of moral obligation that Sartre is describing. Still, he is aware of a certain
flexibility between homage to a strict imperative and the day-to-day
observance. He cites here and in the Rome lecture a study of schoolgirls
who believe that lying is wrong and yet admit to sometimes having told
lies. One might speak of a certain gray (louche) area between accepted
rules and their practical observance – scarcely news to us.
“ 2. The Essence of Ethical Normativity”Still on the descriptive and interpretive level of his argument, Sartre
begins to cite distinctions already introduced in the Rome lecture notes.
“The pyramid of customs (moeurs) and institutions constitutes the real
object of the ethical” (CSC 41 ). “Unconditionality” is set forth as the
distinctive feature of the ethical, for Sartre, as it is for many ethicists:
it trumps other, conditional claims as being unethical or amoral.^46
Among ethical terms, Sartre lists values, goods, examples and ideals.
As instances of each he offers respectively: sincerity (value), life (good),
ethical creations that have slipped into habit (example), and “the crys-
tallization of moral habit in the charisma of a person” (ideal). The ethical
paradox now reappears in the following guises: the good/value, fact/
right, the given/the inaccessible, coincidence with self/nihilating pulling
away (from self). These are among the many aspects of the ethical
paradox for Sartre (CSC 42 ). It is in terms of this ethical paradox that
one must understand what Sartre means by “example” (CSC 43 ).
He allows that one can live a moral life in the midst of these paradoxes,
for example by casuistry – what he calls “the effort to condition the
unconditional” (CSC 43 ), that affords a person what he terms “moral
comfort” (MH 337 ). But in the Rome lecture these are what he called
“inauthentic” forms of morality.
“ 3. On Unconditional Possibility as the Structure of the Norm”The existence for the schoolgirls of an unconditional imperative against
lying “guarantees their security: human life has a meaning” (MH 351 ).
We saw in the Rome lecture that one source, perhaps the basic source, of
(^46) We shall be using the expressions “ethical” and “moral” as roughly synonymous in view of
the ambiguity of the term “La morale” in French, which is echoed in standard English usage.
The Cornell lectures: “Morality and History” 373