ABSTRACT
The discussion in recent French philosophy of closed and open morality, of norms and values, of bad faith and authenticity, constitutes the field of twentieth-century French ethics, or by far the most important part of it. The question which forces itself upon us, and which may appear never to be answered, is: What are the springs of open morality, of value, of the authentic act? We are fairly familiar with the nature, in the form of action in a situation, of what one may call the existentialist Good, but perhaps only M.Vladimir Jankélévitch persistently and perspicaciously seeks its origins, or rather demonstrates its lack of origin, at the same time scrutinizing the nature of intention in both its phenomenological and everyday senses.
