Bei dem folgenden Text handelt es sich um einen leicht gekürzten Konferenzbeitrag, den ich im Juni 2024 auf der UK Sartre Society Conference in Oxford halten durfte. Der Beitrag basiert auf meiner Doktorarbeit Siegler, M. (2023) Needful Structures. The Dialectics of Action, Technology, and Society in Sartre’s Later Philosophy, transcript.
Introduction
In my talk, I will first retrace and explore the conceptual development and significance of Sartre’s notions desire (désir) and need (besoin) between Being and Nothingness and Critique of Dialectical Reason. Both these concepts play a significant role in Sartre’s dialectical conception of human action. Especially the shift from desires to needs, from désirs to besoin, marks a significant shift in Sartre’s philosophical and scientific approach toward society and history.
After we have reached this point, I will draw some practical implications from these insights and illustrate how we can understand and evaluate processes of societal transformation based on this dialectic.
Part I – The Dialectic of Need and Desire
According to Sartre, existence is action. Nothing that relates to human ingenuity, ideals, or the building of our future comes about in the material world without some form of human activity. These forms of activity include uttering thoughts through speaking and writing, creating things by crafting or building, and constituting society by communicating and organizing with others.
In his early work Being and Nothingness, Sartre states that “to act is to modify the way the world is figured, to arrange the means in view of an end; it is to produce an organized, instrumental structure such that, through a series of sequences and connections, the modification brought about in one of the links brings in its wake modifications in the entire series and, in the end, produces some foreseen result”.1
The early Sartre approaches human action from a first person perspective. The way he links the arrangement of means with a foreseeable result in the material world and the way he connects this process to a person’s end and their existence is rather intriguing. What we do when we act according to Sartre is that we bring usually disparate elements in connection with each other under a specific end.
This end acts as a guidance for our action and it also relates to the more global practical horizon of goals of our existence. These elements we bring together can be more interior elements such as feelings, thoughts, wishes, our abilities and proficiencies, our understanding of our situation and circumstances, or our awareness of our possible options for action. More exterior elements would be certain instruments, tools, machines, systems, and other things in our physicochemical environment that we can use as means to our ends, other people that we know or do not know, animals, plants, the weather, the time of day and so on. From these elements it already becomes clear how inherently relational the way we act in the world is for Sartre.
In that we bring these elements together under a specific end and a practical plan, and in that we then act accordingly by actually changing our physicochemical environment, we produce our self in the world as a “synthetic unity”2 of all these elements. The later Sartre calls this synthetic unity a totality. This totality, however, must not be thought of as a static thing we produce. Rather, it represents the everchanging and self-enriching practical interrelation with our past experiences and socialization, our present issues, capabilities, and surroundings as well as our future worries and longings. This ongoing practical interrelation is our existence.
Since existence is action and since action is an ongoing synthetic activity that produces totalities, existence is an ongoing process of totalization both of our own self and our world around us. The elements that give shape to our actions and thus to our existence, according to the early Sartre, are our desires, French désir.
According to Sartre, “Desire is a lack of being, and is haunted in its innermost being by the being that it desires. In this way, desire testifies to the existence of a lack in human-reality’s being.”3
Desires represent and point toward a lack of being in our existence. Due to our totalizing relation with the world, in desiring, we exist in a lacking state of things.
However, this state is merely a moment within the totalization of our existence. This is because we simultaneously exist as this lack and as the entity that has to get involved with the world to negate this lack. In desiring, we are thus not passive. Rather, we always already transcend the given toward the possible by projecting from the concrete facticity of our existence toward a potential future self that is satisfied. Desires bestow our existence with a certain directedness, practical intentionality, and finality toward the future. They project toward what we want and provide us with an outline of what we have to do and how in order to get it.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre broadly encompasses different physical and mental urges, requirements, and wishes under the term desire. These include feelings of hunger and thirst, of coldness and warmth, or the sexual longing of another person’s body. I suggest that desires also encompass more mental urges such as recognition, social inclusion, a sense of meaning and purpose, a new car, a new phone or a more socially just form of government.
Although Sartre states that desire is somewhat attached to an object of desire4, he mentions that it would be “quite wrong to say that what is desired, in desiring, is our ‘physical possession’ of the desired object.”5 Rather, a desire has a concrete direction toward an already familiar thing or toward a process in the world that represents the general context of its satisfaction. To act based on the ends projected toward by our desires thus means to modify the materiality of the world in such a way that the lacking state of things may become a satisfied state of things for us. In this way, acting does not merely mean acting based on our desires. Rather, acting means to realize a subject-dependent, potential future state of the world in which we are involved for ourselves through our desires. This realized state can be satisfying, but it does not have to be.
