Jean-Paul Sartre — The Existentialist Hegel (1943-1960)
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Framing: The Movement of the Whole
If Hyppolite was the academic mediator who translated and commented on Hegel for France, then Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was the philosophical transformer who converted Hegelian structures into a radically new philosophy of freedom. Sartre represents the existentialist appropriation of Hegel — an appropriation that was at once transformation and inversion.
The temporal bracket is telling: 1943 saw the appearance of Being and Nothingness (L’être et le néant), written during the German occupation — a work that transforms Hegelian dialectic existentially. In 1960 appeared the first volume of the Critique of Dialectical Reason (Critique de la raison dialectique) — an attempt to synthesize existentialism and Marxism that failed on its own ambition. Between these two works lies the development from individualist existentialism to collective engagement, from ontological analysis to political philosophy.
This development is not merely biographically interesting — it shows the inner tension of the entire existentialist reception of Hegel: How can one take over Hegel’s dialectic without accepting his philosophy of reconciliation? How can one think freedom as radically individual while also understanding social struggles? How can one rebel against the “system” and yet think systematically?
Intellectual-Historical Placement: Who Is Sartre? What Is He Reacting To?
Sartre belonged to the generation that grew up between the wars — shaped by the catastrophe of the First World War, the crisis of democracy, the rise of fascism. In 1933, when he went to Berlin to study Husserl’s phenomenology, he witnessed the Nazi seizure of power. From 1933 to 1939 he attended Kojève’s legendary lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit. These two experiences — Husserl’s phenomenology and Kojève’s anthropological Hegel — formed his thinking fundamentally.
The German occupation of France (1940–1944) was the existential context in which Being and Nothingness arose. Sartre was not a Resistance fighter in the narrow sense, but he experienced the situation of the occupation as a fundamental existential experience: How is freedom possible under conditions of unfreedom? How can one be authentic in a world of deception? These questions were not academic speculations — they were questions of life and death.
The postwar period brought new challenges: How does one position oneself vis-à-vis communism? Sartre became the philosophe engagé, the committed intellectual who intervened in political debates. His journal Les Temps Modernes (founded 1945) became the forum for political and philosophical confrontations. The Algerian War, the Cold War, de-Stalinization after 1956 — all of this demanded philosophical answers.
What is Sartre reacting to with his reception of Hegel? To three challenges:
First: the crisis of liberal humanism. Bourgeois philosophy had spoken of the autonomous subject, of reason and progress — and Europe had plunged into fascism. How could one still speak of humanism after Auschwitz? Sartre answered: only a humanism of radical freedom, not of abstract nature, can endure.
Second: the challenge of Marxism. Marxism was the dominant left philosophy — but it seemed deterministic, economistic, disregarding individual freedom. Sartre tried to renew Marxism through existentialism: to think freedom and history, individual and class together.
Third: the relation to the Other. Hegel had developed recognition as a central category. But Kojève’s reading had dramatized it: struggle to the death, mastery and servitude. Sartre radicalized this even further: the Other is initially a threat, the “look” that makes me into an object. How is solidarity possible nonetheless?
The Steelman Position: Sartre’s Existentialist Transformation of Hegel
Being and Nothingness (1943) — The Ontological Foundation
The early Sartre’s main work bears the subtitle “An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology.” It combines Husserl’s phenomenology, Heidegger’s existential ontology, and Hegel’s dialectic into a unique synthesis. The Hegelian imprint is palpable on every page — but transformed.
The Basic Structure: In-itself and For-itself Sartre takes over Hegel’s distinction between “being-in-itself” and “being-for-itself” — but reinterprets it radically. In Hegel these are moments of a dialectical movement: being-in-itself is immediate determinacy, being-for-itself is reflection into itself, and both are reconciled in being-in-and-for-itself. In Sartre these become two ontologically distinct modes of being that can never be reconciled.
The être-en-soi (being-in-itself) is the mode of being of things: massive, dense, without distance from itself, without consciousness. It is what it is — identical with itself, without difference, without negativity. A stone, a table, a tree — they are in-themselves.
