Does Sartre speak to us today? “Our answer is an emphatic, Yes!" Thus begins Bowman and Stone’s detailed reading of Sartre’s Second Ethics. Across the arc of their remarkable study a regressive-progressive movement reveals that our individual actions are saturated with morality. Thus, our individual qua collective life’s goal is unveiled as a free and shared commitment. Whether we read this lifelong study from beginning to end, or merely open it here or there, we are always reminded of Sartre’s own lifelong moral commitment: that we are free, free to share in the goal of inventing ourselves as fully human.

Joseph Catalano, professor emeritus, Kean University

Long and eagerly anticipated by students of late twentieth century intellectual life, this is a unique, pioneering, and magisterial treatment of Sartre’s linchpin thinking about ethics and the possibility of a more humane future society as it evolved during the mid-1960s. Bowman and Stone combine expert scholarly analyses of an important lecture that Sartre gave in Rome and another that he had prepared to present (but withheld out of opposition to U.S. Vietnam policy) at Cornell University, together with hundreds of other pages of his unpublished notes, with their own careful, well-documented, well-structured treatment of central philosophical discussions about the nature of morality and, indeed, of humanity itself.

William McBride, Purdue University

Reading Elizabeth Bowman and Robert Stone’s book on Sartre’s second ethics is a good starting point to familiarize yourself with the ideas Sartre formulated in the 1960s. Their book is in line with the many essays they have previously written on Sartre’s second ethics, which have earned them so much respect. It is to be hoped that Bowman/Stone’s new book will find many eager–and hopefully critical–readers.

Sartre Studies International

I strongly recommend Reading Sartre’s Second Ethics to anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of the relationship between the ethics of engagement and the politics of social movements, and the history-making attempts to consolidate what had been achieved in the revolutionary event. Bowman and Stone make an important contribution to Sartre studies in their account of the necessity of both political struggle and philosophical reflection.

Socialism and Democracy

A most worthy contribution to the Sartre literature as well as to philosophical thinking … Many thanks to our sterling authors, and warmest congratulations to them.

Radical Philosophy Review