Sartre's Ethics.pdf

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Sartre's Ethical Theory

MRINAL KANTI BHADRA

PART I

Many feel that Sartre was not agreeable to the terms, 'ethicaltheory', because the word 'theory' has an appearance ofabstractness.1 He wanted to size every object in its particularity orin its concreteness. It has been narrated by Simone de Beauvoirwith reference to an incident of his life that Raymond Aronspoke about Husserl's phenomenology to him and told him thatif he had known phenomenology, he could have discussed theapricot wine in his glass and might also have developed his ownphilosophy. Sartre became pale with excitement. He had beensearching for this for a long time. He wanted to describe thingsas they appeared to him, as he touched them. He would be ableto squeeze out his philosophy from such description perhaps,for this reason the word 'thoughts about ethics' may be appro-priate to Sartre. Even then, the word 'ethical theory' may beused in accordance with the traditional usage. The questionwhich arises at the outset: Has Sartre developed any ethicaltheory ? At the end of his major philosophical treatise Being andNothingness he remarks that man's freedom, his sense of value,the real situation of life, man's responsibility, etc. raise certainquestions which are the ethical questions of human life. He willwrite another book later to discuss these questions. But he wasnot able to write any such book. But the books he wrote after-ward such as Existentialism is a Humanism, Saint Genet, The Cri-tique of Dialectical Reason and The Idiot of the Family contain hisethical thoughts in many places. In Being and Nothingness thereare also discussions about morality specially the idea of man'sfreedom, human relation with other persons, value, the goal of

human life, etc. It is perhaps possible to arrive at a systematicstructure of Sartre's ethical views from these discussions.

In 1976 a documentary film on the life of Sartre was exhib-ited at Cannes in France. In this film Sartre was asked about hisbook on ethics. His reply was that he had collected a great dealof materials about ethics and he would write a book on thembut he wanted to complete his book on Flaubert before that. Infact, it would have been proper for him to have written twobooks, one after he had completed Being and Nothingness dur-ing 1945-1947, when the problems of the individual's life weremore important to him. He had been planning to write anotherbook on the problems of reality and morality. With all theseideas taken together he could write a book sometime before theend of his life. This did not happen. But in 1988, a book writtenby him on ethical problems was published. It was untitled Cahierpour une morale. Some of his later ideas, in which the line ofseparation between ethics and social philosophy was becomingindistinct, could be discovered in this book. But he discussedsome of these problems just months before his death, in aninterview to the journal La Nouvelle Francais. Between 1972 and1975, it was found that Sartre was becoming increasingly in-volved in politics. Actually, it had started from 1968, when thestudents of the University of Paris-Sorbonne had started amovement against the government of Charles de Gaul. It hadbecome clear to him that the ethical thoughts are also politicalideas. He said that he was in complete agreement with theMaoists on this point. We have to determine Sartre's views onethics in these perspectives.

We can discuss man's ethical life from two points of view.One, we have to see whether the individual human beingdecides anything as the ultimate end of his life. If he has anultimate end, he can try to realize it through his actions. We havealso to understand whether it is essential for human beings tohave freedom to realize this ideal or what is the role of freedomin human life ? What is also the relation between the ultimateend and his actions ? What is also the criterion of value, good orbad ? Secondly, man's ethical life can also be considered from

BHADRA : Sartre's Ethical Theory 225 226 ETHICS : An Anthology


another point of view. We know that man has to live in asociety and there is a relation between his action and the actionsperformed by other persons. If we are able to know the natureof human relations, we shall be in a position to improve theconditions of the society. So human relations do not seem to beoutside the purview of ethical thinking. The questions of how ahuman being can form a group and how, in a group, he canperform moral actions as a member of the group, are not irrel-evant from the perspective of ethical deliberations. There is anideal for the individual in the case of moral action. Similarly,there is a social purpose of the individual's action. We have tosee whether this purpose or ideal will be equally beneficial forevery man. I think that these questions are very essential inSartre's ethical thought. I have tried to limit my discussion tosome definite aspects. These are (a) Sartre's ideas about freedom,(b) his idea about value, (c) his idea about the relation betweenthe human individuals and the group or the society as well as therelation with the factual environment, and (d) Sartre's ideasabout the ideal society and the means by which the ideal can beimplemented. But the discussion of these four aspects may notconfine us to the realm of pure ethics. We have to enter into thesocial and the political areas of human life.

Sartre believed that man has an ultimate end in life. Hewanted to unite himself with the real world. Human conscious-ness is ever-changing. It is constantly in the process of destroy-ing one level of existence and moving towards another. Perhaps,this is Sartre's idea of deconstruction in the current terminology.But Sartre believes that what we call the real world has an iden-tity and permanence. Man wants to participate in this identityand permanence. He thinks that such identity and permanencewill give him peace and tranquility. In order to realize this pur-pose man is constantly producing change in the real world.Perhaps, the ideal remains unattainable, because if man wants toreach a state of unity with the real world he has to realize a stateof existence where there will be translucidity of consciousnessand permanence of reality. It is possible to think of such con-tradictory modes of existence in God. But due to this fact, the

idea of God is also self-contradictory. Man practices penance toreach this ideal, butfails. Because of this human consciousness isunhappy. There is a connection between this ideal and freedom.Man wants to be what he is not, from what he is. For this hehas to perform actions, but his actions may be good or bad. Hehas to bear responsibility for such action. In ordinary sense, amoral action is that which produces good or bad consequences.But in the academic sense, the action which has a purpose andthe action which gives rise to alternates so that only one can beselected is defined as a moral action. Nonetheless, such an actioncan be performed only because man has freedom and so thereis an inseparable relation between freedom and action. In thecourse of discussing such an action Sartre has brought to focusthe relation between freedom, choice, cause and effect system,purpose, and their mutual relation. Such an analysis is essentialfor any discussion of moral theory. Sartre thinks that freedomis man's primal condition because we cannot think that man hasconsciousness, but he is not free. Man's consciousness has thepeculiarity that it had been always destroying the past and mov-ing towards the future. This power of man is his freedom. Thisfreedom is always accompanied by anxiety, because the actionwhich comes into existence due to freedom does not have anyrational certainty. What is being done may produce success ormay fail to give rise to any success. Still more, the action whichis chosen by man due to his freedom may undergo a change anymoment. The action which man performs may have certainconditions of reality, but it does not mean that the condition ofreality necessarily gives rise to the action. In this connectionSartre gives us an idea about the relation between freedom,cause and effect relation and the purpose. By cause he under-stands the factual conditions, because such conditions can becalled cause if they can be related to the purpose. Macbeth hadin his favour certain conditions of the real situation and they arecalled cause, because they could be utilised to serve his purpose.In Sartre's opinion, cause has to be understood in the light ofthe end. Feeling or emotion also cannot be understood bySartre to be the cause of human action, because when all paths



of action are blocked due to the failure of the activity of reason,man takes refuge in emotion.

In the case of the choice of an action Sartre says that mychoice will really be free only when I could have chosen some-thing else other than what I have selected. But is this possibleall the time ? If I go hitch-hiking, I will become fatigued aftertravelling some distance. Whether I then decide to return doesnot depend on my fatigue, but depends on my ultimate project.If exploring the countryside and travelling are my real purpose,I shall not bother about the fatigue. So, whether I shall chooseone particular action or another depends on how much myultimate project will be affected. At this point, Sartre refers tothe ultimate purpose of the human being. Every man has anultimate end. The purpose is to discover his entire existence inthe world and he wants to identify himself with the worldthrough such actions which help him to proceed towards theultimate end. There are certain secondary projects which areessential to actualize the ultimate project and the secondaryprojects are essentially related to it in a hierarchical order. If myultimate end is to establish an authentic unity with the worldwhich will produce harmony and happiness, the choice of aparticular pattern of life will be helpful. Sartre has spoken aboutexistential psycho-analysis in connection with man's ultimateend. He thinks that man's ultimate end is to discover his real selfand to recover the authentic self. There is a real lack in humanexistence; he is an incomplete being. He is separated from thereal world and such separation or alienation is his lack. Man hasto regain the impenetrability and the solidity of the real worldand if such regaining is possible, he can be elevated to the statesof a complete being. The unity of the real world and humanconsciousness in which man wants to acquire the translucidityand the permanence in the midst of change is man's ultimateend. In other words, it is man's desire to be God and such anend is his life-long search.

A question may arise here: if the ultimate end is the desire ofall men and if it is present in the nature of all men, what is therelation of such end with freedom ? Man's choice does not

depend on any cause and effect situation on the real world. Hechooses his ultimate end freely and by comparing the ends ofall men, we can discover such an ultimate end. But there is noreason why man chooses an ultimate end. So Sartre calls thischoice of the ultimate end absurd.

Many think that Sartre understands his freedom as absolute.But man cannot have such freedom. Man has to work on thebasis of the factual conditions of the world. There are certainlaws which determine and control the events. There is also re-sistance to human desire from such events and man has toovercome such resistance. Man cannot conquer them simply byhis desire. So the idea of the absolute is meaningless. But theproblem is: has Sartre really said such a thing ? In my opinion,Sartre has used the word 'freedom' in three different senses.Following Norman Mcleod it can be said that the first is thesense of the existential freedom which leads us to recognise thegreat emptiness in our existence. In this sense, every man is freein every place, in all situations of life. To be a man is to be free.As a result of this, man can free himself from the system ofcausal network and can choose a particular course of action. Inthe second use Sartre wants us to realise our freedom and in thatsense, 'freedom' and 'authentic existence' are really equivalent. Insuch an existence man becomes aware of the real nature of hisfreedom and feels also that there is no true criterion of goodand bad. It is man who decides values. In the third sense, by'freedom' Sartre has understood that which we feel in oureveryday life. It means that by freedom we do not only choose,but we possess the ability to execute what we choose. It is in thissense that we understand by freedom social and politicalfreedom. If we want to understand the true nature of moral life,we have to understand freedom in the first and the secondsense. In this sense human freedom is such that it indicates anawareness of freedom. If there is no human choice behind everyaction, then action cannot be judged as either good or bad. Ifwe consider in this way, then Sartre's existential freedom is notreally absolute freedom. The reason is that we do not have thepower to execute what we choose. We have only the power to



choose, because in every situation, there are many alternativeways of action, we can choose any one of these alternatives.Moreover, Sartre never says that factual conditions or facticitydo not give rise to any difficulty. He uses a word in his Beingand Nothingness and it is termed the 'Co-efficient of adversity'.The facticity which can cause difficulties in the exercise offreedom includes my place, my past, my environment, otherpersons and my death. All these factual elements constitute thesituations in which man can make use of his freedom. There isa connection between the situation and my purpose and so it isdifficult to say how much of the situation depends on thesubject and how much is contributed by the objective world.The situation, is, therefore, ambiguous. In the Critique of Dialec-tical Reason Sartre speaks of a 'scarcity' and this scarcity is gen-erated by the objective conditions.

The great emphasis on human freedom shows that it is themost important foundation of moral action. Freedom isintimately connected with responsibility. Sartre has spoken ofman's unlimited freedom, but we have seen that it is not reallyso unlimited. Human freedom, in the philosophy of Sartre,consists mainly of the power to make new choices, though hemay not have the power to achieve the purpose of his tasks. Thewar which I have not declared is also owing to me, because Ihave allowed it to happen and agreeing to the fact that the warwill go on, I conduct the activities of my life. Perhaps for thisreason Sartre says that I as a free being take myself as themeaning of the age in which I exist. I have declared the war, asI have not been able to separate myself from the age. I havetaken responsibility for it, but I am not able to live withoutidentifying myself with it. As I have completely tied myself to itand given my seal on it, and I have to bear the burden ofmoment I have come to exist, I am carrying the burden of theworld alone on my head. Anything else cannot lessen the weightof the burden. Sartre elaborated this notion of freedom in hisdramas, short stories and novels. He wants to say that the re-sponsibility of the individual revolves round the universe inhab-ited by human beings. Because of this the individual discovers in

his anxiety that he is not the foundation of his own being, nordoes it depend on the existence of other human beings. Theexistence of the world does not owe to him, yet it is he who hasto determine the meaning of everything. The individual realizesthrough anxiety that he has been thrown on a host of respon-sibilities. His responsibility makes him aware through the feelingof anxiety that he is a free being and his existence is realised inthat anxiety. But sometimes man fails to tolerate the anxiety ofthe burden given to him and he wants to take flight into badfaith.

