La critique sartrienne de l'universel abstrait : éléments pour une pensée du multiculturel

Abstract

Sartre's Critique of the Abstract Universal: Elements for a Multicultural Thinking The question of cultural justice, which refers in different contexts to the exigency of universality, constitutes a central aspect of Sartre's writings after World War II as f.ex. Réflexions sur la question juive (1946), Orphée noir (1948), Cahiers pour une morale (1947-1948), the famous Preface to Les damnés de la terre of Franz Fanon (1961) and his article on the "question basque" (1971). In this texts Sartre poses some questions, which are crucial for the contemporary multiculturalism debates, specially the questions of cultural justice, of the concepts of universality and the practical subject, of the articulation between cultural justice and distributive justice, as well as of the relation between person, economics and culture. The aims of this article is to discuss the main points of Sartre's critique of the abstract universality on the basis of his Réflexions sur la question juive and to articulate the fields where Sartre's thought offers the theoretical resources for a contemporary debate on cultural justice.

Keywords

• Jean-Paul Sartre, multiculturalism, universalism, cultural diversity, justice, oppression