The early Sartre does not reflect on how our individual histories fundamentally shape the ways we relate to the world by virtue of our desires. He merely accepts the individualist nature of a person’s structures of desire as a given fact.
In this regard, he is ignorant of how these structures of desire are themselves shaped by our lived experience. This experience necessarily takes place in a socioculturally structured and materially predisposed milieu. This milieu fundamentally affects our upbringing, education, and experience.
The desire of thirst, for instance, given as it may be, does not abstractly project toward water in general, but to a more or less concrete outline of action toward a familiar horizon of ends.6
Depending on how we were socialized, how we have satiated our thirst in the past, and what our environments reliably provides, we project to different drinking actions. A person who grew up in an urban environment, for instance, initially projects toward different ends and thus, connectedly, to different courses of action than a person who grew up as a nomad in a desert area with no water infrastructure. The urbanite may project towards taking a cup or a glass and filling it up at their faucet when at home. The desert dweller may have a completely different relationship with water because water is a rare resource in the desert. When thirsty, these people may project toward different ways of finding, preserving, and consuming water owing to their specific situation and experience.
However, if both have a water bottle readily at hand or if there is the option to simply buy water, they may both do so.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre does not reflect on the reason why desires express themselves differently based on a person’s facticity. He simply accepts that human beings have different desires as specific individual modes of subjectivity toward the world. Later, Sartre must have recognized the fact that focusing on desires, without criticizing how the concrete outline of these desires is itself shaped by society, culture, matter, and the processing of history throughout our existence, does not provide a solid foundation for a critical theory of society. To allow for a structural analysis of the processing of society and history, the later Sartre thus introduces the concept of need (besoin).
In Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre states: “[e]verything is to be explained though need (le besoin); need is the first totalising relation between the material being, man, and the material ensemble of which he is part. This relation is univocal, and of interiority. Indeed, it is through need that the first negation of the negation and the first totalisation appear in matter. Need is a negation of the negation in so far as it expresses itself as a lack within the organism; and need is a positivity in so far as the organic totality tends to preserve itself as such through it.”7
The lack of being that the early Sartre has located in human desire thus gains a much more prominent and much more fundamental significance in his later works.
In Critique of Dialectical Reason, need represents a fundamental affirmation of the synthetic, human being-in-the-world in its corporeality. Through our fundamental needfulness, we necessarily engage in an interior relation to our exterior world. We lack whatever we manifest through our needs.
The question here arises, what exactly differentiates a désir from a besoin. I claim that it is their relationship which is important. Without dismissing his earlier thoughts on desires, the later Sartre follows a much more materialist approach. He conceptualizes human existence as the autopoietic process of a biological entity in practical interrelation to its physicochemical surroundings. Connectedly, the later Sartre has a much more materialist conception of human action. He now takes a more external, third person perspective and focuses on the historical praxis of individuals as “an organising project which transcends material conditions towards an end and inscribes itself, through labour, in inorganic matter as a rearrangement of the practical field and a reunification of means in the light of the end.”8
Due to this materialist focus, the later Sartre predominantly conceptualizes the lack of being of human existence as a lack of resources, commodities, skills, rights, knowledge, etc., that we as humans require to survive and persist in one way or another.9 It is important to note that Sartre does not simply introduce need as a material counterpart to desire as a mental or psychological requirement. Need, as “the first totalising relation between the material being, man, and the material ensemble of which he is part”10 is what grounds the possibility of our continued existence, action, experience, and, most of all, freedom. As such, need, or, more precisely, being needy represents both the fundamental and abstract relation between ourselves and our socioculturally structured material surroundings. Through need, we are always already in practical interrelation with the physicochemical universe. It is this abstract relation of need that instantiates concrete desires in the first place. An example might be of help here. For those who already know this example, stay with me.
According to this understanding of the relationship between need and desire, nutrition, for instance, as a person’s physical requirement, which owes itself to the corporeality of their existence, is only ever a pure and simple, abstract need in the form of a besoin in an infant state. Since this need can be satisfied through a number of different practical interrelations between the infant and whoever nourishes them, Sartre assumes that how this need is satisfied, socializes this need, and connects it to a larger societal form of organization. In this understanding, infants who lack nutrition cry initially because of an unpleasant physical symptom complex that is attributable to an abstract, undirected need in the form of besoin. However, as soon as this need has been taken care of a few times in a row, for instance through breastfeeding or a bottle, the abstract and undirected need is rendered into a concrete desire in the form of désir. These infants still cry because of the same unpleasant symptom complex resulting from a physical lack of nutrition. However, they no longer cry as a result of an abstract and undirected need but because of a concrete desire for their caregiver’s breast or the bottle as a means to gain nutrition. In mutual interaction with their caregiver’s action, these infants’ need has been socialized so that it has become a structurally dependent desire relative to the form of societal organization in which both caregiver and infant are situated.1111
Based on these thoughts, a conceptual distinction between the notions of need and desire in Sartre’s philosophy can be made. Desires, understood as désirs, represent concrete, directed, socioculturally shaped, and mediated as well as subjectively qualified modes in which we exteriorize ourselves. We do so by relating to and engaging with our surroundings for ourselves based on our requirements, wants, and wishes. Needs, understood as besoins, represent abstract and initially undirected modes in which we relate to our surroundings.
