But the other side of the paradox is that by throwing myself completely
into the revolutionary enterprise “I risk having no more leisure for
personal relations – worse still, of being led by the logic of the action
into treating most men, and even my friends, as means.”
At this point, Sartre introduces an aesthetic value that, while it is
appropriate for his audience (the writer in 1947 ), harkens back to the
conclusion ofNauseawhere the protagonist seeks “salvation” through
literary art. Though Sartre has by now concluded that “evil cannot be
redeemed” (WL 180 ), he does allow that “the contemplation of beauty
might well arouse in us the purely formal intention of treating men as
ends.” Still, his growing sense of objective (im)possibility counters that
“this intention would reveal itself to be utterly futile in practice since the
fundamental structures of our society are still oppressive” (WL 221 ).
Sartre counsels that “if we can start with the moral exigence which the
aesthetic feeling envelops without meaning to do so, we are starting on
the right foot.” But our task is to “historicizethe reader’s good will.”
By this Sartre means that we must turn the purely formal intention to
treat men in every case as an absolute end into a specific intention by the
subjectof our writing that directs his intention upon his neighbors,
upon the oppressed of the world.” But we shall have accomplished
nothing, he warns, “if we do not show him – and in the very warp and
weft of the work – that it is quite impossible to treat concrete men as
ends in contemporary society” (WL 222 ).
This entails considering the “city of ends” that Sartre adopts from
Kant, as a practical “ideal” toward which we should aim and approach
“only at the end of a long historical evolution.” Sartre acknowledges
this is thestrainpeculiar to the project he is proposing. Repeating what
we have said is the leitmotif of his political and ethical philosophy, he
insists that “we must militate in our writings in favor of the freedom
of the personandthe socialist revolution. It has often been claimed that
they are not reconcilable. It is our job to show tirelessly that they imply
each other” (WL 223 ).
A few years later, as Sartre is moving into the stage of full cooperation
with the PCF, he published a large volume, introducing the works of
Jean Genet:Saint Genet( 1952 ). To return to our discussion of the
conclusion of that work in theprevious chapter, our dilemma of choosing
between Genet and Bukharin can now be replayed as the freedom–
socialism alternative, which itself instantiates the end–means option.
298 Means and ends: political existentialism