From In-Itself to Practico-Inert

Freedom, Subjectivity and Progress

KIMBERLY S. ENGELS

Abstract: This article focuses on Sartre’s concept of the practico-

inert in his major work A Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol. 1
(CDR). I first show the progression from Sartre’s previous concep-
tion of in-itself to his concept of practico-inert. I identify five differ-
ent layers of the practico-inert: human-made objects, language,
ideas, social objects and class being. I show how these practico-inert
layers form the possibilities for our subjectivity and how this repre-
sents a change from Sartre’s view of in-itself in Being and Nothing-
ness. I then explore the relationship of freedom to the practico-inert
and how Sartre argues that the practico-inert places limits on our
freedom. Lastly, I argue that despite the pessimistic picture Sartre
paints in CDR, the practico-inert has the potential to both limit and
enhance our freedom. I appeal to Sartre’s post-CDR essay ‘A Plea
for Intellectuals’ to argue that a Sartrean account of progress
requires the utilisation of the practico-inert.
Keywords: freedom, in-itself, Jean-Paul Sartre, practico-inert,
subjectivity

The practico-inert is a commonly mentioned term in Sartre’s A Cri-

tique of Dialectical Reason, Vol. 1,1 yet has received only modest
attention in analyses of this major work. The concept is as important
as it is complex. The shift from Sartre’s concept of in-itself in Being
and Nothingness2 to practico-inert in CDR and beyond accounts for
many of the differences in the views of human subjectivity presented
in his earlier and later works. By subjectivity, I mean the state of
being a conscious subject capable of having beliefs, setting goals,
experiencing emotions, acting intentionally and possessing a concep-
tion of self. In BN, Sartre portrays the subject as consciousness which
nihilates the given, whereas in CDR the subject is presented as insep-

© UKSS and NASS Sartre Studies International Volume 24, Issue 1, 2018: 48–69
doi:10.3167/ssi.2018.240105 ISSN 1357-1559 (Print) • ISSN 1558-5476 (Online)
 From In-Itself to Practico-Inert

arable from the realm of ‘worked matter’ or practico-inert into which

we emerge. The purpose of this article is threefold: first, I aim to
clarify the different ways in which Sartre uses the term practico-inert
because he uses it to describe a diverse array of objects of experience.
Second, I show the progression of Sartre’s thought from in-itself to
the practico-inert and the implications this shift has for his views on
subjectivity and freedom. Third, I suggest that, despite Sartre’s pes-
simistic depiction in CDR, the practico-inert harbours the potential
to enhance our freedom and expand our field of possibilities.
In BN, Sartre presents a model of subjectivity in which human
consciousness, or for-itself, nihilates static being, or in-itself. In
CDR, this view is replaced with a model of spiralling, social, histori-
cal, material subjectivity in which that which is surpassed is simulta-
neously retained. Human consciousness is now referred to as ‘praxis’
which interacts with the ‘practico-inert’. However, it is a mistake to
assume that praxis and practico-inert simply replace Sartre’s previous
for-itself/in-itself distinction. Rather, the practico-inert actually
introduces a new ontological category into Sartre’s thought: a realm
of ‘worked matter’ which mediates the possibilities for our projects.
This ontological realm includes human-made objects, language, pas-
sively received ideas, social objects or institutions, and class being.
Showing the transition from in-itself in BN to practico-inert in CDR
will elucidate the connections and progression between his earlier
and later views on subjectivity and freedom. This analysis will also
explore whether Sartre’s pessimistic portrayal of the practico-inert in
CDR is unwarranted, as the practico-inert is inevitably a part of our
experience, and thus any vision of enhancing our freedom and pro-
gressing requires interacting with the practico-inert.

Subjectivity in Being and Nothingness and The Critique:

From Nihilation to Dialectic, Negation to Spiral

In BN, Sartre uses the expressions ‘being in-itself’ and ‘being for-
itself ’ to refer to objects and consciousness respectively. Being in-
itself characterises positive being in the world, or being that is not
free to be anything other than what it is. Examples Sartre uses
throughout the text are an inkwell, a pen and a glass (BN, 102–103).
As Sartre says, they are fully ‘positive’ being, that is, not free to be
anything other than what they are (24–30). Being in-itself ‘is what it
is. It is full positivity. It knows no otherness; it never posits itself as
other-than-another-being. It can support no connection with the
– 49 –
 Kimberly S. Engels

other’ (29). Being in-itself is isolated and ontologically inert until it

interacts with being for-itself.
Being for-itself characterises human consciousness. It is ‘negative’
being in the sense that it can differentiate itself from its environment
by understanding what it is not and then negatively construct a con-
cept of what it is. Being for-itself can consciously make choices, have
goals and beliefs, experience emotion and imagine. This category of
being includes only human consciousness (BN, 56–60). Sartre
argues that the for-itself, because it compares itself to what it is not,
experiences itself as a lack in the fully positive in-itself. ‘The for-itself
corresponds [. . .] to an expanding and de-structuring of the in-
itself, and the in-itself is nihilated and absorbed in its attempt to
found itself’ (133). In other words, because consciousness is neces-
sarily consciousness of something, the for-itself needs the in-itself to
have the characteristic ‘conscious of ’ and to differentiate itself.
Because the for-itself is radically different from the in-itself, Sartre
claims that human existence precedes essence and that human beings
are radically free (60).
The primary emphasis in the text is human beings’ power of
choice, but BN does acknowledge that the for-itself is always
responding to a situation. The given is not a blank slate for the for-
itself to write on; rather, it is already imprinted with human mean-
ing. Sartre writes: ‘We do not first appear to ourselves, to be thrown
subsequently into enterprises. Our being is immediately “in situa-
tion”; that is, it arises in enterprises and knows itself first in so far as
it is reflected in those enterprises’ (BN, 77). Thus, while our free-
dom can transcend being in-itself, it is simultaneously limited by it.
Our situation, or the given, presents us with various possibilities
for our actions, goals and choices. We then build ourselves by
negating, or as Sartre says, ‘nihilating’ some of those possibilities
while affirming others. ‘Human reality is its own surpassing toward
what it lacks; it surpasses itself toward the particular being which
it would be if it were what it is’ (139). The for-itself is inevitably
defined by the in-itself but simultaneously rejects this definition
through transcendence.
CDR marks an important turn in Sartre’s thought in which he
realised more profoundly the effects of historicity and materiality on
subjectivity and freedom. The for-itself/in-itself pair is replaced with
the praxis/practico-inert. Praxis refers to purposive, conscious activ-
ity which totalises (makes intelligible as a whole) all the various
objects and perceptions of its environment into a continuous unity
when pursuing our chosen ends. Praxis includes thinking, imagining
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 From In-Itself to Practico-Inert

