LA METHODE SARTRIENNE POUR LA RECHERCHE DES FAITS HISTORIQUES
THE SARTRE'S METHOD FOR SEARCHING HISTORICAL FACTS

Summary/Abstract: Sartre appreciates much Marx, considering that his vision on the market of history is basically correct. But the Marx' heuristic method mechanically used and wrong-intentionally from his descendants, has been transformed into a sterile and completely destructive formalism. So in order to find the truth of history, he believes that a different method is required, which can highlight the irreducible individuality of each fact, method also able to illuminate the general meanings and their most intimate aspects. This new method, which Sartre names "the progressive-regressive" method makes continuous “goes and comes" from the age to the individuals' biography, that it incessantly deepens one in the light of the other. Therefore, the method is heuristic, being able to discover the new elements in history. Its objective is to find reality as a concrete and alive whole; otherwise the corps of history becomes a corpse or a skeleton, than it does not interest anybody anymore. This method does not want to neglect any gesture, any attitude, any aspect of the individual's experience, because it considers them all important for man, the creator of history, whose material is deeply engraved of his subjectivity. It has the great merit of being flexible, not at least dogmatic, and open for any other auxiliary method. In proposing this method, Sartre clearly and proficiently speaks of the theoretical and practical impasse of Marxism in the twentieth century.

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