In reflecting upon Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophical writings in their entirety, the question arises as to whether these writings constitute a harmonious development or rather provide clear evidence of breaks. Generally, the critical literature assumes that the ontological, epistemological, and anthropological positions that are taken in the early philosophic-psychological writings are further elaborated and deepened in the first major work Being and Nothingness. Consequently, there would seem to be no grounds to suppose that in the period between 1934 (the year during which Sartre, in Berlin, worked on The Transcendence of the Ego) and 1943 (the year when the first major work was published) alterations in Sartre's philosophical conceptions occurred of such a magnitude as to interfere with the continuity of his thinking.

Matters are quite different with respect to the period between 1943 and i960, the year when the second major work, the Critique of Dialectical Reason, was published. Whereas Being and Nothingness represents an existentialist conception of man, in which the unique individual - essentially still free even when in chains - is master of his own fate, in the Critique the superiority of a historical-materialistic view of man and history is defended, while existentialism is reduced to the status of an enclave within the tenets of Marxism. Evidently, during the course of - and after - the Second World War, Sartre's ideas altered to such a degree as to necessitate a radical revision of his anthropological viewpoints.