and differentiating like the for-itself, but involves material interaction

with the environment (CDR, 80). Consciousness no longer
‘negates’ or surpasses what is given; rather, the given is incorporated
and retained in praxis. Sartre now claims that each individual’s pro-
ject is constructed through a dialectical interaction of praxis with
reified results of previous human affairs (65–80). This includes
manipulated physical matter, language, passive ideas, social objects
and class. While the freedom of BN was a freedom ‘in situation’, the
various layers of the situation and the ways in which they both shape
and limit our possibilities for subjectivity are more forcefully empha-
sised in CDR.
Subjectivity is now portrayed as an ongoing totalisation and takes
the shape of a spiral. A totality is traditionally understood as an entity
that is distinct from its individual parts. A totalisation, by contrast, is
a totality that is continuously being formed by human activity. The
parts and the whole are being developed simultaneously (CDR, 45).
Our praxis dialectically interacts with history and materiality to cre-
ate a totalisation. Sartre writes: ‘I find myself dialectically condi-
tioned by the totalized and totalizing part of the process of human
development: as a “cultured” man I totalize myself on the basis of
centuries of history and, in accordance with my culture, I totalize
this experience’ (54).
The ‘dialectical’ aspect of our subjectivity is a product of our con-
scious decisions and actions being directly altered by their encounter
with the environment and with the historical past, the traces of which
are all around us. Sartre refers to these traces as the ‘practico-inert’.
The practico-inert is an ontological realm where past actions influ-
ence current praxis and is comprised of ‘alienated praxis and worked
inertia’ (67). Sartre refers to the practico-inert as ‘simply the activity
of others insofar as it is sustained and diverted by in organic inertia’
(556). Thomas Flynn describes it as the ‘“worked matter” that medi-
ates our social and historical relations even as it preserves the sedi-
ment of past praxes’.3 The practico-inert is not just a background
against which we build our project, but is incorporated into and pre-
served in our project.4 These practices, social conventions, collec-
tively valued objects and even deeply ingrained attitudes establish the
boundaries of our current praxis and become the practico-inert.
In the next section, I will discuss the diverse layers of the practico-
inert we find in CDR, and focus on how these concepts introduce a
change from the vision of in-itself, subjectivity and freedom in BN.
This will elucidate the scope of how Sartre employs the term as well
as trace the changes in his thought.
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 Kimberly S. Engels

The In-Itself and the Practico-Inert

One layer of the practico-inert includes physical artefacts, altered

nature and machines. Sartre discusses physical artefacts in BN as
well, where he says that being in-itself, even though it is interpreted
by individual for-itselfs, is already imprinted with collective meaning
(CDR, 168). Objects that have been given a special status in society,
such as precious metals, or socially designated physical structures
such as subways or schools, reveal to us a world that is already collec-
tively organised and intersubjectively shared. In BN, Sartre says, ‘It is
the world which makes known to us our belonging to a subject-
community, especially the existence in the world of manufactured
objects’ (BN, 547). When we see a human-created instrument, we
recognise the use it serves for others and hence the purpose it should
serve for us. He continues: ‘As soon as I use a manufactured object
[. . .] it indicates to me the movement to be made [. . .] Thus, it is
true that the manufactured object makes me known to myself as
“they”; that is, it refers to me the image of my transcendence as that
of any transcendence whatsoever’ (548).
Using a collectively designated object makes one aware of oneself
as a person interchangeable with others. Designated objects present
options for our possibilities. Sartre gives the examples of signs pro-
hibiting certain behaviour, such as ‘No Exit’ signs (672). As soon as
I understand the collective designation of the sign, it reveals the
actions and expectations of others to me:
It is indeed to me that the printed sentence is directed; it represents in
fact an immediate communication from the Other to me: I am aimed at.
As soon as I avail myself of the opening market ‘Exit’ and go out through
it, I am not using it in the absolute freedom of my personal projects [. . .]
I do not submit to the object itself when I use it as an ‘Exit’; I adapt
myself to the human order. (552; emphasis in the original)

Objects convey to us that we are in a social situation with expecta-

tions and responsibilities from others. At the same time, the fact that
these objects direct us towards certain behaviour opens up possibili-
ties for our project: ‘According to the free possibilities which I
choose, I can disobey the prohibition, pay no attention to it, or, on
the contrary, confer upon it a coercive value which it can hold only
because of the weight which I attach to it’ (672).
Objects have normative force for us as they offer potential for our
actions. At another level, we create our own meaning by choosing
how to react to the sign. In CDR, Sartre reaffirms that manufac-
tured objects, altered nature and artefacts are integral to interpreting
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 From In-Itself to Practico-Inert