In our practical existence, there is no clear distinction between what is a need and what is a desire, because these two modes of relating to the world are in a constant dialectical tension with each other. This dialectic processes by virtue of how we—as needful beings—come to practically interrelate with our physicochemical environment in concrete, socialized ways. In the course of our existence, our abstract need is practically concretized in the form of a context-specific and socially situated desire. This process of concretization results from the fact that we exist as biological organisms in a material universe with and through which we have to sustain ourselves. In doing so, we become adapted to the way in which the socially and culturally structured material milieu that scaffolds our actions is equipped. Our desires are shaped by what society, culture, and materiality provide us with to life our lives. Since our desires are the signpost of our existence that project toward concrete ends that we strive to realize through our actions, and since we become the self we realize through our actions, we are both our own producer and the product of our circumstances. We are adapted to what is historically given to us alongside the fundamental structures of our existence.12
The change in focus from desires in Being and Nothingness to needs in Critique of Dialectical Reason fundamentally changes the conceptual grounding of Sartre’s philosophical perspective. It opens up his philosophy toward those practical constraints, material potentials, and societal dynamics that condition human existence beyond the borders of the concrete action situation.
Part II – Understanding Societal Transformation
The dialectic of need and desire plays a significant role in Sartre’s later understanding of society and history. Between the lines of his passages about the series and the group, a quasi-system theory about how forms of societal constellations form, transform, persist, and eventually collapse appears in outlines.
Before I am able to outline how societal constellations transform, I have to briefly outline how they form. In short, Sartre claims, that societal constellations, such as partnerships, co-operations, organizations, factories, institutions, and eventually nation states, form because our actions take place in a socially structured material milieu that is characterized by scarcity.
Scarcity is a social and material relationship with our surroundings that is linked to our inherent needfulness. It encompasses not only material resources such as water or food but also options for action in general. What is scarce is determined by whether something we require, want, or wish is available to us in a satisfyingly sufficient way. In this regard, scarcity is both a contingent fact of human life and the sufficient cause of historical development.13
Within this scarce milieu, human beings come together, organize, and constitute different forms of societal organization. This may take place in a controlled or uncontrolled way when people coordinate their actions in such a way, that they fulfill the functional requirement of systematically providing for certain goods and services. Sartre refers to these forms of organization with different terms. He calls them social ensemble or serial ensemble, human ensemble, material ensemble, and technical ensemble. In the spirit of the subtitle of Critique of Dialectical Reason, I refer to these forms of organization as practical ensembles.
These practical ensembles thus form on the basis of human praxis as a response to a shared lack of being. Practical ensembles provide a set of practical interrelations between human agents and their physicochemical surroundings. These interrelations are socially and culturally structured. Practical ensembles scaffold, predispose, and enable how the inherent needfulness of human existence is dealt with in a given historical situation. This means that practical ensembles stipulate how abstract needs are concretely obtained as desires. In this way, practical ensembles allow for stability and social cohesion throughout space and time. They do so, because we don’t have to feel, interpret, and look for what do to every time we or others experience a lack of being. Through this form of co-operation, new abstract needs and concrete desires may emerge, either by social, cultural, or technological progress or by empathetically relating to the lives of others. The price for this relative stability, however, is that the ways in which we may live our lives within practical ensembles are somewhat predisposed. Since the range of our desires is limited by how our practical ensembles enable us to recognize and satisfy them, we have an equally limited range of options for action to realize a certain self.
Understanding contemporary societies as practical ensembles alongside the dialectic of need and desire means to deconstruct how our inherent needfulness is shaped and concretized by how we have come to organize ourselves. When we look at our desires, we see that they have become somewhat obscured and even captured and exploited in certain ways. In this way, the dialectic of need and desire has immediate practical implications for understanding societal transformation.
In our corporeality, the need for liquid expresses itself through a dry mouth and a slight headache, so we desire an ice-cold coca cola.
In our corporeality, the need for rest expresses itself by a lowering of body temperature and a general slowing down of our cognitive functions, so we desire a coffee when we sit in a conference like this.
In our corporeality, the need for social interaction expresses itself through feelings of loneliness, so we desire a beer.
