its multiple dimensions; its application requires a careful study of the whole philosophy. Just as a text cannot be translated simply word for word, so too a philosophy must be considered in its entirety in order for its lessons and implications to be significant for sociological activity in general. For Craib, the sociology of Garf'mkel and Marx, Parsons and Becker, Weber and Durkheim is per se practico-inert. A structured sociology, which Parsons most clearly approximates, though Marx, Durkheim, and Weber also have some relevance, will operate on the basis of "representative experience" drawn from a commonality. In citing this program from the articles of Alan Dawe, which announce a reflexive sociology, Craib indicates one respect in which the translation of the Sartrean philosophy into sociology might function. But the most effective lessons in Craib's book come from the reanalyses themselves. By restating the analyses of Goffman, Garfinkel, and Gouldner in Sartrean terms, that is, by translating them into philosophy, the author is able to "re-construct" them rather than simply redescribe them. However, in the process, he accomplishes the reverse movement which is his ultimate goal: to translate the philosophical understanding of social structures into sociological praxis. That Craib also recognizes the impossibility of such a retranslation back into sociology without examining the place of the sociologist himself in the inquiry is to his credit.

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Existentialism and Sociology is not readily accessible to either philosopher or sociologist. It requires a series of leaps and a confidence that the enterprise is worthwhile. The philosopher interested in Sartre will want to read the book not so much for the restatements of Sartre's fundamental positions, but for what relevance they have to another discipline. The philosopher who does not know Sartre well will find the interpretations of both the early and later works to be clear, accurate, and relatively thorough. For the sociologist who is willing to consider how philosophy can enhance and fulfill his analyses, this book is invaluable. However, the sociologist who takes Craib seriously will want to know that alternative translations from philosophy could come from other quarters: through Mefleau-Ponty and Foucault, Habermas and Heidegger, or even Popper and Dewey. Naturally, a certain selectivity must be applied. On the other hand, Sartre's work can take the sociologist a long way in the understanding of sociality and social structures. It cannot go the whole way and Craib has only lighted the initial segment of the path. Much of his work is a retracing of steps; but without writing down and reconstructing those traces, there would be no terrain.