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The Ethics of Ambiguity
Simone de Beauvoir, novelist, dramatist, and philosopher, was the most distinguished woman writer in modern France. A leading exponent of French existentialism, her work complements, though it is independent of, that of her great friend Jean-Paul Sartre. In "The Ethics of Ambiguity," Madame de Beauvoir penetrates at once to the core ethical problems of modern man: what shall he do, how shall he go about making values, in the face of this awareness of the absurdity of his existence? She forces the reader to face the absurdity of the human condition, and then, having done so, proceeds to develop a dialectic of ambiguity which will enable him not to master the chaos, but to create with it.
162 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1947
About the author
Simone de Beauvoir
322 books9,614 followersSimone de Beauvoir was a French author and philosopher. She wrote novels, monographs on philosophy, political and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. She is now best known for her metaphysical novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins, and for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism.
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Simone de Beauvoir est née à Paris le 9 janvier 1908. Elle fit ses études jusqu'au baccalauréat dans le très catholique cours Désir. Agrégée de philosophie en 1929, elle enseigna à Marseille, à Rouen et à Paris jusqu'en 1943. C'est L'Invitée (1943) qu'on doit considérer comme son véritable début littéraire. Viennent ensuite Le sang des autres (1945), Tous les hommes sont mortels (1946), Les Mandarins (prix Goncourt 1954), Les Belles Images (1966) et La Femme rompue (1968).
Simone de Beauvoir a écrit des mémoires où elle nous donne elle-même à connaître sa vie, son œuvre. L'ampleur de l'entreprise autobiographique trouve sa justification, son sens, dans une contradiction essentielle à l'écrivain : choisir lui fut toujours impossible entre le bonheur de vivre et la nécessité d'écrire ; d'une part la splendeur contingente, de l'autre la rigueur salvatrice. Faire de sa propre existence l'objet de son écriture, c'était en partie sortir de ce dilemme.
Outre le célèbre Deuxième sexe (1949) devenu l'ouvrage de référence du mouvement féministe mondial, l'œuvre théorique de Simone de Beauvoir comprend de nombreux essais philosophiques ou polémiques.
Après la mort de Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir a publié La Cérémonie des adieux (1981) et les Lettres au Castor (1983) qui rassemblent une partie de l'abondante correspondance qu'elle reçut de lui. Jusqu'au jour de sa mort, le 14 avril 1986, elle a collaboré activement à la revue fondée par Sartre et elle-même, Les Temps Modernes, et manifesté sous des formes diverses et innombrables sa solidarité avec le féminisme.
----
Simone de Beauvoir est née à Paris le 9 janvier 1908. Elle fit ses études jusqu'au baccalauréat dans le très catholique cours Désir. Agrégée de philosophie en 1929, elle enseigna à Marseille, à Rouen et à Paris jusqu'en 1943. C'est L'Invitée (1943) qu'on doit considérer comme son véritable début littéraire. Viennent ensuite Le sang des autres (1945), Tous les hommes sont mortels (1946), Les Mandarins (prix Goncourt 1954), Les Belles Images (1966) et La Femme rompue (1968).
Simone de Beauvoir a écrit des mémoires où elle nous donne elle-même à connaître sa vie, son œuvre. L'ampleur de l'entreprise autobiographique trouve sa justification, son sens, dans une contradiction essentielle à l'écrivain : choisir lui fut toujours impossible entre le bonheur de vivre et la nécessité d'écrire ; d'une part la splendeur contingente, de l'autre la rigueur salvatrice. Faire de sa propre existence l'objet de son écriture, c'était en partie sortir de ce dilemme.
Outre le célèbre Deuxième sexe (1949) devenu l'ouvrage de référence du mouvement féministe mondial, l'œuvre théorique de Simone de Beauvoir comprend de nombreux essais philosophiques ou polémiques.
Après la mort de Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir a publié La Cérémonie des adieux (1981) et les Lettres au Castor (1983) qui rassemblent une partie de l'abondante correspondance qu'elle reçut de lui. Jusqu'au jour de sa mort, le 14 avril 1986, elle a collaboré activement à la revue fondée par Sartre et elle-même, Les Temps Modernes, et manifesté sous des formes diverses et innombrables sa solidarité avec le féminisme.
