Existentialism and Sociology: A Study of Jean-Paul Sartre by Ian Craib (review)

524 BOOK REVIEWS misunderstanding, but would also help to support his thesis. For, as he himself makes clear in the Humanity of Man, ". . . the scholar who is attuned to the social, moral, and religious convictions of another will be more likely to interpret them accurately than one to whom they are alien" (p. 9). In this sense, Barbotin is undoubtedly better qualified than many of his critics to approach the Christian mysteries in the light of human experience. Barbotin classifies himself as a phenomenologist and it is evident that he has been influenced to some extent by Maurice Nedoncelle, and more strongly perhaps by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. His aims parallel in some respects those of Heidegger and Kant but they are more suggestive than definitive. Perhaps he has been most strongly influenced by the Pensees of Pascal. Like Pascal, Barbotin intends to write from lived experience devoid of all presuppositions, but like Pascal he cannot escape the fact that his own faith colors all his interpretations of human experience. This should not in any way detract from Barbotin's achievement. The Humanity of God is based on a much richer anthropology than underlies most Christology. As a result, he has produced a beautiful work: he writes with simplicity, clarity, and a lyricism rare in theological work. Avoiding technical terms, he writes in a leisurely, meditative fashion that evokes a keen awareness of the value of everyday experience and deep appreciation of the significance of God's intervention in human history. PRISCILLA SNELL, 0. P. The Chancery Archdiocese of Detroit E:i:istentialism and Sociology: A Study of Jean-Paul Sartre. By IAN CRAIB. Cambridge University Press, 1976. Pp. vii + 242. $18.50. It would seem strange that a book with this title and sub-title would begin by complaining that Sartre's name has wrongly become synonymous with existentialism. But in other respects also the title and sub-title do not quite identify the subject of this fascinating study. The book begins by presenting Sartre's understanding of intentionality, the 'self,' and language as they are found in Being and Nothingness; then in terms of this understanding the author criticizes sociological studies of Goffman, Garfinkel, and Schutz. Stressing the continuity between B & N and Sartre's later Critique de la raison dialectique, Craib then outlines the formation of social structures as found in the latter work. These structures serve as the basis for a sustained critique of Alvin Gouldner's Wildcat Strike; both Sartre's and Gouldner's works are concerned with BOOK REVIEWS 525 the spontaneous formation of groups. But in addition to criticizing some of Gouldner's assumptions, Craib also renders Gouldner's work more widely significant. The existentialism that is introduced into sociology is basically a refusal to allow that sociology can be finally objective; rather, objective (or analytic) sociology must be considered as only a moment in an ongoing and total process. A purely analytic sociology would present " group pressures," "markets," "bureaucracies," etc., as objective facts, that is, as social forces that like physical forces are simply part of the " given." This would leave them as wholly contingent and incapable of further explanation. Using Sartre, Craib would argue that these "givens" are more or less free human creations, even if this freedom is alienated at the moment it is exercised. Craib's critique of various sociological studies consists in his effect to introduce free human projects into the subject matter of sociology, not to render it arbitrary, but to render it more intelligible. In B & N Sartre rejected a certain study of Flaubert that tried to explain Flaubert's psychology by breaking his psyche down into a set of basic drives: grandiose ambition, feeling of invincible power, etc. Then these elements were recombined to give us Flaubert. This is the analytic method in psychology; it would offer the reader a set of basic drives as " inexplicable original givens." Sartre urged that such a method arbitrarily resigns itself to being incomplete (Why was he ambitious? etc.) and renders Flaubert a behavioral object. Sartre proposed " existential psychoanalysis " as a way of avoiding these limitations; later he would illustrate what he meant in his increasingly complex accounts of Baudelaire , Genet, and Flaubert...