Abstract

The epistemological implications of Sartre's later philosophy have been left largely unconsidered by the vast majority of the secondary literature devoted to his work. I attempt to correct this oversight by dealing with the issue of epistemic relativism in the context of his dialectical account of knowledge as a moment of praxis. Two broad questions emerge on the basis of this account, and they form the general structure of the investigation. How may the relations between the epistemic and non-epistemic dimensions of the practice of knowledge be coherently understood and what epistemological status may be granted to Sartre's critical account of dialectical reason in terms of its own understanding of the historical limits of reason? In answering the first question I examine Michel Foucault's concept of power/knowledge and show how the epistemological difficulties posed there may be resolved in terms of Sartre's notion of the practico-inert, and praxis as an irreducibly normative interiorizaiton of its constraints. In answering the second question I examine Richard Rorty and Paul Feyerabend's criticisms of the attempt to ground the social practice of knowledge in anything less transient than itself in the light of Sartre's own thesis of practical comprehension as a "non-theoretical foundation" for knowledge. Though in agreement on many essential points, Sartre's thought is seen to diverge from theirs in rightly emphasizing the need to understand praxis itself as rational, though in a non-formalizable, practical sense of rationality. In this way, the social-historical production of reason may itself be understood as a rational process for which a reasoned assessment or critique is always possible