The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedJean Paul Sartre
Title QuotedAnti-Semite and Jew
Date (Year/Month/Day)1962/03/06
ImprintNew York : Schocken Books. 1948
QuotationThere is unquestionably a great nobility in Sartre's morality of "authenticity," at least as he expresses it in his book on anti-semitism. And this too throws a different light on the "situation ethic" which is so spat upon-when it is represented as a form of opportunism and an evasion of responsibility. Here on the contrary it is an acceptation of responsibility-in the fullest and most direct way. "[If] it is agreed that man may be defined as a being having freedom within the limits of a situation, then it is easy to see that the exercise of this freedom may be considered as ‘authentic' or ‘inauthentic' according to the choices made in the situation. Authenticity, it is almost needless to say, consists in having a true and lucid consciousness of a situation, in answering the responsibilities and risks that it involves, in assuming it in pride and humiliation, sometimes in horror and hate." Anti-Semitism [New York, 1948], 90
Quotation SourceTurning Toward the World: The Pivotal Years. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 4, 1960-1963.; Edited by Victor A. Kramer. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1996, p. 207
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