I feel that Sartre will call such existence authentic whichexpresses itself through man's moral actions. The freedomwhich is the basis of such actions makes man an authentichuman being. But when man transcends the sphere of his ownexistence and moves towards the welfare of the society, it is notpossible for us to consider the ethical thoughts from the pointof view of the individual. Ethical thought then becomes socialor political thought. The fact as to whether it is possible for anindividual to perform such an action contributes not only to thewelfare of the individual, but also to the community. It occupiesa large area in Sartre's thought. We shall come to that aspectlater. But prior to that we want to see how Sartre has developedthe role of objective conditions of facticity in his book Beingand Nothingness, and also in his other writings. The objectiveconditions and the social reality play an important part in man'sfree choice: this has been admitted by Sartre in his Critique ofDialectical Reason. But he would also say that ultimately thedecision of the individual is his own and it is not determined byany objective state of affairs. But in this book the idea of man'ssocial ideal has occupied a larger area. There is no doubt thatbehind the individual's choice of a particular course of action,there is a great role of the objective and social conditions. Sartrementions such an idea also in Saint Genet. At this stage thediscussion of ethics to Sartre means that man has a freedom toshape his own destiny. But in 1962 he does not seem to believe,as he did in 1946, that man has absolute freedom. He thinksnow that the situation is very complex and in such an



environment the individual himself has to decide his own courseof action in a free manner. In Saint Genet Sartre has not raisedthe question of the community. He has focussed his attention onthe individual Genet and he has recreated the development ofGenet from his childhood to the top of his fame. But he hasalso noted how much influence is exerted on the individual bythe real and social conditions. Here Sartre holds that to live amoral life means to devise a code of conduct for oneself priorto other things. This code of conduct might be a set of moralrules which might agree with social patterns, or it might goagainst the rules of society. Genet wished to choose the evil, butthat evil has a nature in its entirety. It may be compared to awork of art or to poetry. Some point out that as Sartre isemphasising the choice of a course of action decided by theindividual, morality and the action chosen by the individual arebecoming identical. Sartre has called this morality, the moralityof the course of action. In such a situation it is not possible toseparate man's possibility from his goal. Man has to beunderstood in terms of the totality of his decisions, which arerelated to his ultimate end and which is revealed through hisactions. In Sartre's opinion an action can be judged to be goodor bad, after it has been performed. The action, of course, hasto be chosen through the feeling of freedom. Existence whichis accepted through the experience of such a feeling and whichis related to responsibility and which troubles the mind due tothe pursuit of the ultimate end will be called authentic existenceby Sartre. In my understanding, the attempt to attain thisauthentic existence is what Sartre means by moral life.

Those who are not able to encounter the hazards of thismorality hide themselves in self-deception. In Being and Noth-ingness Sartre has provided many illustrations which show thatwhen man has to take a decision himself, he becomes a victimof anxiety. He wants to flee from this anxiety. He then performsmechanically according to the dictates of society. It may be thathe wishes to give shape to a social ideal in a mechanical manner,and such a manner destroys his freedom. Sartre gives the ex-ample of a young lady whose male companion desires her com-

pany provided she is nothing but a piece of wood. Or, a cafe-waiter plays the role of a cafe-waiter and protects himself fromthe risk of making his own free decisions. In Sartre's play TheRespectful Prostitute the American senator advises Lizzy to playsuch a role. In the story 'The childhood of a leader' the smallleader identifies himself with a set of rights and dreams aboutbuilding up his own life according to those ideals. In the 'Thecondemned of Altova' Franty hides himself in his room, as hewishes to avoid responsibility. In this way Sartre argues that manlives a life of inauthenticity if he does not exercise his freedomand cannot apply it to actions. Such an inauthentic existence islife devoid of morality.

In the context of a discussion of Sartre's views on value, wefind that contemporary philosophers hold two different opin-ions regarding the concept of value. One view is discovered inG. E. Moore's ethical contemplation. Moore understands 'good'as a non-natural property which is revealed in actions. Man canknow this property by his intuition. The source of another viewregarding value is the investigation by the logical positivist. Inthis view, the 'good' is not an actual quality, rather it is theexpression of an emotional reaction. According to this view,when we perform a good action, a feeling of pleasure is awak-ened in our mind. Wherever such pleasure exists, it indicates'good'. This view has been developed by thinkers like Stevensonand others afterwards. This view can be called the emotivetheory in the explanation of values, which is quite opposite tothe one held by Moore. These philosophers have come to suchconclusions after an analysis of the uses of language. Sartre can-not be exactly located in the group of the linguistic analysts. Still,it is true that he does not think of value as something existingin the world. So we may perhaps include him in the group ofthinkers known as non-cognitivists. He does not admit the re-ality of value, nor does he think that morality expresses anyfeature of reality. Value, according to him, is created in andthrough the activities of human being. Man develops or createsa meaning through the experiences of his life and value is relatedto such experiences. As values arise in the situations of man's



life, they can be said to be descriptions of life in a sense. Toexplain the inner aspects of human action, these values becomenecessary, because man encounters different kinds of nothing-ness to which he has to adjust himself. These adjustments createvalues. In Sartre's opinion, the meaning of life is that which webuild up and by real life we also understand it. In analysingconsciousness Sartre speaks of two levels of consciousness: oneis the pre-reflective, while the other is reflective. In the first level,consciousness is directed towards objects. But he does not haveany knowledge of himself, for if consciousness is to be knownas an object, it has to be held before consciousness separately asan object. Sartre's example is that I am crossing a street andwhen I am in the middle of such activity, it is the object of myconsciousness and my consciousness is directed towards it. Butfor the street to-be-crossed to be known as an object, con-sciousness has to rise to the second level and the whole situationhas to be the object of consciousness. Sartre says surely that inthe first level consciousness has an awareness about itself. In thecase of value, man chooses a particular action from the aspectof lack and he thinks that the action will remove the lack. So inthe first stage, that which fulfils man's sense of lack produces aconsciousness of that object. The object which puts an end tothe lack appears to us as good and it has a value or it is some-thing of a particular value. This kind of consciousness developsas a result of analysis in the second stage. So Sartre argues thatthe reflected experience is presented as a particular experienceand value becomes separate from the object that fulfils the lack.So reflective thought can be called a type of moral consciousnessand it cannot originate without expressing the value. Sartre fur-ther points out that there is no value in a world where there isno human being and value has a reality in the human world.Perhaps, this is what can be called the ambiguity of value, towhich Simon de Beauvoir has directed our attention.

Sartre says that it is human reality which introduces value inthe world. To him, value is like a demand which requires afoundation. But the objective world cannot be the foundation.He thinks that it is human freedom which is the foundation of

value. But why I choose a particular value and not another, hasno justification. The being which makes the appearance ofvalues possible has no justifiable existence. As a result, my exist-ence is fraught with anxiety, because it has no function of itsown. There is another reason for my anxiety. Value may berevealed by my freedom, but we can always raise questions aboutit. We are accepting a scale of values, but to reject it is also mypossibility. As man stands before values with his anxiety-strickenexistence, he comes to know that value is man's ideal.

Sartre wishes to say that what is good or bad, desired orundesirable, depends on me. But many believe this is not suffi-cient. Man wants to know also the foundation of the good,when he is fighting for it. If good or bad simply depends onthe point of view or choice of the subject, the fight for estab-lishing values also becomes meaningless. Therefore it is necessarythat these values have a foundation. But Sartre thinks that thisfoundation is man's freedom. It really means that value is whatman chooses and it has no justification. If we can understandthe significance of this statement, we are able to realise the roleof anxiety in our life. When all values depend on man, not uponGod or any party, the search for values increases the burden ofanxiety. Sartre raises one question in this connection: if freedomis accepted as a value, what will be its foundation ? There is noanswer to this question, for to Sartre freedom has no being, itis non-being, nothingness. It might then be pointed out that noethical theory can develop from Sartre's ontology. When Sartresays we have to perform such an action by which freedom canbe established, and the freedom which is not only mine, but alsothe freedom of other persons, then his ethical theory does notremain confined only to the region of ethics, but it is trans-formed into a political ideal. Ethical theory and political ideasare becoming fused. Sartre himself has also pointed out 'ontol-ogy cannot formulate the principles of ethics'. According toSartre ontology can only be an investigation of which it is, andfrom an ontological statement we cannot derive any ethicalideal. In this way, though Sartre will say that there is no rationalbasis of what man chooses, still what is selected or chosen can



account for the actions which are to be performed. So theultimate project chosen by man has no rational foundation. Theactions which depend on the choice can be explained with ref-erence to itself. Sartre has referred in this connection to a ratio-nality which is internal to the choice and the actions can bejudged by that choice. Whether an action is right or wrong, hasto be judged by reason which is internal to choice, and not byanything which is outside choice.

Sartre's ethical thought has ultimately developed into politicalthought. I feel that man's ethical life can be built up in asuccessful way, if there is such a society in which man's freedomis not hindered. In Being and Nothingness he has tried to showthat man always tries to dominate over another person, oneman appears as an object to the eyes of another person, butman can never be a material object. The man who is conqueredby another person always tries to establish his own freedom. Sothe relation between human beings is one of an eternal conflict.But if this is the last word about human relations, then no unityamong human beings can develop and man will not be able toput an end to the rule of oppression. In Being and Nothingnesshe has said that the oppressed persons can be united, but hedescribes that unity as 'us-object'. The idea of 'we-subject' hasnot been developed in the proper way there. But if man is tobuild up a healthy society he has to be united with other humanbeings, the attitudes of hatred and enmity have to be overcome.Actions would be such that even if it is the action of oneperson, it will have a universal significance. The idea of suchpossibility had its first beginning in Sartre's book Existentialismis a Humanism and it has remained true to the last day of his life.

The book Existentialism is a Humanism has not receivedproper attention, because Sartre himself never took the bookseriously. But in my understanding, in this book Sartreemphasises on man's resolution as the basis on which man cancreate a system which can bring good to all human beings.Sartre does not only say that every man has to take care of hisown interests, but he adds that each man is responsible for thewhole of humanity. When man chooses for his own self, he is

also choosing for all men. Many think that this aspect is theweakest point in Sartre's thinking, because what is good for oneman may not be so for the whole humanity. Sartre states thatwhen a man chooses a particular course of action, he has to askhimself whether what he is doing can also be done by others.To avoid this question is self-deception or bad faith. The ques-tion for every man is whether he has the right to perform inone way which can decide the future of all human beings. Sartrethinks that in every man's heart there remains an anxiety for allmen. He says further that he discovers in his consciousness notonly the existence of himself but also that of others. I cannothave any true knowledge except through the intervention ofothers. So the existence of the other is essential for my existenceand for my self-knowledge. This way of knowing othersthrough one's own existence is called by Sartre 'intersubjectivity'.Besides these, there is a universality of conditions for everyman's action. These are real conditions, because they exist every-where and at the same time they are individuals, because they arethe conditions for the individual's action and man lives his ownlife by them. In that way Sartre can say that there is a humanuniversality, but it is not given universally. It is being created andrecreated all the time. By choosing himself man creates thisuniversality, he creates it by understanding the nature of man,irrespective of the period. So this universality does not affect therelativity of every age.

One of the arguments against Sartre is that it is not possibleto judge one's action in his ethical theory. Sartre thinks that thisidea is mistaken. The action which is consistent with one's ownfreedom is good. Those who deprive themselves of full free-dom, according to Sartre, are cowards and fail to achieve themoral end. This is the formal aspect of freedom. But the prin-ciple of morality cannot state beforehand what actions are to bedone. The object of action is actual and it has to be discovered.Only it is to be remembered whether this action has been per-formed freely.