our possibilities and relating to others. However, he goes further

from his discussion of objects as in-itself in BN and now argues that
human-made objects, as practico-inert, can have their own ontologi-
cal demands. The objects contain an inertia within them that can
place greater restrictions on our praxis.
Machines, especially assembly lines or other mechanical appara-
tuses associated with labour, are emphasised as practico-inert. These
human-made machines, such as automobiles and factories, are por-
trayed as having their own demands and interests. Cars need fuel and
repair, assembly lines need electricity and people to operate them.
These machines impose a material exigency into our experience – we
must adjust our praxis to meet the needs of machines (CDR
205–210). These machines are created by us, but they also alter the
very fibre of our being. We adjust the rhythm of our bodies to the
working of the machines when we are driving or operating them.
The deterministic mechanical nature of machines such as factory
lines can lead to individuals feeling bound to the environment with
no real power to change situations: ‘The machine defines and pro-
duces the reality of its servant, that is to say, it makes of him a prac-
tico-inert Being [. . .] the worker finds in [the machine] his being as
indifferent generality, his praxis as already materialized in predeter-
mined tasks as inert exigencies to be satisfied, and his future as impo-
tence’ (207–208). We need to view Sartre not as abandoning his
previous views in BN, but as recognising more deeply that human-
made objects have a conditioning effect that goes beyond conveying
collective meaning.
A second layer of the practico-inert is language. In BN, Sartre
identifies the use of language as automatically placing us in a web of
social relations at the level of our community, nationality and all of
humanity: ‘To know how to speak is not to know how to pronounce
and understand words in general; it is to know how to speak a certain
language and by it to manifest one’s belonging to humanity on the
level of a national collectivity’ (BN, 657).The words we use precede
us, and our freedom is bound to the collective terms and concepts we
use to communicate. Language exists before us, but it functions as
freedom when we use it to communicate with other free individuals
(663). The laws of language and speaking are produced by individual
freedoms because each act of speaking is an act of freedom by the for-
itself. Because it is linked to the actions of the for-itself, it comes to be
through for-itselfs and exists at the level of communal meaning.
In CDR, Sartre refines this distinction. While language most cer-
tainly conditions our possibilities, the intermediary category of the
– 53 –
 Kimberly S. Engels

practico-inert allows him to make clear distinctions between lan-

guage and speaking. Speaking is a form of praxis, but language itself
is practico-inert. In one reference, he says, ‘Words are matter’. At the
same time, ‘they carry the projects of the Other into me and they
carry my own projects into the Other’. Thus, Sartre suggests that
‘language might well be studied in the same way as money: as circu-
lating, inert materiality’, but, as he adds, language ‘unifies dispersal’
(CDR, 98).
Sartre emphasises that words have a physical impression on us, as
they are experienced and interpreted through our physical bodies. As
a distinctly human practice, language can be considered not a purely
inert totality but rather a developing totalisation. ‘There can be no
doubt that language is in one sense an inert totality. But this material-
ity is also a constantly developing organic totalisation’ (CDR, 98;
emphasis in the original). The circulation of words is a realm in
which free praxis saturates the inert matter with collective meaning.
When objects, interactions and relationships are characterised by ver-
bal signifiers, this becomes an arena of shared meanings which indi-
viduals use to communicate: ‘Every word is in fact unique, external
to everyone; it lives outside as a public institution; and speaking does
not consist in inserting vocable into a brain through an ear, but in
using sounds to direct the interlocutor’s attention to this vocable as
public exterior property’ (99; emphasis in the original).
Language as practico-inert is about not merely individual words
but also the exchange of words between subjects. So, while language
is practico-inert as a hardened form of past praxis, when it is used to
communicate between subjects, Sartre refers to language as ‘praxis
itself’: ‘But this fundamental totality can only be praxis itself in so far
as it is directly expressed to others; language as the practical relation
of one man to another is praxis, and praxis is always language
because it cannot take place without signifying itself’ (99).While the
practico-inert is almost always referred to in CDR as freedom limit-
ing, we here see that the practico-inert (language) is the basis of free
praxis between subjects.
A third layer of the practico-inert is deeply engrained ideas or atti-
tudes. The notion that attitudes or ideas can be practico-inert is a con-
cept that cannot be completely accounted for in terms of the in-itself.
In BN’s extensive discussion of bad faith, bad faith was attributed to
trying to fix oneself as an object, or the desire to be God. In other
words, bad faith stemmed from a desire to coincide with oneself and
become being in-itself (BN, 797–798). The intermediary category of
the practico-inert allows Sartre to introduce a dimension to our
– 54 –
 From In-Itself to Practico-Inert

processes of understanding that does not qualify as free praxis, nor is it

reducible to bad faith. Sartre refers these unquestioned ideas or atti-
tudes as ‘ideas’. Ideas cannot be considered consciously intended
praxis; rather, they are meanings engraved in the ‘matter’ of our
processes of thought and thus practico-inert. One example Sartre uses
is the Great Fear of 1789, which was a widespread panic among the
rural population that occurred at the beginning of the French Revolu-
tion in which fearful citizens armed themselves in self-defence. Sartre
uses this example to show how easy it is for ideas to spread without
any conscious reflection on the ideas themselves. It may seem strange
to understand a sense of panic as a meaning ‘embedded in matter’, but
this is meant to signify that discourses can become solidified, unques-
tioned, static and ‘carved’ into the very structure of our thought:5
At this level, the Idea is a process; it derives its invincible strength from
the fact that nobody thinks it. That is to say, it does not define itself as
the conscious moment of praxis [. . .]. Instead it defines itself as a prac-
tico-inert object whose self-evidence, for me, is the same as my double
inability to verify it and transform it to Others. (CDR, 300)

When the idea that ‘bandits’ or ‘foreigners’ were posing a threat was
circulated between various individuals who accepted the Idea with-
out thinking, the force of the idea grew even stronger. No one
reflected on the idea as consciously intended praxis, but still a great
sense of panic spread through peasants in France (298).
A fourth layer of the practico-inert is social objects. The realm of
the social plays an important role in BN, but it is discussed as a con-
scious mode of being-for-others. Sartre discusses how the recogni-
tion of the Other as a subject and oneself as an object makes us
realise we are not purely self-determined. While we can try to behave
in a way that gives others the perception we want to convey, we ulti-
mately cannot control how others view us and the type of ‘object’
they perceive us to be. Sartre argues that the realisation that we are
potentially observable by others conditions all of our thoughts (BN,
373). This includes understanding ourselves through social categori-
sations, which are projected upon us by others:
There exists, in fact, something in ‘my’ world other than plurality of pos-
sible meanings; there exist objective meanings which are given to me as
not having been brought to light by me. I, by whom meanings have
come to things, I find myself engaged in an already meaningful world
which reflects to me meaning I have not put into it. (655; emphasis in
the original)

