Victims, Power and Intellectuals: Laruelle and Sartre

Authors

Constance L. Mui PhD, Loyola University, New Orleans
Julien Murphy PhD, University of Southern MaineFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 2017

Publication Title

An International Journal for Philosophy, Value Theory and Sociocultural Hermeneutics

Abstract

In two recent works, Intellectuals and Power and General Theory of Victims, François Laruelle offers a critique of the public intellectual, including Jean-Paul Sartre, claiming such intellectuals have a disregard for victims of crimes against humanity. Laruelle insists that the victim has been left out of philosophy and displaced by an abstract pursuit of justice. He offers a non- philosophical approach that reverses the victim/intellectual dyad and calls for compassionate insurrection. In this paper, we probe Laruelle's critique of the committed intellectual's obligations to victims, specifically, through an examination of Sartre's "A Plea for Intellectuals." We hope to show the value of Laruelle's theory on victims, crime and power for imagining future-oriented intellectuals.

Comments

Labyrinth: An International Journal for Philosophy, Value Theory and Sociocultural Hermeneutics

Vol 19, No 2 (2017)

Non-Philosophy, Social Action, and Performance

PRINTED ISSN: 2410-4817

ONLINE ISSN: 1561-8927

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25180/lj

The online edition of Labyrinth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Published with the support of the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna

Recommended Citation

Mui, Constance L. PhD and Murphy, Julien PhD, "Victims, Power and Intellectuals: Laruelle and Sartre" (2017). Faculty Publications. 51.
https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/philosophy-faculty/51