The moral, for the later Sartre, is linked with praxis, that is with the free
organic individual. In contrast to the “alienating third party” that
objectifies others via forms of the practico-inert, theCritiqueintroduces
the pivotal role of the “mediating” third (party), a functional term, as we
know, that describes free organic practice as constituting the fused
group.^22 This is the moment of concrete freedom, “the origin of human-
ity” (CDRi: 436 ). We could say it is the ethical moment as well, in the
sense that dialectically it generates and is generated by a “mediated
reciprocity that has nothing to do with alterity [alienation]” (CDR
i: 374 ). As will become clear in the resultant dialectical ethics, this
positive reciprocity mediated by praxes, both individual and group,
offers a glimpse, however brief, of a future free from the alienating
mediation of the practico-inert. Sartre will now elaborate that “true
ethical moment” by contrasting it with inauthentic moral systems and
their nature and structure.
Throughout our study we have spoken of the threefold primacy
of “praxis” in Sartre’s thought: the ontological, the epistemological,
and the ethical. Though the epistemic primacy does not figure centrally
in this dialectical ethics, it does play a crucial role in theCritique, where
the intelligibility of history depends on the mutual transparency of
individual and group praxis. That is actually a basic methodological
assumption that Sartre defends not transcendentally but in practice.
The ontological primacy, recall, emerges when we talk about praxis
as grounding social relations, sustaining processes (systems) such as
capitalism and colonialism, and even leaving behind sediments as
practico-inert. And the ethical primacy of praxis reveals itself in the
dialectic where it sustains and is dialectically sustained by the practico-
inert, the locus of alienating moralities (ethical heir to the spirit of
seriousness inBNand seriality in theCritique).
The experience of moralitySartre is intent on proposing a concrete morality (ethics). Consequently
he rejects moralimperativesoutright. He now seems to believe that all
(^22) On the “apocalyptic” moment when the disunited series “fuses” into the practical group
with its union of praxes and mutual concerns, see aboveChapter 8 , the social ontology of
Critiquei.
362 A second ethics? 0