JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

192Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic WritingsThe essential concept in the establishment of this middle path isresponsibility. To say that someone is responsible for what they do is to saythat they do it, they could have refrained from doing it, and they are answerableto others for doing it. (This last component of ‘responsibility’ is apparent inthe word’s etymology. It means ‘answerability’.) It is a consequence of Sartre’stheses that existence precedes essence in the case of humanity, and peoplehave an ineliminable freedom, that we are responsible for what we are. Weare nothing else but what we make of ourselves. It follows that everyone iswholly and solely responsible for everything they do.Responsibility for Sartre includes another, crucial, dimension. In choosingfor myself I am implicitly choosing for others. By joining a trade union, byjoining the communist party, by getting married, by becoming a Christian, byfighting in the French resistance, by anything I do, I am implicitly prescribingthe same course of action to the rest of humanity. To put it another way, all myactions are recommendations. By acting I set an example for all similarlyplaced others to follow. I am obliged at every instant to perform actionswhich are examples.This implicit recommendation to others is called in moral philosophy‘universalisability’, and finds its most sophisticated expression in Kant’sethical works, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (GrundlegungzurMetaphysik der Sitten, 1785) and the Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik derPraktischen Vernunft, 1788). Kant, like Sartre, tries to found an objectivemorality that does not rely on theological premises. In Sartre’s texts,universalisability admits of two interpretations, one causal the other logical.On the causal interpretation we take literally Sartre’s notion of setting anexample. By joining a trade union I may cause others to join a trade union,and so my responsibility is in a direct sense a responsibility for what I makeothers do, not just for what I do myself.On the logical interpretation, in order to be consistent we have to acceptthat persons similarly placed to ourselves should do as we do. A person isonly one person amongst others and it would be inconsistent to maintainthat one person but not others should follow a course of action where allthose people are similarly placed. There would be something incoherentabout someone who freely chose to join a trade union, or who became aconvert to Christianity, but disapproved of people making just those choices.Of course Sartre accepts that that may happen. One form of religious orpolitical commitment might be suitable for one person but not another but,