Abstract

This essay explores the thought of Heidegger and Sartre concerning whether existentialism is conducive to a certain ethics conceived of as a theory of moral conduct. In the Letter on Humanism, Heidegger stresses the importance of a return to the idea of “ethos” as a replacement for the metaphysically conceived “ethics.” Sartre, conversely, in his essay Existentialism is a Humanism outlines an ethics that draws heavily from the philosophical tradition. This paper’s guiding question is whether the study of human existence, given the views of these thinkers, leads to a particular ethics, or whether it suggests something like Heidegger’s return to the ancient Greek notion of “ethos,” that is, morality conceived of as a manner of being. The paper outlines the basic conceptions of human being held by these two thinkers, and shows how their individual conceptions of ethics unfold from these. I explicate and bring these thinkers’ conceptions of ethics into contrast in order to approach an answer to the question of whether existentialism is conducive to an ethics