Sartre

the extent that they make it by surpassing (de ́passement) what it has made
of them.”^51 Again, this is an expression of what I’ve been calling “the
primacy ofpraxis” in Sartre’s later philosophy; it pervades his earlier
thought under another name (individual freedom and responsibility).

The basic claims

Unlike his earlier remarks on the topic, this dialogical ethics is the
product of a conversation between two allegedly independent thinkers.
It is more open-ended than conclusive, despite several agreed-upon
principles and conclusions. It remains “socialist” in orientation, building
on the social ontology of theCritiqueas does the dialectical ethics, but is
less concerned about phenomenological insights with its distinctions
between the certain and the merely probable nature of its claims. Of
course, if the two previous attempts were incomplete, this one was barely
begun. The unifying concept of dialectic is scarcely mentioned. In that
respect,Power and Freedom resembles the lecture, “Existentialism is
a Humanism” in being a series of insights (aperc ̧us) rather than an
extended argument. Despite that feature or perhaps because of it, the
work is quite suggestive, serving to enrich as well as challenge the claims
made in the previous undertakings.
A further claim is this: “I don’t believe that the relationship of
production is the primary one.” Rather, the family relationship is the
primary social relationship (Hope 86 ). Relegating socioeconomic consid-
erations to second place by comparison with the relative autonomy
of ethical considerations saves Sartre’s position from being dismissed
as “idealist” in character, as theNotebookswere. But its reference to
“moral consciousness” or conscience (what John Locke called “the
internal forum”) brings it back into the mainstream of moral philosophy
as commonly understood – and that, I believe, is news.

What is distinctive about this approach

As an ethic of the “We,” it is plural rather than singular in its number
and thus generates alternatives and tensions in its expression. Lest one

(^51) Citedibid., 559. This echoes a similar remark made in theCritique: “The men history makes
are never entirely those needed to make history” (CDRii: 221 ). SeeBEM 35.
378 A second ethics? 0