In our corporeality, the need for a sense of accomplishment and recognition expresses itself through feelings of insecurity and self-doubt, so we desire a new car.
In our corporeality, the need for a meaningful life and a perspective for our future expresses itself through feelings of anxiety, insecurity, and worry, so we desire for everyone that we have been told to take our lives away to be deported from our country.
Since our abstract needs are concretized through our actions within society, and since our societies predispose our actions as practical ensembles in complex ways, our desires can be captured, derailed, and decoupled from our inherent structures of need. Our desires can be exploited for profit or fueled with ideology and hate. The last EU elections seem to confirm this strategy.
In this way, the fact that there is a tension between our abstract relatedness to our physicochemical surroundings in the form of our inherent needfulness and their concretization in the form of desires, is the foundation for societal transformation.
Sartre, however, also has other practical implications of the dialectic of need and desire in mind.
I already mentioned, that practical ensembles form as a response to scarce surroundings in relation to our abstract need. However, practical ensembles may also form in the active attempt of human beings to eliminate or change how these ensembles scaffold and predispose their actions. This attempt to change and transform results from recognizing that some inherent needs are not sufficiently or no longer met by the way in which the practical ensemble is structured. We can feel threatened by the fact that some of our needs and desires are not provided for. This can either be because certain options for action do not exist, or because the structures of our ensemble actively constrain us in trying to satisfy our needs and desires. Instances of this can be the identification of exploitative labor conditions, a lack of political representation, control, or governmental regulation, or an overall lack of certain options for action. It can also be the non-existence of any form of organization through which individuals may exert power over themselves. On one side, recognizing such a mismatch between our inherent needfulness and its real-life satisfaction may lead to passivity, cynicism, and acquiescence. The world is how it is and we must adapt, make ourselves small, and fit in. On the other hand, it may lead to activity and the will to change.
In my opinion, Sartre’s thoughts on how practical ensembles form allows us to develop this will to change, because we can use his thoughts to deconstruct the structures of our society and recognize, that it is a product of human action in every corner. Society is something we continue to make based on what the people before us made. This also means, that we can change and transform it.
In order to actually do so to match our needs more clearly, we have to either change the functional requirements that our practical ensembles fulfill or the way in which our practical ensembles fulfill these requirements.
Part III – What is to be done?
The question now arises: What is to be done? Well, we should start with ourselves. This reflection entails that we first explore our own needs as obscured aspects of our existence. We must find out what we want, why we want the things we want, and how we share what we want with others, especially our children.
As elements of practical ensembles, we have to critically reflect where we stand, how we benefit from the system, and what our options are to change something and solidarize with others to help them do the same. Most importantly, we have to do so from within our institutions.
Especially as philosophers we must critically reflect our current societal systems, depict how they influenced the way we relate to ourselves, each other, and our physicochemical environment.
We then have to evaluate whether the way these systems function right now is congruent with our insights and values.
We also have to incorporate the knowledge of others, of engineers, practitioners, workers, politicians, other scientists, to assess if our societal systems are on the level of the actual options for action we could have under our current historical circumstances.
As free human beings in social relation with others, we also have the responsibility to help others to critically reflect the same. This is mostly because we also profit from the fact that so many other people, who might be way less fortunate than us in our immediate neighborhood and all around the world, work under conditions that can never sufficiently satisfy their desires.
They cannot be free, and thus neither can we.
Lastly, we can open up spaces in which we discuss different visions of a ‘fit’ between need and desire.
The time is now. Let’s get to work!
References
- Sartre, J.-P. (2021). Being and Nothingness. An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (S. Richmond, Trans.). Washington Square Press/Atria, 569. ↩︎
- Sartre, J.-P. (1978). Critique of Dialectical Reason I. Theory of Practical Ensembles (A. Sheridan-Smith, Trans.). NLB, 45. ↩︎
- Sartre 2021, 140 ↩︎
- Sartre 2021, 508–509 ↩︎
- Sartre 2021, 508 ↩︎
- Sartre 2021, 730, 747 ↩︎
- Sartre 1978, 80, emphasis in original ↩︎
- Sartre 1978, 734 ↩︎
- Cannon, B. (1992). Praxis, need, and desire in Sartre’s later philosophy: An addendum to existential psychoanalysis. Bulletin de La Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française, 4(2–3), 131–141, 132. ↩︎
- Sartre 1978, 80 ↩︎
- Cannon 1992 ↩︎
- Siegler, M. (2022). The Dialectics of Action and Technology in the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. Philosophy & Technology, 35(2), 1–28, 25. ↩︎
- Monahan, M. J. (2008). Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason and the Inevitability of Violence: Human Freedom in the Milieu of Scarcity. Sartre Studies International, 14(2), 48–70, 50–51. ↩︎
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