Sartre

political, etc.); 2 nd, the work always being considered as a gift. The beautiful is a gift
above all else. The beautiful is the world considered asgiven. The work being
the particularity of the person and his image as given back by the world, it is in
treating my work as inhabited by a concrete freedom that you treat my Me as
freedom. Whereas if you turn directly toward this Me, it evaporates into abstract
freedom.
(NE 141 )

Positive reciprocity

This is the lesson of theNotebooksto supplement the adversarial image
of the interpersonal inBeing and Nothingness. It relies on generosity,
gift-appeal and more fundamentally, the concept of positive reciprocity
so clearly lacking inBeing and Nothingness, which Sartre once described
as his “eidetic of bad faith.” IfAnti-Semite and Jewcounseled that
we change the “bases and structures” of the anti-Semite’s choice, that
is, his “situation,” since we cannot deal causally with another freedom
directly, theNotebookshas added the model of gift-appeal from one
concrete freedom to another as “the means of directly affecting a quali-
fied freedom” (NE 141 ).

Mutual recognition

The request as distinct from the order, which elsewhere Sartre calls
“the Other in us,”^13 is “an appeal for collaboration and reciprocity in
action.” It involves a comprehension, that is, an understanding of
the Other’s goal or purpose. This understanding is concrete and
contextual. It is essential to authentic interpersonal relations. As Sartre
explains:

I recognize the freedom of the one to whom I make my request, I recognize the
legitimacy of his ends, not because they are absolute but because he wants them.

(^13) See Thomas R. Flynn, “An End to Authority: Epistemology and Politics in the Later
Sartre,” reprinted inSartre and Existentialism, ed. William L. McBride, 8 vols. (New York:
Garland, 1997 ), vol.vi,Existentialist Politics and Political Theory, 51 and 64. The quotation
fromIFi: 166 is “Belief is the Other in me,” which I transpose into authority playing that
role because Sartre “considers the similarity between belief and authority to lie in the
otherness(heteronomy) which each entails,” 64. This rendition seems to be confirmed by
Sartre’s remark that “duty is the will of the other in me” (NE 191 ).
268 Ends and Means: existential ethics