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March 17, 2024
Existentialism was, for a sweet minute, the new way to think about self and the world in the 20th century; but few—so very precious few—understood anything about it. Christians were probably the primary reason it bombed among traditionalists, but its novel language, complex ideas, and deep avowal of the value of personal choice were strong determinants of its unrecognized benefits. So what is it exactly that Existentialism offers? Simone de Beauvoir does a wonderful job drawing out the practical significance of existentialist ideas, such as:
1. An affirmation and value of one’s own self as the center of the universe
2. Confidence in one’s own powers to shape the world
3. A confidence in the importance and necessity of others and their happiness
4. A call to action and responsibility within the context of a limited understanding
5. A framework to understand the world in a more practical way which exposes and utilizes the subject-object tension consistently evident in our experience.
She offered answers for postmodernism and post-traditionalism and post-“what the heck do I do now that I realize I have to decide for myself?”-ism. Besides defining a new method for ethics, she also took on crass communists and gross capitalists and staunchly defended a philosophy of authentic, vulnerable, courageous living against a petrified, simplistic code of morals that for centuries has enabled instant action but not an understanding of the nature or goals of one’s existence. It will always be difficult to defend a new idea against deeply ingrained and widely accepted customs, but then again, there’s air conditioning. Old ways of thinking, no matter how convenient, are like Missouri summer weather, while the ethics of existentialist ambiguity is like air conditioning. Who wants to live in Misery without air conditioning? You sir? Be my guest, but I’m thinking air conditioning will ultimately win the day.
This book is especially for anyone wondering what the blank they should do with the ideas of Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialism. Many summarize Sartre’s philosophy by his words, “Man is a useless passion”, and though some women may agree (ha!), I think mostly his words are being wrenched out of context. In Being And Nothingness Sartre laid out that humanity is a lack in that every existing person has a consciousness which has, in effect, stepped away from the world of things (thus a lack) to be able to comprehend the world of things. In other words, the subject-object relationship is fundamental and absolute, for if all were object there would be no consciousness of objects at all. And because this subject-object disparity is the foundation of consciousness, there is no going back. The subject strives to expand in the universe, to “disclose its being” and define its dimensions. Its goal is to continue to become more without becoming all, because in becoming all it would be object (in that there would be no object besides itself), and it would cease to exist, theoretically, as conscious subject. Beauvoir sums it up nicely, “If I were really everything there would be nothing beside me; the world would be empty. There would be nothing to possess, and I myself would be nothing.” In other words, we strive to remain conscious as a limited, transcendent being-away-from-objects, but we also strive to assimilate things we are becoming conscious of. This is the paradox and “useless passion” that Sartre spoke so frankly about, but I would think the words “endless passion” would better characterize the tension.
Beauvoir, Sartre’s compatriot in country and mind, takes up existentialism where Sartre left off, and tackles how one should live with these new ideas. She believes with Sartre that our existence is concerned with disclosing and expanding our being, but she is chiefly concerned with how to do so healthily and happily for the best results. In the wake of WWII and communist turmoil, France, and the rest of the world, needed someone to point the way with a new species of ethics that wouldn’t land us all in the awful mess and global suffering the world at that time found itself in.
So Beauvoir did what Sartre was never able, or interested enough, to do. She recognized with him that the ethical character of existentialism was ambiguity—no external right or wrongs that absolved individuals from their essential responsibility to decide for themselves and all the risk that entails, and that this ambiguity would become a perceived stumbling block for the uninitiated; but she also believed that something might be done to help people embrace their freedom and love their life, and she hoped to provide ideological support to assist people in making more rewarding decisions in the game of life. “The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.”
She begins by laying out what human beings want: freedom over and above the world of objects, disclosing one’s being in that world, and a future open with possibilities to continue to expand and define one’s presence in that world. “My freedom must not seek to trap being, but to disclose it. The disclosure is the transition from [unconscious] being to [conscious] existence.” The autonomy of the human being must always float above the objective world, never equating itself with a thing or finding itself on a crash course collision with objectification and the ‘stillness’ of absolute and unconscious being. This is why “freedom is not to be engulfed in any goal; neither is it to dissipate itself vainly without aiming at a goal.” The idea of an open future and a continually retreating, but partly-realizable goal, is what everyone wants in balance, and oppression occurs when one is prevented by another from feeling fulfilled in balanced and meaningful pursuit.