The être-pour-soi (being-for-itself) is the mode of being of consciousness: broken through by negativity, distanced from itself, always already with another. Consciousness is what it is not, and is not what it is. It is the introduction of nothingness into the world.
This distinction is Hegelian — but the decisive point is anti-Hegelian: there is no reconciliation. The for-itself can never become in-itself without sublating itself. The for-itself-in-itself-being that Hegel thinks as “Idea” is for Sartre an impossible synthesis — the “ideal of God,” which can never be attained. The human being is “a useless passion” (une passion inutile), vainly trying to unite in-itself and for-itself.
Negativity as Freedom Where Hegel thinks negativity as the motor of dialectical movement leading to reconciliation, Sartre thinks it as radical freedom that never comes to rest. Consciousness is negativity — it negates what is, and projects what is not yet. This negativity is freedom: the capacity to transcend the given, to distance oneself from facticity, to project possibilities.
This freedom is not choice among given options — it is the original choice through which I exist in the first place. “Existence precedes essence” — the famous existentialist motto means: there is no predetermined nature of humanity, no fixed essence. The human being makes himself, through his choice, his action, his engagement.
This freedom is radical — and therefore terrifying. Sartre speaks of “anguish” (angoisse) before freedom: I am responsible for what I am, without excuse, without alibi. I cannot appeal to my nature, my past, my circumstances — I am “condemned to be free.”
The Other as Problem: The Look Here the existentialist inversion of Hegelian recognition shows itself most clearly. In Hegel recognition is constitutive for self-consciousness — I become I through the Other. Sartre takes over this structure — but interprets it negatively.
The famous passage on “the look” (le regard) shows this: I am alone in a park, looking through a keyhole, wholly absorbed in what I see. Suddenly I hear footsteps — someone is coming. In this moment my whole existence is transformed: I become an object from a subject. The Other sees me, and this look turns me into a thing that he judges, classifies, fixes.
The structure is Hegelian: self-consciousness constitutes itself through the Other. But the evaluation is anti-Hegelian: the Other is initially a threat, not an enabling. “Hell is other people” (L’enfer, c’est les autres) — this famous sentence from the play No Exit (1944) puts it in a nutshell.
Hegel had interpreted the master-servant dialectic as a struggle for recognition that leads, through labor, to mutual recognition. Sartre sees no way out of the conflict. The relation to the Other is a permanent struggle: either I make him into an object (sadism), or he makes me into an object (masochism). We oscillate between these two poles, without synthesis.
This pessimistic interpretation has existential roots: under the occupation the “look of the Other” was indeed threatening — the look of the Gestapo, of collaborators. The existential experience of the occupation is universalized into an ontological structure.
Bad Faith as Flight from Freedom One of the most brilliant analyses in Being and Nothingness is the theory of mauvaise foi (bad faith). Sartre shows how people try to escape their freedom by regarding themselves as things, as determined, as “being-such.”
The example of the waiter: he plays the role of the perfect waiter — too eager, too mechanical, too precise. He is a waiter, the way a table is a table. But that is self-deception. He is not a waiter in the sense of being-in-itself — he chooses to play this role. Bad faith consists in denying this choice, in regarding oneself as determined.
This analysis is an existentialist radicalization of Hegelian alienation. In Hegel alienation is a necessary moment leading to higher unity. In Sartre it is an escape, a lie, a betrayal of one’s own freedom. There is no reconciliation — only the choice between authenticity (acknowledgment of one’s own freedom) and inauthenticity (flight into bad faith).
Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960) — The Failed Synthesis
Seventeen years after Being and Nothingness, the first volume of the Critique of Dialectical Reason appeared — a monumental work of over 700 pages that remained a fragment. The planned second volume was never completed. This failure is symptomatic.
The Project: Connecting Existentialism and Marxism
Sartre had an ambitious goal: to synthesize existentialism and Marxism. Existentialism had emphasized individual freedom, but had developed no philosophy of history. Marxism had thought history, but had degraded the individual to an epiphenomenon of economic structures. Sartre wanted both: freedom and history, individual and collective.
