Sartre's second century

166 Chapter Eleven
Now, describes Sartre's hope as "above all a political hope". While I do
not disagree with Aronson's statement, we do need to clarify what the
term "political" means in this context. 27 Indeed, a more commonplace
understanding of the term "political" will lead to a misunderstanding of
the text's overriding message. In Hope Now, Sartre tells us that he
considers democracy to be more than a form of government. He says to
L£vy: "[F]or me, and I believe for you, too, democracy seems to be not
only a form of government, or a way of granting power, but a life, a way
of life. One lives democratically, and in my view human beings should
live in that way and in no other." 28 Thus, we might say that Sartre's hope
is political only insofar as it demands through politics the realisation of a
pre-political existential desire for society.
Following this line of thought, the realisation of ethical life does not
need a traditional political vehicle. Instead, ethics has more to do with the
kind of thing Levy and Sartre are attempting: thinking together. Sartre
describes humanism as "the act of thinking about the relationship of man
to man in terms of the principles that prevail today", 29 and later says about
ethics:
We non-Jews are searching for an ethics, too. The question is to find the
ultimate end, the moment when ethics will be simply and truly the way in
which humans live in relations to each other. The rules-and-prescriptions
aspect of ethics that prevails today will probably no longer exist—as has
often been said, for that matter. Ethics will have to do with the way in
which men form their thoughts, their feelings [...]. 30
My intention here is not to dive into a thorough discussion of the exact
ethics proposed in Hope Now, but rather to point out the importance of the
act of thinking in whatever that ethics might be. Sartre's attempt to think
with Levy should not be seen as an interesting footnote, but should frame
the way we understand the text as a whole. The Sartre-Ldvy project is an
example, then, of the transhistorical ideal of man appearing in history in
the sense that they are internalising the ideal through their way of beingwith-one-another.
In his recent book on Sartre, Bernard-Henri Levy (no relation of Benny
L6vy) argues that the real importance of the Sartre-Levy interviews is that
"Sartre's Last Words", 29.
To be sure, Aronson makes this clarification in his introduction as well.
Hope Now, 83.
Ibid., 68.
Ibid., 106-107.