Jean-Paul Sartre

Hope and affirmation: an ethics of reciprocity

Marguerite La Caze

Jean-Paul Sartre’s final ethics of the “we” (or reciprocity) remains controversial and less developed than his other ethics. Scholars have generally accepted the periodization of his ethics into three, as Sartre himself described them: the first ethics of authenticity, the second Marxist or dialectical ethics, and this final ethics, that considers the ontological basis of ethics, based primarily on the 1980 interviews in Hope Now (L’Espoir maintenant; Sartre 1991b, 1996). It has been suggested that Hope Now is not worth discussing as Sartre is expressing his interviewer Benny Lévy’s ideas, not his own, and Simone de Beauvoir’s distress at their content is well known. However, as Ronald Aronson argues in the introduction to Hope Now, we should take Sartre’s contribution here seriously and compare it with his other works, in spite of Lévy’s insistent questioning based on readings of Sartre’s work that are not entirely accurate or charitable. I will focus on Sartre’s responses in the interviews, rather than contributions of his interlocutor so that I can reconstruct the lines of his thought. Sartre’s comments in these interviews are also consonant with that in other earlier interviews, such as that with Michel Sicard (Sartre & Sicard 1979) and Leo Fretz (Fretz 1980). This article aims to show both the continuity with Sartre’s earlier ethics in his responses to Lévy and the potential of the original ideas of the final ethics. My interpretation is that Sartre draws ideas from his earlier ethics, introduces some new ideas, and makes some startling formulations in suggesting the form of an ethics of reciprocity. I will discuss first the basis of the ethics of reciprocity, then the concepts of fraternity and democracy, and finally, Sartre’s account of hope and messianism.

The ethics of reciprocity

Reciprocity in Hope Now concerns each human being’s link to the other, a link that was difficult to envisage in the apparently conflictual conception of human relations in Being and Nothingness, where Sartre began from the isolated individual subject. Sartre makes clear that the ethics he is conceiving is different from the spirit of seriousness, criticized in Being and Nothingness, which desires being one’s own foundation or cause (Sartre 1996: 59). Sartre’s ethics of reciprocity provides an alternative to bad faith and conflict between human beings, an alternative that Sartre gestured to and struggled to describe throughout his writings. That conflict arose from incompatible and paradoxical projects to become one’s own foundation. Nevertheless, as early as the Notebooks for an Ethics (Sartre 1983b, 1992), written in 1947 to 1948, the concept of reciprocity was important because it indicates the recognition of the freedom in situation of the other (Sartre 1992: 285). When Sartre returns to reciprocity in Hope Now, he expresses a fuller idea of being together, incorporating the concept of need from his dialectical ethics, where “what I have is yours, what you have is mine; if I am in need, you give to me, and if you are in need I give to you” (Sartre 1996: 91). Reciprocity is the ideal of an ethics where no-one is in lack because of the ethical relation shared with all others and the scarcity of resources has been overcome.

The source of this ethical relation, Sartre argues in Hope Now, is an ethical imperative, demand or obligation in our actions. This is an idea familiar from his dialectical ethics, including work then unpublished, such as “Morale et histoire”, also known as the Cornell lectures (Sartre 1996: 70; 2005b). Ethics begins from this imperative or requirement. The imperative is seen as an “inner constraint” of our consciousness in everything we do, a must that is an ethical must. The constraint comes from striving to achieve something that goes beyond our present reality. Nonetheless this constraint is not a determining one; we can choose to follow it or not. Sartre sees this imperative as ethical because it involves a sense that things can and should be different from what they are, which motivates us to act. Such a motivation is only the beginning of an ethics, to be sure, but it contains a concept of normativity that can be linked to the ethical, or to our relations with others. In “Morale et histoire” Sartre had linked an unconditional imperative to the norms inherent in every imperative to act; what he describes in Hope Now is a link between the imperative and a fundamental bond between consciousnesses.

