Abstract

At the very end of Being and Nothingness, Sartre states that he would devote himself in the future to a work on ethics. Unfortunately, it never came into being. In this dissertation, I have explored possible reasons for Sartre's failure to a write a work on ethics. I show several possible reasons why he did not finish his ethical work. But the real and essential reason is that Sartre discovered that his dialectical ethics had not developed as well as he expected because he was never able to reconcile socialism with his theory of freedom. ;A second issue I focus on is the question whether there is a Sartrean ethics and whether a Sartrean ethics is possible on the basis of what Sartre did accomplish. Sartre did produce a considerable quantity of writings on ethics. Those works contain rich and detailed suggestions with regard to topics having to do with ethics. In addition, my research shows that Sartre's early view of freedom was modified in many ways but had never been abandoned. On the contrary, he insisted on the point of view that individual were always free until his death. However ultimately Sartre did not provide us with an ethical work, even an outline, which makes us unable to conceive what this ethics would be. Moreover, many of his notebooks on ethics are missing or still unpublished, so that anyone venturing to present Sartre's ethics must accept the possibility of being proved mistaken at least until we have all of his material and writings. ;I do examine all his available writings related to the ideas of ethics to compose a possible outline of Sartrean ethics. In my research, I show that human freedom is the unifying thread of this ethics. In addition, I show that Sartre emphasizes the power of man in morality. He rejects the view that a priori moral rules, human nature, or God directs human behavior. He demonstrates that it is man himself who creates morality and value. I also discuss the importance of bad faith for Sartre's ethics, that is, why it is the root of the alienation of freedom and how it can be overcome