In Existentialism is a Humanism Sartre has taken his ethicalthought to the level of social thought. Perhaps, he realized at



this time that it is possible to evolve a only such a principlewhich is the individual's own. By his free choice man wishes tobe something which will be applicable to every man. But itcannot be said which action should be performed by man andit is not possible to speak of any unchangeable and obligatoryprinciple. In this connection we can refer to a story mentionedin the book. A French youth approached Sartre for his adviceabout what he should do during the war of resistance. His prob-lem was this that if he did not join the war of resistance he willbe called a traitor. But if he joined the war, he would neglect hisduties to his mother, as there was nobody to look after her.Sartre's idea was this that in such a problem he alone wouldhave to decide what he would do because if he accepted Sartre'sadvice, it would mean that he had already decided to accept thatadvice. In this context, it is also found that Sartre wants to solvethe problems which appear in general ethical theories aboutwhat duties are fundamental and primary. In his opinion it is thefeeling of freedom which decides a particular action to be moraland in cases where such a feeling is absent, the action is notmoral. By presenting such thought Sartre is expressing his exis-tentialist attitude towards ethics. We find in Kierkegaard's phi-losophy that he would call such actions ethical, which may besocial activities, but because man has himself chosen them, hecalls these ethical and such existence is ethical existence.

But it is in Existentialism is a Humanism that Sartre has addeda dimension of social purpose to his ethical views. In the bookswritten afterwards he has tried to show how man can be unitedwith society or how individuals can come together to form agroup. He has shown the formation of such a unity brilliantlyinhis Critique of Dialectical Reason. Man rises from the level ofindividual existence and moves forward to the life of the group.He has shown this in two stages. The first is the level of a seriesand the second in that of a group. In the first situation individu-als form a series when they stand in a queue for a bus. In thissituation, men are united in a particular way, but their differencesare not removed. It is due to the fact that each of them isclaiming a seat in the bus. But when these men either in the time

of French Revolution or in the time of any other revolutionbecome united a mutual brotherliness is developed in them. Oneman can see his own project in the face of another person.Every man obtains the form of the structure of a universalproject. The idea of freedom which Sartre developed in hisBeing and Nothingness is that of an absolute freedom. But hesaid also that this freedom was unattainable. So he said that manis a useless passion. The freedom about which he spoke in theCritique of Dialectical Reason is the freedom by which a socialsystem can be built up in which every man's free will can bepreserved. All men would be united to participate in the socialproject. He wishes to speak of a society where class distinctionswill be abolished and where man will have adequate scope forthe development of his freedom. As he has tried to explore howthe individual can exercise his freedom, many critics have calledhim an existential Marxist. We know from the events of his lifethat in the last period of his life he became a staunch supporterof radical thought. In spite of saying so many things it can besaid that he has accorded individual freedom the highest posi-tion. In the Critique of Dialectical Reason where he discusses theproblem of method, he points out the mutual interaction be-tween man and social as well as historical circumstances, but hestresses that it is man who creates history on the basis of histori-cal conditions, and not otherwise. While discussing the life ofFlaubert, he says that he has brought one thing again in hiswriting and it is this that man has a project of action with whichhe wants to build up the everyday world. If we forget thisproject of the individual man, we cannot understand the socialproject. When individuals unite together, even then his purposebecomes one with the project of other and the social life be-comes integrated. So social good which produces a happy lifefor all men has its sources in freedom and it is a moral life.

Sartre says something in his interview to La Nouvelle Francaisin which also he included some ethical problems. He thinks thatconsciousness has a moral aspect. In his earlier life he searchedfor this morality in mere consciousness which is separated fromother human beings. But in his present thinking man's



consciousness is essentially connected with the presence ofothers. He thinks that every consciousness develops by itself, butat the same time it reveals itself related to the consciousness ofanother person as well as the consciousness of the other. Hewants to call this consciousness related to another person themoral consciousness. He says that others are always present tomy consciousness and they influence my consciousness. So myresponse is not just to my consciousness, it is also a response toother which has been present from the time of my birth andwhich has even influenced me. The nature of that response ismoral. In Being and Nothingness Sartre thought that every manis confined in his consciousness and he is relatively free fromthe consciousness of others. But the essence of morality is thisthat man is dependent on other human beings. He may choosehis action along with others, but he does it freely.

I have felt that Sartre wanted to reach a social ideal throughthe ideal of morality. In his different writings it has been estab-lished that his ideal consists of developing man's freedom whichwill make him realize the ultimate end. This ideal is somethingwhich will bring unity and permanence in human life. In orderto realize this ultimate project man can take the help of somesecondary projects. In the course of realizing the secondaryprojects man will move towards the ultimate end. If we see fromthis point of view, socialism or a state directed towards thewelfare of humanity is a secondary project. In the path in whichthe ideal would be realized man would be able to retain hisindividual freedom, because the social system which he wants tobuild up willdevelop real freedom in the limited venture of allmen. It will also allow the development of individual freedom.But the question which arises here is this: in his Being andNothingness Sartre wrote that man would not be able to attainhis ultimate end. Does he want to say the same thing at the endof his life? We come to know from the events of his life thathe took part in many movements and wherever man's freedomhas encountered danger, he has been active in his protests. Inhis last interview we find that he says that the world todayappears to be bad, ugly and without any hope. The old manwho is dying in the midst of all these has a quiet pessimism. But

he is resisting and he knows that he will die with hope but thishope has to be established. We have to try to explain that thishope is always the directing power of revolt and revolution. Hestill feels the strength of his hope and knows that this hope willultimately win.

In conclusion, we may observe that Sartre has mentioned theultimate end of human life. Man will choose that through hisfreedom which will give him unity and permanence. In givingshape to this ideal he will create a scale of values through hisfree actions. As the aim of this scale of values we can measurehis life of action and his social idea. Rather it will be moreappropriate to say that man will construct his scale of values inthe social contexts. So the ultimate end of human life will resultin the improvement of society through this secondary project.The actions performed by the individual will be judged good orbad in terms of the successful realization of his freedom. Ac-tions done without the feeling of freedom would be withoutany morality.

PART II

I have mentioned earlier that Sartre wished to write a book onethics immediately after the publication of Being and Nothing-ness. Such a book was actually written between 1947 and 1948and given the title Cahiers pour une Morale (Notebooks for anEthics). We come to know from Arlette Elkaim-Sartre (who isSartre's adopted daughter) in her foreword to the bookpublished in 1983 that in the opinion of Sartre ontology itselfcannot formulate ethical precepts. It is concerned solely withwhat is and we cannot possibly derive imperatives from onto-logical indicatives. It does however allow us to catch a glimpseof what sort of ethics will assume when we confront a humansituation and try to understand our responsibilities. But besidesthe Notebooks it is now known that Sartre prepared more thana thousand pages of handwritten and typed manuscripts. Butthese pages which were mainly devoted to ethics, portions ofwhich were to be read at the Gramsci Institute of Rome and at



Cornell University were set aside. They have not yet been pub-lished and it is very risky to say that the Notebooks representSartre's final view on ethics. Still, they indicate his attitude to-wards developing a revolutionary socialist ethics. Actually, Sartrethought of ontology as something dealing with actual reality.And as ethics deals with what ought-to-be, ethical propositionscannot be deduced from the factual state of affairs. But in thisbook about which I am trying to give some idea (which may bea very bad summary) Sartre seems to be abandoning his formerstance. He is now more close to Heidegger who speaks of anontology which is the foundation of metaphysics. He makes adistinction between ontic and ontological existences. The onticdeals with the every day human affair, but ontology refers to thefundamental nature of Dasein. It is true that the ontic cannotexplain the ethical norms, but the ontological existence is moreor less the basis of ethical situation. But this should not give usany hope that the Notebooks place us face to face with theethical principles which give us an insight into the systematicdevelopment of an ethics. Of course, it cannot be denied thatSartre is moving to a direction where he hopes to show thathuman ethics has to bear the burden of abolishing violence andoppression in the society. It speaks of a realm of ends whichmay not be the kingdom of ends as mentioned by Kant, but itpoints to the direction where man can hope for an improvedcondition of life. As I have already pointed out that it is notpossible to give an idea of the 600-odd pages of the Notebooksin a few pages, still I shall try to indicate the main areas of focuson which Sartre directs his analytic flash-light.

In the beginning Sartre makes some introductory remarksabout the necessity of ethics. But one thing must be made clear.Ethics has to do with the concrete man in his particular situa-tion. In his Existentialism and Humanism Sartre decried the ab-stract humanism of the humanitarians where humanity is spokenof as the collective without any concern for the particular hu-man being. The same thing is found in his novel Nausea wherehe does not agree with the autodidact for his sympathy for theabstract. But even though ethics is necessary, it is absurd because

we are not yet sure of an ethics in the ontological framework ofBeing and Nothingness. But man is everywhere oppressed andthe oppressor himself does know how he is caught in the socialtraps of the network of the oppression. Hegel's Master andSlave showed us how the master wishes to reduce the slave toan object and consider him as inessential. Similar thingshappen in relation to the leader of a political party who consid-ers the workers as essential. He gives us a list of ethical values inwhich generosity features at the top in the hierarchy of thevalues. But even generosity is not sufficient, for to a slave themaster may show generosity but it is as if the master is beingkind to him, while the improvement of the condition of theslave is his claim. It is to be acquired and not to be offered asthe gift of the master.

Sartre gives history a very important role in the Notebooks.It is true that in Being and Nothingness history is not that im-portant, but it assumes a more important role in his Critique ofDialetical Reason and The Idiot of the Family. He speaks of his-tory as ambivalent and this is due to the fact that a plurality ofconsciousnesses are related to history. They attempt a unificationand a totality, where history will realize its end. In Hegel, theevolution of history takes place in the world and for man it isfinite, as it comes to reach its ultimate end in the course of time.So history, according to Hegel, has an inevitability and a neces-sity. It is always totalized. But because of the relations of a plu-rality of consciousnesses history is always a detotalized totality. Inother words, history reaches a synthetic unification. But that isnot the end of history. The totality loses its unification andbecomes detotalized. Sartre points out that both necessity andcontingency are the essential aspects of history. It is necessarybecause the pre-existing conditions are going to determine whatwill happen. But such a thing does not happen. Sartre givesmany illustrations of which we can mention the Battle of Wa-terloo where Napoleon was defeated. But it was a matter ofchance that one of the army commanders failed to arrive ontime with his regiment. Such chances arise because of humanintervention. Sartre speaks of human action which has an end.



But the end depends on certain means. Again, we find that themeans themselves become ends: when an engineer wants toconstruct a bridge across a river, the construction of the bridgeis his end. But the manner in which the bridge will be built isthe means. Then, when the work is going on, the work becomesthe end and things necessary for the work become the means.So there is no absolute distinction between means and end.Only we have to ensure that whatever is done has to be donewithout incurring anything evil.

There is one problem of history. It may be that there aremany points of view. But how is that one point of viewrecognises another and there comes to be a unification of somany points of view ? I know that there is the other and he triesto dominate over me by his look or gaze. I wish to snatch mysubjectivity from him. Thus begins the play of subjectivity andobjectivity which we found also in Hegel. So in the play of thestruggle between subjectivity and objectivity, sometimes, perhaps,most of the time, the master wins and he wants to annihilate theslave. But if the slave is killed, the master loses his power ofdomination. So he wants that the slave continues to live andwork for him. But the slave also desires to annihilate the master,so that he can become the master. But he cannot be masterunless there is a slave. So the problem remains and ultimately wefind that master-slave unity in struggle continues in a form of asynthesis. Sartre does not speak of any synthesis in Being andNothingness where my relations with the other are of an eternalconflict. There is no Mitsein (togetherness). But in the Note-books he says that the work is a project. It is not only myproject. But it is the project of an infinite number of people. Itis in relation to the project that I recognise the other and alsounderstand that his project and my project are coming to beunified. A suggestion about this recognition of the other wasgiven in Existentialism and Humanism where Sartre said that Icannot be free, unless the others are free. He was criticized bymany that there is no room for the existence of the other, inSartre's universe, because the Cartesian confined within thesolitariness of the own consciousness. But in the Notebooks he

