( 1960 ) laid the groundwork for this second ethics. The dialogical ethics
or what he described as “an ethics of the we” consists of the recorded
conversations that the now blind Sartre held with his secretary and
confidant Benny Le ́vy toward the end of his life. Sartre’s seemingly
wholesale rejection of earlier positions in these conversations and his
apparent “softness” on quasi-religious themes that he had previously
dismissed shocked both Simone de Beauvoir and Raymond Aron. They
saw them as the ramblings of a sick old man under the influence of an
aggressive religious convert.
However one may assess this apparent volte-face and the “ethics” that
it sketched, it should already have become clear that many, though
certainly not all, of the allegedly “shocking” remarks in these interviews
should not have disturbed anyone who cared to hear what Sartre had
been saying over a good part of his public life. Not that one could have
predicted this “conversion” without the catalytic presence of Benny
Le ́vy, but that, in retrospect, one can notice a series of remarks – some
off-hand but others quite relevant to the discussion – that make this
change less radical than might otherwise have been expected. We shall
address these last two “ethics” inChapter 14 below, once their appropri-
ate ontologies and contexts have been considered in the intervening
chapters.
Ethics of authenticity:Notebooks for an Ethics
We have discussed Sartre’s initial reflections on authenticity in his
Wa r D i a r i e s, where his shift was “from Stoicism to Authenticity,”^7 and
inBeing and Nothingness, where he concluded the text with a set
of questions that “can find their reply only on the ethical plane.”
Today: A Centenary Celebration, ed. Adrian van den Hoven and Andrew Leak (New York:
Berghahn, 2005 ) (hereafterCentenary). For reference to the manuscripts for both Gramsci
lectures conserved in the Beinecke Library, Yale University, and for the first in the Bib-
liothe`que Nationale in Paris, along with other secondary literature, see below,Chapter 15.
The most complete published version of “Morale et Histoire,” the “Cornell Lectures,” ed.
Juliette Simont, appears inLTMnos. 632 , 633 , 634 (July–Oct. 2005 ): 268 – 414 ; hereafter MH
with reference to theLTMversion. Bowman and Stone have discussed the Cornell Lectures
inCentenary, chapter 17 , and in “‘Morality and History’: Birth and Re-inventions of an
Existential Moral Standard,”Sartre Studies InternationaI 10 ,no. 2 ( 2004 ): 1 – 27. They offer7 detailed information about the relevant manuscripts in the Beinecke in note^5 ,p.^20.
Arlette Elkaı ̈m-Sartre,CDG 12 ; seeCDG 68 andWD 50 – 51 as well asChapter 7 above.
Notebooks for an Ethics 265