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, 'ethical
theory', because the word 'theory' has an appearance of
abstractness.
1
He wanted to size every object in its particularity or
in its concreteness. It has been narrated by Simone de Beauvoir
with reference to an incident of his life that Raymond Aron
spoke about Husserl's phenomenology to him and told him that
if he had known phenomenology, he could have discussed the
apricot wine in his glass and might also have developed his own
philosophy. Sartre became pale with excitement. He had been
searching for this for a long time. He wanted to describe things
as they appeared to him, as he touched them. He would be able
to 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 be
used in accordance with the traditional usage. The question
which arises at the outset: Has Sartre developed any ethical
theory ? At the end of his major philosophical treatise Being and
Nothingness he remarks that man's freedom, his sense of value,
the real situation of life, man's responsibility, etc. raise certain
questions which are the ethical questions of human life. He will
write another book later to discuss these questions. But he was
not 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 his
ethical thoughts in many places. In Being and Nothingness there
are also discussions about morality specially the idea of man's
freedom, human relation with other persons, value, the goal of
human life, etc. It is perhaps possible to arrive at a systematic
structure 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 his
book on ethics. His reply was that he had collected a great deal
of materials about ethics and he would write a book on them
but he wanted to complete his book on Flaubert before that. In
fact, it would have been proper for him to have written two
books, one after he had completed Being and Nothingness dur-
ing 1945-1947, when the problems of the individual's life were
more important to him. He had been planning to write another
book on the problems of reality and morality. With all these
ideas taken together he could write a book sometime before the
end of his life. This did not happen. But in 1988, a book written
by him on ethical problems was published. It was untitled Cahier
pour une morale. Some of his later ideas, in which the line of
separation between ethics and social philosophy was becoming
indistinct, could be discovered in this book. But he discussed
some of these problems just months before his death, in an
interview to the journal La Nouvelle Francais. Between 1972 and
1975, it was found that Sartre was becoming increasingly in-
volved in politics. Actually, it had started from 1968, when the
students of the University of Paris-Sorbonne had started a
movement against the government of Charles de Gaul. It had
become clear to him that the ethical thoughts are also political
ideas. He said that he was in complete agreement with the
Maoists on this point. We have to determine Sartre's views on
ethics in these perspectives.
We can discuss man's ethical life from two points of view.
One, we have to see whether the individual human being
decides anything as the ultimate end of his life. If he has an
ultimate end, he can try to realize it through his actions. We have
also to understand whether it is essential for human beings to
have freedom to realize this ideal or what is the role of freedom
in human life ? What is also the relation between the ultimate
end and his actions ? What is also the criterion of value, good or
bad ? Secondly, man's ethical life can also be considered from
BHADRA : Sartre's Ethical Theory 225 226 ETHICS : An Anthology
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another point of view. We know that man has to live in a
society and there is a relation between his action and the actions
performed by other persons. If we are able to know the nature
of human relations, we shall be in a position to improve the
conditions of the society. So human relations do not seem to be
outside the purview of ethical thinking. The questions of how a
human being can form a group and how, in a group, he can
perform moral actions as a member of the group, are not irrel-
evant from the perspective of ethical deliberations. There is an
ideal for the individual in the case of moral action. Similarly,
there is a social purpose of the individual's action. We have to
see whether this purpose or ideal will be equally beneficial for
every man. I think that these questions are very essential in
Sartre's ethical thought. I have tried to limit my discussion to
some definite aspects. These are (a) Sartre's ideas about freedom,
(b) his idea about value, (c) his idea about the relation between
the human individuals and the group or the society as well as the
relation with the factual environment, and (d) Sartre's ideas
about the ideal society and the means by which the ideal can be
implemented. But the discussion of these four aspects may not
confine us to the realm of pure ethics. We have to enter into the
social and the political areas of human life.
Sartre believed that man has an ultimate end in life. He
wanted 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 identity
and permanence. He thinks that such identity and permanence
will 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 to
reach a state of unity with the real world he has to realize a state
of existence where there will be translucidity of consciousness
and 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 to
reach this ideal, butfails. Because of this human consciousness is
unhappy. There is a connection between this ideal and freedom.
Man wants to be what he is not, from what he is. For this he
has to perform actions, but his actions may be good or bad. He
has to bear responsibility for such action. In ordinary sense, a
moral action is that which produces good or bad consequences.
But in the academic sense, the action which has a purpose and
the action which gives rise to alternates so that only one can be
selected is defined as a moral action. Nonetheless, such an action
can be performed only because man has freedom and so there
is an inseparable relation between freedom and action. In the
course of discussing such an action Sartre has brought to focus
the relation between freedom, choice, cause and effect system,
purpose, and their mutual relation. Such an analysis is essential
for any discussion of moral theory. Sartre thinks that freedom
is man's primal condition because we cannot think that man has
consciousness, but he is not free. Man's consciousness has the
peculiarity that it had been always destroying the past and mov-
ing towards the future. This power of man is his freedom. This
freedom is always accompanied by anxiety, because the action
which comes into existence due to freedom does not have any
rational certainty. What is being done may produce success or
may fail to give rise to any success. Still more, the action which
is chosen by man due to his freedom may undergo a change any
moment. The action which man performs may have certain
conditions of reality, but it does not mean that the condition of
reality necessarily gives rise to the action. In this connection
Sartre 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 be
called cause if they can be related to the purpose. Macbeth had
in his favour certain conditions of the real situation and they are
called cause, because they could be utilised to serve his purpose.
In Sartre's opinion, cause has to be understood in the light of
the end. Feeling or emotion also cannot be understood by
Sartre 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 my
choice will really be free only when I could have chosen some-
thing else other than what I have selected. But is this possible
all the time ? If I go hitch-hiking, I will become fatigued after
travelling some distance. Whether I then decide to return does
not 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 choose
one particular action or another depends on how much my
ultimate project will be affected. At this point, Sartre refers to
the ultimate purpose of the human being. Every man has an
ultimate end. The purpose is to discover his entire existence in
the world and he wants to identify himself with the world
through such actions which help him to proceed towards the
ultimate end. There are certain secondary projects which are
essential to actualize the ultimate project and the secondary
projects are essentially related to it in a hierarchical order. If my
ultimate end is to establish an authentic unity with the world
which will produce harmony and happiness, the choice of a
particular pattern of life will be helpful. Sartre has spoken about
existential psycho-analysis in connection with man's ultimate
end. He thinks that man's ultimate end is to discover his real self
and to recover the authentic self. There is a real lack in human
existence; he is an incomplete being. He is separated from the
real world and such separation or alienation is his lack. Man has
to regain the impenetrability and the solidity of the real world
and if such regaining is possible, he can be elevated to the states
of a complete being. The unity of the real world and human
consciousness in which man wants to acquire the translucidity
and the permanence in the midst of change is man's ultimate
end. In other words, it is man's desire to be God and such an
end is his life-long search.
A question may arise here: if the ultimate end is the desire of
all men and if it is present in the nature of all men, what is the
relation of such end with freedom? Man's choice does not
depend on any cause and effect situation on the real world. He
chooses his ultimate end freely and by comparing the ends of
all men, we can discover such an ultimate end. But there is no
reason why man chooses an ultimate end. So Sartre calls this
choice 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 the
basis of the factual conditions of the world. There are certain
laws which determine and control the events. There is also re-
sistance to human desire from such events and man has to
overcome such resistance. Man cannot conquer them simply by
his desire. So the idea of the absolute is meaningless. But the
problem 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 the
sense of the existential freedom which leads us to recognise the
great emptiness in our existence. In this sense, every man is free
in 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 of
causal network and can choose a particular course of action. In
the second use Sartre wants us to realise our freedom and in that
sense, 'freedom' and 'authentic existence' are really equivalent. In
such an existence man becomes aware of the real nature of his
freedom and feels also that there is no true criterion of good
and bad. It is man who decides values. In the third sense, by
'freedom' Sartre has understood that which we feel in our
everyday life. It means that by freedom we do not only choose,
but we possess the ability to execute what we choose. It is in this
sense that we understand by freedom social and political
freedom. If we want to understand the true nature of moral life,
we have to understand freedom in the first and the second
sense. In this sense human freedom is such that it indicates an
awareness of freedom. If there is no human choice behind every
action, then action cannot be judged as either good or bad. If
we consider in this way, then Sartre's existential freedom is not
really absolute freedom. The reason is that we do not have the
power to execute what we choose. We have only the power to
choose, because in every situation, there are many alternative
ways of action, we can choose any one of these alternatives.
Moreover, Sartre never says that factual conditions or facticity
do not give rise to any difficulty. He uses a word in his Being
and Nothingness and it is termed the 'Co-efficient of adversity'.
The facticity which can cause difficulties in the exercise of
freedom includes my place, my past, my environment, other
persons and my death. All these factual elements constitute the
situations in which man can make use of his freedom. There is
a connection between the situation and my purpose and so it is
difficult to say how much of the situation depends on the
subject 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 the
most important foundation of moral action. Freedom is
intimately connected with responsibility. Sartre has spoken of
man's unlimited freedom, but we have seen that it is not really
so unlimited. Human freedom, in the philosophy of Sartre,
consists mainly of the power to make new choices, though he
may not have the power to achieve the purpose of his tasks. The
war which I have not declared is also owing to me, because I
have allowed it to happen and agreeing to the fact that the war
will go on, I conduct the activities of my life. Perhaps for this
reason Sartre says that I as a free being take myself as the
meaning of the age in which I exist. I have declared the war, as
I have not been able to separate myself from the age. I have
taken responsibility for it, but I am not able to live without
identifying myself with it. As I have completely tied myself to it
and given my seal on it, and I have to bear the burden of
moment I have come to exist, I am carrying the burden of the
world alone on my head. Anything else cannot lessen the weight
of the burden. Sartre elaborated this notion of freedom in his
dramas, 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, nor
does it depend on the existence of other human beings. The
existence of the world does not owe to him, yet it is he who has
to determine the meaning of everything. The individual realizes
through anxiety that he has been thrown on a host of respon-
sibilities. His responsibility makes him aware through the feeling
of anxiety that he is a free being and his existence is realised in
that anxiety. But sometimes man fails to tolerate the anxiety of
the burden given to him and he wants to take flight into bad
faith.