According to Sartre, ethics is “a matter of one person’s relationships to another” (Sartre 1996: 68). In that way, ethics is distinguished from a political or purely communal link that concerns how our relationships are organized or how we form groups. He ties our consciousness with the existence of the other to define the moral conscience. This is what he means by considering the ontological sources of ethics (Sartre & Sicard 1979: 15), a change in his thinking attributed to the indirect influence of Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics. We are always in the presence of the other and Sartre lyrically evokes scenes of co-presence in spite of absence: “in the form of an object when I’m alone in my room, in the form of some reminder, a letter lying on the desk, a lamp that someone made, a painting that someone else painted” (Sartre 1996: 71). Our response to this presence, he argues, is ethical because it concerns our relationship with the other. Sartre concedes that this way of thinking is a shift from the relative independence of individuals in Being and Nothingness to a concern with the interdependence of human beings, although he had begun to hint at this interdependence even then. Nonetheless, making the primary focus the necessary and basic relation with the other entails a conception of ethics where rather than competing with the other I am fulfilling myself in being ethical. In doing so I have given up pretensions to absolute being, or the desire to be God or my own foundation, and recognized the importance of the other and their bond with me. This change in our projects is the idea of ethical conversion or transformation that Sartre first refers to in Being and Nothingness and discusses in more detail in Notebooks for an Ethics.

While ethics is distinguished from politics, ethics provides the basis for a revolutionary transformation of society instead of a political or economic theory such as Marxism. This idea is expressed as the discovery of the “true social ends” of ethics that would provide “a guiding principle for the left as it exists today” (ibid.: 60), that is, a left that is exhausted and demoralized. The ethical desire is what Sartre calls a desire for society, and not a society with a Marxist economy or the democracy of the French Fifth Republic (ibid.: 60). The relations of such a society would be characterized by trust, justice, and generosity, a generosity that cannot be the craze to destroy and possess of Being and Nothingness nor the alienated generosity of Notebooks for an Ethics. It is rather a pure generosity that is not appropriative or economic and involves a recognition of freedom that comes after the ethical conversion of the Notebooks. This ethical society would be one “without power” “because a new form of freedom is established, which is the freedom of reciprocal relations of persons in the form of a we” (Fretz 1980: 233). His claim here articulates the sharp distinction between an ethics concerned with class struggle and an ethics of reciprocity where each person helps the others.

In recognition of the difficulties in reaching the final ethics, Sartre suggests that compromises will be needed, where the context of action and intention is taken into account and we may have to choose different means to our ends (Sartre 1996: 80). This compromise is one way of incorporating the political, yet what he is working towards is an ethics and a situation in which such compromise would not be necessary. The ethical imperative, which is conceived as leading to a situation where all will be generous to others in need, is juxtaposed with our simultaneous struggle against scarcity where there is not enough for everyone. In this sense, we currently have to live the tension between ethics and competition and lack. Sartre also concedes that “violence in certain circumstances is both necessary and justified” although it is the opposite of fraternity, as he understands it here (ibid.: 79). In extreme situations, such as that of the colonized in Algeria, violence may be necessary to become an active citizen, even though that is still far from becoming genuinely or totally human. Being an active citizen is only a step along the way to becoming ethical. Here we can see how Sartre is moving away from his dialectical ethics to articulate a more positive picture of human relations than one solely based on scarcity. A clearer picture of the ethics of reciprocity is drawn through Sartre’s discussion of the concepts of fraternity and democracy.

Fraternity and democracy

Fraternity in the ethics of reciprocity involves solidarity and dependence. It expresses the ontological connection between human beings that distinguishes the ethics of the we. In this account, unlike in the dialectical ethics, Sartre accepts an understanding of fraternity without terror or uniting against a common enemy. Furthermore, he argues that fraternity must be thought in relation to democracy, as a principle behind democracy. It can be theorized while remaining open about the nature of democracy, although he connects democracy to the idea of mutual freedom (Fretz 1980: 233). Strikingly, Sartre states that “democracy seems to be not only a form of government, or a way of granting power, but a life, a way of life. One lives democratically, and in my view, human beings should live in that way and no other” (Sartre 1996: 83). This focus on democracy continues his concern with radicalizing it as a concept, gives some content to the ethics of reciprocity, and prefigures Jacques Derrida’s stress on the same concept and his openness about what democracy means. Earlier, in “Elections: A Trap for Fools” (Sartre 1977b), Sartre argued for direct democracy on the grounds that indirect democracy rendered voters powerless to effect political change.