is supported by Heidegger who speaks of Dasein as being-in-the-world along with Being-with-others. Sartre speaks not onlyof human reality as being-in-the-world, but he is also speakingof being-within-the-world as Being-in-the-world. Another re-markable thing in the Notebooks is that the word Being is usedboth with a capital letter and a small letter, as 'Being' and 'being'.The second being means existence, though Sartre does not sayso. But the way he used Being and being suggests that humanbeings have a being-with-others within being-in-the-world.Being with capital letter, perhaps, indicates the mysterious Beingwhich constitutes the character or the categories of human ex-istence as well as the unity of the whole towards which manemerges. Oppression occurs in an important way in the Note-books. It may be asked whether oppression causes alienation oralienation causes oppression. The latter statement may be true inmany cases, but it cannot be said that oppression or alienationis sufficient to cause the other. There are cases where alienationoccurs due to natural conditions or man's own condition. Insuch cases it cannot be said that alienation is the basis of oppres-sion. There are cases of oppression which cannot be explainedby alienation. Sartre refers to many illustrations of oppressionand his analysis is fascinating. One important illustration is therelation between child and the parents. The child is asked tofollow certain rules or do certain duties. But he fails in manycases. So he is oppressed. Actually, what we call duty is anexpression of oppression. There is a demand behind duty. Thedemand expresses the nature of oppression. But in the case ofrelation to God man approaches Him with prayer. Heexpresses his submission to God and wants to accept thenecessary order of the world established by God. But whensomething happens in the world not due to any fault of hisown, he protests against the divine order. At that time the divineorder appears to be a demand. It depends on violence. Whenman does not listen to the commands of God, he is threatenedwith oppressive consequences. But oppression is not just force.It is true that force is a power which is necessary to movesomething from one place to another. Force may be applied in



certain cases of the natural phenomena. It is the power of natureand natural things, which explains why certain changes occur.But oppression is application of force to human phenomena.Then it takes the shape of demands or commands. It is underdemands that ethical categories become imperative. So impera-tives which have to be obeyed assume the shape of oppressionor violence. The violence comes from the person who is myother. But in the primitive tribal societies where the chief is theother and whose commands are to be obeyed things take placein the form of a gift-giving. Those who want to become chiefarrange a tribal feast called potlatch and all members of the tribetake part in it. It is a sort of gift-giving but theí tribals recipro-cate by accepting the commands. This shows that ethical im-peratives can be explained in two ways, where violence is notneeded and where there is no oppression. Sartre's idea of trac-ing back the ethical duties to tribal society shows that ethics canhave a foundation other than violence or oppression. Sartre ismore preoccupied with God in the Notebooks than in Being andNothingness. He does not take any interest in God there exceptsaying that the idea of God is self-contradictory. But in theNotebooks he refers to the Christian concept of God andspeaks of the divine order in which the believer has faith. Butthis does not mean that he has aligned towards the divine. Thebasic notion that there is no God underlies his discussion onGod. But he tries to see if there can be arguments for establish-ing the existence of God. He wishes to explain certain creationsand discovers that God does not have the required distancebetween himself and the world. So in order to make the worldhe has to adopt the principle of constant creation. But as thatis not possible, God is simultaneous with the world. We can thussay, if we like, that the world is God or God is the world. Soit is man who has to unveil the world which is given to him.Man cannot provide any justification of the world and so theworld is without any reason or it is gratuitous. Man gives mean-ing to the world and the world acquires significance from him.Thus man is creative, but his creation is not out of nothing. Buthis creation begins with the world which is given to him. Values

are also meanings, but they are ideal and objective meanings.They have also a universality. They are chosen by man and areplaced as transcendent outside the human world. So Sartrespeaks of ethics in terms of value and the value is that whichremoves the lack of Being. A lack is what is lacking, the lackedand the totality of being, when the lacked-being will have thetotality of a being. The illustration which Sartre used in Beingand Nothingness is that of the crescent moon or the statue ofVenus de Milo. The crescent moon is lacking the totality of thefull moon, the incompleteness of the moon is the lacked andthe total full moon is the re-pairing of the lacked. So Sartrespeaks of value in terms of the lack. Man is incomplete, becausehe is the for-itself, but lacks the in-itself. The for-itself is lacking,the in-itself which is the lacked, and the ultimate value of be-coming the in-itself, for-itself will remove the lack, which isunattainable. So the human ideal value is always on the recedingprocess. Man pursues his ontological ideal, which is also hisethical ideal and it is here that ontology merges with ethics.Sartre has not really expressed clearly such a possibility but thequest for his ontological ethics moves him towards that direc-tion.

Hegel thought that the individual man is recognised throughthe universal and understood as the representative of the species.But this involves a circularity, for to understand the species it isnecessary that the individual is included in the definition of thespecies. So the individuality has to be recognized through men'ssurpassing himself to his goal. It is through his work that he getsthe universalising image and the externalization is changedthrough my interiority. I pour my particularity in social forms,because I am partially in them in my existence. I am recognisedin particularity through my recognition of the other particularbeings. My particularity includes the universality which is recog-nized in the objective manner. My universal action survives inthe action of the others who follow after my death 'My actionwill necessarily be prolonged since the action of each man is theaction of all'. Sartre discusses the nature of appeal in which oneperson appeals to the freedom of the other. Such freedom is in



a particular situation. It is not an appeal to a given solidarity, buthas to be built on common operation. But what makes theappeal possible ? The ground of the recognition of another'sfreedom is value. This makes the individual point in principlethat every end has a value and every human reality is haunted byvalues. This also gives rise to help which assists others to realizetheir end. There may be an anxiety whether my help to otherswill go against my end. But there is no doubt that there is ageneral tendency to oblige. The principle of such willingness hasan infinite extent and it leads us to the belief that every end isgood.

The initial moment of the appeal is a kind of help to theother. It adheres to the end of other. But it is also a promise ofreciprocity. The person I appeal to may appeal to me in return.Appeal is confined to persons who comprehend each other'sreduction quite well. But appeal has an ambiguity becausethough it recognizes other's freedom which is unconditional, theends are conditioned. The appeal may be a proposal to othersto share a common end. But the proposal may be refused.Refusal presupposes the possibility of carrying out the request.The end is always given and it is an open possibility. Refusal isoften a protext to the prayer and demand. Prayer does notrecognise any reason and as it is the order of the SupremeBeing, there is no reason for refusal. But actually refusal does citereasons. There may be revealed refusal but that is 'not anexpressed determination'. It simply illuminates the direction ofmy willingnes. It refers to the preferences, which are in realityfree preferences. In refusing, the other seems to interfere in myfreedom. But he does not do so directly. Actually, he does notwant to cooperate with me. His refusal has to do with his ownacts. The refusal is a direct action on my project. His freedomacts profoundly on my freedom. He wants to prevent me, as hewanted to help me in my project. The freedom of the otherdetermines me. Thus refusal does what no violence can do. 'Itsteals my freedom from me'. 'It rearranges my projects, yet it isnothing'. It is a lack of being, 'a hole at the heart of its essence'.To this I have to accommodate. But refusal is not violence. It

is done by right.Sartre also refers to cases of ignorance wherein the ignorant

persons do not comprehend the events of the world and hencesuffer. But this situation is taken advantage of by those whoknow, who are intelligent. I find that one of my acquaintancesis at a low level of culture, because he does not know how toappreciate a painting by Picasso or enjoy the Sonata compiledby Beetophen. I take the opportunity of educating him andpromise him that I will bring him to a higher level. In so doing,I want to grab his freedom, because he has to freely submithimself to me for his cultural development. An ignorant personnot only does not know that he lacks knowledge, but also isunaware of the level of ignorance. He thinks himself to be quitecompetent and thinks that he can manipulate the situations ofthe world without any difficulty. But his ignorance is revealed,when he starts talking on a particular subject. It is the highesttime for the intellectuals and the intelligent people to seize theopportunity. Average men may have more or less same intelli-gence and they only over-shine, because they cross the barriersof intelligence tests. It is for this reason the average men whooccupy the centre of the bell-shaped curve do not like either thevery intelligent or the stupid people. In extreme cases, there maybe differences in the size of the brain, the availability of greymatter and the member of fissures in the brain. Other peoplewho are average have more or less the same type of brain. It isbecause of this that the intelligent men want to take the benefitof the situation. They oppress the ignorant people and may alsotake resort to violence. So Sartre wants to show that violence isnot limited to the familiar cases of use of force, the attack oninnocent people and the principle of preventing people fromsetting their due. In the case of the relation of the stupid peopleto intelligent people there is often deception and unlawfulpossession of things which are not owned by me. Heideggerexpressed at a good length how the average people dominateover the non-average. It is the average who sets the standardsof everything and so actually in everyday existence, man is dasMann and he is not his individual self. In the cases of ignorance



the average intelligent man and it may also happen that the veryintelligent people also will not allow others to obtain morerefinement and cultural enlightenment than themselves. Sartre,of course, does not refer to Heidegger in this particular case, butit seems that he has Heidegger in mind when he expresses hisidea that the intelligent people make the life of the unintelligentvery hard. They take recourse to actions which endanger thefreedom of the unintelligent. Of course, many can ask whetherthey require to be treated as men. We shall see later that thewhite slave trader did not regard the black Africans as humanbeings. They sold them as commodities and the slaves couldrevolt, but ignorant people have no such scope because the reinsof the freedom are in the hands of the enlightened people.

Sartre criticises the theory of 'Master and Slave' and pointsout that it is seductive as a phenomenon. The slave did notinvent anything of technological importance. Essentially he wasa domisticated or agricultural worker. As he worked in a group,he could not grasp the significance of his work, on the assemblyline. The philosophical theory of stoicism and skepticism wasnot invented by slaves. They were formulated by freemen, inRome. Stoicism became the theory for Masters like Epictetus orSeneca or an emperor like Marcus Aurelius. In this theory, Sartrethinks, the Master forewarns himself of the danger of becominga slave. He hides his pride only in the goal which is not threat-ened. For one has to have good and detach himself from themso that he can be a stoic. It is not a case of consoling oneselffor not having them. The theory of the slave who does not riskhis life, but who apprehends his freedom in fear and work istrue for the first-generation slaves. It does not hold for the latergenerations who were born in the house of the Master and weretreated as members of the family. Therefore, he is an accompliceof the Master. Such a slave finds himself in a natural situation.It is not true that the Masters have no history. There are otherMasters with whom he does business. The Masters conqueredthe Roman Empire. It was through the Masters that Christianitycame to Rome. Scientific invention and discoveries are not theaffair of slaves and serfs. It is the clergy or freemen of the

middle class who carry them out most of the time. Hegel'stheory is an ideal relationship and an ideally true one. (This partis a paraphrase from Sartre's Notebooks.)2

Sartre criticized Hegel's Dialetic and Marx's Materialism whichhe identified with Stalinist version of Dialectical and HistoricalMaterialism in 1946. He pointed out that materialism had first ofall robbed man of his subjectivity and considered man in thenatural world as a set of natural functions. Materialism put thecausal and metaphysical priority of matter over mind, gave adetermined account of history. But it is itself transformed intoidealism, as it thought of the dialectic of Nature as the trueaccount of both the non-human and the human world. Thisdialectic was held by the Materialists to be the absolute truth.Sartre accused the Materialists of bad faith. He called it thesubjectivity of those who are ashamed of their subjectivity.Materialism is a doctrine which destroys thought, but whatexpects a person to choose freely. If thought is determined bymatter, how can there be a voluntary adoption of ideas ? Mate-rialism, Sartre thought, 'is a monster; an elusive proteus, a largecontradictory semblance'. In spite of these criticisms againstMaterialism he believed that it was the only liberating force inFrance. He thought that man has no salvation other than theliberation of the working class.3 Sartre also mentioned that bothmaterialism and idealism are myths. What is required is aphilosophy which explains the revolutionary situations. In theNotebooks he criticises Historical Materialism in number twoand Engles' Economic Determinism in number one.

In historical materialism and psycho-analysis there is a simi-larity in that both hold that they all express one and the samecomplex reality. In both, phenomena become myths, fetsh,mystification and symbolic satisfaction. In both, the superstruc-ture is explained as the effect of the infrastructure. In both, thephenomenon is reality. In both cases the higher is reduced to thelower.

