ABSTRACT
It is worth noting that in the eyes of most commentators there is a fairly dramatic shift that takes place in Sartre’s thought that can be broadly defined by his pre-and post-war periods. Before the war much of Sartre’s writings were focused primarily on a phenomenological account of the absolutely free individual, and his work lacked any strong account of the social and political relationships between multiple subjects, as well as an account of history. After the war, however, the changing political climate along with his serious reading of Marx led him to move beyond an account of the free individual in an attempt to develop a political philosophy which could account for the relationship between man and the material conditions in which he found himself, as well as providing an account for the emergence of group activity. While the Sartre of Being and Nothingness grounded freedom in a phenomenological-ontological lack, with the writing of Critique of Dialectical Reason Sartre now provides a materialist account for this lack which grounds freedom in the concept of material scarcity.