While we are still operating in the mode of in-itself/for-itself, we see

a dimension of being-for-others that exists in between. In CDR,
– 55 –
 Kimberly S. Engels

Sartre expands on this and argues that the practico-inert plays a

mediating role in our social interactions, including the way in which
we form into social collectives.
Sartre introduces three types of social formations: the series, the
group in-fusion and the pledged group. The first social formation is
a series, in which individuals are loosely united around a practico-
inert object, yet have no common bond or praxis uniting them. ‘The
isolation of the organism, as the impossibility of uniting with Others
in an organic totality, is revealed through the isolation which every-
one lives as the provisional negation of their reciprocal relations with
Others’ (CDR, 256). In a series, individuals remain atomic and iso-
lated; there is nothing tying their praxis together other than their
reliance on the common object. ‘Their identity is their practico-inert
unity, in so far as it determines itself at the present time as meaning-
less separation’ (260).
The praxis of individuals can be united into group praxis, although
there is nothing a priori in the structure of social collectives that
necessitates a group to form. In a fused group, individuals react to
the threat or enemy by bonding together in shared goals. In dis-
cussing the example of the storming of Bastille, Sartre writes:
The political praxis of the government alienated the passive reactions of
seriality to its own practical freedom: indeed, from the point of view of
this praxis, the passive activity of the gathering was taken from it in its
passivity and inert seriality and reappeared on the other side of the
process of alterity as a united group which had performed a concerted
action. (CDR, 355)

The people of Paris bonded together in light of a common threat,

banding together against the king. The threat posed against them
forced them to rely on each other and form a collective praxis. This
potentiality is present in the series, but without the external praxis
threatening them, individuals in a series retain their isolation. Sartre
also introduces an idea of a pledged group, in which individuals
freely join together, in the absence of a common threat, and pledge
to place limits on their freedom in order to maximise freedom for
the overall group (422–424). In all cases of group formation, the
group must produce itself in and against the practico-inert field.
The social dimension of the practico-inert and group praxis
results in ‘social objects’. ‘Social objects are, at least in their funda-
mental structure, beings of the practico-inert field’ (CDR, 253).
Social objects refer to objects which have a collective structure and
result in some distinct organisation of individuals. This can include
things like labour unions, schools or colleges, health care systems,
– 56 –
 From In-Itself to Practico-Inert

mental institutions or disciplinary systems such as prisons or reha-

bilitative facilities. The social objects affect the way in which our
praxis actually emerges into the world. Sartre writes that praxis
‘always arises within an existing society, it is in fact never wholly
natural and as we have seen, is always expressed in techniques and
social institutions which transform it to the extent that it occurs
within them’ (120). These institutions are practico-inert to the
extent that the standards governing them are the result of past
praxis which have become resistant to change. These institutions
are so rigidly engrained in our thinking that their nature becomes
taken for granted. They also make it much easier to simply accept
the practices and ideas of those in charge of the institution without
reflection: ‘[The social object] is the objective totality in so far as it
defines its subjectivity simply by interiorisation of values and objec-
tive ends and, within a given understanding, controls real individu-
als as simple interchangeable modes of subjective praxis’ (118).
Often the individual feels interchangeable with other members of
the institution which leads to feelings of seriality, isolation and
alienation from others. Social objects are not the same as collective
praxis, in which individuals freely unite around a common goal.
Social objects are practico-inert to the extent that they are worked
matter that preserves the traces of history and materiality, and
become static and resistant.
The last layer of the practico-inert I examine is what Sartre refers
to as ‘class being’. Because the practico-inert is characterised by
scarcity, our encounters with others are saturated with shortages
within the material environment. This is accompanied by a state of
practico-inert being that accompanies the fact that we belong to a
certain class, which he calls ‘class being’ (l’être de classe) (CDR, 65).
Scarcity includes not only scarcity of resources necessary for subsis-
tence but also scarcity of space, land, jobs, possessions and opportu-
nities. Even in advanced societies, our general interaction with others
is permeated with the differences that are linked to the socio-eco-
nomic class to which we belong.
For example, class differences lead to identifying one’s project in
relation to the types of work considered a realistic option for oneself.
Depending on the class of the families into which they are born,
people have varying financial means available and usually only see
certain occupations as possibilities for them. This is especially true in
developing societies where the wealth of one’s family strictly deter-
mines the educational opportunities available. The following passage
describes a bourgeois individual on vacation who encounters labour-

– 57 –
 Kimberly S. Engels

ers from the lower working class. The bourgeois cannot view these
workers without comparing them to himself:
It is in fact as a ‘holiday-maker’ confronting a gardener and road-
mender, that I come to conceive myself; and in making myself what I am
I discover them as they make themselves, that is, as their work produces
them [. . .] I realise myself as a member of a particular society which deter-
mines everyone’s opportunities and aims; and beyond their present activ-
ity, I rediscover their life itself, the relation between needs and wages,
and, further still, social divisions and class struggles. (CDR, 101; em-
phasis added)

Class being is not consciousness, nor pure matter, but it is certainly

real. When one sees the gardener and the road mender, one inter-
prets them as members of a particular societal class with an economi-
cally and socially specified array of possibilities. In turn, one shapes
one’s own possibilities in relation to the class one occupies. The
occupations of those of the lower working class usually involve fac-
tory labour that is completely bound to a physical practico-inert
structure.
The emphasis that class being is not something that can be tran-
scended is one of the strongest differences between Sartre’s earlier
and later works and shift from in-itself to practico-inert. In BN, still
in the language of for itself/in-itself, Sartre mentions how class is
part of the situation:
It appears that it is no longer I who decide in terms of my ends whether
the world appears to me with the simple, well-marked oppositions of the
‘proletarian’ universe or with the innumerable interwoven nuances of the
‘bourgeois’ world [. . .] I am thrown into a worker’s world, a French
world [. . .] which offers me its meanings without my having done any-
thing to disclose them. (BN, 659)