In Engels's economic determinism, D”˙Ëhring is the main tar-get of attack. D”˙Ëhring understood the economic facts as facts ofthe second order. The primary phenomena are to be sought in



the political force. D”˙Ëhring's point of view is mainly academicand he deduces the situation from the will and not otherwise.D”˙Ëhring tried to explain distribution on the basis of the eco-nomic scheme and their mutual understanding. Engles criticisesD”˙Ëhring saying that he forgets the economic reality and acceptsthe eighteenth-century bourgeois as the eternal man. Violenceintervenes in the course of history and before a society makesuse of slavery, it must have invented the instruments which theslaves can use. In the dialectic theory we find that in the begin-ning the primitive society had common land. The communitydue to the rise of improved instruments produces more thanwhat is necessary. Different members appropriate different pro-portion. As a result, inequality begins to appear leading to thepeasants owning small parcles of lans. This inequality among thepeople of the tribal society gave rise to slavery and the origin ofprivate property. The Native North American known as the'Iroquous' had a communitarian society. But the advent of pri-vate property gave rise to class distinctions. Those who had noland were treated as slaves. Sartre does not agree with this ex-planation. He believes that slavery might have been introducedfor other reasons. Often tribes attacked other tribes and tookprisoners. These prisoners were then enslaved and engaged inwork. But slaves cannot be properly utilized unless there hasbeen some advancement of society during which new instru-ments were discovered. This was possible with the discovery ofbronze. Moreover, in the primitive tribal society which mainlydepended on hunting, women stayed at home. In their leisuretime, they would cultivate the land and sow seeds. So agriculturewas not the activity of the whole society. It was mainly the workof slaves and women. But slaves could not be used before thediscovery of bronze, because they have to be given sharperinstruments for cultivation. Now, the abundance of crop mayproduce greed and desire to store the crops. Thus, there was notonly the economic fact of production and distribution whichgave rise to private property and slavery, but there were also thepsychological elements of greed, violence as well as choice. Sincethe slaves were chosen as they were found useful, society could

have advanced to a better, progressive stage. That there wasprogress in the slave society was also admitted by Engles. Sowhat we need for the explanation of the evolution of society isa kind of combination of D”˙Ëhring and Engles, and not simplythe economic determinism of Engles.

Sartre criticises also the dialectical theory of Marx and Hegel.Dialectic is only possible of concepts and in that Hegel may beright. But his idea of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis which arepurely logical phenomena cannot be applied to actual things.Moreover, when Hegel speaks of contradiction between twoconcepts A and not-A, it may be understood clearly. But whenwe speak of a contradiction between the feudal society and thecapitalist society, there may be contradictions between them. Butone is a development of the other and so there may be bothhomogeneous and heterogeneous elements. This does not makeone the contradiction of the other. There are differences whichare not denied. But difference is not contradiction. As there areboth similarities and differences, Hegel and Marx both canspeak of aufheben or surpassing. Sartre points out also that in thecase of events there are not only dialectical, but non-dialecticalelements. Workers are hungry and so they declare a strike.Between hunger and strike there are not just these two elements,but there are the family members of the workers, their enduringpower, their resistance to violence, there may be a group ofworkers who may want to surrender, the capitalistic threat oflock-out__all these elements which are not exactly dialecticalmake the strike either successful or a failure. So Sartre thinks thatin a dialectical study of history we have to take into account allthese considerations.

We shall now discuss Sartre's concept of revolt, idea of goodand evil as well as his analysis of the condition of the slaves inAmerica, when slave traders used to bring the African men andwomen for sale in the American market.

In the case of a revolt by the slave against the Master, herevolts because he does not possess any property. He thereforewants to kill the Master and acquire his property. There is alsoanother way in which the slave can win the victory. He can



assign himself completely to the Master and force him to obeyhis orders blindly. But this will not continue for a long time.There will come a time in future when he will revolt against theMaster. So I have to turn to the others and in the project Iundertake, others also have to be included. Thus, a collectivitywhich is objective can join the revolt.

Along with this point of Sartre, it will not be irrelecvant if wemention that Sartre gives desire a very important place. Desireoccurs twice in the Notebooks, once in number one and againin number two. In the first Sartre wishes to discuss the relationbetween desire and possession. The Master possesses everythingand the slave is deprived of everything. In certain tribalcommunities there is a dance through which the desire to possessis expressed. Before the animal is killed and possessed, the tribalpeople mime the whole scene which gives them the strength andcourage to kill the animal. The same thing can happen in relationto the property of the Master. But desire to possess may happenalso in imagination. In Notebook 2 Sartre shows that the image isthe present absent, while the perception is the absent present. Idesire a fruit, but the fruit is not before me. It is somewhere in theworld and I imagine its qualities. This, the image of the object, isconstituted, and my desire moves from the present absent to theabsent present to possess the thing.

When Sartre speaks of good and evil, he wants to make it clearthat evil is purely subjective. But in a project, all men work togetherand they move towards the good, So the good is a value. But it isa value which is transcendent and placed outside of us as in Platonicconcept of the goal.

About revolutionary violence which Sartre discusses at the end ofthe Notebooks Sartre comments that he wishes to examine theconditions of slavery in USA which was a case of institutional vio-lence. He wanted to examine the conditions of the workers in thecapitalist society, but the book ended before this could be discussedand remained incomplete. About the condition of black slaves, hesays, that they were not treated as human beings. They were notgiven any education and also not any religion. It was believed by theMaster that the slaves would not be able to learn anything. But the

slaves of the later generation regarded themselves as essential to theMaster. They were born and brought up in the Master's house. Butthat did not give them any extra privilege, except that some of themwere very loyal. The oppression continues but, perhaps in a moresophisticated manner. Slavery is institutionalised and the Master feelsthe echo of being the oppressor coming from outside. Here tooSartre seems to suggest that it is by a revolutionary socialist ethicsthat the institution of slavery and the capitalistic system can beoverthrown.

Sartre distinguishes different forms of freedom as alienation.First type: through human nature__one must become what one

is;Second type: through duty__through right (a right which is the

Master's demand robs the slave of his right);Third type: through values__how can value be upheld by free-

dom? Intervention of the other is necessary. Values are a goal forthe other;

Fourth type: the Me conceived as an alien__one can expectanything from me.

How do nature, duty, value imply the freedom that alienates ?The freedom is always negativity. To disengage the ought-to-be

is also a duty. But it is still a theory. In history each ideology is arefusal of some form of alienation and a new form of alienation.Each moment of progress represents freedom as a refusal and italso represents the freedom as a thing. 'Je est un autre'. I am He.4

Besides these topics which I have discussed Sartre includesdiscussions on ontology, which may not be ethics proper, but whichis the foundation of ethics. In Notebook 2, he discusses the onto-logical issues of Being, Nothing, how Being can be Nothing,relation between for-itself and in-itself. These are familiar to Sartrereaders, but Sartre is trying to rethink thee ideas. I have notincluded them in my discussion. I think I have been able in a veryminor way to throw light on the Notebooks for an Ethics. But stillwe are not able to say finally what Sartrean Ethics is. Perhaps, westill have to wait for the final word on this. I conclude my discussionwith a quotation from Sartre's Notebookñ2:

In sum, my epoch is Me. I am the being



immanent to it by which it transcends itselftowards its salvation. I have to assume it as Iassume myself and make it pass over to theabsolute in attaining myself as absolute. In thisway I manifest being, by way of my moods andmy epoch in and through a project that savesand founds this epoch. It is the historicizingmyself that I assume myself as absolute (in takingup my gratuitousness for my own account) and itis historicizing myself that I manifest and unveilthe concrete maximum of being (the beingalready revealed by my epoch and the revealing/revealed being of this epoch on Being'.5

Perhaps, this is Sartre's ethical message for us. Weheard it in Being and Nothingness.

Notes

Part one of this essay is based on a Bengali article published in Jignasa, in1983.

1. Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness 1946, 625-626.2. Notebooks, 75-76.3. From A Critical Survey of Phenomenology and Existentialism by the author,

381.4. Notebook 1, 469.5. Notebook 2, 491.

A Note on Gender Justice and AmartyaSen

SHEFALI MOITRA

The classical model of 'economic man' has gone through manymutations. In the earlier period the economic man wasconceived as an abstract rationality-maximizer. A major changein this approach was brought about around 1960 with theacknowledgement of the role of history in man's economicactivities. Economic choices are not abstract ones, they arechoices influenced by their respective historical settings. Workingwithin the liberal tradition Amartya Sen has brought about amajor change in the economic image of man. Sen is trying tofree man from an over-deterministic position by focusing onthe open-endedness of his decisions. Market forces are not allpowerful. Often these forces fail to exert a regulative influenceover an individual's choice. Similarly Sen asserts that social forcesfail to control all our choices. In other words no legitimizationis absolute. There are spaces through which man's free choicescan be formulated. The enlightenment image of man as a ratio-nal animal has been subjected to close scrutiny by Sen. Hecomes to the conclusion that man is guided by many motivesand that purity of motive is not a virtue of choice.

Having incorporated partiality, plurality and open-endednessSen has expanded the classical liberal image of 'economic man'.There is of course a fundamental difference between expandinga concept and fundamentally changing it. Expanding entailsinclusion of new parameters into an already existing frameworkwhereas a fundamental shift entails a change in the frameworkitself. While the first is a liberal move the second is a radical one.

BHADRA : Sartre's Ethical Theory 257


Sen desists from a radical shift, he thinks it may affect theeconomic structure as well as jeopardise efficiency. By includingplurality into his model of interpretation he has been able toloosen the straight-jacketing of theory to a great extent. Hemakes room for plurality by acknowledging the open-endednessof man's choice. Since choices cannot be fully determined, aKant-like categorical imperative cannot be uniformly appliedacross the board. Individual difference in choice will arise inspite of the fact that man is a rationality-maximiser. There willalways be a plurality or lack of homogeneity. The denial of theexisting differences between individual choices led to uniformprescriptions of the principle of justice. This approach had itslimitations, the desires and aspirations of any groups were silencedand marginalised. The process was so subtle that even the aggrievedparty failed to perceive the hidden injustice in the system. Thoseoccupying the margins were made to believe that the projectedprinciple of justice was in their interest even though they did nothave any representative role in formulating the principle. Coopera-tion in society was sought to be established in this way by silencingdissent and ignoring conflict. Sen tries to change the situation byprescribing a theory of justice which makes room for uniformitythrough cooperation and which also admits the possibility ofindividual differences leading to conflict.

The acceptance of pluralism has created an opportunity for theso-far silenced voices to find a channel for expression. Women areprominent among those whom Sen has included in his list ofexemplars for plurality. Though Sen's specific contribution to thewomen's question is limited, the general structural modifications, hesuggests for liberalism, has far-reaching prospects for women aswell. The interpretative apparatus thus provided helps to identifymany problem areas that were either passed off in silence or notgiven separate importance. For instance, it was thought that with anincrease in utilities women's deprivation would be alleviated.

Before assessing Sen's contribution to gender justice a few ob-servations regarding gender in general would be appropriate. Thebiological difference between male and female members of thehuman species is referred to as sex differences. The role models

assigned to male and female members of the species are known asgender roles. So each individual has a sex identity and a genderidentity. The gender roles are artificially created, therefore genderidentity is a constructed identity. These structures differ from oneculture to the other. By contrast, sex differences are given in nature.Cultures the world over have been guilty of creating gender modelsin a discriminatory fashion so that men are expected to play lauda-tory roles and women are expected to play the gender role of beingman's 'other', his complementary. Treating the woman as the man's'other' is typical of the way patriarchy constructs gender. Genderpolitics is determined by the way gender is constructed. We canshift, change and transform gender roles but we cannot freeourselves from them, they are very much part of every cultureóthere is no way of going back to a gender-innocent culture. More-over, the observance of certain gender roles provides a certainamount of efficiency in our social dynamics. So gender construc-tions are part of the social reality we live in. The problem is not howto get rid of gender but how to construct a just gender division or,in other words, how to avoid gender discrimination.

The omnipresence of gender construction is not something thatcan be overemphasised. The identification of this phenomenon hasbeen the singular contribution of feminists. Feminists form aheterogeneous group. The conservatives, for instance, think thatideally gender should be constructed in accordance with woman'sand man's biological nature, in other words, they take a naturalisticapproach to gender. In contrast, the liberals hold that there is anessential human nature which is gender-neutral and that in ethicsand jurisprudence men and women should attempt to transcendtheir gender differences so as to approximate their essential humannature. As a corollary to this construction moral prescriptions aredesigned as prescriptions for the human which resides in all menand women irrespective of their gender roles. Sen is sensitive to theanomaly in this view. He is aware that gender differences permeateall human existences. There is no gender-neutral human core. Attimes he even seems to talk in line with conservative feminism whenhe says 'one of the features of gender inequality is its associationwith a biological difference which has to be taken into account in

MOITRA : A Note on Gender Justice 261260 ETHICS : An Anthology


understanding the demands of equity between women and men'.1

This sounds like the conservative feminist slogan 'gender is wiredinto biology'. In addition to the biological needs of women Sen,however, speaks also of the influence of social pressures on genderconstruction. Sen seems to be pointing at two different constituentsof gender, the social and the biological.

