in Sartre’s most “violent” remarks. InWretched, for example, he allows
that “this irrepressible violence [the counterviolence of the colonized]
is man recreating himself ” ( 21 ).^40 This positive attitude would continue
in the Rome and Cornell lectures, as well as in what we know ofPower
and Freedom.
This “humanist” strain brings us to the counter-concept of violence
(terror), namelyfraternity. Among the “specific modalities” of the group
listed in theCritique, Sartre mentions violence and fraternity (CDRi:
510 ). Both are features of the organic praxis of a group member. “In the
group, the individual’s existence is not, or is no longer, the temporaliza-
tion of organic need in a project; rather, it arises in a field ofviolent but
nonantagonistic tensions, that is to say, through a web of synthetic relations
by which it is profoundly and fundamentally constituted as a mediating
relation, that is to say, asterror and fraternityfor all and for himself ”
(CDRi: 510 ). So it seems that “fraternity and terror” are not mutually
exclusive. Indeed, they may serve complementary roles, at least in an
inauthentic society.
Since fraternity emerges when seriality (alienation) is overcome or
at least kept in check, the concept of moral creativity recommended
inEHandpromotedintheRomeandCornelllecturesseemsbothto
aim at and to presume (dialectically) a certain equality of possibility/
freedom at the start, even as it intends to expand the field of our
possibilities and thereby achieve a richer degree of freedom. This is
the “unconditional possibility” that Sartre’s “socialist” ethics (morale)
proposes. Under the aspect of “fraternity,” this possibility forms the
ethical dimension of that equality and reciprocity that characterizes
“the reign of freedom,” and that reign marks the advent of “integral
man” in a society of material abundance which, for Sartre, is our
guiding ideal.
(^40) SeeSFHRii: 236 – 237 , where Sartre will develop this concept of a positive, constructive
strain in his most violent remarks. In a revealing interview with Madeline Chapsal in 1959 ,
he admits apropos his student days at the ENS: “Most of us were very mild and yet we
became violent beings. For one of our problems was this: could a particular act be described
as one of revolutionary violence or did it rather go beyond the violence necessary for the
revolution?This problem has stayed with us all our lives – we will never surmount it”(BEM 23 ,
emphasis added). He was and remains opposed to “an absolutely pure and unconditioned
violence. Such a brand of violence,” as what he witnessed among the Facists in the 1930 s and
1940 s, “never calls itself into question” (BEM 24 ).
370 A second ethics? 0