萨特有没有伦理学？(6)
作者：佚名； 更新时间：2014-12-05
gain finding a way to revise Sartre’s analysis of freedom in such a way that such questions do not arise, or at least can be answered satisfactorily.
The other significant contribution of Sartre in ethics is that he raises the issue of bad faith. As we often see, lying is frequently discussed in ethics. But what Sartre probes is a different issue. It is not the issue of lying to others; rather, it is the problem of self-deceit. Sartre made a profound research into such bad faith. He reveals that he nature of bad faith is to cover up one’s true being to others for one’s own purpose. The person in bad faith sets himself in a false imagination and regards it as reality. Although he knows clearly about what the actual reality is, he is not willing to recognize it. He would rather indulge his mind and body in illusions. Sartre shows us that bad faith is a very common phenomenon in human society. It is harmful to human freedom. Human freedom would be alienated and ruined if bad faith remains. To solve the problem of bad faith is possible, according to Sartre, however. Man can look for good faith. In other words, to be authentic. There are two ways to reach authenticity: to think lucidly and to be responsible. The former asks us not to elude reality. The latter tells us we must bravely deal with reality as we find it. These methods are perhaps still too general, some will say. Well, at least they provide some hints to us. Sartre did not have the chance to expound details of how he would apply these guidelines, although we can grasp something of how he understood them in his own concrete interventions in the events of his day, i.e., to always try to be on the side of the oppressed.
There are two great changes in Sartrean ethical view. One is that since he became more aware that man was a social being, human freedom must be studied in the context of its historical and social environment. He therefore set aside the idea and the method he adapted before that man was alone and could be understood in isolation from other people and his social conditions. As Sartre recognized his mistake, he found that man’s freedom was badly spoiled and alienated under the situation of oppression, poverty, and the class war. He thereby recognized that in order to restore an individual’s freedom, the oppressed had to unite and employ class force to seek social liberty first. Individual freedom could be seized back only of the whole oppressed class got liberated. This is a significant change. Before the end of the Second World War the method Sartre offered to treat bad faith was one of “self-recovery.” He believed that individuals could seek authenticity through a self-training in ethics. Yet after the war he totally gave up this view of the way to salvation. He turned his view to one where individual freedom could not truly exist unless freedom for all existed.
The other important change is his theory of intersubjectivity. In the earlier time, Sartre had conceived that the relationship between individuals was always one of conflict, for one side is always going to objectify the other side. The picture of human relations drawn by Sartre was cruel and pessimistic. Nonetheless, when Sartre discovered man was social, he found reciprocity in human relations. The method he adapted was to think each person in a group as “a third.” In this way, everyone discovers that he is the “same” as others, for he can be a subject, an object, and the third person who watches others as a subject and as an object as well. And since there is no difference between each individual, everybody is equal to one anther. No one is ever a slave. It follows that there is a mutual recognition of freedom among different individuals. Sartre studied more closely the freedom in groups, in classes, and in nations in his well-known work, The Critique of Dialectical Reason. The result of his study of such mutual freedom for his ethics is the recognition that individual freedom has to be rooted in the soil of freedom for all. And individual freedom will be raised to a higher level when common freedom rises to a higher degree. But the result has a negative side, too. For it seems that the higher level common freedom develops to, the more restrictions land on individual freedom. This means that individual freedom will decrease when common freedom increases. So on the one hand, individual freedom cannot survive alone without common freedom; on the other hand, individual freedom is contradictory to common freedom to some extent. This is the dilemma the later Sartre confronted. On the one hand, we know that he still insisted on his early stand in favor of individual freedom; on the other hand, he came to understand that common freedom and social liberty are equally important. He has to find a way to integrate these two freedoms. It seems to me that Sartre did not solve this dilemma satisfactorily. That is why he hesitated to complete or to publish his work on ethics in his lifetime.
Nevertheless, as Sartre said, it is good to leave a work unfinished and to leave room for readers to think about what might follow or what might have been. It is our task to try to finish Sartre’s ethics by trying to think beyond what he did say on the basis of what he did accomplish.
Abstract: That is there a Sartre’s ethics is a heated debate in western philosophical society. This is because it’s true that Sartre made an announcement to write an ethical work right after his well known philosophical work , but that work had never come into being. It is also true that Sartre wrote down many notebooks on ethics. And he had some unique and creative ethical thoughts spread in many of his discourses, essays, and philosophical works. From these facts, how do we conclude if Sartre really has his own ethical theory? This article introduces some different opining on this issue among western scholars and is going to present an answer to this question through an analysis.
Key words: Sartre Ethics Earlier Ontology
About Author: ji Ruman was teaching in the Philosophy Department of Fudan University from 1973 to 1985. She went to the USA to study western philosophy and obtained MA and PhD degrees in philosophy. She is a vice chairman of Basic Education Department in Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Foreign Language Institute at Present.
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[1] Thomas C. Anderson: The Foundation and Structure of Sartrean Ethics, P.6.
[2] Thomas W. Busch: The Power of Consciousness and the Force of Circumstance in Sartre’s Philosophy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990, P.xi.
[3] Ibid., P.xiii.
[4] David Detmer: Freedom as Value: A Critique of the Ethical Theory of Jean-Paul Sartre, Lasalle, IL: Open Court, 1986, P. 2.
[5] Simone de Beauvoir, Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre, trans, Patrick O’Brian (New York: Pantheon, 1984) 25.
[6] Beauvoir, 21.
[7] Beauvoir, 26.
