When Er finally encounters the Titans (actually, Prometheus is
mistaken for one), we find them engaged in the kind of argument which
a pair of philosophy students, say Sartre and Nizan (who have been
reading Leibniz) might engage in: Does evil exist? What is its relation
to the Good? And the traditional problem faced by Leibniz’sTheodicy–
how can one reconcile physical and, especially, moral (what Sartre calls
“psychological”) evil with the existence of God? After hearing one “solu-
tion” to the problem, namely, that it surpasses our understanding (the
response of the thinly veiled “Christian” Titan, Ichtyos), Prometheus
concludes that the question of good and bad intentions, which has emerged
in the discussion, applies less to God than to humans. Their argument,
though not the dialogue, concludes when Prometheus shakes his head and
proclaims: “When the gods are conquered, evil will cease to exist on the
earth,” to which Ichtyos responds bitterly, “I doubt it” (EJ 322 ).
Actually, other portions of this fragmented manuscript continue the
discussion in terms of “the illusion of Fate” and a suggestive “analogous
method” for dealing with the problem of evil, not in terms of God and
Theodicy but solely in terms of the Human. Man is subject to his milieu
and even to his own character. But if the milieu would limit the effects of
an evil action, what about character? Er claims that it is neither good nor
evil. Even an egoistic character, if such exists, Er urges, would be a mere
fact and hence a phenomenon of the “middle” region that is neither good
nor evil.^43 It would seem that Er (Sartre), though sympathetic toward an
ethic of intentions, is beginning to face the problem of relating freedom to
what Sartre would call “situation” inBeing and Nothingness. Failure to do
so adequately constitutes a major weakness in Sartre’s systematic thinking
and a barrier to any properly social ontology, much less to an adequate
social ethic. Overcoming this weakness and breaking this barrier would be
the work of his reflections in the 1950 s, culminating in his second major
philosophical work, theCritique of Dialectical Reason.
The second dialogue takes place with the god Apollo on the nature of
Art, though it also manifests a quasi-moral concern. Sartre wrote to
Beauvoir at this time that he was close to finishing a “complete aesthet-
ics.” This too was to end up among his unfinished works, though he
scattered the elements of a complete aesthetic throughout his writings
(^43) EJ 327 – 328.
Philosophical reflections in a literary mode 35