The basic thesis: “Marxism is the unsurpassable philosophy of our time” — but it must be renewed through existentialism. Mechanical materialism, Diamat, had eliminated the subject. Sartre wanted to bring it back, without falling into abstract humanism.
The Progressive-Regressive Method Sartre develops a method that starts from concrete practice. One must go both forward (progressively — understanding the projects, goals, plans of the individual) and backward (regressively — analyzing the material conditions, history, structures).
This method is a transformation of Hegelian dialectic: instead of proceeding from logic to reality, Sartre proceeds from practice to theory. Dialectic is not “law of history,” but a method of concrete analysis. This turn is important — it makes dialectic empirical, historical, fallible.
Seriality and the Group-in-Fusion Sartre’s central distinction is between “seriality” and “group-in-fusion.”
Seriality denotes atomized individuals who exist side by side, without real connection. The example: people waiting at a bus stop. They are a “series” — each for himself, without a common project, only externally connected by the common situation. Bourgeois society for Sartre is fundamentally serialized — isolated individuals externally mediated by markets and institutions.
The group-in-fusion (groupe en fusion) arises in revolutionary moments: suddenly the isolated individuals recognize their common situation, they act together, they become a “we.” The example: the storming of the Bastille. The Parisian population, previously serialized, fuses into an acting group.
This distinction transforms the Hegelian dialectic of the particular and the universal. In Hegel, ethical life is the mediation between individual and community through institutions. In Sartre there are only two extremes: atomized seriality or revolutionary fusion. The institutions are ambivalent — they can stabilize the group, but they can also cause it to freeze, to return it to “series.”
The Failure of the Synthesis The problem: Sartre cannot show how the group-in-fusion can become permanent without freezing into a series. Revolutionary moments pass, institutions arise, bureaucracy sets in. The “sworn group” (groupe assermenté) — which constitutes itself through an oath — is an attempt to preserve the fusion. But the oath becomes terror: whoever deviates is excluded, punished, eliminated.
Sartre analyzes the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution — and shows how revolutionary freedom turns into terror. But he cannot show an alternative. The dialectic remains aporetic: either atomized freedom without community, or revolutionary community that turns into totalitarianism.
This is no accident. It follows from Sartre’s basic position: because he excludes reconciliation from the outset, because he thinks being-in-and-for-itself as impossible, he also cannot develop a reconciled social philosophy. The Critique of Dialectical Reason fails not on external circumstances (although Sartre never finished it) — it fails on its own internal logic.
Sublation I: What Is True? (Preserving)
Sartre’s existentialist transformation of Hegel contains important moments of truth that must be preserved:
First: The Radicalization of Freedom Sartre made explicit and radicalized an essential moment of Hegelian philosophy: freedom is not something the human being has — it is what the human being is. This insight was present in Hegel, but not consistently carried through. Sartre shows: freedom does not mean freedom of choice among given options — it is the original self-choice through which I exist in the first place.
This radicalization was necessary against all forms of determinism — economic (vulgar Marxism), biological (racism), psychological (behaviorist psychology). The emphasis on responsibility — “I am what I do” — was an important counterposition against excuse through circumstances.
Second: The Concretization of Existence Sartre showed that abstract concepts (freedom, consciousness, subject) are always concretely embodied in situations, bodies, projects. The phenomenology of the look, of nausea, of anguish, of shame — all this is a concrete explication of what often remained too abstract in Hegel.
This concretization was productive. It made philosophy livable, existentially relevant. The question “How should I live?” became the philosophical core question — not as moral sermonizing, but as ontological analysis of the human situation.
Third: The Analysis of Bad Faith The theory of mauvaise foi is a brilliant analysis of self-deception that goes beyond Hegel. Hegel thought alienation as a necessary moment of formation. Sartre shows: there are forms of self-deception that are not formative but destructive — the flight from one’s own freedom, the denial of one’s own responsibility.
This analysis is relevant for political philosophy: how many political positions rest on “bad faith” — on the denial of one’s own responsibility, on the projection of guilt onto others, on flight into ideologies that promise determinism?