I feel that Sartre will call such existence authentic which
expresses itself through man's moral actions. The freedom
which is the basis of such actions makes man an authentic
human being. But when man transcends the sphere of his own
existence and moves towards the welfare of the society, it is not
possible for us to consider the ethical thoughts from the point
of view of the individual. Ethical thought then becomes social
or political thought. The fact as to whether it is possible for an
individual to perform such an action contributes not only to the
welfare of the individual, but also to the community. It occupies
a large area in Sartre's thought. We shall come to that aspect
later. But prior to that we want to see how Sartre has developed
the role of objective conditions of facticity in his book Being
and Nothingness, and also in his other writings. The objective
conditions and the social reality play an important part in man's
free choice: this has been admitted by Sartre in his Critique of
Dialectical Reason. But he would also say that ultimately the
decision of the individual is his own and it is not determined by
any objective state of affairs. But in this book the idea of man's
social ideal has occupied a larger area. There is no doubt that
behind the individual's choice of a particular course of action,
there is a great role of the objective and social conditions. Sartre
mentions such an idea also in Saint Genet. At this stage the
discussion of ethics to Sartre means that man has a freedom to
shape his own destiny. But in 1962 he does not seem to believe,
as he did in 1946, that man has absolute freedom. He thinks
now that the situation is very complex and in such an
environment the individual himself has to decide his own course
of action in a free manner. In Saint Genet Sartre has not raised
the question of the community. He has focussed his attention on
the individual Genet and he has recreated the development of
Genet from his childhood to the top of his fame. But he has
also noted how much influence is exerted on the individual by
the real and social conditions. Here Sartre holds that to live a
moral life means to devise a code of conduct for oneself prior
to other things. This code of conduct might be a set of moral
rules which might agree with social patterns, or it might go
against the rules of society. Genet wished to choose the evil, but
that evil has a nature in its entirety. It may be compared to a
work of art or to poetry. Some point out that as Sartre is
emphasising the choice of a course of action decided by the
individual, morality and the action chosen by the individual are
becoming identical. Sartre has called this morality, the morality
of the course of action. In such a situation it is not possible to
separate man's possibility from his goal. Man has to be
understood in terms of the totality of his decisions, which are
related to his ultimate end and which is revealed through his
actions. In Sartre's opinion an action can be judged to be good
or bad, after it has been performed. The action, of course, has
to be chosen through the feeling of freedom. Existence which
is accepted through the experience of such a feeling and which
is related to responsibility and which troubles the mind due to
the pursuit of the ultimate end will be called authentic existence
by Sartre. In my understanding, the attempt to attain this
authentic existence is what Sartre means by moral life.
Those who are not able to encounter the hazards of this
morality hide themselves in self-deception. In Being and Noth-
ingness Sartre has provided many illustrations which show that
when man has to take a decision himself, he becomes a victim
of anxiety. He wants to flee from this anxiety. He then performs
mechanically according to the dictates of society. It may be that
he 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 from
the risk of making his own free decisions. In Sartre's play The
Respectful Prostitute the American senator advises Lizzy to play
such a role. In the story 'The childhood of a leader' the small
leader identifies himself with a set of rights and dreams about
building up his own life according to those ideals. In the 'The
condemned of Altova' Franty hides himself in his room, as he
wishes to avoid responsibility. In this way Sartre argues that man
lives a life of inauthenticity if he does not exercise his freedom
and cannot apply it to actions. Such an inauthentic existence is
life devoid of morality.
In the context of a discussion of Sartre's views on value, we
find that contemporary philosophers hold two different opin-
ions regarding the concept of value. One view is discovered in
G. E. Moore's ethical contemplation. Moore understands 'good'
as a non-natural property which is revealed in actions. Man can
know this property by his intuition. The source of another view
regarding value is the investigation by the logical positivist. In
this view, the 'good' is not an actual quality, rather it is the
expression 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 Stevenson
and others afterwards. This view can be called the emotive
theory in the explanation of values, which is quite opposite to
the one held by Moore. These philosophers have come to such
conclusions 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 existing
in the world. So we may perhaps include him in the group of
thinkers known as non-cognitivists. He does not admit the re-
ality of value, nor does he think that morality expresses any
feature of reality. Value, according to him, is created in and
through the activities of human being. Man develops or creates
a meaning through the experiences of his life and value is related
to such experiences. As values arise in the situations of man's
life, they can be said to be descriptions of life in a sense. To
explain the inner aspects of human action, these values become
necessary, because man encounters different kinds of nothing-
ness to which he has to adjust himself. These adjustments create
values. In Sartre's opinion, the meaning of life is that which we
build up and by real life we also understand it. In analysing
consciousness Sartre speaks of two levels of consciousness: one
is the pre-reflective, while the other is reflective. In the first level,
consciousness is directed towards objects. But he does not have
any knowledge of himself, for if consciousness is to be known
as an object, it has to be held before consciousness separately as
an object. Sartre's example is that I am crossing a street and
when I am in the middle of such activity, it is the object of my
consciousness and my consciousness is directed towards it. But
for the street to-be-crossed to be known as an object, con-
sciousness has to rise to the second level and the whole situation
has to be the object of consciousness. Sartre says surely that in
the first level consciousness has an awareness about itself. In the
case of value, man chooses a particular action from the aspect
of lack and he thinks that the action will remove the lack. So in
the first stage, that which fulfils man's sense of lack produces a
consciousness of that object. The object which puts an end to
the lack appears to us as good and it has a value or it is some-
thing of a particular value. This kind of consciousness develops
as a result of analysis in the second stage. So Sartre argues that
the reflected experience is presented as a particular experience
and value becomes separate from the object that fulfils the lack.
So reflective thought can be called a type of moral consciousness
and it cannot originate without expressing the value. Sartre fur-
ther points out that there is no value in a world where there is
no human being and value has a reality in the human world.
Perhaps, this is what can be called the ambiguity of value, to
which Simon de Beauvoir has directed our attention.
Sartre says that it is human reality which introduces value in
the world. To him, value is like a demand which requires a
foundation. 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, has
no justification. The being which makes the appearance of
values possible has no justifiable existence. As a result, my exist-
ence is fraught with anxiety, because it has no function of its
own. There is another reason for my anxiety. Value may be
revealed by my freedom, but we can always raise questions about
it. We are accepting a scale of values, but to reject it is also my
possibility. As man stands before values with his anxiety-stricken
existence, he comes to know that value is man's ideal.
Sartre wishes to say that what is good or bad, desired or
undesirable, 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 on
the point of view or choice of the subject, the fight for estab-
lishing values also becomes meaningless. Therefore it is necessary
that these values have a foundation. But Sartre thinks that this
foundation is man's freedom. It really means that value is what
man chooses and it has no justification. If we can understand
the significance of this statement, we are able to realise the role
of anxiety in our life. When all values depend on man, not upon
God or any party, the search for values increases the burden of
anxiety. Sartre raises one question in this connection: if freedom
is accepted as a value, what will be its foundation ? There is no
answer to this question, for to Sartre freedom has no being, it
is non-being, nothingness. It might then be pointed out that no
ethical theory can develop from Sartre's ontology. When Sartre
says we have to perform such an action by which freedom can
be established, and the freedom which is not only mine, but also
the freedom of other persons, then his ethical theory does not
remain confined only to the region of ethics, but it is trans-
formed into a political ideal. Ethical theory and political ideas
are becoming fused. Sartre himself has also pointed out 'ontol-
ogy cannot formulate the principles of ethics'. According to
Sartre ontology can only be an investigation of which it is, and
from an ontological statement we cannot derive any ethical
ideal. In this way, though Sartre will say that there is no rational
basis of what man chooses, still what is selected or chosen can
account for the actions which are to be performed. So the
ultimate project chosen by man has no rational foundation. The
actions 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 be
judged by that choice. Whether an action is right or wrong, has
to be judged by reason which is internal to choice, and not by
anything which is outside choice.
Sartre's ethical thought has ultimately developed into political
thought. I feel that man's ethical life can be built up in a
successful way, if there is such a society in which man's freedom
is not hindered. In Being and Nothingness he has tried to show
that man always tries to dominate over another person, one
man appears as an object to the eyes of another person, but
man can never be a material object. The man who is conquered
by another person always tries to establish his own freedom. So
the relation between human beings is one of an eternal conflict.
But if this is the last word about human relations, then no unity
among human beings can develop and man will not be able to
put an end to the rule of oppression. In Being and Nothingness
he has said that the oppressed persons can be united, but he
describes that unity as 'us-object'. The idea of 'we-subject' has
not been developed in the proper way there. But if man is to
build up a healthy society he has to be united with other human
beings, the attitudes of hatred and enmity have to be overcome.
Actions would be such that even if it is the action of one
person, it will have a universal significance. The idea of such
possibility had its first beginning in Sartre's book Existentialism
is a Humanism and it has remained true to the last day of his life.
The book Existentialism is a Humanism has not received
proper attention, because Sartre himself never took the book
seriously. But in my understanding, in this book Sartre
emphasises on man's resolution as the basis on which man can
create a system which can bring good to all human beings.
Sartre does not only say that every man has to take care of his
own interests, but he adds that each man is responsible for the
whole of humanity. When man chooses for his own self, he is
also choosing for all men. Many think that this aspect is the
weakest point in Sartre's thinking, because what is good for one
man may not be so for the whole humanity. Sartre states that
when a man chooses a particular course of action, he has to ask
himself 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 in
one way which can decide the future of all human beings. Sartre
thinks that in every man's heart there remains an anxiety for all
men. He says further that he discovers in his consciousness not
only the existence of himself but also that of others. I cannot
have any true knowledge except through the intervention of
others. So the existence of the other is essential for my existence
and for my self-knowledge. This way of knowing others
through one's own existence is called by Sartre 'intersubjectivity'.
Besides these, there is a universality of conditions for every
man's action. These are real conditions, because they exist every-
where and at the same time they are individuals, because they are
the conditions for the individual's action and man lives his own
life by them. In that way Sartre can say that there is a human
universality, but it is not given universally. It is being created and
recreated all the time. By choosing himself man creates this
universality, he creates it by understanding the nature of man,
irrespective of the period. So this universality does not affect the
relativity of every age.
One of the arguments against Sartre is that it is not possible
to judge one's action in his ethical theory. Sartre thinks that this
idea is mistaken. The action which is consistent with one's own
freedom is good. Those who deprive themselves of full free-
dom, according to Sartre, are cowards and fail to achieve the
moral end. This is the formal aspect of freedom. But the prin-
ciple of morality cannot state beforehand what actions are to be
done. 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 ethical
thought to the level of social thought. Perhaps, he realized at
this time that it is possible to evolve a only such a principle
which is the individual's own. By his free choice man wishes to
be something which will be applicable to every man. But it
cannot be said which action should be performed by man and
it is not possible to speak of any unchangeable and obligatory
principle. In this connection we can refer to a story mentioned
in the book. A French youth approached Sartre for his advice
about 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 will
be called a traitor. But if he joined the war, he would neglect his
duties to his mother, as there was nobody to look after her.
