By Geoffrey Chen
In a long and quiet conversation, I sat by the window with a certain wise man. Outside there was no wind, the street lay still, yet our discussion circled around something far from calm — whether Sartre’s philosophy truly possesses real value.
I spoke first. I said I had never been able to accept Sartre’s starting point. To construct an entire philosophical framework upon the absolute freedom of the individual already stands in tension with the actual form of human society. Real human society is not a simple aggregation of isolated individuals. It is an organic whole. It is not many lives stitched together, but something that, in their coming together, becomes a new living structure. This whole has its own internal logic, its own demand for coherence and harmony. That is not moral coercion, nor merely the pressure of custom; it is an intrinsic requirement of social existence itself. If one begins with individual freedom and proceeds to dismantle this organic whole, the result will not be liberation but fracture and pain.
The wise man did not rush to refute me. He asked gently whether the “organic whole” I described implied some kind of priority. Did it mean that the individual is merely a derivative unfolding of the whole?
I answered that the priority I spoke of was not political, not tyrannical. I was not defending collective domination over the individual. I was speaking of generative priority. From birth, the human being is embedded in language, culture, and networks of feeling. Even self-consciousness itself arises within relations. To abstract the individual as a philosophical starting point is an artificial incision. In reality, there is no such pre-social isolated subject.
The wise man nodded. He acknowledged that embeddedness cannot be denied. Yet he said Sartre does not deny social structure. What Sartre denies is that society can assume responsibility in place of the individual. Even if one is shaped by structures, one must still choose. Society cannot act on one’s behalf, nor can it bear one’s responsibility. When the whole is granted too much legitimacy, it easily becomes an abstract authority for which no one is accountable.
I paused, then shifted the ground of the discussion. The issue, I said, is not merely theoretical structure but historical consequence. In practice, Sartre’s admirers did not exhibit a more mature balance between individual and collective. Rather, in specific historical contexts, they often manifested excessive rebellion against the collective. More importantly, Sartre himself did not distance himself clearly enough from such blind zeal. His affirmations of certain radical movements function as a commentary on his own philosophy. I therefore do not believe the excesses of his followers are accidental distortions. I believe there is a structural connection.
This time the wise man did not dismiss the claim. He admitted that once thought enters history, it is reshaped by emotion and circumstance. Sartre indeed weakened the sacredness of the collective, yet he did not construct a robust positive theory of how the social whole generates itself. He excelled at dismantling legitimacy, but offered less in terms of ontological grounding for coexistence. In turbulent times, such asymmetry naturally magnifies the negative force of critique over the constructive force of renewal.
Still, he remained cautious. To emphasize freedom is not the same as encouraging arrogance. Sartre’s system contains responsibility at its core, though that responsibility remains abstract rather than socially articulated. If there is a structural risk, it lies in the elevation of freedom to first principle without an equally strong account of relational generation. Such imbalance inclines a philosophy toward deconstruction rather than construction. It suggests a tendency, not a logical inevitability.
I replied that this was precisely my deeper concern. If freedom is established as the first principle, then the whole becomes secondary. But if the organic whole is ontologically prior, then individual freedom must be understood as its unfolding. The divergence begins at the very starting point. The problem with Sartre lies not merely in historical radicalization but in the ordering of existence itself.
The wise man fell silent for a long moment. At last he said that perhaps our disagreement was not about whether to affirm the individual or the collective, but about which is granted ontological priority. Sartre feared that the whole might swallow the subject. I feared that the subject might sever itself from the whole. Both fears are rooted in real historical experiences. The question may not be which side to choose, but whether there exists a third structure — one that neither begins with the isolated subject nor sanctifies the whole, but understands responsibility and coexistence as emerging together within relational generation.
Night deepened. We reached no final conclusion. Yet one thing had become clear: the debate over Sartre is not a superficial disagreement about usefulness, but a profound divergence over the ordering of being itself. Is freedom the first principle, or is relation? That question is far more fundamental than any judgment about a philosopher or his followers.
We did not agree. But we both sensed that the real conversation had only just begun.
Perhaps within this very tension, what I call the “Theory of Consensus” does not seek to stand on the side of the individual or the whole, but to offer a generative framework for boundary, proportion, and balance between them. If consensus is understood not as imposed uniformity but as rationality continually emerging within relational structures, then individual responsibility and collective coherence need no longer appear as opposites. They may instead take shape together through dynamic interaction. At that level, perhaps the Theory of Consensus can provide a more fundamental path toward resolving the tension between freedom and the whole.