Categorisations regarding class and material possessions are imposed

upon us, not freely chosen. Although Sartre discusses sociality at
length in BN, the issue of class is a secondary one, portrayed as one
social designation among others. In BN, class does not place an
untranscendable limit on one’s freedom:
The bourgeois makes himself a bourgeois by denying that there are any
classes, just as the worker makes himself a worker by asserting that classes
exist and by realizing through his revolutionary activity his ‘being-in-a-
class.’ But these external limits of freedom, precisely because they are
external and are interorized only as unrealizables, will never be either a
real obstacle for freedom or a limit suffered. (680)

In BN, Sartre acknowledges that the in-itself reflects the existence

of class. At the same time, the for-itself is able to transcend class
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 From In-Itself to Practico-Inert

boundaries. In CDR, class is emphasised as a much stronger and

untranscendable limit on our subjectivity. Class is not only a mode
of being-for-others, but also a practico-inert state of being inter-
twined with our material, bodily experience of the world. Sartre
gives the example of a woman who works long shifts in a Dop sham-
poo factory whose existential project is devoted only to struggling
to meet her daily needs. For many people, especially in developing
societies, their possibilities are reduced to striving to fulfill their
basic needs amidst practico-inert limitations: ‘What is “assigned” to
them is a type of work, and a material condition and a standard of
living tied to this activity; it is a fundamental attitude, as well as a
determinate provision of material and intellectual tools; it is a strictly
limited field of possibilities’ (CDR, 232; emphasis in the original).
The ‘material and intellectual tools’ signify not only that some peo-
ple are subject to scarce material resources, but also that available
mental apparatuses for interpreting experience are constricted. Thus,
not only do these individuals’ daily routines of struggling to survive
place restrictions on their practical actions (if the woman does not
go to work at the factory, she and her children will suffer), but the
orientation of their projects are also predetermined by their class
being: ‘Her life and destiny can be determined before she gets her
job, and this pre-fabricated reality must be conceived in the mode of
being, in the pure materiality of the in-itself. The role and attitude
imposed on her by her work and consumption have never even been
the object of an intention’ (CDR, 232; emphasis in the original).
There was no deliberate choice for this woman of where she would
work, how she would live or what she could value. Class being
established very narrow boundaries for her thoughts, motives,
beliefs and choices. Thus, class is not just one social designation that
we can transcend or reject, but a practico-inert reality that is impos-
sible to completely overcome.
While the above analysis may not exhaust everything Sartre means
when he uses the term ‘practico-inert’, elucidating these various lay-
ers helps us to better understand the scope with which he uses the
term and better understand how the practico-inert evolves from
Sartre’s previous concept of in-itself. The most stark difference is
that the practico-inert places more direct limits on our freedom and
obscures our comprehension of the freedom we do have. In the next
section I discuss these limitations and explore whether Sartre ulti-
mately portrays the practico-inert too pessimistically in CDR.

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 Kimberly S. Engels

Analysis: The Practico-Inert, Freedom and the

Possibility of Progress

The first way in which the practico-inert places limits on our free-
dom is that it contains inertia within it that was not accounted for by
the in-itself. The practico-inert harbours the potential to deflect our
praxis. Sartre describes this potential as ‘a magical field of quasi-
dialectical counterfinality [. . .] everything acts on everything else
from a distance’ (CDR, 224).
Because human praxis is projected onto the practico-inert, which
harbours the potential to repel praxis, the results of human action can
become alienated from their original intentions. In the complexity of
a subject’s historical situation, an individual encounters what Sartre
calls an ‘authorless antipraxis’. The antipraxis is the inertia embedded
within the practico-inert that counteracts our intended praxis. He
describes antipraxis as ‘a retroactive power eroding my freedom, from
the final objectivity to the original decision; but nevertheless emerg-
ing from it; it is the negation of freedom in the domain of complete
freedom, sustained by freedom itself, and proportional to the very
completeness of this freedom’ (CDR, 226). Antipraxis and freedom
are intertwined, as it is our free praxis that leads to the antipraxis.
Sartre refers to one extreme form of antipraxis as a ‘counterfinality’.
Counterfinalities are a modification of the environment through
praxis in which the field of inertia deflects this praxis, resulting in the
direct opposite of the agent’s conscious intentions. According to
Sartre, a counterfinality is ‘the contradiction [. . .] which develops
within an ensemble, in so far as it opposes the process which pro-
duces it’ (193). Because of antipraxis and counterfinality, the free
praxis of human beings alters the environment, becomes solidified
into the practico-inert and then comes full circle to restrict their pos-
sibilities. This places concrete limits on our options and leads to feel-
ings of determinism (225–228).
Another way in which the practico-inert restricts our freedom is
by keeping individuals in seriality. This is a change from Sartre’s
emphasis in BN that a failure to acknowledge and embrace our free-
dom is bad faith. As mentioned, seriality is the default mode of
sociality in which individuals are united only by a practico-inert
object, and not by common praxis. Participation in a series leads to
what Sartre calls ‘serial rationality’, which is the default mode of
thinking in the series. With serial rationality, ideas are spread pas-
sively and without conscious intention (CDR, 258). In seriality we
view ourselves as interchangeable and determined. With serial rea-
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 From In-Itself to Practico-Inert

son, individuals accept ideas from others and the practico-inert at

face value with no process of reflection. Sartre argues that serial rea-
son is the default mode of thinking in the practico-inert realm. While
groups with common praxis can form either in response to a threat
or through chosen goals, the group is always formed against the
practico-inert.
Sartre uses the example of individuals waiting for a bus. The prac-
tico-inert object (the bus stop) unites these individuals to the extent
that they all need the bus to take them where they need to go. How-
ever, they have no other bond beyond the fact that they are waiting
for the same bus. In seriality, the practico-inert object unites individ-
uals and isolates them at the same time:
These separate people form a group, insofar as they are all standing on
the same pavement [. . .] insofar as they are grouped around the same
bus stop, etc. Above all, these individuals form a group to the extent that
they have a common interest, so that, though separated organic individu-
als, they share a structure of their practico-inert being, and it unites them
from the outside. (CDR, 258; emphasis in the original)

The practico-inert ‘unites them from the outside’ because the only
connection between them is their gathering around the object.
Although they have the common interest of riding the bus to reach
their destination, this is not a collective interest or internal bond.
The lack of meaningful practical options and the feeling that one’s
options are equally undesirable does not support a comprehension of
ourselves as free.
Throughout CDR and certainly in the discussion above, the prac-
tico-inert is portrayed as limiting freedom, stifling free praxis, giving
rise to antipraxis and counterfinality and thwarting humans’ best-laid
plans. Sartre calls it the realm of scarcity, sorcery, witchcraft, seriality
and violence. Thus, the optimism of BN in which we can always
transcend our situation is replaced by a pessimism surrounding the
human condition and the possibility of historical progress. Because
of antipraxis and counterfinality, the practico-inert thwarts attempts
to progress. Even collective group praxis dedicated to common goals
is not immune to being countered by antipraxis or resulting in coun-
terfinality. In his culminating lecture on ethics, The Rome Lecture,
Sartre posits a moral ideal where human beings would dissolve the
practico-inert as soon as it is formed, again emphasising the practico-
inert as an obstacle to human progress and his later ethical vision of
fulfilment of human needs.6
The question of whether the practico-inert need always be free-
dom limiting rather than potentially freedom enhancing has been
– 61 –
 Kimberly S. Engels

taken up by several authors in a discussion of the relationship of

progress to the practico-inert. Ron Aronson explores Sartre’s overall
position on the possibility of human progress (scientific, social and
moral) in history. Aronson specifically asks whether it is necessary for
matter to dominate us to the precise extent that we dominate it – in
other words, whether counterfinality is inevitable or if the practico-
inert could be controlled in a way that leads to genuine human
progress.7 Aronson points out that each generation inevitably takes
the worked matter of the previous generation as the starting point
for its own projects, something Sartre affirms in Search for a Method:
It is relatively easy to foresee to what extent every attempt (even that of a
group) will be posited as a particular determination at the heart of the
totalizing movement and thereby will achieve results opposed to those
which it sought: this will be a method, a theory, etc. But one can also
foresee how its partial aspect will later be broken down by a new genera-
tion and how, within a Marxist philosophy, it will be integrated into a
wider totality. To this extent even, one may say that the rising generations
are more capable of knowing (savoir) – at least formally – what they are
doing than generations which have preceded us.8

While this does not always result in progress, it can under certain
conditions. Progress becomes possible, in Aronson’s view, when a
sense of common human needs is posited as a goal. Aronson argues
that a goal of common humanity or common needs must be pursued
alongside a sense of positive practico-inert, or ‘practices, tools, insti-
tutions, habits, laws whose purpose is to meet those needs’.9 Aron-
son points out, however, that Sartre never develops the sense of a
positive practico-inert that could have led to an overall account of
the possibility of progress, and helped fulfil the vision of a society
that meets human needs which he gives us in Rome.10
Paul Gyllenhammer picks up this discussion but argues that there
are texts in which Sartre suggests there is a positive sense of the prac-
tico-inert. Gyllenhammer argues that in Sartre’s examples of com-
mitted literature and the spread of atheism, we see the practico-inert
operating as a positive force of progress. He draws on Sartre’s works
What Is Literature? and Mallarmé to illustrate his belief that Sartre is
‘interested in the idea that the world of worked matter is, to some
degree, a world of liberation and enlightenment’.11 Gyllenhammer
focuses on Sartre’s conception of committed literature and its poten-
tial for enabling progress and freedom. He argues that Sartre’s pro-
gressive mindset is characterised by his commitment to revealing that
beliefs in what is natural are actually rooted in class oppressions, and
providing the oppressed classes with enough knowledge to turn
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 From In-Itself to Practico-Inert

those tables. Gyllenhammer argues that in What Is Literature?,

Sartre shows that ‘a key material condition for such a growing
awareness is the development of literature as committed literature, as
well as the development of literacy in the form and content of a soci-
ety’.12 Sartre describes how the availability of literature and the abil-
ity of more people to read actually led to a rupturing of society’s
norms, becoming a force of social enlightenment.13 To improve Gyl-
lenhammer’s account, Thomas Flynn suggests emphasising the ‘prac-
tico’ sense of literature over the ‘inert’, emphasising that the force of
literature is the ‘sedimentation of past praxes that condition the
“work” of the “inert” on the free organic praxis’.14 Flynn highlights
that the true force of progress within the practico-inert comes from
the praxis that initiates it and is embedded within it. Thus, the prac-
tico-inert can serve as a freedom-enhancing tool when the freedom
of others is channelled through it.
In line with this view, I argue that Sartre’s account of the prac-
tico-inert, at least in CDR, is ultimately too pessimistic when he
portrays the practico-inert as always a barrier to freedom and the
result of free praxis. When discussing language, Sartre does hint at
the ambiguous nature of the practico-inert. He speaks of language
as both practico-inert and ‘praxis itself’ when it is used to carry our
projects into the other (CDR, 99). For the other layers of the prac-
tico-inert discussed, Sartre focuses on freedom-limiting examples,
but for each layer of the practico-inert identified, there can be coun-
terexamples of the practico-inert positively enabling freedom. For
example, while Sartre emphasises throughout CDR that physical
artefacts limit our freedom, it seems equally plausible that these
artefacts enable it. Automobiles place restrictions on our finances
and our possibilities, but they also open up a new realm of possibili-
ties by allowing us to get to places more quickly, for example, open-
ing up options for where one could be employed or go to school.
Physical artefacts such as the Chunnel, the Panama Canal or the
Golden Gate bridge opened up new possibilities for travel and com-
merce. While these accomplishments inevitably introduced a new set
of limitations, they also enabled new opportunities. In CDR, Sartre
emphasises the freedom-restricting aspect of physical objects and
machines, but fails to articulate the freedom-enabling dimension of
practico-inert physical objects.
In another example, labour unions, universities or health care cen-
tres have arguably enabled as much freedom as they have hindered.
Many labour laws that have protected workers over the course of the
past century were put in place because of labour unions. These pro-
– 63 –
 Kimberly S. Engels

