El. knyga: Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol. 2: The Intelligibility of History

The 1991 edition is cited in Books for College Libraries, 3d ed. This second volume was drafted in 1958, and the rumors flew for decades about why the venerable French philosopher was not bringing it to completion. It was published only in 1985, when the question it addressed--whether history has a meaning--had long faded from intellectual favor. He finished the first part, about the Soviet Union, but not the second, about liberal democracies. The French edition was published as Critique de la raison dialectique, tome II by Editions Gallimard. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

"A landmark in modern social thought A turning point in the thinking of our time."Raymond Williams

At the height of the Algerian war, Jean-Paul Sartre embarked on a fundamental reappraisal of his philosophical and political thought. The result was the Critique of Dialectical Reason, an intellectual masterpiece of the twentieth century, now republished in two volumes with major original introductions by Fredric Jameson.

Here, Sartre began a new theory of history that he believed was necessary for postwar Marxism. His substantive concern was the structure of class struggle and the fate of mass movements of popular revolt, from the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century to the Russian and Chinese revolutions in the twentieth.

An intellectual masterpiece of the twentieth century.