Jean-Paul Sartre: From an Existentialist to a Realistic Ethics

Abstract

This article presents the general framework of Sartre's two major ethical theories: the first, the unfinished "existentialist" ethics undertaken in the late 1940s and abandoned; the second, the "realist" ethics he developed in the 1960s. Because his second morality is grounded in a more complete understanding of human reality and its social dimensions, Sartre considered it an improvement over the first. Its goal (humans with needs fulfilled) is richer in content than the abstract goal (freedom of all) of the first. Also, the second provides a firmer basis (human needs) for the universal normative character of moral values than does the first where freedom creates all values. In any case, Sartre should not be identified with his early, abandoned, existentialist ethics.