society – and thisby the very content of our works”(WL 221 , emphasis
added). For even if formal beauty elicited a general feeling of good will
toward everyone as an end in himself, Sartre cautions, the concrete
reality of our present society is that it is built on violence. “We must
historicizethe reader’s good will” by directing his attention on the
oppressed of the world. “But we will have accomplished nothing if, in
addition, we do not show him – and in the very warp and weft of the
work – that it is quite impossible to treat concrete men as ends in
contemporary society (WL 222 ). What he calls “the present paradox of
ethics” (WL 221 ) figures centrally in his dialectical ethics and reappears
five years later inSaint Genetas the present “alienation” of man, namely,
the fact that “Ethics isfor usinevitable and at the same time impossible”
(SG 185 n.). The task of the committed artist is to exhibit this paradox.
Clearly, art as such is not enough.
What is Literature? 261