tections, such as a forty-hour work week or mandatory sick pay, have

certainly given more options to lower-class workers who were previ-
ously exploited by the dominant classes. While there are many exam-
ples of outdated and unjust laws causing problems in the present,
there are also positive examples of civil rights laws, desegregation,
tenants’ rights or labour laws. Laws governing the regulation of the
market have led to the elimination of some stark class differences in
some developed societies. While the resistance to change can cer-
tainly become frustrating or can stifle new ideas, sometimes those
institutions become engrained and resistant because their existence
has a positive effect on human development.
Additionally, the practico-inert gives us insight into the lives of
past humans, which can foster human connections between people
of the past and the future. Discovered artefacts or historical ruins of
past civilisations open a window to understanding past people and
what was important to them. The traces of their past lives, the
worked matter of their experience, grants us insight and directly con-
nects our praxis with people who came before us, emphasising our
differences while at the same time connecting us. We learn from pre-
vious generations by reading their written accounts, building on
their scientific discoveries and realising when their projects failed. We
learn from past people and their projects: each generation knows a
little bit more than the one before it, because the results of what past
generations know are integrated again into society. We are able to
imagine how past generations solved problems, strove to progress
and tried to make the struggle with the practico-inert lead to an out-
come that was at least a little better for the human community, even
if not what was originally the intent of praxis.
While Sartre does not acknowledge this dimension of the prac-
tico-inert in CDR, there are post-CDR writings on ethics and politi-
cal activism that suggest Sartre does realise that building a more free
society requires understanding, utilising and potentially controlling
the practico-inert. It is possible that Sartre emphasises the freedom-
limiting dimension of the practico-inert in CDR because a diagnos-
tic of all the ways in which the practico-inert can affect and limit our
praxis is necessary for utilising the practico-inert for progress. In
multiple post-CDR texts, he posits the possibility of a better future
where class differences are less pronounced, but a future we must
choose and create. 15 These later claims must be read alongside
Sartre’s view in CDR that our freedom and choices cannot be
divorced from the practico-inert. Through this lens, we see that only
understanding the dialectical interaction of our praxis with the prac-
– 64 –
 From In-Itself to Practico-Inert

tico-inert, as well as utilising the practico-inert to our advantage can

facilitate this future.
For example, in the essay ‘A Plea for Intellectuals’16 Sartre explores
the dilemma of an intellectual, or a practician of technical knowl-
edge, such as a doctor, lawyer or academic, who becomes con-
sciously aware that the society they occupy does not offer equal
opportunities to all people. Sartre argues that the intellectual who
comes to this discovery will grasp that a universal humanism does
not currently exist and realise that it is it the task of intellectuals to
help advance the cause of creating this future. Sartre explicitly states
that the intellectual must use the dialectical method he lays out in
detail in CDR to investigate their society: ‘It is by applying the
dialectical method, by grasping the particular in the demands of the
universal and reducing the universal to the movement of a singularity
towards universalization, that the intellectual [. . .] can help the pro-
letariat to achieve its own self-consciousness’.17 This task can only be
accomplished by understanding the practico-inert structures of one’s
time, especially those related to class oppression. Sartre calls intellec-
tuals – as members of a bourgeoisie who have become cognisant of
the contradiction between the universal vision of the human and the
particularity of one’s historical situation driven by class disparities –
to help the oppressed classes achieve knowledge and understanding
of their own place in society. This knowledge and understanding,
Sartre previously argued in CDR, was unavailable to the lower
classes because of the effects of the practico-inert on their praxis. By
immersing oneself in the experiences of the lower classes in one’s his-
torical moment, Sartre argues that the intellectuals can come to
understand the contradictions of their society as well as the specific
nature of the practico-inert structures that are preventing the prole-
tarian classes from being free. Sartre suggests that both the intellec-
tual and the proletarian are produced by the practico-inert structures
of their time, most prominently class being, and only a collaboration
between them can help the proletarian achieve consciousness and
perhaps be liberated. Sartre urges the intellectual to take on the lib-
eration of the exploited classes as a moral goal and to explore cre-
ative means for achieving this task.
His goal is to realize the practical subject and to discover the principles of
a society capable of engendering and sustaining such a subject [. . .].
What he contests, by contrast, is simply ideology (and its practical conse-
quences) – in so far as ideology, whatever its origin, is a mendacious and
imperspicuous substitute for a class praxis which he is incapable of under-
taking alone, a praxis which can only be brought to fruition by the total-
ity of oppressed and exploited classes, and whose positive meaning – even
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 Kimberly S. Engels

if he can only glimpse it – the advent in a distant future of a society of

free men.18
Sartre says the individual is called to the task of struggling against
particularist ideology, laying the foundations of a universal culture,
training technicians of practical knowledge in the underprivileged
classes and acting as a guardian against political power, including the
political parties and apparatuses of the working class.19 He mentions,
however, that the guardian could serve as a leader in a political party,
which Sartre would consider a practico-inert social object, as long as
the power was used for the right ends – the end of creating a univer-
sal humanism. ‘All we can say on the subject is that there should be
intellectuals associated with political parties or organizations – in a
situation of maximum discipline and minimum criticism’. These
intellectuals must keep themselves aligned with the oppressed classes
in order not to become indoctrinated by the ideologies of the bour-
geois class and start to believe them.20 Here Sartre suggests that with
proper critical reflection, a practico-inert social object could be used
as a means for achieving a moral end – facilitating moral praxis and
becoming freedom enabling. Under no circumstances is the social
object inherently freedom enhancing, but when it is aligned with a
moral goal of praxis, it can serve as a means of making progress.
Sartre explores the possibility that the writer is an intellectual and
once again refers to the dual nature of language, referring to ‘ordi-
nary language’ as materiality, or practico-inert. It is a materiality that
the writer must use to communicate. Literary writing:
[P]roduces the singular universal by showing simultaneously language as
a generality that produces and wholly conditions the writer in his factic-
ity, and the writer as an adventurer, turning back on his language, and
assuming its follies and ambiguities in order to give witness to his practi-
cal singularity and imprison his relationship with the world, as lived expe-
rience, in the material presence of words.21