Gender expectations are internalised by women. Sen is verymuch aware of this problem of internalisation and he calls it theproblem of legitimisation. He writes: 'the tolerance of genderinequality is closely related to notions of legitimacy and correctness.In family behaviour, inequalities between women and men (andbetween girls and boys) are often accepted as "natural" or "appro-priate",2 By legitimising injustice its invisibility is facilitated. Once aform of life is accepted as natural and appropriate it can also beaccepted as being objectively true.

Conservative theories are faulted for sanctioning different sets ofrole prescriptions for men and women, the fault being that anessentialistic prescription leads to discrimination. The liberal theoristsattempt to liberate women by approving uniform moral sanctionsfor men and women alike. Liberal theories of justice are generallyconcerned with justice in a gender-neutral way by presuming thatthere is a gender-neutral metaphysical agent for whom the prescrip-tions of justice are meant. Any evidence of injustice is then attributedto a biased use of an otherwise unbiased principle of justice. Anidentical diagnosis is offered for cases of gender bias ó gender biasis interpreted as a form of malpractice and not as a product of atheory which is at fault. So in order to eradicate cases of gender-discrimination we are urged to be more objective and then only weshall be in a position to identify the essence of man which is gen-der-neutral. Having identified the human essence we will be in aposition to apply the neutral universal principle of justice to all menand women uniformly, without any gender bias. This was the pre-scription of Kant, and also of Rawls. Feminists, who follow theRawlsian model, argue that the feminist problem is the problem ofjustice and that once that is achieved the feminist struggle will realizeits goal.

Sen has pointed at the difficulties in this approach. He tells us

how difficult it is to arrive at a gender-neutral perspective. We carrythe bias within us in a way that leads us to treat them as legitimate.We are all both participants and victims of a hierarchical, violent,scarcity-ridden society in which we are in the habit of not noticingthe existence of a large number of needs of the 'other'. These needsbecome invisible and eventually non-existent. This happens througha process of internalisation of injustice. The apparent insensitivity toinjustice may also be caused by a process of resignation to theexisting order of things. Since Sen accepts heterogeneity in thehuman situation he does not fall in line with the classical liberalaccount of a universal man. At the same time he does not acceptthe absolute man-woman dichotomy laid down by the conserva-tives. He tries to carve a place somewhere between the two extremesof a biologically determined universal prescriptions for all men andwomen, and the other extreme of 'anything goes'. He wants tomaintain the centrality of reason. Man is rational and to be rationalis to be a utility-maximiser. For Sen the concept of reason is muchmore nuanced than it is in the Kantian or Rawlsian system. Reasonfor Sen is context-sensitive.

Instead of making a priori prescriptions for ensuring greaterfreedom, as Kant did, Sen suggests that prescriptions for freedomand empowerment must be prefaced by an empirical investigationinto the existing forms of injustice. Once injustice is identified aprima facie argument is established for censoring the theories ofjustice which accommodate instances of such injustice. He stressesthe point that any future theory of justice must lead to empower-ment. Empowerment for him is an increase in human capabilities.Further capabilities are translated into things people can do - theseare ways of translating freedom into concrete achievements. Merelyhaving the concept of freedom as Kant had or merely to have themeans to freedom as Rawls prescribes, does not rule out injustice.Injustices that co-exist with the practice of theories of justice are seenby Sen as forms of legitimised injustice. An unjust practice for Senis a symptom of a defect in the theory of justice. A glaring exampleis found by Sen in the case of 'missing women' the world over. Thegirl child is more vulnerable to malnutrition than the male child is.The morbidity rate is also very high among girls. The girl child



gradually becomes dysfunctional as a social agent, she does seem tofade out of the social dynamics - due to ill health or due to otherhealth constraints.

There is a pronounced gender injustice prevalent in all societiesincluding North America, Western Europe and Japan. In somefields women's deprivation is much more glaring, as for instance inthe Third World countries. Here the mortality rate as well as themorbidity rate is much higher among women than among men.Sen points out that even if the Sub Saharan African ratio of femalesto males is taken as the standard the number of missing women inIndia would exceed 100 million. Gender inequality in matters ofbirth and death must be seen as an accident or as the result of somenatural causal chain. This inequality is directly related to genderinjustice according to Sen. Many economists would not like to linkeconomic statistics to ethical issues in this way. This is why Sen saysthat what counts as gender injustice depends on the way justice isdefined. Sen is one of the few economists who focuses on genderinequality as an indication of an associated theory of injustice. Inother words, he looks at the ground-level reality in order toadjudicate the implications of a theory of justice. Thus Sen bringseconomics and philosophy into an essential bind.

Legitimised injustice is hard to identify; it need not take a crudeform of denying food and medication to a woman or a girl child.Generally gender injustice is concealed in much subtler forms. Justas gender injustice could either be frank or implicit. Similarly injusticecould be one of omission or one of commission. Injustice ofcommission occurs when a legislation negatively affects women andan injustice of omission occurs when women's needs are ignored__

we just seem to forget that women exist__they continue to betreated as mute and invisible.

The roots of injustice spread over both the subjectivepsychological sphere and the objective social sphere. Therefore,injustice has to be fought both at the level of concepts/theories andon the level of practice. Due to the legitimisation of injustice wedevelop a false consciousness which is then carried with us at thetime of formulating legislations and at the time of adjudication. Ifwe are the products of a gender-biased culture then it is only to be

expected that we will contaminate our theories. Social theories, afterall, are not a voice from nowhere. So theories must be closelyrelated to traces of gender injustice. Feminists are especially sensitiveto partialities built into theories of justice. The second wave offeminism has drawn our attention to the existence of gender-biasembedded in concepts. The first wave of feminism spoke againstmaterial discriminations leading to various kinds of concretedeprivations. Sen pays due attention to the concrete instances ofdiscrimination as well as to the conceptual biases against women. Aclose look at practice not only reveals the existing malpractices, Senthinks, it also provides an indicator of flaws in the conceptualscheme in which the practice is embedded.

In the case of gender injustice Sen is addressing two questions atthe same time. The first is how to identify an injustice which is seenby the victim and her culture as legitimate, natural and appropriate.The second question is how to translate the demands of justice intopractice. Sen's answer to the first question is rather perfunctory. Hemerely says that a 'wrong information basis will play havoc with anysubsequent discussion of inequalities'. A theory of justice without anadequate epistemic support is empty. For philosophers any distinctionbetween appearance and reality is of great importance, be it thedistinction of apparent justice and real justice, or be it of any otherform of appearance and reality. Sen uses a simple criterion for theidentification of real justice, perceptions of justice must be subjectedto the demands of fairness, so that the demands for justice couldserve as the standard for justice. Since Sen pays tribute to Rawls' ideasof fairness, rationality, reasonableness, objectivity and reflective equi-librium it does not seem to be inappropriate to loosely club Rawlsand Sen together as liberals belonging to the same tradition. Thisaffinity between the two is disturbing to the radical feminist.

Unlike conservatives and liberals the radical feminists trace theroots of oppression to theories and concepts. They are not willingto confine women's issues to the level of content only. To themliberal theory is also suspect, it lays too much emphasis on maintain-ing the status quo in the name of efficiency. Radical feminists feelthat merely by including hitherto neglected women's issues to exist-ing conceptual schemes will not address the real question of oppres-



sion in the appropriate place. Women's issues are identified as issuesrelating to women's gendered existence--broadly speaking 'her livedexperience'. Issues like abortion, child marriage, pornography, brideburning have been so far marginalized or omitted from mainstreamconceptual analysis, they have heen confined to first-level discus-sions of social science. Women's problems are not caused by errorsof omission alone. Even if such errors are rectified by incorporatingwomen's issues into existing interpretational frameworks, thewrongs done to women will not be amended according to theradical feminists. To take an example one may decide to choose oneof the existing interpretational models, e.g. Utilitarianism, Existential-ism, Marxism or some other model for addressing hithertoneglected women's issues--the problem of abortion could be seenas such an issue. Then following the line of approach we have eithera utilitarian account or an existential account or a Marxian accountof abortions__depending on which framework we adopt. The radi-cal feminist feels that this mode of addressing the problem ofinvisibility and marginalization is only a way of sidetracking the realbone of contention. For this would imply that there was nothingwrong with the conceptual schemes that are available. Schemes canalways be appropriately expanded to 'include' women's lived expe-riences, meaning thereby that there is nothing inherent inexisting theories that has been responsible for the marginalization ofwomen's experience. Not acknowledging the uniqueness ofwomen's experiences has been a lapse according to them and nota shortcoming of the existing theories. They plead that there is nogender bias in a conceptual scheme. The radical feminists do notagree; they want to change the perspective from seeing women asthe problem to seeing theory from a critical perspective, suggestingthereby that a theory, oblivious of the gender question, has a seriouslacuna and needs to be revised. Many experiences are not amenableto theoretical explanations within the existing theories. Such experi-ences remain excluded from the domain of theoretical contexts.Radical feminists challenge this position and seek to restructuretheory. So it is no longer women who are the problem, it is thetheory which makes women the problem, and therefore the theoryneeds revision. The liberal diagnosis of a liberal theory and a

gendered practice is not acceptable to the radical feminist; they seegender as an omnipresent category of interpretation. Wherever thepresence of gender is denied some politics of silence is at work. Soit is the neutral stance that is a suspect.

The problem, the radicals have with Sen, is that he restricts thedomain of gendered categories to the context of women's issuesand fails to see that the neutered zones are equally afflicted bygender discrimination. Let us re-examine the virtues Sen sees inRawls' position. They are: fairness, rationality, reasonableness, reflec-tive equilibrium and objectivity. The radical feminist will complainthat these are all mythical goals on the assumption that reason canat times be autonomous, context-neutral and impartial. The artifici-ality of these goals can be exposed by pointing out the real existenceof plurality and diversity in human experiences at the levels of boththeory and practice.

Sen's thesis is no doubt an improvement of Rawls' theory ofjustice which is out-and-out insensitive to the gender question. Senspeaks of gender insensitivity but sees the problem as being con-fined to the capabilities of women alone. On examination it will beseen that once gender-bias is acknowledged as a hindrance to justiceit will also be observed that gendered roles adversely affect bothmen and women, of course, in different ways.

Sen makes it very clear that he is not forwarding a full-fledgedtheory of justice. He says: 'I have not gone beyond outlining a spaceand some general features of a "combining formula", and thisobviously, falls short of a complete theory of justice.'3 The 'combin-ing procedure' referred to by Sen is a complex procedure. Eachindividual occupies a complex socio-historical space determined byclass, caste, gender, etc., in other words, every individual ispositioned in a social context. When primary goods like income,wealth, basic liberties, etc. are distributed among individuals then acombination of the place one occupies and the goods one ownstakes place. This combination influences the individual's freedom toachieve. Sen's position marks an important shift from Rawls' posi-tion. Rawls held that the possession of primary goods serves as anindex of justice. Sen agrees that the possession of primary goods isa necessary condition for freedom. But he hastens to add that each



does not have the same capability of translating primary goods intoidentical 'freedom to achieve'. In addition to the disparity in thesocial position held by individuals there are also behaviouralconstraints which stand in the way of translating primary goods into'freedom to achieve'. Behavioural constraints occur due to socialpressures and due to prescriptions of what counts as legitimatebehaviour. These constraints are not limited to gender-definedbehaviour alone, other underprivileged group may also beconstrained. Sen's theory of justice tries to make room for two setsof capabilities__one set has a narrower scope and the other set hasa wider scope. The former includes the capability to achieve thedemands of justice so as to give the individual more freedom withina given system and the second is the capability of playing an inter-vening role in bringing about social change.