Beauvoir lists 6 ways in which a flight from freedom becomes manifest in a person's life: the child, the sub-man, the serious man, the nihilist, the adventurer, and the passionate man (see link at the bottom of this review for the full review including discussion of the types). The problem with all of these various ways to escape oneself and one’s responsibility is that they become not only destructive to self, but destructive to others. In other words, the Sub-man and the Passionate person both threaten me because they have assigned me a value of being just another object in their world in which they are not invested. The failure to see others as critical components of one’s own consciousness leads to a reduction of others’ worth in a subordinate role. This idea of interdependence of the frameworks for consciousness is what Sartre referred to as “intersubjectivity” in his work, Existentialism Is a Humanism, and it underpins all of Beauvoir’s philosophy of the human concern for one another. The existentialists fought hard to make people see that we are all woven into a tapestry of consciousness which comes into being together and cannot function rightly without each other. “The freedom of one man almost always concerns that of other individuals… his freedom can be achieved only through the freedom of others.” In the repeated emphasis of human solidarity one can clearly understand how French existentialism was birthed in crisis amid the political and communistic oppression of the mid-20th century, not to mention the Nazi occupation.
So, now that we know how NOT to act, how DO we act? Essentially Beauvoir heads towards a “greatest good for the greatest number” form of rationale, and it stands up pretty well. She offers well thought-out and cogent responses to humanitarian quandaries like using force against others, sacrificing a few that more may live, sacrificing many so that one with a more hopeful future can live, and using means in the light of ends while making sure that the ends are present in-part with the means.
However, while it seems that Beauvoir is presenting a hard-and-fast ethic—being concerned for others—the whole point of human existence is realizing our fundamental freedom from external influence that would condition or determine human beings’ actions or choices, and it is this which introduces ambiguity as the freedom from the restraint of rules, traditions, dogma or imperatives of any kind. There is no external authority to be blamed or praised for an individual’s unique and unqualified personal choice, not even the authority of thinkers like Beauvoir. My choice is my own, and no one else’s. It is mine alone, and will always be so. Therefore, the other can only suggest tools that I can use to help me achieve more success with my actions, and even then, I have to assess those tools and experiment with them at my own risk. I am liable only for myself to myself. This is why Beauvoir proposes personally utilized ‘methods’ and not universal absolutes, even when it comes to things like human oppression and murder. “Ethics does not furnish recipes any more than do science and art. One can merely propose methods.”
Probably the most uncomfortable part of existentialism, and of this work in particular, is the deflating assertion that we must accept risks in ethics as in the rest of life without having complete information, being always in a state of partial doubt; and this, says the author, is the most fundamental trait of human existence.
“The movement of the mind, whether it be called thought or will, always starts up in the darkness…we must [at bottom] maneuver in a state of doubt… Man always has to decide by himself in the darkness, [and] he must want beyond what he knows.”
For many, this will not sound consoling, but for those who have already begun to recognize that this is indeed our situation, it is freeing to be able to admit it, and maybe to start loving it for what it is. For one like myself who has come to the realization that they may not have been one hundred percent certain of anything at any point in their life, it comes as an affirmation to know that all the good that could ever be achieved can only be achieved, and has only ever been achieved, by courage and love with all of their concomitant dangers. That feels pretty good to know.
If ethics are not absolutes but only proposed methods, what about the people who may not adopt the methods which I believe ultimately benefit humankind, and instead employ methods which produce only devastation? This, my dear, is what war is for. “There are cases where a man positively wants evil, that is, the enslavement of other men, and he must then be fought.” I assume Beauvoir believes that her method-of-proposing-helpful-methods must be somewhat effective in producing authentic living and honest thinking which naturally engender a human concern for one another; but it’s easy to see that she isn’t opposed to a very physical approach to attitude adjustments when all else fails. And this would still fit within her philosophy of being concerned for others, even those fought against, because another’s unwarranted violence against their own self or another person “is an attempt of the individual against his own freedom”; and so violence against violence can be justified, and only justified, if the fight is against a person, for a person, and for others’ ultimate welfare. “The tyranny practiced against an invalid can be justified only by his getting better.”
