question of relating “is” to “ought,” fact to moral value, that Hume
revived in modern thought. But in this case, the problem expands to
relating and even conjoining an abstract ethical theory with history,
and specifically history in our day.^18 Secondly, it must account for what
is specific about theexperience of morality, if it is neither positivist nor
idealist in nature, the one stressing facts and the other promoting
values. What in Sartre’s view distinguishes a socialist ethic from
non-ethical agents and phenomena? Thirdly, as Foucault once warned,
dialectic leads to humanism, which entails a bourgeois morality of
self-realization. He considered it a nineteenth-century affliction and
Sartre one of its carriers.^19 Granted, Sartre’s dialectic does lead to a
humanismthat, in turn, entails anethic(une morale). But must such a
humanism and the ethic it inspires necessarily be bourgeois? Are not
a socialist humanism and a socialist ethic conceptual or even historical
possibilities? The honored guests at this lecture would have responded
unqualifiedly in the affirmative. Finally, how does one deal with the
seemingly intractable problem ofmeans and ends^20 that has plagued
Sartre for decades? Stated in terms of theCritique,howdoesone
resolve the problem offraternity and terror?
(^18) This conference was held at a time when the “official” doctrine of Stalinist communism,
which locates morality in the ideological superstructure supported by an “amoral” or
“premoral” economic and technological base, had been under attack by several of the
speakers at this conference – Sartre, of course, included. A week later, Sartre was to leave
for another visit to Russia. (June 1 –July 10 , 1964 ), one of nine he made between June
1962 and September 1966 (Life 404 ). In the past Sartre had referred to a specific year to
contextualize his critique of “economism” in “Materialism and Revolution” (its object was
“the Marxist scholasticism of 1949 ” [MR 198 n.]) and to assess “the situation of the Writer
in 1947 ”(WL 141 ff.). So a “concrete” ethic, such as he is projecting in these lectures, is
going to bear the marks of the 1960 s prior to May 1968 , namely the end of the Algerian war,
the Cuban revolution and the anti-Soviet uprisings in eastern and central Europe; not to
mention the American intervention in Vietnam, which, as we know, affected the second of
these lectures directly. But it also underscores the contingency of his remarks and of the
19 moralehe is delineating.
“Because it is a philosophy of history, because it is a philosophy of human practice, because it
is a philosophy of alienation and reconciliation. For these reasons and because fundamentally
it is always a philosophy of return to the self (soi-meˆme), dialectic in a sense promises the
human being that he will become an authentic and true man. It promises man to man and to
this extent it is inseparable from a humanist ethic (morale). In this sense, the parties most
responsible for contemporary humanism are evidently Hegel and Marx.” Michel Foucault,
20 Dites et e ́crits, ed. Daniel Defert and Franc ̧ois Ewald (Paris: Gallimard,^1964 ),i:^541.
Discussed above inChapters 10 and 11.
360 A second ethics? 0