Sartre's idea was this that in such a problem he alone would
have to decide what he would do because if he accepted Sartre's
advice, it would mean that he had already decided to accept that
advice. In this context, it is also found that Sartre wants to solve
the problems which appear in general ethical theories about
what duties are fundamental and primary. In his opinion it is the
feeling of freedom which decides a particular action to be moral
and in cases where such a feeling is absent, the action is not
moral. 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 be
social activities, but because man has himself chosen them, he
calls these ethical and such existence is ethical existence.
But it is in Existentialism is a Humanism that Sartre has added
a dimension of social purpose to his ethical views. In the books
written afterwards he has tried to show how man can be united
with society or how individuals can come together to form a
group. He has shown the formation of such a unity brilliantlyin
his Critique of Dialectical Reason. Man rises from the level of
individual existence and moves forward to the life of the group.
He has shown this in two stages. The first is the level of a series
and 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 this
situation, men are united in a particular way, but their differences
are not removed. It is due to the fact that each of them is
claiming a seat in the bus. But when these men either in the time
of French Revolution or in the time of any other revolution
become united a mutual brotherliness is developed in them. One
man can see his own project in the face of another person.
Every man obtains the form of the structure of a universal
project. The idea of freedom which Sartre developed in his
Being and Nothingness is that of an absolute freedom. But he
said also that this freedom was unattainable. So he said that man
is a useless passion. The freedom about which he spoke in the
Critique of Dialectical Reason is the freedom by which a social
system can be built up in which every man's free will can be
preserved. All men would be united to participate in the social
project. He wishes to speak of a society where class distinctions
will be abolished and where man will have adequate scope for
the development of his freedom. As he has tried to explore how
the individual can exercise his freedom, many critics have called
him an existential Marxist. We know from the events of his life
that in the last period of his life he became a staunch supporter
of radical thought. In spite of saying so many things it can be
said that he has accorded individual freedom the highest posi-
tion. In the Critique of Dialectical Reason where he discusses the
problem of method, he points out the mutual interaction be-
tween man and social as well as historical circumstances, but he
stresses that it is man who creates history on the basis of histori-
cal conditions, and not otherwise. While discussing the life of
Flaubert, he says that he has brought one thing again in his
writing and it is this that man has a project of action with which
he wants to build up the everyday world. If we forget this
project of the individual man, we cannot understand the social
project. When individuals unite together, even then his purpose
becomes one with the project of other and the social life be-
comes integrated. So social good which produces a happy life
for all men has its sources in freedom and it is a moral life.
Sartre says something in his interview to La Nouvelle Francais
in which also he included some ethical problems. He thinks that
consciousness has a moral aspect. In his earlier life he searched
for this morality in mere consciousness which is separated from
other human beings. But in his present thinking man's
consciousness is essentially connected with the presence of
others. He thinks that every consciousness develops by itself, but
at the same time it reveals itself related to the consciousness of
another person as well as the consciousness of the other. He
wants to call this consciousness related to another person the
moral consciousness. He says that others are always present to
my consciousness and they influence my consciousness. So my
response is not just to my consciousness, it is also a response to
other which has been present from the time of my birth and
which has even influenced me. The nature of that response is
moral. In Being and Nothingness Sartre thought that every man
is confined in his consciousness and he is relatively free from
the consciousness of others. But the essence of morality is this
that man is dependent on other human beings. He may choose
his action along with others, but he does it freely.
I have felt that Sartre wanted to reach a social ideal through
the ideal of morality. In his different writings it has been estab-
lished that his ideal consists of developing man's freedom which
will make him realize the ultimate end. This ideal is something
which will bring unity and permanence in human life. In order
to realize this ultimate project man can take the help of some
secondary projects. In the course of realizing the secondary
projects man will move towards the ultimate end. If we see from
this point of view, socialism or a state directed towards the
welfare of humanity is a secondary project. In the path in which
the ideal would be realized man would be able to retain his
individual freedom, because the social system which he wants to
build up willdevelop real freedom in the limited venture of all
men. It will also allow the development of individual freedom.
But the question which arises here is this: in his Being and
Nothingness Sartre wrote that man would not be able to attain
his ultimate end. Does he want to say the same thing at the end
of his life? We come to know from the events of his life that
he took part in many movements and wherever man's freedom
has encountered danger, he has been active in his protests. In
his last interview we find that he says that the world today
appears to be bad, ugly and without any hope. The old man
who 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 this
hope has to be established. We have to try to explain that this
hope is always the directing power of revolt and revolution. He
still feels the strength of his hope and knows that this hope will
ultimately win.
In conclusion, we may observe that Sartre has mentioned the
ultimate end of human life. Man will choose that through his
freedom which will give him unity and permanence. In giving
shape to this ideal he will create a scale of values through his
free actions. As the aim of this scale of values we can measure
his life of action and his social idea. Rather it will be more
appropriate to say that man will construct his scale of values in
the social contexts. So the ultimate end of human life will result
in the improvement of society through this secondary project.
The actions performed by the individual will be judged good or
bad in terms of the successful realization of his freedom. Ac-
tions done without the feeling of freedom would be without
any morality.
PART II
I have mentioned earlier that Sartre wished to write a book on
ethics immediately after the publication of Being and Nothing-
ness. Such a book was actually written between 1947 and 1948
and given the title Cahiers pour une Morale (Notebooks for an
Ethics). We come to know from Arlette Elkaim-Sartre (who is
Sartre's adopted daughter) in her foreword to the book
published in 1983 that in the opinion of Sartre ontology itself
cannot formulate ethical precepts. It is concerned solely with
what is and we cannot possibly derive imperatives from onto-
logical indicatives. It does however allow us to catch a glimpse
of what sort of ethics will assume when we confront a human
situation and try to understand our responsibilities. But besides
the Notebooks it is now known that Sartre prepared more than
a thousand pages of handwritten and typed manuscripts. But
these pages which were mainly devoted to ethics, portions of
which 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 represent
Sartre's final view on ethics. Still, they indicate his attitude to-
wards developing a revolutionary socialist ethics. Actually, Sartre
thought of ontology as something dealing with actual reality.
And as ethics deals with what ought-to-be, ethical propositions
cannot be deduced from the factual state of affairs. But in this
book about which I am trying to give some idea (which may be
a very bad summary) Sartre seems to be abandoning his former
stance. He is now more close to Heidegger who speaks of an
ontology which is the foundation of metaphysics. He makes a
distinction between ontic and ontological existences. The ontic
deals with the every day human affair, but ontology refers to the
fundamental nature of Dasein. It is true that the ontic cannot
explain the ethical norms, but the ontological existence is more
or less the basis of ethical situation. But this should not give us
any hope that the Notebooks place us face to face with the
ethical principles which give us an insight into the systematic
development of an ethics. Of course, it cannot be denied that
Sartre is moving to a direction where he hopes to show that
human ethics has to bear the burden of abolishing violence and
oppression in the society. It speaks of a realm of ends which
may not be the kingdom of ends as mentioned by Kant, but it
points to the direction where man can hope for an improved
condition of life. As I have already pointed out that it is not
possible to give an idea of the 600-odd pages of the Notebooks
in a few pages, still I shall try to indicate the main areas of focus
on which Sartre directs his analytic flash-light.
In the beginning Sartre makes some introductory remarks
about 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 spoken
of as the collective without any concern for the particular hu-
man being. The same thing is found in his novel Nausea where
he does not agree with the autodidact for his sympathy for the
abstract. But even though ethics is necessary, it is absurd because
we are not yet sure of an ethics in the ontological framework of
Being and Nothingness. But man is everywhere oppressed and
the oppressor himself does know how he is caught in the social
traps of the network of the oppression. Hegel's Master and
Slave showed us how the master wishes to reduce the slave to
an object and consider him as inessential. Similar things
happen in relation to the leader of a political party who consid-
ers the workers as essential. He gives us a list of ethical values in
which generosity features at the top in the hierarchy of the
values. But even generosity is not sufficient, for to a slave the
master may show generosity but it is as if the master is being
kind to him, while the improvement of the condition of the
slave is his claim. It is to be acquired and not to be offered as
the 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 of
Dialetical Reason and The Idiot of the Family. He speaks of his-
tory as ambivalent and this is due to the fact that a plurality of
consciousnesses are related to history. They attempt a unification
and a totality, where history will realize its end. In Hegel, the
evolution of history takes place in the world and for man it is
finite, 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. In
other words, history reaches a synthetic unification. But that is
not the end of history. The totality loses its unification and
becomes detotalized. Sartre points out that both necessity and
contingency are the essential aspects of history. It is necessary
because the pre-existing conditions are going to determine what
will happen. But such a thing does not happen. Sartre gives
many illustrations of which we can mention the Battle of Wa-
terloo where Napoleon was defeated. But it was a matter of
chance that one of the army commanders failed to arrive on
time with his regiment. Such chances arise because of human
intervention. Sartre speaks of human action which has an end.
But the end depends on certain means. Again, we find that the
means themselves become ends: when an engineer wants to
construct a bridge across a river, the construction of the bridge
is his end. But the manner in which the bridge will be built is
the means. Then, when the work is going on, the work becomes
the 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 done
without incurring anything evil.
There is one problem of history. It may be that there are
many points of view. But how is that one point of view
recognises another and there comes to be a unification of so
many points of view? I know that there is the other and he tries
to dominate over me by his look or gaze. I wish to snatch my
subjectivity from him. Thus begins the play of subjectivity and
objectivity which we found also in Hegel. So in the play of the
struggle between subjectivity and objectivity, sometimes, perhaps,
most of the time, the master wins and he wants to annihilate the
slave. But if the slave is killed, the master loses his power of
domination. So he wants that the slave continues to live and
work for him. But the slave also desires to annihilate the master,
so that he can become the master. But he cannot be master
unless there is a slave. So the problem remains and ultimately we
find that master-slave unity in struggle continues in a form of a
synthesis. Sartre does not speak of any synthesis in Being and
Nothingness where my relations with the other are of an eternal
conflict. There is no Mitsein (togetherness). But in the Note-
books he says that the work is a project. It is not only my
project. But it is the project of an infinite number of people. It
is in relation to the project that I recognise the other and also
understand that his project and my project are coming to be
unified. A suggestion about this recognition of the other was
given in Existentialism and Humanism where Sartre said that I
cannot be free, unless the others are free. He was criticized by
many that there is no room for the existence of the other, in
Sartre's universe, because the Cartesian confined within the
solitariness 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 only
of human reality as being-in-the-world, but he is also speaking
of being-within-the-world as Being-in-the-world. Another re-
markable thing in the Notebooks is that the word Being is used
both with a capital letter and a small letter, as 'Being' and 'being'.
The second being means existence, though Sartre does not say
so. But the way he used Being and being suggests that human
beings have a being-with-others within being-in-the-world.
