Sartre's second century

The Literary-Philosophical Experience of Hope Now 165
become explicit. With that said, we must now look at the content of the
text. What is it exactly that, if I am right, we are supposed to be feeling
and comprehending in a literary way?
The central conclusion Sartre and Levy reach is that a leftist ethics
aims at a transhistorical ideal of man and is thus more fundamental than
politics. This conclusion will become clearer if we explain the basic terms
involved: ethics, man, and the left.
Ethics is specifically defined by Sartre in the fourth section of the
interviews: "By 'ethics' I mean that every consciousness, no matter whose,
has a dimension that I didn't study in my philosophical works and that few
people have studied, for that matter: the dimension of obligation." 21 Each
consciousness, Sartre explains, is dependent on all other consciousnesses
and thus has an inner constraint of obligation to every other consciousness.
The ethical conscience is a product of "the self considering itself as self
for the other". 22 This obligation, Sartre explains, does not come and go, for
we are "constantly in the presence of the other, even when we are going to
bed or falling asleep [...] my response, which isn't only my own response
but is also a response that has been conditioned by others from the
moment of my birth, is of an ethical nature." 23
Man refers to the ideal unification of all consciousnesses that would
allow every consciousness to exist together ethically. According to
Sartre's definition, this entails a community in which each self can truly be
for the other: "[0]ur goal is to arrive at a genuinely constituent body in
which each person would be a human being and collectivities would be
equally human." 24 This goal, as an ideal, is aimed at throughout history but
is transhistorical. Sartre states: "It appears in history but doesn't belong to
history." 25
The left is a reference to the hopeful effort of the masses to realise the
ideal of man. It is, in other words, the appearance of the transhistorical
ideal in history in the form of social movements. The individual goals of
these social movements are connected by a common radical intention,
which is necessarily hopeful. As historical circumstances change, the left
must adapt in order to continue operating as the hopeful vehicle by which
the ideal will be realised.
Obviously, the term "left" has a political connotation. It is not
surprising, therefore, that Ronald Aronson, in his introduction to Hope
21 Hope Now, 69.
22 Ibid., 71.
23 Ibid., 71.
24 Ibid., 67.
25 Ibid., 82.