Some may ask, “How dare you? How dare you, Simone de Beauvoir, though your name is like a honeyed song rolling off the tongue? If you are so concerned with the Other, what right have you to hurt another human being?” She would answer (and she did), “… love authorizes severities which are not granted to indifference.”
Now THAT’S a woman.
**Like this review? Clicking ‘like’ lets me know someone’s reading!
1. An affirmation and value of one’s own self as the center of the universe
2. Confidence in one’s own powers to shape the world
3. A confidence in the importance and necessity of others and their happiness
4. A call to action and responsibility within the context of a limited understanding
5. A framework to understand the world in a more practical way which exposes and utilizes the subject-object tension consistently evident in our experience.
She offered answers for postmodernism and post-traditionalism and post-“what the heck do I do now that I realize I have to decide for myself?”-ism. Besides defining a new method for ethics, she also took on crass communists and gross capitalists and staunchly defended a philosophy of authentic, vulnerable, courageous living against a petrified, simplistic code of morals that for centuries has enabled instant action but not an understanding of the nature or goals of one’s existence. It will always be difficult to defend a new idea against deeply ingrained and widely accepted customs, but then again, there’s air conditioning. Old ways of thinking, no matter how convenient, are like Missouri summer weather, while the ethics of existentialist ambiguity is like air conditioning. Who wants to live in Misery without air conditioning? You sir? Be my guest, but I’m thinking air conditioning will ultimately win the day.
This book is especially for anyone wondering what the blank they should do with the ideas of Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialism. Many summarize Sartre’s philosophy by his words, “Man is a useless passion”, and though some women may agree (ha!), I think mostly his words are being wrenched out of context. In Being And Nothingness Sartre laid out that humanity is a lack in that every existing person has a consciousness which has, in effect, stepped away from the world of things (thus a lack) to be able to comprehend the world of things. In other words, the subject-object relationship is fundamental and absolute, for if all were object there would be no consciousness of objects at all. And because this subject-object disparity is the foundation of consciousness, there is no going back. The subject strives to expand in the universe, to “disclose its being” and define its dimensions. Its goal is to continue to become more without becoming all, because in becoming all it would be object (in that there would be no object besides itself), and it would cease to exist, theoretically, as conscious subject. Beauvoir sums it up nicely, “If I were really everything there would be nothing beside me; the world would be empty. There would be nothing to possess, and I myself would be nothing.” In other words, we strive to remain conscious as a limited, transcendent being-away-from-objects, but we also strive to assimilate things we are becoming conscious of. This is the paradox and “useless passion” that Sartre spoke so frankly about, but I would think the words “endless passion” would better characterize the tension.
Beauvoir, Sartre’s compatriot in country and mind, takes up existentialism where Sartre left off, and tackles how one should live with these new ideas. She believes with Sartre that our existence is concerned with disclosing and expanding our being, but she is chiefly concerned with how to do so healthily and happily for the best results. In the wake of WWII and communist turmoil, France, and the rest of the world, needed someone to point the way with a new species of ethics that wouldn’t land us all in the awful mess and global suffering the world at that time found itself in.
So Beauvoir did what Sartre was never able, or interested enough, to do. She recognized with him that the ethical character of existentialism was ambiguity—no external right or wrongs that absolved individuals from their essential responsibility to decide for themselves and all the risk that entails, and that this ambiguity would become a perceived stumbling block for the uninitiated; but she also believed that something might be done to help people embrace their freedom and love their life, and she hoped to provide ideological support to assist people in making more rewarding decisions in the game of life. “The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.”
She begins by laying out what human beings want: freedom over and above the world of objects, disclosing one’s being in that world, and a future open with possibilities to continue to expand and define one’s presence in that world. “My freedom must not seek to trap being, but to disclose it. The disclosure is the transition from [unconscious] being to [conscious] existence.” The autonomy of the human being must always float above the objective world, never equating itself with a thing or finding itself on a crash course collision with objectification and the ‘stillness’ of absolute and unconscious being. This is why “freedom is not to be engulfed in any goal; neither is it to dissipate itself vainly without aiming at a goal.” The idea of an open future and a continually retreating, but partly-realizable goal, is what everyone wants in balance, and oppression occurs when one is prevented by another from feeling fulfilled in balanced and meaningful pursuit.
