Responsibility as an Ethical Principle in Jean-Paul Sartre

Abstract

Although has never written a book on the subject, Jean-Paul Sartre is commonly regarded as a moral philosopher, possibly because of his conference The existentialism is a humanism by which he made not only a defense of existentialism against objections that gave to this philosophy a bad fame, as well as by which he popularized his own notions about the existing individual, and how this individual, condemned to freedom, is not truly free of responsibility. In the present paper we will trace a way to explore some key concepts in Sartre that base their perception on freedom, and we will try to understand how the pillars of their phenomenological reasoning result in a consequent awareness of the individual about his own condition, from which to flee for an act of bad faith would be the same as evading one's own responsibility to the world, which causes anguish but justifies the moral action of a subject who at first sight seems free to do what he wants. In short, we will see that Sartre's radical freedom is not so radical, and for that reason Sartre conciliates her with an ethical approach, which in a principiological sense we will take as being exposed in his concept of responsibility.