Through their work, literary writers show how they are shaped and
conditioned by the practico-inert materiality of language, and
simultaneously use this materiality to give witness to their own cre-
ative experience of the world. ‘The commitment of the writer is to
communicate the incommunicable (being-in-the-world as lived
experience) by exploiting the misinformation contained in ordinary
language, and maintaining the tension between the whole and the
part, totality and totalization, the world and being-in-the-world, as
the significance of his work’. Ordinary language is practico-inert,
but can be used creatively by the writer to help illustrate the contra-
dictions of one’s society. The writer’s task is different from that of
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 From In-Itself to Practico-Inert

the standard intellectual, as the writer seeks to use language to illus-

trate the conflict between the vision of a universal humanism and
the particularity of lived experience dominated by the ideologies of
the bourgeois class: ‘In his professional capacity itself, the writer is
necessarily always at grips with the contradiction between the par-
ticular and the universal [. . .] the inner task of the writer is to
remain on the plane of lived experience while suggesting universal-
ization as the affirmation of life on its horizon’.22 The writer should
aim for the same goal as the traditional intellectual, but the writer
creatively uses ordinary language (as practico-inert) to reveal both a
universalism and the singular experience of a person who inhabits a
historical world.
Sartre presents the possibility of the practico-inert (in this case
ordinary language) serving as a means of enhancing freedom, explic-
itly establishing a goal, and then advocates using the practico-inert
to attempt to facilitate that progress. As Sartre illustrates with his
many examples, the practico-inert worked matter of our experience
places limits on our projects and makes it so we can never truly know
the results of our praxis. Thus, we can draw from some of the pes-
simism of CDR which reminds us of the restrictions the practico-
inert inevitably places on our freedom. At the same time we can look
to the cautious optimism of Sartre’s texts, such as A Plea, where he
directly calls us to work towards a society in which the limits
imposed by practico-inert class being are dissolved, and acknowledge
that we have to utilise the practico-inert to do that.

Conclusion

Sartre’s concept of the practico-inert in CDR introduces a new layer

of depth and complexity to his views on subjectivity and freedom.
Comprised of objects as diverse as language, physical artefacts and
class being, the ontological realm of the practico-inert places more
limits on our freedom than the in-itself of Being and Nothingness. By
exploring the scope of how Sartre uses the term, we gain a deeper
understanding of his later vision of subjectivity and freedom.
Although Sartre portrays the practico-inert pessimistically in CDR, it
is clear that our freedom cannot be separated from it. If we look to
some of Sartre’s less pessimistic texts, we see that the practico-inert
harbours the potential to enhance our freedom, and an understand-
ing of how it shapes our subjectivity is necessary for human progress.
When we understand the practico-inert and how it affects us, we
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 Kimberly S. Engels

have the possibility of using our free praxis to control it and enhance
our possibilities.

KIMBERLY S. ENGELS is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Molloy

College. She has published several articles on Sartre and the implica-
tions of his views for contemporary ethical problems Email: kengels@
molloy.edu

Notes

1. Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, Vol. 1: Theory of Practical Ensem-

bles, trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith (New York: Verso, 2004) (hereafter cited as
CDR).
2. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes (New York: Philo-
sophical Library, 1956) (hereafter cited as BN).
3. Thomas Flynn, Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason: Toward an Existentialist
Theory of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 121.
4. Ibid., 120.
5. See Thomas Flynn, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1983), 100. ‘If one thinks of the native, the foreigner, the female
in such societies, these are the words at one’s disposal. Sartre appreciates the ver-
bal milieu created by sexist or racist language; but his particular insight is to have
situated it within the passive activity and unity-in-exteriority of serial individuals
mediated by the practico-inert’.
6. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Rome Lecture Notes, lecture given at Insituto Gramsci in
Rome on 23 May 1964, retrieved from La Bibliothèque nationale de Paris, France.
7. Ron Aronson, ‘Sartre on Progress’, in The Cambridge Companion to Sartre, ed.
Christina Howells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 261–292.
8. Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, trans. Hazel Barnes (New York: Vintage
Books, 1968). 91.
9. Aronson, ‘Sartre on Progress’, 289.
10. Ibid., 290.
11. Paul Gyllenhammer, ‘Progress and the Practico-Inert’, Sartre Studies Interna-
tional 21, no. 2 (2015): 3–12, here 3.
12. Gyllenhammer, ‘Progress and the Practico-Inert’, 5.
13. See Jean-Paul Sartre, What Is Literature?, trans. Bernard Frechtman (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 97–99; Jean-Paul Sartre, Mallarmé or the
Poet of Nothingness, trans. Ernest Sturm (University Park: Pennsylvania State Uni-
versity Press, 1988).
14. Thomas Flynn, ‘Two Core Concepts of Sartre’s Later Philosophy: Responses
to Gyllenhammer and Baugh’, Sartre Studies International 21, no. 2 (2015):
25–32, here 26.
15. This vision is especially pronounced in The Rome Lecture Notes. In this text,
Sartre introduces the vision of a society that meets needs.

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 From In-Itself to Practico-Inert

16. Jean Paul Sartre, A Plea for Intellectuals, in Between Marxism and Existentialism,
trans. John Matthews (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), 228–285.
17. Ibid., 260.
18. Sartre, A Plea for Intellectuals, 251.
19. Ibid., 262.
20. Ibid., 263 (this and the previous quotation).
21. Ibid., 280.
22. Ibid., 284 (this and the previous quotation).

– 69 –