ABSTRACT
Hope Now, the interviews on ethics with Benny Levy, is J. P. Sartre’s most controversial text. The immediate objection to Hope Now, namely, that Sartre was misled by the young Levy, was repeated when the translated text appeared years later. Sartre explicitly states that his purpose in Hope Now is to work with Levy to construct a new ethics that would be a guiding principle for the left. Either Sartre suddenly, buoyed by his enthusiastic young friend, had a seismic shift in his position on these matters, or Hope Now is, at best, a half-hearted attempt at the impossible. Sartre is critical of his earlier conception of freedom. Radical freedom, the core of Sartre’s existentialism, presupposed a world of others. For Sartre, history is a collective praxis that comprises a journey toward a developed sense of humanity, even when fraught with missteps.