Being with capital letter, perhaps, indicates the mysterious Being
which constitutes the character or the categories of human ex-
istence as well as the unity of the whole towards which man
emerges. Oppression occurs in an important way in the Note-
books. It may be asked whether oppression causes alienation or
alienation causes oppression. The latter statement may be true in
many cases, but it cannot be said that oppression or alienation
is sufficient to cause the other. There are cases where alienation
occurs due to natural conditions or man's own condition. In
such cases it cannot be said that alienation is the basis of oppres-
sion. There are cases of oppression which cannot be explained
by alienation. Sartre refers to many illustrations of oppression
and his analysis is fascinating. One important illustration is the
relation between child and the parents. The child is asked to
follow certain rules or do certain duties. But he fails in many
cases. So he is oppressed. Actually, what we call duty is an
expression of oppression. There is a demand behind duty. The
demand expresses the nature of oppression. But in the case of
relation to God man approaches Him with prayer. He
expresses his submission to God and wants to accept the
necessary order of the world established by God. But when
something happens in the world not due to any fault of his
own, he protests against the divine order. At that time the divine
order appears to be a demand. It depends on violence. When
man does not listen to the commands of God, he is threatened
with oppressive consequences. But oppression is not just force.
It is true that force is a power which is necessary to move
something from one place to another. Force may be applied in
certain cases of the natural phenomena. It is the power of nature
and 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 under
demands that ethical categories become imperative. So impera-
tives which have to be obeyed assume the shape of oppression
or violence. The violence comes from the person who is my
other. But in the primitive tribal societies where the chief is the
other and whose commands are to be obeyed things take place
in the form of a gift-giving. Those who want to become chief
arrange a tribal feast called potlatch and all members of the tribe
take part in it. It is a sort of gift-giving but the tribals recipro-
cate by accepting the commands. This shows that ethical im-
peratives can be explained in two ways, where violence is not
needed and where there is no oppression. Sartre's idea of trac-
ing back the ethical duties to tribal society shows that ethics can
have a foundation other than violence or oppression. Sartre is
more preoccupied with God in the Notebooks than in Being and
Nothingness. He does not take any interest in God there except
saying that the idea of God is self-contradictory. But in the
Notebooks he refers to the Christian concept of God and
speaks of the divine order in which the believer has faith. But
this does not mean that he has aligned towards the divine. The
basic notion that there is no God underlies his discussion on
God. But he tries to see if there can be arguments for establish-
ing the existence of God. He wishes to explain certain creations
and discovers that God does not have the required distance
between himself and the world. So in order to make the world
he has to adopt the principle of constant creation. But as that
is not possible, God is simultaneous with the world. We can thus
say, if we like, that the world is God or God is the world. So
it is man who has to unveil the world which is given to him.
Man cannot provide any justification of the world and so the
world 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. But
his 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 are
placed as transcendent outside the human world. So Sartre
speaks of ethics in terms of value and the value is that which
removes the lack of Being. A lack is what is lacking, the lacked
and the totality of being, when the lacked-being will have the
totality of a being. The illustration which Sartre used in Being
and Nothingness is that of the crescent moon or the statue of
Venus de Milo. The crescent moon is lacking the totality of the
full moon, the incompleteness of the moon is the lacked and
the total full moon is the re-pairing of the lacked. So Sartre
speaks of value in terms of the lack. Man is incomplete, because
he 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 is
unattainable. So the human ideal value is always on the receding
process. Man pursues his ontological ideal, which is also his
ethical ideal and it is here that ontology merges with ethics.
Sartre has not really expressed clearly such a possibility but the
quest for his ontological ethics moves him towards that direc-
tion.
Hegel thought that the individual man is recognised through
the universal and understood as the representative of the species.
But this involves a circularity, for to understand the species it is
necessary that the individual is included in the definition of the
species. So the individuality has to be recognized through men's
surpassing himself to his goal. It is through his work that he gets
the universalising image and the externalization is changed
through my interiority. I pour my particularity in social forms,
because I am partially in them in my existence. I am recognised
in particularity through my recognition of the other particular
beings. My particularity includes the universality which is recog-
nized in the objective manner. My universal action survives in
the action of the others who follow after my death 'My action
will necessarily be prolonged since the action of each man is the
action of all'. Sartre discusses the nature of appeal in which one
person appeals to the freedom of the other. Such freedom is in
a particular situation. It is not an appeal to a given solidarity, but
has to be built on common operation. But what makes the
appeal possible ? The ground of the recognition of another's
freedom is value. This makes the individual point in principle
that every end has a value and every human reality is haunted by
values. This also gives rise to help which assists others to realize
their end. There may be an anxiety whether my help to others
will go against my end. But there is no doubt that there is a
general tendency to oblige. The principle of such willingness has
an infinite extent and it leads us to the belief that every end is
good.
The initial moment of the appeal is a kind of help to the
other. It adheres to the end of other. But it is also a promise of
reciprocity. The person I appeal to may appeal to me in return.
Appeal is confined to persons who comprehend each other's
reduction quite well. But appeal has an ambiguity because
though it recognizes other's freedom which is unconditional, the
ends are conditioned. The appeal may be a proposal to others
to 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 is
often a protext to the prayer and demand. Prayer does not
recognise any reason and as it is the order of the Supreme
Being, there is no reason for refusal. But actually refusal does cite
reasons. There may be revealed refusal but that is 'not an
expressed determination'. It simply illuminates the direction of
my willingnes. It refers to the preferences, which are in reality
free preferences. In refusing, the other seems to interfere in my
freedom. But he does not do so directly. Actually, he does not
want to cooperate with me. His refusal has to do with his own
acts. The refusal is a direct action on my project. His freedom
acts profoundly on my freedom. He wants to prevent me, as he
wanted to help me in my project. The freedom of the other
determines me. Thus refusal does what no violence can do. 'It
steals my freedom from me'. 'It rearranges my projects, yet it is
nothing'. 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 hence
suffer. But this situation is taken advantage of by those who
know, who are intelligent. I find that one of my acquaintances
is at a low level of culture, because he does not know how to
appreciate a painting by Picasso or enjoy the Sonata compiled
by Beetophen. I take the opportunity of educating him and
promise him that I will bring him to a higher level. In so doing,
I want to grab his freedom, because he has to freely submit
himself to me for his cultural development. An ignorant person
not only does not know that he lacks knowledge, but also is
unaware of the level of ignorance. He thinks himself to be quite
competent and thinks that he can manipulate the situations of
the world without any difficulty. But his ignorance is revealed,
when he starts talking on a particular subject. It is the highest
time for the intellectuals and the intelligent people to seize the
opportunity. Average men may have more or less same intelli-
gence and they only over-shine, because they cross the barriers
of intelligence tests. It is for this reason the average men who
occupy the centre of the bell-shaped curve do not like either the
very intelligent or the stupid people. In extreme cases, there may
be differences in the size of the brain, the availability of grey
matter and the member of fissures in the brain. Other people
who are average have more or less the same type of brain. It is
because of this that the intelligent men want to take the benefit
of the situation. They oppress the ignorant people and may also
take resort to violence. So Sartre wants to show that violence is
not limited to the familiar cases of use of force, the attack on
innocent people and the principle of preventing people from
setting their due. In the case of the relation of the stupid people
to intelligent people there is often deception and unlawful
possession of things which are not owned by me. Heidegger
expressed at a good length how the average people dominate
over the non-average. It is the average who sets the standards
of everything and so actually in everyday existence, man is das
Mann and he is not his individual self. In the cases of ignorance
the average intelligent man and it may also happen that the very
intelligent people also will not allow others to obtain more
refinement and cultural enlightenment than themselves. Sartre,
of course, does not refer to Heidegger in this particular case, but
it seems that he has Heidegger in mind when he expresses his
idea that the intelligent people make the life of the unintelligent
very hard. They take recourse to actions which endanger the
freedom of the unintelligent. Of course, many can ask whether
they require to be treated as men. We shall see later that the
white slave trader did not regard the black Africans as human
beings. They sold them as commodities and the slaves could
revolt, but ignorant people have no such scope because the reins
of the freedom are in the hands of the enlightened people.
Sartre criticises the theory of 'Master and Slave' and points
out that it is seductive as a phenomenon. The slave did not
invent anything of technological importance. Essentially he was
a domisticated or agricultural worker. As he worked in a group,
he could not grasp the significance of his work, on the assembly
line. The philosophical theory of stoicism and skepticism was
not invented by slaves. They were formulated by freemen, in
Rome. Stoicism became the theory for Masters like Epictetus or
Seneca or an emperor like Marcus Aurelius. In this theory, Sartre
thinks, the Master forewarns himself of the danger of becoming
a slave. He hides his pride only in the goal which is not threat-
ened. For one has to have good and detach himself from them
so that he can be a stoic. It is not a case of consoling oneself
for not having them. The theory of the slave who does not risk
his life, but who apprehends his freedom in fear and work is
true for the first-generation slaves. It does not hold for the later
generations who were born in the house of the Master and were
treated as members of the family. Therefore, he is an accomplice
of the Master. Such a slave finds himself in a natural situation.
It is not true that the Masters have no history. There are other
Masters with whom he does business. The Masters conquered
the Roman Empire. It was through the Masters that Christianity
came to Rome. Scientific invention and discoveries are not the
affair of slaves and serfs. It is the clergy or freemen of the
middle class who carry them out most of the time. Hegel's
theory is an ideal relationship and an ideally true one. (This part
is a paraphrase from Sartre's Notebooks.)
2
Sartre criticized Hegel's Dialetic and Marx's Materialism which
he identified with Stalinist version of Dialectical and Historical
Materialism in 1946. He pointed out that materialism had first of
all robbed man of his subjectivity and considered man in the
natural world as a set of natural functions. Materialism put the
causal and metaphysical priority of matter over mind, gave a
determined account of history. But it is itself transformed into
idealism, as it thought of the dialectic of Nature as the true
account of both the non-human and the human world. This
dialectic was held by the Materialists to be the absolute truth.
Sartre accused the Materialists of bad faith. He called it the
subjectivity of those who are ashamed of their subjectivity.
Materialism is a doctrine which destroys thought, but what
expects a person to choose freely. If thought is determined by
matter, how can there be a voluntary adoption of ideas ? Mate-
rialism, Sartre thought, 'is a monster; an elusive proteus, a large
contradictory semblance'. In spite of these criticisms against
Materialism he believed that it was the only liberating force in
France. He thought that man has no salvation other than the
liberation of the working class.
3
Sartre also mentioned that both
materialism and idealism are myths. What is required is a
philosophy which explains the revolutionary situations. In the
Notebooks he criticises Historical Materialism in number two
and 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 same
complex 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, the
phenomenon is reality. In both cases the higher is reduced to the
lower.
In Engels's economic determinism, D hring is the main tar-
get of attack. D hring understood the economic facts as facts of
the second order. The primary phenomena are to be sought in
the political force. D hring's point of view is mainly academic
and he deduces the situation from the will and not otherwise.