An important idea Sartre raises in relation to democracy is that we are conditioned by others and so when we vote there is a fundamental relationship that underlies how we think about voting and the vote itself. This relation is one of belonging to a single family in some sense. In a surprising and rather masculinist turn, Sartre refers to an essential relationship of fraternity or unity of human beings, an original “relationship of being born of the same mother” (Sartre 1996: 87). He does not mean this claim literally or biologically but as a way of describing the relationship of fraternity that exists between human beings, an aspect of the human condition. He says it is a truth we feel that is described in myths of a single origin of humanity, such as that in Plato’s Republic. Sartre distinguishes this idea from equality and also from a principle, contending that “It’s the relationship in which the motivations for an act come from the affective realm, while the action itself is in the practical domain” (ibid.: 89). In addition to fraternity relating to a common origin, he argues that it concerns a common end.

Sartre modifies his claim that fraternity exists by saying that this feeling will not come about until what he calls humanity, or a truly ethical state, is achieved:

At that moment it will be possible to say that men are all the products of a common origin, derived not from their father’s seed or their mother’s womb but from a total series of measures taken over thousands of years that finally result in humanity. Then there will be true fraternity.

(Ibid.: 90)

Thus, fraternity begins from a feeling and origin, and then is linked to a future goal of total or integral humanity, a goal that is signalled by the ethical imperative. Humanity will be achieved when all our needs, both basic and material, and for meaningful communication and friendly relationships, are fulfilled. This idea of a fulfilled humanity is one Sartre was concerned with for decades, referring to it in the first editorial for Les Temps modernes. Given that fraternity and democracy are linked, democracy cannot be genuine without the conditions of fraternity being realized either. The gap between the present situation and an ethical future, a vital issue for understanding his vision of ethics, is one that Sartre theorizes through his uptake of Jewish messianism as a particular expression of hope. This focus on messianism is one of the most controversial features of the interviews with Benny Lévy, yet my judgement is that Sartre transforms the idea of messianism for his own ends and anticipates much contemporary interest in messianism as an articulation of a concept of history distinct from the Enlightenment notion of history as simply gradual progress.

Hope and affirmation

Sartre discusses the question of hope at the beginning of the interviews, stating he believes that hope is part of what it means to be human and inherent in the nature of action in that action “always aims at a future object from the present in which we conceive of the action and try to realize it” (Sartre 1996: 53). Hope concerns our attempt to reach an end, and any particular practical end is meaningful in connection to a transcendent or absolute goal (ibid.: 56). This view is one that we can see in Sartre’s concept of the fundamental project through which all our smaller projects make sense in Being and Nothingness. The further point Sartre makes is that hope survives the non-achievement of our goals, so is not necessarily connected with success. We may fail and still hope, fail and still go on acting. As in Immanuel Kant’s work, hope for Sartre is intimately linked with progress, with our gradual awareness through history of the importance of other human beings (ibid.: 61). As we become more aware of others, the proper nature of value and of what should be affirmed becomes clear to us. Also similarly to Kant, Sartre conceived of progress as something that could be happening without our being entirely aware of it through fragmentary, limited, positive achievements growing from the midst of our failures (ibid.: 66). This possibility is what inspires hope. The end he has in mind is transhistorical and is dependent on finding what is truly human and a way to be and live together as human beings. At present, we are in a kind of less than human state, yet there are elements that could lead towards a more human future. These elements are demonstrated by our best acts (ibid.: 69). Sartre does not spell out what he means by our best acts, yet they must be connected with the generosity, justice and trust he mentions elsewhere in the interviews. These are intimations of the future if not inevitable progress. Sartre’s affirmation comes from the idea that our relationships with each other will improve and will be important even in that better future.

Nevertheless, unlike Kant, Sartre appears to reject any gradual progression into the future when he discusses what he finds interesting about Jewish messianism. For him, the idea of Jewish messianism is a way of thinking about the future that is not tied to simple progress from the current situation. It suggests a possibility of a different, ethical, future for Jewish people and non-Jewish people alike (ibid.: 106). This way of understanding messianism is one that is not tied to a specific religious faith; rather, he is taking the form of the idea of a different future that does not simply extend from our present. The future is surprising, not inevitable, and not predictable. In that future state, ethics will not be concerned with rules and prescriptions, but with the way people “form their thoughts, their feelings” (ibid.: 107). Sartre ends with the thought and feeling of hope for the future, a hope that he would like to ground. This image of hope frames his ethical thinking and appears to be what motivated him to continue his struggle to develop an ethics. Sartre died not long after these interviews and so his thoughts concerning the ethics of reciprocity, planned as a book on “power and freedom”, remain to be developed by others.