Sen is dissatisfied with Rawls' proposal to focus on the posses-sion of primary goods as an index of justice. Rawls' list of primarygoods include wealth, basic liberties, freedom of movement, choiceof occupations, power of office and the social basis for self-respect.Sen says that these are means to freedom and not indicatory offreedom. Women, for instance, may possess these primary goodsand yet not possess freedom. If a woman has internalized injustice,in other words if injustice is legitimised for her, then she will beincapable of harnessing the available primary goods for the acqui-sition of freedom. We could take the example of wealth which isa basic primary good and show how the possession of this goodneed not be an indicator of freedom or of justice. A woman, whohas internalized injustice, could think it appropriate to accumulatewealth for the purpose of providing a dowry for her own marriage.In this instance the ownership of a primary good is not an indicatorof freedom. Gender justice cannot be guaranteed within the limitedscope of primary goods. Sen rightly suggests that the focus of theindex of freedom must be shifted from the context of primarygoods to the 'freedom to achieve'. By 'freedom to achieve' Senmeans the capability to function. This he calls the 'capabilityapproach to justice'. The 'freedom to achieve' is reflected in one'scapability to function. Like the primary goods approach, thecapability approach too has its limitations. Due to the internalisation

of injustice one may not possess the psychological frame of mindto assert one's capabilities, which means having a capability andfunctioning accordingly are not one and the same thing. Senobserves that it is 'important to emphasize that the freedom tochoose from alternative actions has to be seen not just in terms ofpermissible possibilities but with adequate note of the psychologicalconstraints that may make a person (e.g. a housewife in a traditionalfamily) desist from taking steps that she could in principle freelytake'.4 Thus the capability approach to justice also needs a greatamount of vigil. As Sen says 'the central issue is not to confront theunderlying prejudice directly'.5 The prejudices must give way toexceeding fruition of capabilities in terms of greater fairness, greaterrational equilibrium, greater reasonableness, greater objectivity, etc.By guiding practice towards these aims women can effectively worktowards eliminating gender injustice.

The second question that Sen had posed in this context wasa related question how to translate the demands of justice intopractice. Sen observes that one major reason why the existinggender status quo has been maintained by different cultures isthat the status quo is perceived as a guarantor of efficiency. Sensuggests that by increasing women's capabilities the overallefficiency of society will not decrease. Once this is establishedthere should be no problem in translating his theory intopractice.

Sen tells us that speaking of freedom and capabilities alonedoes not amount to a theory of justice, in addition to this, a theoryof justice must have aggregative principles and distributiveprinciples. Sen's emphasis on freedom as an index of justice is tobe taken as an improvement because it tells us about the advan-tages that persons actually enjoy when they pursue their objectives.

Sen is working with only two options--either we opt forefficiency or we opt for inefficiency and chaos. There seems tobe more available options than these. I do not feel comfortablewith his assertion that 'a theory of justice defined in terms of thecapability space is to place the debate where it securely belongs'.To say that prejudices relating to justice could be addressed headon by subjecting them to demands of fairness or less partial



rational assessment doesn't sound very convincing. The fearremains that there can be a patriarchal version of 'fairness' and'less partial rational assessment'. Sen rightly points out thatgender is a hidden variable which plays havoc with theories ofjustice. But when he demands that a theory of gender justicemust satisfy the efficiency condition then one wonders whetherthis demand would be counter-productive.

NotesNotesNotesNotesNotes

1. Amartya Sen, 'Gender Inequality and Theories of Justice' in WomanCulture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities, eds.MarthaNussbaum and Jonathan Glover (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 264.

2. Ibid., 260.

3. Ibid., 268.

4. Ibid., 267.

5. Ibid., 270.

270 ETHICS : An Anthology


Morality and Happiness

TIRTHANATH BANDYOPADHYAY

I

The objective of this essay is to deal with the issue as to how,if at all, morality is related to the moral agent'shappines__shappiness being understood as a subjective feelingof contentment.

I have no fear of being mistaken if I claim that each of uswants happiness, although we feel happiness and unhappinessinvoluntarily. Ensuring this fact about ourselves, I think, needsno complicated justification or proof__it can be seen throughsimple self-reflection with no need of reasoning; the slightestattention of the mind to itself suffices to show it.

Now it can hardly be agreed that the ground of happinesslies necessarily in one's acquaintance with philosophical ethics__that is, in one's knowledge as to how one ought to behave.A moment's reflection will make the reason evident: acquain-tance with philosophical ethics cannot be necessary for beinghappy, since many happy people have never heard of philo-sophical ethics or, having heard of it, regard it as a trifling,bookish avocation. Nor, on the other hand, many who aremoral philosophers or students of moral philosophy are muchbetter off than the rest of us. This being the case, there seemsto be no necessary link between 'being acquainted with philo-sophical ethics' and 'being happy'.

Is there any such connection between 'being moral' and'being happy' ? Here, too, the response can hardly be optimistic.There is of course no compelling theoretical reason to concludethat morality is something which we would always be better off

without. Better-off moral persons may be thought possible,anyway. But then it is all well and good to envisage cases inwhich moral persons are better off on account of their morality,but in the world in which we live such cases are very rare if realat all. Frankly speaking, it hardly needs to be mentioned that inthis world morality and happiness often diverge. Howevercreepy or pathetic it might appear, it is a blatant truth thatpeople trying hard to remain moral daily and hourly often meetwith miseries and misfortunes, while the vicious flourish. I mustconfess that it seems to me at least quite a vexing fact thatmorality hardly pays__or in case it pays, it strikes us with asurprise. We can only register a deep disappointment with thisfact of life. Anyway, this being the fact, a necessary link seemsto be lacking between 'being moral' and 'being happy'__at leastinasmuch as the mundane life is concerned. This does not meanthat a man should abandon morality in case it leads him to apitiable plight. On the contrary, one might even argue thatmorality could never be turned into mere expediency. Indeed,often morality needs or involves some kind of struggle withadverse circumstances, physical or mental hardships. But thenmostly it is on the amount of hardship that an agent has to faceto fulfil his moral responsibilities that the degree of moralexcellence of the action is supposed to depend. Truly speaking,a man can scarcely remain moral in his daily activities if he is notresolute in misfortune; in order to remain moral he must havefortitude, the ability to endure suffering.

But, then, many moral philosophers have insisted that amoral person should get happiness, since, in virtue of beingmoral, he deserves to be happy; that is, only morality allows usto become worthy of happiness, although the moral agent doesnot put any claim to it. It is however not rare that the moremoral and the less happy a man is, the more painful is thefeeling that he is not happy, though deserving happiness. Sucha man is satisfied with his conduct, but not with his condition.Were he not moral, he could perhaps bear his painful conditionbetter, in the knowledge that he deserved to suffer.

Anyway, the point that a moral person is worthy of beinghappy leads many thinkers to conclude that if a moral person

BANDYOPADHYAY : Morality and Happiness 271 272 ETHICS : An Anthology


never becomes happy, morality would be deprived of its due.The basis of morality can hardly be said to lie in happiness,

however. As Kant repeatedly argues, morality consists in actingas the moral law enjoins, because that is what the moral lawenjoins. A right action done from any other motive cannotcount as morally admirable. Kant, that is, is not arguing that theconsciousness of morality and the expectation of happiness areone and the same thing, and thus keeps intact the distinctnessof virtue and happiness in order to guarantee the purity of themoral motive. In other words, consciousness of the moral lawand the feeling of respect resulting therefrom must be distinctfrom, and prior to, any expectation of happiness as its conse-quence. Otherwise, it would make no sense to say that theworthiness to be happy is a function of oneís devotion to virtue.If the consciousness of virtue and the expectation of happinesscollapsed, then striving for happiness would be the standard bywhich the worthiness to be happy would be measured, and wewould be left without a means or reason to discriminate worthi-ness since presumably everyone strives to be happy with rathergreat regularity. We cannot, then, speak of worthiness to behappy unless there is an independent standard for assessingmoral worth.

Anyway, in spite of the total irrelevance of happiness in themotivational framework of morality, Kant thinks it unjust that amoral person should suffer. It is this kind of thinking that hasprompted Kant to say:

'The moral law contains within it a natural promise of hap-piness : it tells me that if I conduct myself so as to be worthyof happiness I may hope for it;...morality thus has a necessaryrelation to happiness'.1

It is precisely for this reason that Kant has to assume theimmortality of the soul as well as the reality of God. As Kantthinks, it is only an omnipotent and just Being like God whocan guarantee the harmony of morality and happiness, if not inthis life, in an after-life. Such a harmony should at some state orother be ensured. Hence morality needs, according to Kant, topostulate our immortality and God. The same point, it may benoted in passing, has been emphasised in a slightly different way

by another ancient philosopher, Ralph Cudworth. To quotehim:

The belief of the existence of a God, of the natu-ral immortality of the soul, and consequently ofrewards and punishments after this life, ... arehighly necessary to be believed in order to lead amorally virtuous and good life.2

But is there any way to ensure the happiness of the moralagent in this life ? Must we conclude that morality stands be-tween mankind and happiness on the mundane level at least ?Let us see.

It might be agreed that man seeks happiness for its own sake.But in our ordinary judgements we seem to be rather convincedthat happiness and morality are two entirely different things. Wemay be pleased, for example, to see a person happy, but we donot think that he is by that fact morally good. We also knowthat a man can be very unhappy even when he tries hard to bemorally good, as well as happy even if he has not been morallygood in the least. In fact, the pursuit of happiness is more oftenthan not the chief rival and impediment to morality. This isbecause we are mostly guided by the conviction, oftenunspoken, that our individual happiness is special. It oftenhappens that we try to be happy in a way that is not defensiblein objective terms. To make the point more explicitly, to bringhappiness to ourselves, we often render ourselves convenientlyindifferent, even sometimes hostile, to the welfare of others. Butmorality essentially requires us to be guided by the thought thatwe are in no way privileged and we should never act as if we are.More importantly, morality urges us to help even those who arenot likely to help us in return, and to do so even when nobodyis watching. This is why a moral life is said to be a battle againstselfishness; or, to put it in more general terms, this explains whyour moral responsibilities often appear to us in the form ofobligations.

In view of the above, it is difficult to find out any ready orinternal link between morality and happiness in this world. Butit is important to comprehend that if moral life can in no waybe itself a happy life then pursuing morality will soon become



a stifling affair. It is hard to regard such a life as a good life óand this would not be a very healthy thesis about moral life. Itis indeed universally agreed that part of what makes a good lifeis that the person in question is happy or pleased with how itis going, that is, subjectively experiences it as satisfying. Trulyspeaking, man can hardly intend to be unhappy, not directly inany case; consequently, no moral theory ought to ask him to tryto do so. As Kant observed:

Man is not...expected to renounce his naturalaim of attaining happiness as soon as the ques-tion of following his duty arises; for like anyfinite rational being, he simply cannot do so.3

But then it should be clear that moral agency certainly cannotallow one to want oneself to be the kind of person who ishappy in terms of immorality. So the crucial question is this: Canmorality make one happy solely for being moral ? I think, It can.

As I see, morality and happiness are not absolutely opposedto each other. For there is a sense__or so it seems to me__inwhich the conflict between morality and happiness would seemto be superficial. In terms of this sense, the antagonism betweenthe pursuit of morality and being happy would appear to be dueto a faulty or rather narrow conception of happiness. Ourmodern conception of happiness is shaped__I should saydistorted__by the weight of material gains alone. And, as I see,among the factors that render pursuing morality distressing, thiscramped notion of happiness plays a prominent role. But thenthere is a kind of happiness, not in conflict with morality, ofwhich human beings are capable and which some, though a veryfew, human beings achieve. What I have in mind is the satisfac-tion that is inherent in the moral pursuit itself__that is, theinterior delight that moral endeavour as such brings in one'smind. This does not mean that when someone feels himselfhappy in achieving something through immoral deeds, hishappiness is not happiness at all. I am not in favour of defininghappiness in terms of morality, so that only being moral is beinghappy. It seems possible to be happy without being moral. It isnonetheless true that one who wants to be moral for its ownsake characteristically enjoys his moral activities. And it would be

foolish to confuse this sort of enjoyment with other forms ofpleasure. For one thing, I, at least, am strongly inclined to be-lieve that happiness brought forth in one's mind only by engag-ing in moral deeds__that is, the happiness which cannot be hadin any way but by engaging in moral deeds outclasses all othersorts of happiness. Of course, such moral contentment wouldbe available only to one who values morality for its own sake.Since such a person pursues morality for its own sake and notfor any further motive, he would take pleasure just in pursuingmorality, even if it leads to disadvantages, or even to woundsand death; he would not think that he would be losing anythingby his moral deeds that could be balanced against the value ofmorality. Such a person would not only judge that he venerateshimself in pursuing morality, but, more importantly, that moralpursuits themselves endow his self with a worth that cancompensate him any loss that moral pursuit would or mightotherwise incur. As a consequence, for such a person, thesatisfaction of staking morality on everything else would outrankall possible pleasures. With this realisation, anyone pursuingmorality even in misery could remain a self-content man, whichis why moral contentment is of paramount importance in thecontext of morality. For, as Kant long ago points out, '... dis-content with one's state, ... might easily become a great tempta-tion to the transgression of duty'4. Moral contentment even inutter adversity might help one to overcome such temptation.