D hring tried to explain distribution on the basis of the eco-
nomic scheme and their mutual understanding. Engles criticises
D hring saying that he forgets the economic reality and accepts
the eighteenth-century bourgeois as the eternal man. Violence
intervenes in the course of history and before a society makes
use of slavery, it must have invented the instruments which the
slaves can use. In the dialectic theory we find that in the begin-
ning the primitive society had common land. The community
due to the rise of improved instruments produces more than
what is necessary. Different members appropriate different pro-
portion. As a result, inequality begins to appear leading to the
peasants owning small parcles of lans. This inequality among the
people of the tribal society gave rise to slavery and the origin of
private 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 no
land were treated as slaves. Sartre does not agree with this ex-
planation. He believes that slavery might have been introduced
for other reasons. Often tribes attacked other tribes and took
prisoners. These prisoners were then enslaved and engaged in
work. But slaves cannot be properly utilized unless there has
been some advancement of society during which new instru-
ments were discovered. This was possible with the discovery of
bronze. Moreover, in the primitive tribal society which mainly
depended on hunting, women stayed at home. In their leisure
time, they would cultivate the land and sow seeds. So agriculture
was not the activity of the whole society. It was mainly the work
of slaves and women. But slaves could not be used before the
discovery of bronze, because they have to be given sharper
instruments for cultivation. Now, the abundance of crop may
produce greed and desire to store the crops. Thus, there was not
only the economic fact of production and distribution which
gave rise to private property and slavery, but there were also the
psychological elements of greed, violence as well as choice. Since
the slaves were chosen as they were found useful, society could
have advanced to a better, progressive stage. That there was
progress in the slave society was also admitted by Engles. So
what we need for the explanation of the evolution of society is
a kind of combination of D hring and Engles, and not simply
the 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 be
right. But his idea of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis which are
purely logical phenomena cannot be applied to actual things.
Moreover, when Hegel speaks of contradiction between two
concepts A and not-A, it may be understood clearly. But when
we speak of a contradiction between the feudal society and the
capitalist society, there may be contradictions between them. But
one is a development of the other and so there may be both
homogeneous and heterogeneous elements. This does not make
one the contradiction of the other. There are differences which
are not denied. But difference is not contradiction. As there are
both similarities and differences, Hegel and Marx both can
speak of aufheben or surpassing. Sartre points out also that in the
case of events there are not only dialectical, but non-dialectical
elements. 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 enduring
power, their resistance to violence, there may be a group of
workers who may want to surrender, the capitalistic threat of
lock-out
__
all these elements which are not exactly dialectical
make the strike either successful or a failure. So Sartre thinks that
in a dialectical study of history we have to take into account all
these considerations.
We shall now discuss Sartre's concept of revolt, idea of good
and evil as well as his analysis of the condition of the slaves in
America, when slave traders used to bring the African men and
women for sale in the American market.
In the case of a revolt by the slave against the Master, he
revolts because he does not possess any property. He therefore
wants to kill the Master and acquire his property. There is also
another way in which the slave can win the victory. He can
assign himself completely to the Master and force him to obey
his orders blindly. But this will not continue for a long time.
There will come a time in future when he will revolt against the
Master. So I have to turn to the others and in the project I
undertake, others also have to be included. Thus, a collectivity
which is objective can join the revolt.
Along with this point of Sartre, it will not be irrelecvant if we
mention that Sartre gives desire a very important place. Desire
occurs twice in the Notebooks, once in number one and again
in number two. In the first Sartre wishes to discuss the relation
between desire and possession. The Master possesses everything
and the slave is deprived of everything. In certain tribal
communities there is a dance through which the desire to possess
is expressed. Before the animal is killed and possessed, the tribal
people mime the whole scene which gives them the strength and
courage to kill the animal. The same thing can happen in relation
to the property of the Master. But desire to possess may happen
also in imagination. In Notebook 2 Sartre shows that the image is
the present absent, while the perception is the absent present. I
desire a fruit, but the fruit is not before me. It is somewhere in the
world and I imagine its qualities. This, the image of the object, is
constituted, and my desire moves from the present absent to the
absent present to possess the thing.
When Sartre speaks of good and evil, he wants to make it clear
that evil is purely subjective. But in a project, all men work together
and they move towards the good, So the good is a value. But it is
a value which is transcendent and placed outside of us as in Platonic
concept of the goal.
About revolutionary violence which Sartre discusses at the end of
the Notebooks Sartre comments that he wishes to examine the
conditions of slavery in USA which was a case of institutional vio-
lence. He wanted to examine the conditions of the workers in the
capitalist society, but the book ended before this could be discussed
and remained incomplete. About the condition of black slaves, he
says, that they were not treated as human beings. They were not
given any education and also not any religion. It was believed by the
Master that the slaves would not be able to learn anything. But the
slaves of the later generation regarded themselves as essential to the
Master. They were born and brought up in the Master's house. But
that did not give them any extra privilege, except that some of them
were very loyal. The oppression continues but, perhaps in a more
sophisticated manner. Slavery is institutionalised and the Master feels
the echo of being the oppressor coming from outside. Here too
Sartre seems to suggest that it is by a revolutionary socialist ethics
that the institution of slavery and the capitalistic system can be
overthrown.
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 for
the other;
Fourth type: the Me conceived as an alien
__
one can expect
anything 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 a
refusal of some form of alienation and a new form of alienation.
Each moment of progress represents freedom as a refusal and it
also represents the freedom as a thing. 'Je est un autre'. I am He.
4
Besides these topics which I have discussed Sartre includes
discussions on ontology, which may not be ethics proper, but which
is 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 Sartre
readers, but Sartre is trying to rethink thee ideas. I have not
included them in my discussion. I think I have been able in a very
minor way to throw light on the Notebooks for an Ethics. But still
we are not able to say finally what Sartrean Ethics is. Perhaps, we
still have to wait for the final word on this. I conclude my discussion
with a quotation from Sartre's Notebook2:
In sum, my epoch is Me. I am the being
immanent to it by which it transcends itself
towards its salvation. I have to assume it as I
assume myself and make it pass over to the
absolute in attaining myself as absolute. In this
way I manifest being, by way of my moods and
my epoch in and through a project that saves
and founds this epoch. It is the historicizing
myself that I assume myself as absolute (in taking
up my gratuitousness for my own account) and it
is historicizing myself that I manifest and unveil
the concrete maximum of being (the being
already revealed by my epoch and the revealing/
revealed being of this epoch on Being'.
5
Perhaps, this is Sartre's ethical message for us. We
heard it in Being and Nothingness.
Notes
Part one of this essay is based on a Bengali article published in Jignasa, in
1983.
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 Amartya
Sen
SHEFALI MOITRA
The classical model of 'economic man' has gone through many
mutations. In the earlier period the economic man was
conceived as an abstract rationality-maximizer. A major change
in this approach was brought about around 1960 with the
acknowledgement of the role of history in man's economic
activities. Economic choices are not abstract ones, they are
choices influenced by their respective historical settings. Working
within the liberal tradition Amartya Sen has brought about a
major change in the economic image of man. Sen is trying to
free man from an over-deterministic position by focusing on
the open-endedness of his decisions. Market forces are not all
powerful. Often these forces fail to exert a regulative influence
over an individual's choice. Similarly Sen asserts that social forces
fail to control all our choices. In other words no legitimization
is absolute. There are spaces through which man's free choices
can be formulated. The enlightenment image of man as a ratio-
nal animal has been subjected to close scrutiny by Sen. He
comes to the conclusion that man is guided by many motives
and that purity of motive is not a virtue of choice.
Having incorporated partiality, plurality and open-endedness
Sen has expanded the classical liberal image of 'economic man'.
There is of course a fundamental difference between expanding
a concept and fundamentally changing it. Expanding entails
inclusion of new parameters into an already existing framework
whereas a fundamental shift entails a change in the framework
itself. 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 the
economic structure as well as jeopardise efficiency. By including
plurality into his model of interpretation he has been able to
loosen the straight-jacketing of theory to a great extent. He
makes room for plurality by acknowledging the open-endedness
of man's choice. Since choices cannot be fully determined, a
Kant-like categorical imperative cannot be uniformly applied
across the board. Individual difference in choice will arise in
spite of the fact that man is a rationality-maximiser. There will
always be a plurality or lack of homogeneity. The denial of the
existing differences between individual choices led to uniform
prescriptions of the principle of justice. This approach had its
limitations, the desires and aspirations of any groups were silenced
and marginalised. The process was so subtle that even the aggrieved
party failed to perceive the hidden injustice in the system. Those
occupying the margins were made to believe that the projected
principle of justice was in their interest even though they did not
have any representative role in formulating the principle. Coopera-
tion in society was sought to be established in this way by silencing
dissent and ignoring conflict. Sen tries to change the situation by
prescribing a theory of justice which makes room for uniformity
through cooperation and which also admits the possibility of
individual differences leading to conflict.
The acceptance of pluralism has created an opportunity for the
so-far silenced voices to find a channel for expression. Women are
prominent among those whom Sen has included in his list of
exemplars for plurality. Though Sen's specific contribution to the
women's question is limited, the general structural modifications, he
suggests for liberalism, has far-reaching prospects for women as
well. The interpretative apparatus thus provided helps to identify
many problem areas that were either passed off in silence or not
given separate importance. For instance, it was thought that with an
increase 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. The
biological difference between male and female members of the
human species is referred to as sex differences. The role models
assigned to male and female members of the species are known as
gender roles. So each individual has a sex identity and a gender
identity. The gender roles are artificially created, therefore gender
identity is a constructed identity. These structures differ from one
culture to the other. By contrast, sex differences are given in nature.
Cultures the world over have been guilty of creating gender models
in a discriminatory fashion so that men are expected to play lauda-
tory roles and women are expected to play the gender role of being
man's 'other', his complementary. Treating the woman as the man's
'other' is typical of the way patriarchy constructs gender. Gender
politics is determined by the way gender is constructed. We can
shift, change and transform gender roles but we cannot free
ourselves from them, they are very much part of every culture
there is no way of going back to a gender-innocent culture. More-
over, the observance of certain gender roles provides a certain
amount of efficiency in our social dynamics. So gender construc-
tions are part of the social reality we live in. The problem is not how
to 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 that
can be overemphasised. The identification of this phenomenon has
been the singular contribution of feminists. Feminists form a
heterogeneous group. The conservatives, for instance, think that
ideally gender should be constructed in accordance with woman's
and man's biological nature, in other words, they take a naturalistic
approach to gender. In contrast, the liberals hold that there is an
essential human nature which is gender-neutral and that in ethics
and jurisprudence men and women should attempt to transcend
their gender differences so as to approximate their essential human
nature. As a corollary to this construction moral prescriptions are
designed as prescriptions for the human which resides in all men
and women irrespective of their gender roles. Sen is sensitive to the
anomaly in this view. He is aware that gender differences permeate
all human existences. There is no gender-neutral human core. At
times he even seems to talk in line with conservative feminism when
he says 'one of the features of gender inequality is its association
with a biological difference which has to be taken into account in
MOITRA : A Note on Gender Justice 261 260 ETHICS : An Anthology
understanding the demands of equity between women and men'.