Fourth: Engagement Sartre’s concept of engagement was important for the postwar period: the intellectual cannot hold himself apart, he must take a stand. This demand was a necessary reaction to academic “purity,” which held itself apart from political struggles — and thereby factually supported the existing order.
Engagement is not the mere application of a finished theory to practice. It is the insight that theory itself is practical — that every philosophical position has political consequences, whether one wants it or not. This insight is often forgotten today — Sartre’s insistence on it remains current.
Sublation II: The Internal Contradictions (Negating)
But Sartre’s position is shot through with contradictions that follow from its own design — not from external misunderstandings, but from the internal logic of the existentialist approach.
First Contradiction: The Absolutization of Negativity
Sartre takes over Hegel’s category of negativity — but absolutizes it. In Hegel negativity is a moment that passes into affirmation. Negation is “determinate negation” — it leads to new content. In Sartre negativity becomes the essence of consciousness — something that can never be sublated.
This leads to a performative contradiction: Sartre claims that consciousness is “nihilation” (néantisation) — pure negativity without positive content. But this claim is itself a positive content. The theory of negativity is itself a positive theory. Sartre cannot consistently claim that consciousness is only negativity — for this claim presupposes that consciousness can also grasp something (namely its own structure as negativity).
In Hegel’s terminology: Sartre remains stuck in “abstract negation,” which turns against everything positive — but precisely thereby betrays that there must be a positive against which it turns. Pure negativity is a mental fiction, not a real structure.
Second Contradiction: The Impossibility of Recognition
Sartre’s analysis of “the look” leads to an aporetic situation: the Other is constitutive for my self-consciousness — but he is at the same time a threat. I need the Other in order to become I — but the Other makes me into an object.
This position is inconsistent. If the Other were only a threat, he could not be constitutive for my self-consciousness. For something to be constitutive, it must be enabling, not merely limiting. Sartre wants both: the Other should be constitutive (Hegelian legacy) and should be a threat (existentialist dramatization). But that does not go together.
The consequence is fatal: Sartre cannot develop an ethics of recognition. He tries in late writings (Cahiers pour une morale, posthumous 1983) — but these attempts remain fragmentary. Why? Because his basic ontology — the for-itself as pure negativity, the Other as threat — excludes an ethics of recognition.
This shows itself politically: Sartre supported various revolutionary movements (communism, decolonization, Maoism) — but he had no systematic criterion to distinguish between emancipatory and totalitarian movements. If the Other is in principle a threat, then violence is always legitimate when it defends “our” freedom against “their” threat. Sartre came dangerously close to this consequence — for instance in his preface to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), where he praised violence as cathartic.
Third Contradiction: Freedom and Situation Sartre asserts simultaneously absolute freedom (“Man is condemned to be free”) and situational conditionedness (“Man is the totality of his actions”). These two theses strain against each other.
On the one hand: I am absolutely free, no circumstances excuse me, I am responsible for everything I am. On the other hand: I am thrown into a situation I have not chosen — my birth, my class, my history, my time.
Sartre tries to mediate this tension through the concept of “facticity”: I am free in my situation, not free from it. I do not choose the situation, but I choose how I stand toward it. But that is not real mediation — it is only a reformulation of the problem.
This shows itself in political questions: Is the worker free to accept or fight his exploitation? Sartre would say: yes, he is free — he is responsible for his choice. But is that not cynical toward someone who starves if he does not work? “Absolute freedom” becomes an abstract phrase if material conditions are ignored.
Conversely: if the situation determines so much that factually no choice exists — where then is freedom? Sartre oscillates between two poles: abstract freedom (which ignores the situation) and situational determinism (which eliminates freedom). He cannot think a real mediation.
In Hegel’s terminology: Sartre remains stuck in either-or. Either absolute freedom or total determination. The dialectical insight — that freedom exists only in and through mediation, that it does not stand abstractly beyond conditions, but is also not simply determined by them — remains closed to him.
Fourth Contradiction: The Failure of the Philosophy of History
The Critique of Dialectical Reason was supposed to show how history is possible despite individual freedom. It was supposed to synthesize existentialism and Marxism. It failed at this task — and not by accident.
