ABSTRACT
The outline of a method for the study of human beings and human reality presented in Questions de methode is based on a certain conception of what human beings are like and on certain principles for how an empirical-interpretative investigation of concrete human beings and human reality shall proceed. Sartre sets himself the task to investigate the very foundation of his standpoint. Sartre sets up his investigation as a critique of reason, in a Kantian sense of critique: it is intended to investigate the limits, scope and validity of a certain conception of reason. Although the mode of investigation is primarily set up as Kantian, both Sartre’s conception of reason and his views on the status of the results are informed by the Hegelian-Marxist tradition. There is a tension in Sartre’s text between his declared antifoundationalism, a standpoint that might well be characterised as hermeneutical, and his attempt to provide a universal foundation for such historical thinking.
