An Existential Ethical Imperative

The author’s purpose in this article is to show that Sartre’s ontological structure has room in it for an existential imperative that makes moral activity possible. The author dramatically reveals that “we cannot will freedom without grasping, on an interhuman level, the ambiguous existence of each other.” This reality results from an understanding of Sartre’s notions of consciousness, temporality, bad faith, authenticity, freedom, responsibility, and especially the Other. By the end of his exegesis, the author has shown that Sartre’s phenomenology requires each of us to be authentic as being-for-itself and as being-for-others. The author uses this conclusion to negate Dostoevsky’s famous worry about everything being permissible, because we can definitely say that accepting one’s wish to become a slave is not compatible with authenticity