Beauvoir lists 6 ways in which a flight from freedom becomes manifest in a person's life: the child, the sub-man, the serious man, the nihilist, the adventurer, and the passionate man (see link at the bottom of this review for the full review including discussion of the types). The problem with all of these various ways to escape oneself and one’s responsibility is that they become not only destructive to self, but destructive to others. In other words, the Sub-man and the Passionate person both threaten me because they have assigned me a value of being just another object in their world in which they are not invested. The failure to see others as critical components of one’s own consciousness leads to a reduction of others’ worth in a subordinate role. This idea of interdependence of the frameworks for consciousness is what Sartre referred to as “intersubjectivity” in his work, Existentialism Is a Humanism, and it underpins all of Beauvoir’s philosophy of the human concern for one another. The existentialists fought hard to make people see that we are all woven into a tapestry of consciousness which comes into being together and cannot function rightly without each other. “The freedom of one man almost always concerns that of other individuals… his freedom can be achieved only through the freedom of others.” In the repeated emphasis of human solidarity one can clearly understand how French existentialism was birthed in crisis amid the political and communistic oppression of the mid-20th century, not to mention the Nazi occupation.
So, now that we know how NOT to act, how DO we act? Essentially Beauvoir heads towards a “greatest good for the greatest number” form of rationale, and it stands up pretty well. She offers well thought-out and cogent responses to humanitarian quandaries like using force against others, sacrificing a few that more may live, sacrificing many so that one with a more hopeful future can live, and using means in the light of ends while making sure that the ends are present in-part with the means.
However, while it seems that Beauvoir is presenting a hard-and-fast ethic—being concerned for others—the whole point of human existence is realizing our fundamental freedom from external influence that would condition or determine human beings’ actions or choices, and it is this which introduces ambiguity as the freedom from the restraint of rules, traditions, dogma or imperatives of any kind. There is no external authority to be blamed or praised for an individual’s unique and unqualified personal choice, not even the authority of thinkers like Beauvoir. My choice is my own, and no one else’s. It is mine alone, and will always be so. Therefore, the other can only suggest tools that I can use to help me achieve more success with my actions, and even then, I have to assess those tools and experiment with them at my own risk. I am liable only for myself to myself. This is why Beauvoir proposes personally utilized ‘methods’ and not universal absolutes, even when it comes to things like human oppression and murder. “Ethics does not furnish recipes any more than do science and art. One can merely propose methods.”
Probably the most uncomfortable part of existentialism, and of this work in particular, is the deflating assertion that we must accept risks in ethics as in the rest of life without having complete information, being always in a state of partial doubt; and this, says the author, is the most fundamental trait of human existence.
“The movement of the mind, whether it be called thought or will, always starts up in the darkness…we must [at bottom] maneuver in a state of doubt… Man always has to decide by himself in the darkness, [and] he must want beyond what he knows.”
For many, this will not sound consoling, but for those who have already begun to recognize that this is indeed our situation, it is freeing to be able to admit it, and maybe to start loving it for what it is. For one like myself who has come to the realization that they may not have been one hundred percent certain of anything at any point in their life, it comes as an affirmation to know that all the good that could ever be achieved can only be achieved, and has only ever been achieved, by courage and love with all of their concomitant dangers. That feels pretty good to know.
If ethics are not absolutes but only proposed methods, what about the people who may not adopt the methods which I believe ultimately benefit humankind, and instead employ methods which produce only devastation? This, my dear, is what war is for. “There are cases where a man positively wants evil, that is, the enslavement of other men, and he must then be fought.” I assume Beauvoir believes that her method-of-proposing-helpful-methods must be somewhat effective in producing authentic living and honest thinking which naturally engender a human concern for one another; but it’s easy to see that she isn’t opposed to a very physical approach to attitude adjustments when all else fails. And this would still fit within her philosophy of being concerned for others, even those fought against, because another’s unwarranted violence against their own self or another person “is an attempt of the individual against his own freedom”; and so violence against violence can be justified, and only justified, if the fight is against a person, for a person, and for others’ ultimate welfare. “The tyranny practiced against an invalid can be justified only by his getting better.”
Some may ask, “How dare you? How dare you, Simone de Beauvoir, though your name is like a honeyed song rolling off the tongue? If you are so concerned with the Other, what right have you to hurt another human being?” She would answer (and she did), “… love authorizes severities which are not granted to indifference.”