This, if true, shows another important truth : It is a mistaketo believe that moral worth is only gained if the performance ofduty is unpleasant. Acknowledgement of moral contentmentwould thus render the claim untrue that in order to be moral,one needs necessarily to be a sorry or unhappy person. It is ofcourse true that the real strength of the moral man lies in hisdeliberate and firm resolution to act on moral maxims for theirown sake. But, given moral contentment, this would not entailthat moral decisions are, of necessity, torturous decisions.Indeed, it is arguable that the moral life is often made unattrac-tive in ways that are unnecessary or at any event not very press-ing since so little is said about what it (moral life) uniquelyinvolves__the deeply satisfying moral contentment. It is rarely



realised that a virtuous life may well be and in all likelihood willbe pleasant for those who are virtuous.

It is important to stress here that the joy one gets in genu-inely virtuous acts is not an apprehensive joy, because it is notbased on any longing or promises, and hence moral content-ment never afflicts its owner with anxieties. Consequently, thebest way to such happiness is to engage in moral activities fortheir own sake. I must say that those who are always after gettingprofited by immorality become so obstinate about unjust ben-efits that they are incapable of pausing long enough to considerif happiness obtained from such benefits would be outclassed bythe joy that a moral life has to offer. As the moral contentmentis not contingent on any interest but is self-sustained, it is trulyenduring. An in-depth awareness of this matchless aspect ofmoral contentment would console the just in their poverty.

Of course, as observed earlier, the pursuit of morality, to beworthy of happiness, must be determined independently of anypromise of happiness, that is, only through the clear perceptionof duty. So the moral agent must turn against any pleasure thatmorality cannot tolerate. In fact, if someone pursues morality inorder to get satisfaction of any sort, he would no longer becounted as a moral person but only as a man of self-interest, forhe would then do moral acts inasmuch as they are personallypleasing him. His final goal would be getting pleasure and notbeing moral. Hence such a person would be a hedonistic egoistwho takes his own pleasure to be the sole justification of all acts.

In any case, a moral person would not hesitate to pursuemorality even when he would be laughed at behind his back forhis moral pursuit. It is however noteworthy that people arounda person of firm moral commitment often feel troubled by hispresence in their midst. This should not occasion surprise.Because of the intrinsic stringency as well as the unique innerworth of moral pursuit, we cannot help having within us a deepfeeling of awe towards a man of firm moral commitment - evenwhen we outwardly mock at him in the name of imprudence.This awesome aspect of morality, if well-taken, may well rendermorality a regenerative force in society. It is of crucial impor-tance to harp on this aspect of morality in an age like one we

live in, wherein people, overcharged with a hedonistic lifestyle,seem to have lost their very capacity to entertain morality asintrinsically valuable, and often do not in the least hesitate toperform the most heinous and loathsome actions if only theybring him some material gain. It is alleged that the conviction inthe modern period is that the more a man works to further hiswealth and economic interests the more he would be consideredas a 'valuable' person. This is true as a matter of fact, but none-theless is most undesirable - indeed dangerous - as an attitudetoward each other. For, such a mentality often begets enmityand hostility of the worst kind. Human imagination long agopictured Hell, but it is only through his recent ruthless deeds ofan unbelievable kind that man has almost been able to givereality to what he had imagined. In fact. I often am compelledto surmise if it would be rational at all to wish that man with hiscurrent lifestyle should continue to exist.

But then I gain hope in th conviction that this cannot con-tinue to be the case. I come to believe that man will sooner orlater realise the intrinsic worth of morality, and hence I allowmyself to hope that that a day will come when man will freehimself from the shackles of material concerns that give himonly 'routine pleasures' ó and thus man will someday bend hismind to moral pursuit for its own sake, which would give himthe kind of happiness most distinctive of man - that is, moralcontentment.

ReferencesReferencesReferencesReferencesReferences

1. Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, tr. T. M.Green and H.H. Hudson (New York: Harper, 1934), 19n.

2. Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Moralitywith A Treatise of Freewill, ed. Sarah Hutton (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996), 181.

3. Immanuel Kant, 'On the Common Saying: 'This May Be True in Theory,But It Does Not Apply in Practice' in Kant's Political Writings, tr. HansReiss (New York: Cambridge Unirversity Press, 1977), 64.

4. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Moral, tr. H. G. Paton(London: Hutchinson University Library, London, 1972), 64.



abhyudaya 1,6adharma 13, 16, 17, 22, 68, 69, 82, 127adhikøıËri 17ad–˝Á—˝Á“˝Âa 13, 81, 82Advaita VedøıËnta 126ahiÀ˝fl søıË 12, 13,50,90, 127aj¤ıÂva 68, 70, 71altruism 42, 55Amartya Sen 55anekøıËntavøıËda 65, 98ap”ıËrva 4,13§Ò‡ranyaka 40arhat 87Aristotle 137, 168, 189Arlette Elkain-Sartre 222Aron, R. 207artha 6, 7Artha—˜ÁøıËstra 19, 22asceticism 95øıË—˜Árava 73, 74, 75, 77, 78øıËtmøıË 67, 72aufheben 233authentic existence 212Auxter 185avidyøıË 58 127Ayer, A. J. 200-203, 206Baier, K. 141bandha 76, 85Beetophen 229Bentham 197Bhagavadg¤ıÂta 7, 11, 12, 18, 22, 23, 24,

126, 129

bodhi 43, 51Bodhisattva 35, 62, 63Bosanquet 197Bradley, F. H. 135, 197Brandt,R.B. 136, 152, 155, 158, 159,

166, 170Brink, D. O. 130Buddha 30-35, 38, 42-46, 49, 51, 55,

58, 61, 141Buddhism 27, 33, 34, 42, 52, 53, 55,

57Butler 137, 151, 152Camus, A. 29, 39, 36Capability 198-200CøıËrvøıËka 58, 86Categorical Imperative 139, 140, 182,

185, 188cetanøıË 47Charles de Gaul 208Christ 30, 141Christian 125citta—˜Áuddhi 24codanøıË 3, 4, 5conglomeration principle 15Cudworth, R. 249Dante 141deontic logic 15deontological 140Dhammapada 48dharma 1, 2, 3, 5-8, 13, 17, 19, 35, 42,

49, 61, 68, 69, 78, 82, 83, 127Dharma—˜ÁøıËstra 1, 19, 22

Index

Dharmayuddha 11, 24duhkha 113, 114D”˙Ëhring 231, 232egoism 55eightfold means 44emotivism 202-204Engels 231, 232entropy principle 83Epictet 230Eudaimonia 137Ewing A.C. 152Firth, R. 136, 166Flaubert 208Foot 167, 199, 203Fortes, M. 136Frankena 150-152, 170freedom 139, 178, 183, 186, 188, 189,

209, 210, 212-215, 217-222, 228,229

Gender 191-200Human nature 193Hyustice 192, 194-196, 200køıËmya Karma 23, 24Kant 139-141, 177-194, 197, 223, 248-

251Karma 83-90, 92-94karuÃ˝ÈøıË 60Kierkegaard 30, 220k—˝Áatriya 12 Lenin 36Lenin 36liberation 109, 113, 115love 29Mackie 98Macleod, N. 211MahøıËbhøıËrata 6, 30MahøıËvrata 96maitri 66manana 24Manu 12, 14, 30ManusaÀ˝flhitøıË 6, 30Marcus Aurelius 230Marx, K. 30, 36, 231, 233Materialism 231MøıËyøıË 126

middle path 44Mill, J.S. 137, 143, 145, 149, 197M¤ıÂmøıËÀ˝flsøıË 1, 3, 5, 12, 27, PrabhøıËkara

M¤ıÂmøıË À̋fl søıË 21, 22, 98;BhøıË“˝Â“˝Âa 98Miri 95Missing Women 195Mok—˝Áa 17, 23, 24, 72, 79, 84, 87, 88,

115, 116Moore 137, 197-200, 206, 215moral contentment 251-253moral law 182, 188, 191, 248moral relativism 163-176,normal moral relativism 163-165, 171,

172, 176,moral judgement relativism 163, 165-

169, 171-173, 176,meta-ethical relativism 163, 169í 171,

174, 176Moses 135MP-model 89, 90, 92Mysticism 95naturalism 203naturalistic fallacy 198nayavøıËda 65niddhyøıËsana 24nih—˜Áreyas 1, 2, 3, 6Nietzsche 30, 31, 140nirjarøıË 72, 78, 95nirvøıËÃ˝Èa 33, 39, 56, 58, 62, 127 ni—˝Áedha

21ni—˝ÁkøıËma karma 22, 23, 24Nowell-Smith 205, 206Ogden 202paÃˆÈca—˜Á¤ıÂla 59, 60ParøıË—˜Áara saÀ˝flhitøıË 12phenomenology 207Plato 28, 31, 137Plutarch 28possibility 15prajÃˆÈøıË 45prak–˝Áti 109-111, 116-120, 126Pra—˜ÁastapøıËda 13prat¤ıÂtyasamutpøıËda 49, 57, 58

Index 279 280 ETHICS : An Anthology


prøıËya—˜Ácitta 13, 79Prescriptivism 206Primary good 198-99Pringle Pattison 192Pr¤ıÂti 4, 5, 6pudgala 66, 69, 70, 72, 73, 84PurøıËÃ˝Èas 109, 110, 116-120, 126puru—˝ÁøıËrtha 1purusøıËkøıËra 93quietism 95Rawls 96, 138, 194-196, 198-99

relativism 163revolt 27, 29, 34revolution 27-30, 34, 36

∂˝flgveda 37Richards 202Ross 199∂˝flta 81, 82søıËdhøıËraÃ˝Èa dharma 12SamøıËdhi 45Sambara 72, 77, 78, 88, 95saÀ˝flgha 61Samiti 78SøıË À̋fl khya 20, 21, 109-114, 117- 120,

126SøıË À̋flkhya Tattva Kaumudi 20∑ÓfiaÀ˝flsøıËra 109, 112, 113, 116Samkara 123Sartre 207-135?SatyøıËgraha 29Schopenhauer 95Sen 191-200sevecca 230Siderits, M. 57Sidgwick 137S¤ıÂla 45-47, 56Silber 187Simone de Beauvoir 207, 216∑ÓfiravaÃ˝Èa 24∑Ófireya∆˝Ë 7, 14, 17∑Ófir¤ıÂdhara 2∑Ófiruti 1,2, 5, 17Stevenson 200, 202, 206, 215

Summum Bonum 181Supererogatory 152, 153SyøıËdvøıËda 65, 97Tagore, R. 35, 133TathøıËgata 43tattva 66, 85, 110-112tattvajÃˆÈøıËna 1, 2teleological 138, 140T¤ıÂrthaÃ˝Èkara 38trivarga 7Truth 29Udayana 27Udyotakara 32universalizability 140Upani—˝Áad 40Utilitarianism 52, 53, 97, 137, 143-160,

197actó 149, 154, 157-159rule ó 154, 155, 159primitive ruleó 156-158

Vai—˜Áe—˝Áika 1,6, 127 vamøıË—˜Áramadharma 126vidhøıËtøıË 81videhamukti 118vidhi 1, 5, 20-22niravakøıË—˜Áa 20søıËmøıËnya 20-22vi—˜Áe—˝Áa 20, 21welfare economics 55Williams, B. 137, 138Willk”˙Ër 188Zammito 185, 187Zeldin 185

Index 281 282 ETHICS : An Anthology

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