ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the quantum elements in Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy that take it far away from the Cartesian imaginary, from the “Foreclosure of the Other” and from the “prose of the is and is not”, and take it instead toward posthuman horizons. In the contemporary world of posthumanism, quantum physics, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence, his radical theories of consciousness, authenticity, practico-inertia, freedom, and fusion will no doubt resonate further still with an amplified tone. Sartre’s emphasis on the “connective tissue” between pour-soi and en-soi is evident, as scholars have argued, in his theory of the body. As Beauvoir was adamant to declare at the time, Merleau-Ponty significantly overdoes his attack on Sartre’s concept of freedom and misconstrues his ontology, presenting a caricature form of “Pseudo-Sartrisme” that he then proceeds to dismantle critically. Sartre’s social theory of emergent interactionism or “Dialectical Nominalism” recognizes the “synthetic enrichment” of social phenomena and their irreducibility to their parts.