1
This sounds like the conservative feminist slogan 'gender is wired
into biology'. In addition to the biological needs of women Sen,
however, speaks also of the influence of social pressures on gender
construction. Sen seems to be pointing at two different constituents
of gender, the social and the biological.
Gender expectations are internalised by women. Sen is very
much aware of this problem of internalisation and he calls it the
problem of legitimisation. He writes: 'the tolerance of gender
inequality is closely related to notions of legitimacy and correctness.
In family behaviour, inequalities between women and men (and
between girls and boys) are often accepted as "natural" or "appro-
priate",
2
By legitimising injustice its invisibility is facilitated. Once a
form of life is accepted as natural and appropriate it can also be
accepted as being objectively true.
Conservative theories are faulted for sanctioning different sets of
role prescriptions for men and women, the fault being that an
essentialistic prescription leads to discrimination. The liberal theorists
attempt to liberate women by approving uniform moral sanctions
for men and women alike. Liberal theories of justice are generally
concerned with justice in a gender-neutral way by presuming that
there is a gender-neutral metaphysical agent for whom the prescrip-
tions of justice are meant. Any evidence of injustice is then attributed
to a biased use of an otherwise unbiased principle of justice. An
identical diagnosis is offered for cases of gender bias gender bias
is interpreted as a form of malpractice and not as a product of a
theory which is at fault. So in order to eradicate cases of gender-
discrimination we are urged to be more objective and then only we
shall be in a position to identify the essence of man which is gen-
der-neutral. Having identified the human essence we will be in a
position to apply the neutral universal principle of justice to all men
and women uniformly, without any gender bias. This was the pre-
scription of Kant, and also of Rawls. Feminists, who follow the
Rawlsian model, argue that the feminist problem is the problem of
justice and that once that is achieved the feminist struggle will realize
its 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 carry
the 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 noticing
the existence of a large number of needs of the 'other'. These needs
become invisible and eventually non-existent. This happens through
a process of internalisation of injustice. The apparent insensitivity to
injustice may also be caused by a process of resignation to the
existing order of things. Since Sen accepts heterogeneity in the
human situation he does not fall in line with the classical liberal
account of a universal man. At the same time he does not accept
the absolute man-woman dichotomy laid down by the conserva-
tives. He tries to carve a place somewhere between the two extremes
of a biologically determined universal prescriptions for all men and
women, and the other extreme of 'anything goes'. He wants to
maintain the centrality of reason. Man is rational and to be rational
is to be a utility-maximiser. For Sen the concept of reason is much
more nuanced than it is in the Kantian or Rawlsian system. Reason
for Sen is context-sensitive.
Instead of making a priori prescriptions for ensuring greater
freedom, as Kant did, Sen suggests that prescriptions for freedom
and empowerment must be prefaced by an empirical investigation
into the existing forms of injustice. Once injustice is identified a
prima facie argument is established for censoring the theories of
justice which accommodate instances of such injustice. He stresses
the 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 - these
are ways of translating freedom into concrete achievements. Merely
having the concept of freedom as Kant had or merely to have the
means to freedom as Rawls prescribes, does not rule out injustice.
Injustices that co-exist with the practice of theories of justice are seen
by Sen as forms of legitimised injustice. An unjust practice for Sen
is a symptom of a defect in the theory of justice. A glaring example
is found by Sen in the case of 'missing women' the world over. The
girl 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 to
fade out of the social dynamics - due to ill health or due to other
health constraints.
There is a pronounced gender injustice prevalent in all societies
including North America, Western Europe and Japan. In some
fields women's deprivation is much more glaring, as for instance in
the Third World countries. Here the mortality rate as well as the
morbidity rate is much higher among women than among men.
Sen points out that even if the Sub Saharan African ratio of females
to males is taken as the standard the number of missing women in
India would exceed 100 million. Gender inequality in matters of
birth and death must be seen as an accident or as the result of some
natural causal chain. This inequality is directly related to gender
injustice according to Sen. Many economists would not like to link
economic statistics to ethical issues in this way. This is why Sen says
that what counts as gender injustice depends on the way justice is
defined. Sen is one of the few economists who focuses on gender
inequality as an indication of an associated theory of injustice. In
other words, he looks at the ground-level reality in order to
adjudicate the implications of a theory of justice. Thus Sen brings
economics and philosophy into an essential bind.
Legitimised injustice is hard to identify; it need not take a crude
form of denying food and medication to a woman or a girl child.
Generally gender injustice is concealed in much subtler forms. Just
as gender injustice could either be frank or implicit. Similarly injustice
could be one of omission or one of commission. Injustice of
commission occurs when a legislation negatively affects women and
an injustice of omission occurs when women's needs are ignored
__
we just seem to forget that women exist
__
they continue to be
treated as mute and invisible.
The roots of injustice spread over both the subjective
psychological sphere and the objective social sphere. Therefore,
injustice has to be fought both at the level of concepts/theories and
on the level of practice. Due to the legitimisation of injustice we
develop a false consciousness which is then carried with us at the
time of formulating legislations and at the time of adjudication. If
we are the products of a gender-biased culture then it is only to be
expected that we will contaminate our theories. Social theories, after
all, are not a voice from nowhere. So theories must be closely
related to traces of gender injustice. Feminists are especially sensitive
to partialities built into theories of justice. The second wave of
feminism has drawn our attention to the existence of gender-bias
embedded in concepts. The first wave of feminism spoke against
material discriminations leading to various kinds of concrete
deprivations. Sen pays due attention to the concrete instances of
discrimination as well as to the conceptual biases against women. A
close look at practice not only reveals the existing malpractices, Sen
thinks, it also provides an indicator of flaws in the conceptual
scheme in which the practice is embedded.
In the case of gender injustice Sen is addressing two questions at
the same time. The first is how to identify an injustice which is seen
by the victim and her culture as legitimate, natural and appropriate.
The second question is how to translate the demands of justice into
practice. Sen's answer to the first question is rather perfunctory. He
merely says that a 'wrong information basis will play havoc with any
subsequent discussion of inequalities'. A theory of justice without an
adequate epistemic support is empty. For philosophers any distinction
between appearance and reality is of great importance, be it the
distinction of apparent justice and real justice, or be it of any other
form of appearance and reality. Sen uses a simple criterion for the
identification of real justice, perceptions of justice must be subjected
to the demands of fairness, so that the demands for justice could
serve as the standard for justice. Since Sen pays tribute to Rawls' ideas
of fairness, rationality, reasonableness, objectivity and reflective equi-
librium it does not seem to be inappropriate to loosely club Rawls
and Sen together as liberals belonging to the same tradition. This
affinity between the two is disturbing to the radical feminist.
Unlike conservatives and liberals the radical feminists trace the
roots of oppression to theories and concepts. They are not willing
to confine women's issues to the level of content only. To them
liberal theory is also suspect, it lays too much emphasis on maintain-
ing the status quo in the name of efficiency. Radical feminists feel
that 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 issues
relating to women's gendered existence--broadly speaking 'her lived
experience'. Issues like abortion, child marriage, pornography, bride
burning have been so far marginalized or omitted from mainstream
conceptual analysis, they have heen confined to first-level discus-
sions of social science. Women's problems are not caused by errors
of omission alone. Even if such errors are rectified by incorporating
women's issues into existing interpretational frameworks, the
wrongs done to women will not be amended according to the
radical feminists. To take an example one may decide to choose one
of the existing interpretational models, e.g. Utilitarianism, Existential-
ism, Marxism or some other model for addressing hitherto
neglected women's issues--the problem of abortion could be seen
as such an issue. Then following the line of approach we have either
a utilitarian account or an existential account or a Marxian account
of abortions
__
depending on which framework we adopt. The radi-
cal feminist feels that this mode of addressing the problem of
invisibility and marginalization is only a way of sidetracking the real
bone of contention. For this would imply that there was nothing
wrong with the conceptual schemes that are available. Schemes can
always be appropriately expanded to 'include' women's lived expe-
riences, meaning thereby that there is nothing inherent in
existing theories that has been responsible for the marginalization of
women's experience. Not acknowledging the uniqueness of
women's experiences has been a lapse according to them and not
a shortcoming of the existing theories. They plead that there is no
gender bias in a conceptual scheme. The radical feminists do not
agree; they want to change the perspective from seeing women as
the problem to seeing theory from a critical perspective, suggesting
thereby that a theory, oblivious of the gender question, has a serious
lacuna and needs to be revised. Many experiences are not amenable
to 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 restructure
theory. So it is no longer women who are the problem, it is the
theory which makes women the problem, and therefore the theory
needs revision. The liberal diagnosis of a liberal theory and a
gendered practice is not acceptable to the radical feminist; they see
gender as an omnipresent category of interpretation. Wherever the
presence of gender is denied some politics of silence is at work. So
it is the neutral stance that is a suspect.
The problem, the radicals have with Sen, is that he restricts the
domain of gendered categories to the context of women's issues
and fails to see that the neutered zones are equally afflicted by
gender discrimination. Let us re-examine the virtues Sen sees in
Rawls' position. They are: fairness, rationality, reasonableness, reflec-
tive equilibrium and objectivity. The radical feminist will complain
that these are all mythical goals on the assumption that reason can
at times be autonomous, context-neutral and impartial. The artifici-
ality of these goals can be exposed by pointing out the real existence
of plurality and diversity in human experiences at the levels of both
theory and practice.
Sen's thesis is no doubt an improvement of Rawls' theory of
justice which is out-and-out insensitive to the gender question. Sen
speaks of gender insensitivity but sees the problem as being con-
fined to the capabilities of women alone. On examination it will be
seen that once gender-bias is acknowledged as a hindrance to justice
it will also be observed that gendered roles adversely affect both
men and women, of course, in different ways.
Sen makes it very clear that he is not forwarding a full-fledged
theory of justice. He says: 'I have not gone beyond outlining a space
and some general features of a "combining formula", and this
obviously, falls short of a complete theory of justice.'
