"Renders accessible what is complicated and opens a window into the mind of a brilliant man. Highly recommended." * Choice * "This book focuses on Jean-Paul Sartres late work to explore what the author sees as a shift in the philosophers earlier ideas. According to Pinkard, Sartres late reappraisal of collective action as fundamentally freea position that is absent from the philosophers early writingsis predicated on what Pinkard defines as Sartres critical appropriation of classical German philosophy. In particular, Pinkard claims that Sartres Critique of Dialectical Reason is better understood through the lens of Sartres original reappropriation of Hegelian ideas in a Marxist key, alongside a new reading of the later Heidegger. This move, argues Pinkard, allows Sartre to modify his early conceptions of meaning, practice, spontaneity, inertia, and the dialectics between individual and collectivity." * Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal * Pinkard has written a pathbreaking and compelling work that shows the importance of Sartres extensive rethinking of his understanding of Hegel and Marx and the role of Heideggers Letter on Humanism in his later thought. Key concepts such as subjectivity, agency, reciprocity, dialectic, materiality, and sociality are given original and philosophically rich interpretations, all presented with striking lucidity. Practice, Power, and Forms of Life is an extraordinary tour de force, both as interpretation and as philosophy, and it should lead to a major reassessment of the later Sartre. * Robert Pippin, University of Chicago * In the extensive bibliography about Sartres work, his connection to classical German philosophy is seldom taken as a guideline. Focusing in particular on the Critique of Dialectical Reason and Sartres late writings, Pinkards book fills this gap by luminously considering Sartres creative appropriation of Hegel and Marx. It shows how this mediation, as well as Sartres response to Heideggers criticism of humanism, reveals a striking proximity to Wittgensteins theme of the forms of life. * Jean-Franēois Kervegan, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne *
