Victims, Power and Intellectuals: Laruelle and Sartre

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\u27s critique of the committed intellectual\u27s obligations to victims, specifically, through an examination of Sartre\u27s A Plea for Intellectuals. We hope to show the value of Laruelle\u27s theory on victims, crime and power for imagining future-oriented intellectuals