3
The 'combin-
ing procedure' referred to by Sen is a complex procedure. Each
individual occupies a complex socio-historical space determined by
class, caste, gender, etc., in other words, every individual is
positioned in a social context. When primary goods like income,
wealth, basic liberties, etc. are distributed among individuals then a
combination of the place one occupies and the goods one owns
takes place. This combination influences the individual's freedom to
achieve. Sen's position marks an important shift from Rawls' posi-
tion. Rawls held that the possession of primary goods serves as an
index of justice. Sen agrees that the possession of primary goods is
a necessary condition for freedom. But he hastens to add that each
does not have the same capability of translating primary goods into
identical 'freedom to achieve'. In addition to the disparity in the
social position held by individuals there are also behavioural
constraints which stand in the way of translating primary goods into
'freedom to achieve'. Behavioural constraints occur due to social
pressures and due to prescriptions of what counts as legitimate
behaviour. These constraints are not limited to gender-defined
behaviour alone, other underprivileged group may also be
constrained. Sen's theory of justice tries to make room for two sets
of capabilities
__
one set has a narrower scope and the other set has
a wider scope. The former includes the capability to achieve the
demands of justice so as to give the individual more freedom within
a 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 primary
goods include wealth, basic liberties, freedom of movement, choice
of occupations, power of office and the social basis for self-respect.
Sen says that these are means to freedom and not indicatory of
freedom. Women, for instance, may possess these primary goods
and yet not possess freedom. If a woman has internalized injustice,
in other words if injustice is legitimised for her, then she will be
incapable of harnessing the available primary goods for the acqui-
sition of freedom. We could take the example of wealth which is
a basic primary good and show how the possession of this good
need not be an indicator of freedom or of justice. A woman, who
has internalized injustice, could think it appropriate to accumulate
wealth for the purpose of providing a dowry for her own marriage.
In this instance the ownership of a primary good is not an indicator
of freedom. Gender justice cannot be guaranteed within the limited
scope of primary goods. Sen rightly suggests that the focus of the
index of freedom must be shifted from the context of primary
goods to the 'freedom to achieve'. By 'freedom to achieve' Sen
means the capability to function. This he calls the 'capability
approach to justice'. The 'freedom to achieve' is reflected in one's
capability to function. Like the primary goods approach, the
capability approach too has its limitations. Due to the internalisation
of injustice one may not possess the psychological frame of mind
to assert one's capabilities, which means having a capability and
functioning accordingly are not one and the same thing. Sen
observes that it is 'important to emphasize that the freedom to
choose from alternative actions has to be seen not just in terms of
permissible possibilities but with adequate note of the psychological
constraints that may make a person (e.g. a housewife in a traditional
family) desist from taking steps that she could in principle freely
take'.
4
Thus the capability approach to justice also needs a great
amount of vigil. As Sen says 'the central issue is not to confront the
underlying prejudice directly'.
5
The prejudices must give way to
exceeding fruition of capabilities in terms of greater fairness, greater
rational equilibrium, greater reasonableness, greater objectivity, etc.
By guiding practice towards these aims women can effectively work
towards eliminating gender injustice.
The second question that Sen had posed in this context was
a related question how to translate the demands of justice into
practice. Sen observes that one major reason why the existing
gender status quo has been maintained by different cultures is
that the status quo is perceived as a guarantor of efficiency. Sen
suggests that by increasing women's capabilities the overall
efficiency of society will not decrease. Once this is established
there should be no problem in translating his theory into
practice.
Sen tells us that speaking of freedom and capabilities alone
does not amount to a theory of justice, in addition to this, a theory
of justice must have aggregative principles and distributive
principles. Sen's emphasis on freedom as an index of justice is to
be 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 for
efficiency or we opt for inefficiency and chaos. There seems to
be more available options than these. I do not feel comfortable
with his assertion that 'a theory of justice defined in terms of the
capability space is to place the debate where it securely belongs'.
To say that prejudices relating to justice could be addressed head
on by subjecting them to demands of fairness or less partial
rational assessment doesn't sound very convincing. The fear
remains that there can be a patriarchal version of 'fairness' and
'less partial rational assessment'. Sen rightly points out that
gender is a hidden variable which plays havoc with theories of
justice. But when he demands that a theory of gender justice
must satisfy the efficiency condition then one wonders whether
this demand would be counter-productive.
Notes Notes Notes Notes Notes
1. Amartya Sen, 'Gender Inequality and Theories of Justice' in Woman
Culture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities, eds.Martha
Nussbaum 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's
happines
__
shappiness being understood as a subjective feeling
of contentment.
I have no fear of being mistaken if I claim that each of us
wants happiness, although we feel happiness and unhappiness
involuntarily. Ensuring this fact about ourselves, I think, needs
no complicated justification or proof
__
it can be seen through
simple self-reflection with no need of reasoning; the slightest
attention of the mind to itself suffices to show it.
Now it can hardly be agreed that the ground of happiness
lies 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 being
happy, 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 are
moral philosophers or students of moral philosophy are much
better off than the rest of us. This being the case, there seems
to 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 conclude
that 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 in
which moral persons are better off on account of their morality,
but in the world in which we live such cases are very rare if real
at all. Frankly speaking, it hardly needs to be mentioned that in
this world morality and happiness often diverge. However
creepy or pathetic it might appear, it is a blatant truth that
people trying hard to remain moral daily and hourly often meet
with miseries and misfortunes, while the vicious flourish. I must
confess that it seems to me at least quite a vexing fact that
morality hardly pays
__
or in case it pays, it strikes us with a
surprise. We can only register a deep disappointment with this
fact of life. Anyway, this being the fact, a necessary link seems
to be lacking between 'being moral' and 'being happy'
__
at least
inasmuch as the mundane life is concerned. This does not mean
that a man should abandon morality in case it leads him to a
pitiable plight. On the contrary, one might even argue that
morality could never be turned into mere expediency. Indeed,
often morality needs or involves some kind of struggle with
adverse circumstances, physical or mental hardships. But then
mostly it is on the amount of hardship that an agent has to face
to fulfil his moral responsibilities that the degree of moral
excellence of the action is supposed to depend. Truly speaking,
a man can scarcely remain moral in his daily activities if he is not
resolute in misfortune; in order to remain moral he must have
fortitude, the ability to endure suffering.
But, then, many moral philosophers have insisted that a
moral person should get happiness, since, in virtue of being
moral, he deserves to be happy; that is, only morality allows us
to become worthy of happiness, although the moral agent does
not put any claim to it. It is however not rare that the more
moral and the less happy a man is, the more painful is the
feeling that he is not happy, though deserving happiness. Such
a man is satisfied with his conduct, but not with his condition.
Were he not moral, he could perhaps bear his painful condition
better, in the knowledge that he deserved to suffer.
Anyway, the point that a moral person is worthy of being
happy 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 acting
as the moral law enjoins, because that is what the moral law
enjoins. A right action done from any other motive cannot
count as morally admirable. Kant, that is, is not arguing that the
consciousness of morality and the expectation of happiness are
one and the same thing, and thus keeps intact the distinctness
of virtue and happiness in order to guarantee the purity of the
moral motive. In other words, consciousness of the moral law
and the feeling of respect resulting therefrom must be distinct
from, and prior to, any expectation of happiness as its conse-
quence. Otherwise, it would make no sense to say that the
worthiness to be happy is a function of ones devotion to virtue.
If the consciousness of virtue and the expectation of happiness
collapsed, then striving for happiness would be the standard by
which the worthiness to be happy would be measured, and we
would be left without a means or reason to discriminate worthi-
ness since presumably everyone strives to be happy with rather
great regularity. We cannot, then, speak of worthiness to be
happy unless there is an independent standard for assessing
moral worth.
Anyway, in spite of the total irrelevance of happiness in the
motivational framework of morality, Kant thinks it unjust that a
moral person should suffer. It is this kind of thinking that has
prompted 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 worthy
of happiness I may hope for it;...morality thus has a necessary
relation to happiness'.
1
It is precisely for this reason that Kant has to assume the
immortality of the soul as well as the reality of God. As Kant
thinks, it is only an omnipotent and just Being like God who
can guarantee the harmony of morality and happiness, if not in
this life, in an after-life. Such a harmony should at some state or
other be ensured. Hence morality needs, according to Kant, to
postulate our immortality and God. The same point, it may be
noted in passing, has been emphasised in a slightly different way
by another ancient philosopher, Ralph Cudworth. To quote
him:
The belief of the existence of a God, of the natu-
ral immortality of the soul, and consequently of
rewards and punishments after this life, ... are
highly necessary to be believed in order to lead a
morally virtuous and good life.
2
But is there any way to ensure the happiness of the moral
agent 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 convinced
that happiness and morality are two entirely different things. We
may be pleased, for example, to see a person happy, but we do
not think that he is by that fact morally good. We also know
that a man can be very unhappy even when he tries hard to be
morally good, as well as happy even if he has not been morally
good in the least. In fact, the pursuit of happiness is more often
than not the chief rival and impediment to morality. This is
because we are mostly guided by the conviction, often
unspoken, that our individual happiness is special. It often
happens that we try to be happy in a way that is not defensible
in objective terms. To make the point more explicitly, to bring
happiness to ourselves, we often render ourselves conveniently
indifferent, even sometimes hostile, to the welfare of others. But
morality essentially requires us to be guided by the thought that
we are in no way privileged and we should never act as if we are.
More importantly, morality urges us to help even those who are
not likely to help us in return, and to do so even when nobody
is watching. This is why a moral life is said to be a battle against
selfishness; or, to put it in more general terms, this explains why
our moral responsibilities often appear to us in the form of
obligations.
In view of the above, it is difficult to find out any ready or
internal link between morality and happiness in this world. But
it is important to comprehend that if moral life can in no way
be 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
and this would not be a very healthy thesis about moral life. It
is indeed universally agreed that part of what makes a good life
is that the person in question is happy or pleased with how it
is going, that is, subjectively experiences it as satisfying. Truly
speaking, man can hardly intend to be unhappy, not directly in
any case; consequently, no moral theory ought to ask him to try
to do so. As Kant observed:
Man is not...expected to renounce his natural
aim of attaining happiness as soon as the ques-
tion of following his duty arises; for like any
finite rational being, he simply cannot do so.
3
But then it should be clear that moral agency certainly cannot
allow one to want oneself to be the kind of person who is
happy in terms of immorality. So the crucial question is this: Can
morality make one happy solely for being moral ? I think, It can.
As I see, morality and happiness are not absolutely opposed
to each other. For there is a sense
__
or so it seems to me
__
in
which the conflict between morality and happiness would seem
to be superficial. In terms of this sense, the antagonism between
the pursuit of morality and being happy would appear to be due
to a faulty or rather narrow conception of happiness. Our
modern conception of happiness is shaped
__
I should say
distorted
__
by the weight of material gains alone. And, as I see,
among the factors that render pursuing morality distressing, this
cramped notion of happiness plays a prominent role. But then
there is a kind of happiness, not in conflict with morality, of
which human beings are capable and which some, though a very
few, human beings achieve. What I have in mind is the satisfac-
tion that is inherent in the moral pursuit itself
__
that is, the
interior delight that moral endeavour as such brings in one's
mind. This does not mean that when someone feels himself
happy in achieving something through immoral deeds, his
happiness is not happiness at all. I am not in favour of defining
happiness in terms of morality, so that only being moral is being
happy. It seems possible to be happy without being moral. It is
nonetheless true that one who wants to be moral for its own
sake characteristically enjoys his moral activities. And it would be
foolish to confuse this sort of enjoyment with other forms of
pleasure. 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 had
in any way but by engaging in moral deeds outclasses all other
sorts of happiness. Of course, such moral contentment would
be available only to one who values morality for its own sake.