Now THAT’S a woman.
**Like this review? Clicking ‘like’ lets me know someone’s reading!
February 18, 2024
‘To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.’
Faced with an absence of moral absolutes, one must ask what a code of ethics would look like in a subjective existence. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir (best known for her cornerstone work, The Second Sex, which kickstarted second-wave feminism) address such questions of ethics from a perspective of existentialist thought she was developing with friend and contemporary Jean-Paul Sartre. Having stated in a lecture that Sartre’s Being and Nothingness was inadequate to base an entire ethical system, Simone de Beauvoir approached existential ethics through the basis of human freedom, which she declared the foundation of morality instead of a binary between good and bad. Above all, she argues one must ‘act to defend and develop the moral freedom of oneself and others.’ Across the three sections of The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir takes a philosophical deep dive into the ambiguity of existence, examining ethical attitudes and ‘ways of being’ people may take in relation to our own freedoms as well as the freedoms of others, arguing that even without a fixed moral absolutism, existentialism provides a path of virtuous and praiseworthy living all the same.
'Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity.'
The Ethics of Ambiguity is a highly readable book, and at just under 200pgs it is one that never feels like biting off more than one can chew despite it being a heady and nuanced work worth giving plenty of space to digest. It is a delicious meal of thought, however, and I’ve always found the ways Beauvoir relates her own thinking with the writings of other philosophers to be rather inviting, giving the reader enough context to follow along even if they are unfamiliar with the other’s work. This book offers some excellent looks at her ideas set against the big picture of other ethical systems as well as in context with other existentialist ideas, often writing in defense against criticisms against existentialism for being too bleak or not offering any distinction between right and wrong. Beauvoir asserting that morality is something people develop through life in relation to the current contexts of life instead of a fixed and universal code. She cites and rebuts Fyodor Dostoevsky’s famous line from the The Brothers Karamazov ‘if God is dead, everything is permitted, ’ as she posits that whole humans are ontologically free, life is not a nihilistic free-for-all under existentialism and she also develops criteria that can determine if actions are moral or not.
‘[L]et us therefore try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting.’
A tenant of existentialist thought is that ‘existence precedes essence,’ namely that objects or ideas exist before value is assigned to them and that, as Sartre argues, life has no meaning until we assign a meaning or essence to it. In this way, Beauvoir argues against any idea of absolute goodness, stating ‘there exists no absolute value’ and that instead value is developed from our choices. So while morality is subjective it is still meaningful because all meaning is subjective. In this way, Beauvoir follows Sartre’s ideas against ‘bad-faith’ living, and that we must desire to always be ‘willing ourselves free’ in authenticity of the self instead of having our value defined by others.
So what is ambiguity? We need to break this down a bit. Beauvoir draws heavily on Sartre’s works in Being and Nothingness on the distinction of anything being ‘in-itself’ or ‘for-itself’ (roughly: using Martin Heidegger’s concept of daesein, or being-in-itself, Sartre looks at in-itself as the object in the world and for-itself as the consciousness of existence/purpose/activity/etc) and sees the friction between the two as creating much of the ambiguity in existence. She shows how as individuals we see ourselves as, say, the main character in our lives, but also must acknowledge that we are side or background characters in the lives of others. We are both subject and object, and while we are free we also exist in the lives of others as ‘factic’ and operating under all the factors of reality and forces of society (laws, socioeconomics, social codes, and social barriers of prejudices/racism/sexism/etc to name a few). This is our ambiguity, and life is ambiguous. We set out with goals and feelings and inevitably die.
She draws a distinction between ambiguity and absurdism as well. ‘To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning,’ she writes, ‘to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won.’ While Camus leaned into the absurdity in life, writing that we find happiness in the struggle itself, Beauvoir looks at how that does not form an ethical system that enhances freedoms for all.
In a way it makes Camus feel overtly nihilistic and Beauvoir argues that freedom comes from the pursuit of it. Transcendence much be found by itself but never actually fulfilled as we inevitably die and the world continues on. As an example, she argues artists don’t set out to “finish” art but instead to capture it in its moment, time always marches on and expands on what came before, which she also addresses in terms of how society and politics are always changing over time.
’Freedom is the source from which all significations and all values spring. It is the original condition of all justification of existence.’