The problem: Sartre wants to think history without teleology, without necessity, without reconciliation. History is supposed to be pure contingency — and yet it is supposed to be comprehensible. But how can something be completely contingent and yet rationally comprehensible?
Sartre brilliantly analyzes individual historical situations — the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution. But he cannot show how these situations connect, where they lead, what follows from them. History disintegrates into a series of moments — “group-in-fusion,” ossification, new revolution — without systematic connection.
This is because Sartre cannot think mediation. In Hegel, institutions are mediating structures between individual and universality. In Sartre they are either ossification (negative) or revolutionary creation (positive, but ephemeral). There is no theory of stable institutions that simultaneously enable freedom and structure history.
The consequence: Sartre’s philosophy of history is aporetic. It can think only the moment of revolution — not the “after.” What arises after the revolution? Either new seriality (then the revolution was in vain) or terror (then freedom turns into its opposite). There is no third way.
This contradiction is not external — it follows from Sartre’s basic approach. Because he excludes mediation, reconciliation, being-in-and-for-itself from the outset, he also cannot develop a philosophy of history that goes beyond the revolutionary moment.
Fifth Contradiction: Existentialist Overdemand
Sartre demands radical authenticity: I should acknowledge my freedom, without flight into bad faith, without excuse through circumstances. That is an enormous demand — perhaps an inhuman one.
The question: can a human being actually live this way? Can he permanently bear his radical responsibility without breaking down? Sartre’s own life shows the tension: he engaged politically, but he wavered between positions, he supported totalitarian movements, he justified violence. Was that authenticity or self-overexertion?
Here a deeper problem shows itself: existentialist ethics has no criteria. “Be authentic!” is a formal demand — but what does that mean in content? Sartre cannot say. He rejects all given norms (they would be flight into bad faith) — but he cannot ground new ones.
This leads to a performative contradiction: Sartre demands authenticity from others — but this demand is itself a norm that he cannot ground. Why should I be authentic? Sartre answers: because I already am — because freedom is my essence. But if freedom is my essence, then I cannot fail to be free. Bad faith would be impossible. Sartre wants both: freedom as unavoidable (ontologically) and as a task (ethically). But that is inconsistent.
In Hegel’s terminology: Sartre has not developed an ethics, only a morality. He has set up demands (be authentic, be engaged) — but he has not shown how these demands follow from the structure of action itself. Hegel’s ethics shows: freedom realizes itself in institutions, not against them. Authenticity is not isolation, but participation in ethical communities. This dimension is entirely lacking in Sartre.
Sublation III: Systematic Placement (Elevating)
What remains of Sartre’s existentialist transformation of Hegel? A double achievement and a fundamental limit:
The achievement: Sartre made explicit the existential dimension of Hegelian philosophy. He showed that freedom, consciousness, self-determination are not abstract concepts, but concrete enactments. He connected phenomenology with dialectic and thereby enabled new insights. His analyses of the look, shame, anguish, bad faith are lasting contributions to philosophical anthropology.
The limit: But this explication was one-sided. Sartre absolutized one moment — negativity, freedom, the individual — and thereby lost other moments: mediation, institution, community. His philosophy can think the revolutionary moment, but not stable life. It can analyze crisis, but not normality. It can protest against false universality, but ground no true one.
This one-sidedness was historically understandable — after fascism and war, the emphasis on individual freedom was necessary. But it could not be permanently sustainable. The aporias of the Critique of Dialectical Reason show: existentialism cannot become social philosophy without giving up its basic principles.
The systematic task: a contemporary reception of Hegel must preserve Sartre’s insights (concreteness, existentiality, engagement) — but must integrate them into a theory of mediation. Freedom is not to be thought abstractly against institutions, but concretely in and through them. Authenticity is not isolation, but active participation in common projects. Recognition is not threat, but enabling — but only if the structures of recognition are themselves just.
Sartre did not accomplish this integration — but he showed where it is necessary. His aporias are productive, not destructive. They show the limits of an existentialist individualism and thereby point to the necessity of a systematic social philosophy that sublates Hegel and Sartre — in the threefold sense: preserves, overcomes, elevates to a higher level.