Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 The childhood of a genius
- 2 An elite education: student, author, soldier, teacher
- 3 Teaching in the lycée, 1931–1939
- 4 First triumph: The Imagination
- 5 Consciousness as imagination
- 6 The necessity of contingency: Nausea
- 7 The war years, 1939–1944
- 8 Bad faith in human life: Being and Nothingness
- 9 Existentialism: the fruit of liberation
- 10 Ends and means: existential ethics
- 11 Means and ends: political existentialism
- 12 A theory of history: Search for a Method
- 13 Individuals and groups: Critique of Dialectical Reason
- 14 A second ethics?
- 15 Existential biography: Flaubert and others
- Conclusion: the Sartrean imaginary, chastened but indomitable
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
10 - Ends and means: existential ethics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2014
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 The childhood of a genius
- 2 An elite education: student, author, soldier, teacher
- 3 Teaching in the lycée, 1931–1939
- 4 First triumph: The Imagination
- 5 Consciousness as imagination
- 6 The necessity of contingency: Nausea
- 7 The war years, 1939–1944
- 8 Bad faith in human life: Being and Nothingness
- 9 Existentialism: the fruit of liberation
- 10 Ends and means: existential ethics
- 11 Means and ends: political existentialism
- 12 A theory of history: Search for a Method
- 13 Individuals and groups: Critique of Dialectical Reason
- 14 A second ethics?
- 15 Existential biography: Flaubert and others
- Conclusion: the Sartrean imaginary, chastened but indomitable
- Select bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
On November 1, 1946, Sartre delivered a lecture entitled “The Writer’s Responsibility” for the inaugural general conference of UNESCO at the Sorbonne. In view of the auspicious nature of this founding symposium, he concludes with a litany of recommendations that he believes should guide the writer in our day:
To create a positive theory of liberation and freedom;
To put himself in a position to condemn violence from the viewpoint of oppressed men and classes;
To establish a true relationship of ends and means;
To immediately reject, in his own name – which, of course, will not prevent it – any violent means of establishing a regime;
Finally, to devote his thoughts without respite, day in, day out, to the problem of the end and the means; or, alternatively, the problem of the relation between ethics and politics.
Underscoring the timeliness of these remarks, he adds: “That is the problem … of the present age, and it is our problem, it belongs to us writers. That is our responsibility, not eternal but contemporary.”
Information
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- SartreA Philosophical Biography, pp. 262 - 282Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
References
, The Wretched of the Earth, preface by (Paris: Maspero, 1961), trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove, 1965)Google Scholar
, Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel That Ended It (University of Chicago Press, 2004)Google Scholar
, “Morals and Society” (or) “Socialist Ethics” is discussed in several essays by Elizabeth Bowman and Robert Stone, such as “Dialectical Ethics: A First Look at Sartre’s Unpublished 1964 Rome Lecture Notes,” Social Text nos. 13–14 (winter/spring 1986): 195–215
and have discussed the Cornell Lectures in Centenary, chapter 17, and in “‘Morality and History’: Birth and Re-inventions of an Existential Moral Standard,” Sartre Studies InternationaI 10, no. 2 (2004): 1–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, An Investigation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Posthumously Published Notebooks for an Ethics (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000)Google Scholar
, “An End to Authority: Epistemology and Politics in the Later Sartre,” reprinted in Sartre and Existentialism, ed. , 8 vols. (New York: Garland, 1997)Google Scholar
The Power of Consciousness and the Force of Circumstances in Sartre’s Philosophy [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990]Google Scholar
, “The Sartrean Cogito: A Journey between Versions,” in (ed.), Sartre and Existentialism, vol. , Existentialist Ontology and Human Consciousness (New York: Garland, 1996), 167–180Google Scholar
offers a careful argument in defense of “The Bad Faith of Violence – and is Sartre in Bad Faith Regarding it?,” Sartre Studies International 11, nos. 1/2 (2005): 62–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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