Reading Sartre's Second Ethics

Morality, History, and Integral Humanity

Elizabeth A. Bowman, Robert V. Stone, Matthew C. Ally

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2023
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978778078
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Ética y filosofía moral

In Reading Sartre's Second Ethics, Elizabeth A. Bowman and Robert V. Stone provide a comprehensive, reconstructive, and critical interpretation of Jean-Paul Sartre's mature dialectical ethics. The key Sartrean texts are two posthumously published lectures, one delivered at the Gramsci Institute in Rome in 1964, the other scheduled to be delivered at Cornell University in 1965 but cancelled by Sartre in protest of U.S. foreign policy. Though different in content, method, and intended audience, Sartre gave both lectures the shared title "Morality and History." As Bowman and Stone argue, these texts comprise a single, systematic ethic in two parts. The Cornell lecture focuses primarily on a regressive and phenomenological analysis of normativity and its ambiguous place in lived moral experience; the Rome lecture focuses primarily on a progressive and dialectical synthesis of the ends or goals of historical conduct. Taken together, the two texts demonstrate that "integral humanity" is always possible because the means to it can always be freely invented.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌
• Abbreviations
• The Second Ethics: A Heuristic and Critical Prospectus
• Unveiling Socialism’s “Ethical Structure”
• The Phenomenological Moment: What Morality Is Made Of
• The Everyday Experience of Morality
• The Types of Norms and What They Share
• The Regressive Moment: How Morality Is Lived
• The Livability of Norms I
• The Livability of Norms II
• Invention I
• Invention II
• The Progressive Moment: The Paradox of Ethos and the Means beyond It
• The Paradox of Ethos I
• The Paradox of Ethos II
• The Root of Ethics I
• The Root of Ethics II
• Humanity Is Always Possible
• “Socialist Morality” and the Conduct of Revolution
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors