146
PARTISAN REVIEW
Between Existentialism and Marxism
and
Life/ Situations
altest, phi–
losophy can still address the full range of basic human concerns in a
serious way. Philosophical theory has no home unless it can be
practiced and its practice must have meaning not only for those who
engage in it but also for those
to
whom it is addressed. Although Sanre
can no longer be followed in each and every tenet, he can be looked to
as a symbol of what is significant in philosophical activity.
The essays in
Between Existentialism and Marxism
and
Life/ Situ–
ations
are drawn from the last three volumes of Sanre's series entitled
Situations I-X
(1947-1976).
Spanning almost thiny years, the series
marks the enormous role Sartre has played in recent Western thought.
All the major issues and developments of our time are there to remind
us where we have been and what we as human beings can do tomorrow.
HUGH
J.
SILVERMAN
THE MIND'S EYE
PASSAGES
IN MODERN SCULPTURE. By
Rosalind E. Krauss. The
Viking Press. $1 8.95.
Rosalind Krauss, immensely gifted with an instinct for
driving metaphor, is one of the most eloquent and frequently elegal1l
interpreters of modern art (and particularly modern sculpture, as her
earlier book,
Terminal Iron Works: The Sculpture of David Smith,
has
already made clear). But even more miraculously Krauss is a thinker.
This particular miracle deserves our grateful appreciation on its own
count, but it also puts us on guard. It is as thinker, rather than as critic
or historian, that I regard her and write of her here. But having
admitted this, I must protect myself immediately from the charge of
condescension. Not condescension at all! It is only that to regard
Krauss as an importal1l thinker about art will for some discredit her as
critic (since the task of criticism is seen by many as not an il1lellective
but an iterative occupation, a process of gathering examples and