Since such a person pursues morality for its own sake and not
for any further motive, he would take pleasure just in pursuing
morality, even if it leads to disadvantages, or even to wounds
and death; he would not think that he would be losing anything
by his moral deeds that could be balanced against the value of
morality. Such a person would not only judge that he venerates
himself in pursuing morality, but, more importantly, that moral
pursuits themselves endow his self with a worth that can
compensate him any loss that moral pursuit would or might
otherwise incur. As a consequence, for such a person, the
satisfaction of staking morality on everything else would outrank
all possible pleasures. With this realisation, anyone pursuing
morality even in misery could remain a self-content man, which
is why moral contentment is of paramount importance in the
context 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 in
utter adversity might help one to overcome such temptation.
This, if true, shows another important truth : It is a mistake
to believe that moral worth is only gained if the performance of
duty is unpleasant. Acknowledgement of moral contentment
would thus render the claim untrue that in order to be moral,
one needs necessarily to be a sorry or unhappy person. It is of
course true that the real strength of the moral man lies in his
deliberate and firm resolution to act on moral maxims for their
own sake. But, given moral contentment, this would not entail
that 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) uniquely
involves
__
the deeply satisfying moral contentment. It is rarely
realised that a virtuous life may well be and in all likelihood will
be 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 not
based on any longing or promises, and hence moral content-
ment never afflicts its owner with anxieties. Consequently, the
best way to such happiness is to engage in moral activities for
their own sake. I must say that those who are always after getting
profited by immorality become so obstinate about unjust ben-
efits that they are incapable of pausing long enough to consider
if happiness obtained from such benefits would be outclassed by
the joy that a moral life has to offer. As the moral contentment
is not contingent on any interest but is self-sustained, it is truly
enduring. An in-depth awareness of this matchless aspect of
moral contentment would console the just in their poverty.
Of course, as observed earlier, the pursuit of morality, to be
worthy of happiness, must be determined independently of any
promise of happiness, that is, only through the clear perception
of duty. So the moral agent must turn against any pleasure that
morality cannot tolerate. In fact, if someone pursues morality in
order to get satisfaction of any sort, he would no longer be
counted as a moral person but only as a man of self-interest, for
he would then do moral acts inasmuch as they are personally
pleasing him. His final goal would be getting pleasure and not
being moral. Hence such a person would be a hedonistic egoist
who takes his own pleasure to be the sole justification of all acts.
In any case, a moral person would not hesitate to pursue
morality even when he would be laughed at behind his back for
his moral pursuit. It is however noteworthy that people around
a person of firm moral commitment often feel troubled by his
presence in their midst. This should not occasion surprise.
Because of the intrinsic stringency as well as the unique inner
worth of moral pursuit, we cannot help having within us a deep
feeling of awe towards a man of firm moral commitment - even
when we outwardly mock at him in the name of imprudence.
This awesome aspect of morality, if well-taken, may well render
morality 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 as
intrinsically valuable, and often do not in the least hesitate to
perform the most heinous and loathsome actions if only they
bring him some material gain. It is alleged that the conviction in
the modern period is that the more a man works to further his
wealth and economic interests the more he would be considered
as a 'valuable' person. This is true as a matter of fact, but none-
theless is most undesirable - indeed dangerous - as an attitude
toward each other. For, such a mentality often begets enmity
and hostility of the worst kind. Human imagination long ago
pictured Hell, but it is only through his recent ruthless deeds of
an unbelievable kind that man has almost been able to give
reality to what he had imagined. In fact. I often am compelled
to surmise if it would be rational at all to wish that man with his
current 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 or
later realise the intrinsic worth of morality, and hence I allow
myself to hope that that a day will come when man will free
himself from the shackles of material concerns that give him
only 'routine pleasures' and thus man will someday bend his
mind to moral pursuit for its own sake, which would give him
the kind of happiness most distinctive of man - that is, moral
contentment.
References References References References References
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 Morality
with A Treatise of Freewill, ed. Sarah Hutton (Cambridge: Cambridge
University 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. Hans
Reiss (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 1,6
adharma 13, 16, 17, 22, 68, 69, 82, 127
adhikri 17
ada 13, 81, 82
Advaita Vednta 126
ahi s 12, 13,50,90, 127
ajva 68, 70, 71
altruism 42, 55
Amartya Sen 55
anekntavda 65, 98
aprva 4,13
ranyaka 40
arhat 87
Aristotle 137, 168, 189
Arlette Elkain-Sartre 222
Aron, R. 207
artha 6, 7
Arthastra 19, 22
asceticism 95
rava 73, 74, 75, 77, 78
tm 67, 72
aufheben 233
authentic existence 212
Auxter 185
avidy 58 127
Ayer, A. J. 200-203, 206
Baier, K. 141
bandha 76, 85
Beetophen 229
Bentham 197
Bhagavadgta 7, 11, 12, 18, 22, 23, 24,
126, 129
bodhi 43, 51
Bodhisattva 35, 62, 63
Bosanquet 197
Bradley, F. H. 135, 197
Brandt,R.B. 136, 152, 155, 158, 159,
166, 170
Brink, D. O. 130
Buddha 30-35, 38, 42-46, 49, 51, 55,
58, 61, 141
Buddhism 27, 33, 34, 42, 52, 53, 55,
57
Butler 137, 151, 152
Camus, A. 29, 39, 36
Capability 198-200
Crvka 58, 86
Categorical Imperative 139, 140, 182,
185, 188
cetan 47
Charles de Gaul 208
Christ 30, 141
Christian 125
cittauddhi 24
codan 3, 4, 5
conglomeration principle 15
Cudworth, R. 249
Dante 141
deontic logic 15
deontological 140
Dhammapada 48
dharma 1, 2, 3, 5-8, 13, 17, 19, 35, 42,
49, 61, 68, 69, 78, 82, 83, 127
Dharmastra 1, 19, 22
Index
Dharmayuddha 11, 24
duhkha 113, 114
Dhring 231, 232
egoism 55
eightfold means 44
emotivism 202-204
Engels 231, 232
entropy principle 83
Epictet 230
Eudaimonia 137
Ewing A.C. 152
Firth, R. 136, 166
Flaubert 208
Foot 167, 199, 203
Fortes, M. 136
Frankena 150-152, 170
freedom 139, 178, 183, 186, 188, 189,
209, 210, 212-215, 217-222, 228,
229
Gender 191-200
Human nature 193
Hyustice 192, 194-196, 200
kmya Karma 23, 24
Kant 139-141, 177-194, 197, 223, 248-
251
Karma 83-90, 92-94
karu 60
Kierkegaard 30, 220
katriya 12 Lenin 36
Lenin 36
liberation 109, 113, 115
love 29
Mackie 98
Macleod, N. 211
Mahbhrata 6, 30
Mahvrata 96
maitri 66
manana 24
Manu 12, 14, 30
Manusahit 6, 30
Marcus Aurelius 230
Marx, K. 30, 36, 231, 233
Materialism 231
My 126
middle path 44
Mill, J.S. 137, 143, 145, 149, 197
Mm s 1, 3, 5, 12, 27, Prabhkara
Mm s 21, 22, 98;
Bha 98
Miri 95
Missing Women 195
Moka 17, 23, 24, 72, 79, 84, 87, 88,
115, 116
Moore 137, 197-200, 206, 215
moral contentment 251-253
moral law 182, 188, 191, 248
moral relativism 163-176,
normal moral relativism 163-165, 171,
172, 176,
moral judgement relativism 163, 165-
169, 171-173, 176,
meta-ethical relativism 163, 169 171,
174, 176
Moses 135
MP-model 89, 90, 92
Mysticism 95
naturalism 203
naturalistic fallacy 198
nayavda 65
niddhysana 24
nihreyas 1, 2, 3, 6
Nietzsche 30, 31, 140
nirjar 72, 78, 95
nirva 33, 39, 56, 58, 62, 127 niedha
21
nikma karma 22, 23, 24
Nowell-Smith 205, 206
Ogden 202
pacala 59, 60
Parara sahit 12
phenomenology 207
Plato 28, 31, 137
Plutarch 28
possibility 15
praj 45
prakti 109-111, 116-120, 126
Praastapda 13
prattyasamutpda 49, 57, 58
Index 279 280 ETHICS : An Anthology
pryacitta 13, 79
Prescriptivism 206
Primary good 198-99
Pringle Pattison 192
Prti 4, 5, 6
pudgala 66, 69, 70, 72, 73, 84
Puras 109, 110, 116-120, 126
pururtha 1
puruskra 93
quietism 95
Rawls 96, 138, 194-196, 198-99
relativism 163
revolt 27, 29, 34
revolution 27-30, 34, 36
gveda 37
Richards 202
Ross 199
ta 81, 82
sdhraa dharma 12
Samdhi 45
Sambara 72, 77, 78, 88, 95
sa gha 61
Samiti 78
S khya 20, 21, 109-114, 117- 120,
126
S khya Tattva Kaumudi 20
asra 109, 112, 113, 116
Samkara 123
Sartre 207-135?
Satygraha 29
Schopenhauer 95
Sen 191-200
sevecca 230
Siderits, M. 57
Sidgwick 137
Sla 45-47, 56
Silber 187
Simone de Beauvoir 207, 216
ravaa 24
reya 7, 14, 17
rdhara 2
ruti 1,2, 5, 17
Stevenson 200, 202, 206, 215
Summum Bonum 181
Supererogatory 152, 153
Sydvda 65, 97
Tagore, R. 35, 133
Tathgata 43
tattva 66, 85, 110-112
tattvajna 1, 2
teleological 138, 140
Trthakara 38
trivarga 7
Truth 29
Udayana 27
Udyotakara 32
universalizability 140
Upaniad 40
Utilitarianism 52, 53, 97, 137, 143-160,
197
act 149, 154, 157-159
rule 154, 155, 159
primitive rule 156-158
Vaieika 1,6, 127
vamramadharma 126
vidht 81
videhamukti 118
vidhi 1, 5, 20-22
niravaka 20
smnya 20-22
viea 20, 21
welfare economics 55
Williams, B. 137, 138
Willkr 188
Zammito 185, 187
Zeldin 185
Index 281 282 ETHICS : An Anthology

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