JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

10 ResponsibilitySartre maintains that ethical values are invented, not discovered. He thinksthere is no God so no divine authority on the distinction between right andwrong, and it is an act of bad faith to endorse a pre-established valuesystem such as Christianity, humanism, or Communism. Rather, eachperson is radically free to create their own values through action. Ethics issomething that exists only within the world of things human. Indeed, in theExistentialism and Humanism Lecture (Chapter 2 above) he says there isno universe except the human universe and we can not escape humansubjectivity. We can not look outside our lives to answer the question of howto live. We can only do that by freely choosing how to live.Superficially, Sartre might appear to be a naive relativist about morality.Relativism in morality is the thesis that it makes no sense to speak of someactions as right and some wrong, only of some individual or some societyholding them to be right or wrong. Relativism embodies a mistake. Fromthe obvious and uncontroversial historical truth that value systems vary fromperson to person and from society to society it is invalidly concluded thatthese systems can not themselves be right or wrong. It is important to refuterelativism because, although it is sometimes misidentified as a liberal andtolerant doctrine, it in fact precludes our condemning individuals or regimesthat practice genocide, torture, arbitrary imprisonment and other atrocities.On the relativist view these practices are, so to speak, ‘right for them butwrong for us’; a putative claim that makes no sense.Sartre’s moral philosophy opens a conceptual space between absoluteGod-given morality on the one hand and naive relativism on the other. Heinsists that values belong only to the human world, and that we areuncomfortably free to invent them, yet he provides us with strict criteria fordeciding between right and wrong.