[8] 萨特：七十自述，出自生活/形势，译者：Paul Auster and Lydia Davis, 纽约：Pantheon, 1977, 第74-75页。
[9] 萨特：伦理学笔记，译者：David Pellauer, 芝加哥：芝加哥大学出版社，1992，第viii页。
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The other significant contribution of Sartre in ethics is that he raises the issue of bad faith. As we often see, lying is frequently discussed in ethics. But what Sartre probes is a different issue. It is not the issue of lying to others; rather, it is the problem of self-deceit. Sartre made a profound research into such bad faith. He reveals that he nature of bad faith is to cover up one’s true being to others for one’s own purpose. The person in bad faith sets himself in a false imagination and regards it as reality. Although he knows clearly about what the actual reality is, he is not willing to recognize it. He would rather indulge his mind and body in illusions. Sartre shows us that bad faith is a very common phenomenon in human society. It is harmful to human freedom. Human freedom would be alienated and ruined if bad faith remains. To solve the problem of bad faith is possible, according to Sartre, however. Man can look for good faith. In other words, to be authentic. There are two ways to reach authenticity: to think lucidly and to be responsible. The former asks us not to elude reality. The latter tells us we must bravely deal with reality as we find it. These methods are perhaps still too general, some will say. Well, at least they provide some hints to us. Sartre did not have the chance to expound details of how he would apply these guidelines, although we can grasp something of how he understood them in his own concrete interventions in the events of his day, i.e., to always try to be on the side of the oppressed.
There are two great changes in Sartrean ethical view. One is that since he became more aware that man was a social being, human freedom must be studied in the context of its historical and social environment. He therefore set aside the idea and the method he adapted before that man was alone and could be understood in isolation from other people and his social conditions. As Sartre recognized his mistake, he found that man’s freedom was badly spoiled and alienated under the situation of oppression, poverty, and the class war. He thereby recognized that in order to restore an individual’s freedom, the oppressed had to unite and employ class force to seek social liberty first. Individual freedom could be seized back only of the whole oppressed class got liberated. This is a significant change. Before the end of the Second World War the method Sartre offered to treat bad faith was one of “self-recovery.” He believed that individuals could seek authenticity through a self-training in ethics. Yet after the war he totally gave up this view of the way to salvation. He turned his view to one where individual freedom could not truly exist unless freedom for all existed.
The other important change is his theory of intersubjectivity. In the earlier time, Sartre had conceived that the relationship between individuals was always one of conflict, for one side is always going to objectify the other side. The picture of human relations drawn by Sartre was cruel and pessimistic. Nonetheless, when Sartre discovered man was social, he found reciprocity in human relations. The method he adapted was to think each person in a group as “a third.” In this way, everyone discovers that he is the “same” as others, for he can be a subject, an object, and the third person who watches others as a subject and as an object as well. And since there is no difference between each individual, everybody is equal to one anther. No one is ever a slave. It follows that there is a mutual recognition of freedom among different individuals. Sartre studied more closely the freedom in groups, in classes, and in nations in his well-known work, The Critique of Dialectical Reason. The result of his study of such mutual freedom for his ethics is the recognition that individual freedom has to be rooted in the soil of freedom for all. And individual freedom will be raised to a higher level when common freedom rises to a higher degree. But the result has a negative side, too. For it seems that the higher level common freedom develops to, the more restrictions land on individual freedom. This means that individual freedom will decrease when common freedom increases. So on the one hand, individual freedom cannot survive alone without common freedom; on the other hand, individual freedom is contradictory to common freedom to some extent. This is the dilemma the later Sartre confronted. On the one hand, we know that he still insisted on his early stand in favor of individual freedom; on the other hand, he came to understand that common freedom and social liberty are equally important. He has to find a way to integrate these two freedoms. It seems to me that Sartre did not solve this dilemma satisfactorily. That is why he hesitated to complete or to publish his work on ethics in his lifetime.
Nevertheless, as Sartre said, it is good to leave a work unfinished and to leave room for readers to think about what might follow or what might have been. It is our task to try to finish Sartre’s ethics by trying to think beyond what he did say on the basis of what he did accomplish.
Abstract: That is there a Sartre’s ethics is a heated debate in western philosophical society. This is because it’s true that Sartre made an announcement to write an ethical work right after his well known philosophical work , but that work had never come into being. It is also true that Sartre wrote down many notebooks on ethics. And he had some unique and creative ethical thoughts spread in many of his discourses, essays, and philosophical works. From these facts, how do we conclude if Sartre really has his own ethical theory? This article introduces some different opining on this issue among western scholars and is going to present an answer to this question through an analysis.
Key words: Sartre Ethics Earlier Ontology
About Author: ji Ruman was teaching in the Philosophy Department of Fudan University from 1973 to 1985. She went to the USA to study western philosophy and obtained MA and PhD degrees in philosophy. She is a vice chairman of Basic Education Department in Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Foreign Language Institute at Present.
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[1] Thomas C. Anderson: The Foundation and Structure of Sartrean Ethics, P.6.
[2] Thomas W. Busch: The Power of Consciousness and the Force of Circumstance in Sartre’s Philosophy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990, P.xi.
[3] Ibid., P.xiii.
[4] David Detmer: Freedom as Value: A Critique of the Ethical Theory of Jean-Paul Sartre, Lasalle, IL: Open Court, 1986, P. 2.
[5] Simone de Beauvoir, Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre, trans, Patrick O’Brian (New York: Pantheon, 1984) 25.
[6] Beauvoir, 21.
[7] Beauvoir, 26.
[8] 萨特：七十自述，出自生活/形势，译者：Paul Auster and Lydia Davis, 纽约：Pantheon, 1977, 第74-75页。
[9] 萨特：伦理学笔记，译者：David Pellauer, 芝加哥：芝加哥大学出版社，1992，第viii页。
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