Freedom creates values but this sort of subjective approach has an objective morality of responsibility with freedom. Beauvoir teaches us to remember that our will to freedom affects all those around us, creating a sense of morality that enhancing freedom is ethically correct, but restricting freedom of others even in enhancing our own, is not.
There is a good look at the ways systems purported to promote freedom often become restrictive. Freedom must be employed productively or it becomes oppressive, and a large part of The Second Sex shows that subjugation comes when a person (women, in this instance) is denied being thought of as for-itself and viewed instead as an object/property or other aspect of materialism. She also shows how moral evil for existentialists is essentially anything preventing us from accepting life’s ambiguity being able to improve both yourself and the world together. Or, anything that makes your valuation the object of another’s will.
‘Man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it.’
Part two examines how as we enter adulthood we realize that we not only have freedom but responsibility and our actions shape the world. She breaks down several ‘ways of being’ and how that relates to ideas of ambiguity and freedom which I suppose could serve as a replacement for the enneagram if you wanted. These include examples like the sub-man who is so afraid of action they deny their own freedom and aims to do nothing at all, the adventurer who seeks their freedom but often runs over that of others, or the passionate man who is similar but allows diminishment of his own freedoms for others. Problems arise due to either rejecting the experience of freedom or misunderstanding the meaning of it, and one should live with passion and generosity while protecting both themselves and others from becoming an object of another’s will. We must accept the burdens of freedom and not avoid them.
‘The oppressed can fulfill his freedom as a man only in revolt.’
The third section emphasizes actions and how they relate in her concept of ethical ambiguity. Much of this addresses the misuse of freedom, particularly in ways that oppress others and how this is always evil. Yet because oppression always exists, and because oppressors go to great lengths to convince the oppress this is just the “natural” order or way of things (think how under capitalism the poor are mistakenly socially framed as failures to mislead from acknowledging them as victims) and thereby we must always be in revolt. She addresses Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and how his works acknowledges 'the struggle will never cease' and 'does not dare delude himself with the idea of a stationary future.'
I’m reminded of Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and how society is an endlessly revolving series of revolutions and must always be aimed at expanded ethical freedoms. She cites Leon Trotsky envisaging 'the future as a permanent revolution' and once again reiterates than ethics is of the moment and not a mark on a static line through time.
When it comes to revolt, Beauvoir looks at how during revolt 'we can conquor our enemies only by acting on their facticity, by reducing them to things,' and how, in the process of this, we 'have to make ourselves things' in return. This also gets into the issue of violence and she asks if there are circumstances when violence is justified against oppressors (this comes after the occupation of France by the Nazis during which Beauvoir worked with the Underground).
She posits that when violene is done to, say, a 16 year old Nazi on the battlefield 'it was not he whom we hated but his masters,' but also that 'the oppressors would not be so strong if they did not have accomplices among the oppressed themselves.' She admits that, ideally, we should re-educate those who have been persuayed to serve the oppressors in violence and unethical action, but the 'urgency of struggle forbits slow labor.' The conclusion she arrives at is 'we are obliged to destroy not only the oppressor but also those who serve him, whether they do so out of ignorance or out of constraint.'
Overall, we are called to ask how we commit to freedom for the self while also making room to the freedom of all others. This is explored in many aspects of ambiguity and ethical conundrums where the point of objectivity in the subjective reality is always freedom. The Ethics of Ambiguity is a great and worthwhile read that would serve as a perfect introduction to existentialism ethics or simply to anyone interested in ethical philosophy in general. Perhaps not her strongest work, yet still plenty engaging and interesting. I’ve always found her method of examining concepts to be very effective and promote understanding without being overly obfuscating. I also enjoyed many ways how I could see her expanding or using these ideas in the underpinnings of her later work, The Second Sex. Short, but not short on big ideas to wrestle with, The Ethics of Ambiguity is a staple of existentialist works.
‘ we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite.’
Faced with an absence of moral absolutes, one must ask what a code of ethics would look like in a subjective existence. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir (best known for her cornerstone work, The Second Sex, which kickstarted second-wave feminism) address such questions of ethics from a perspective of existentialist thought she was developing with friend and contemporary Jean-Paul Sartre. Having stated in a lecture that Sartre’s Being and Nothingness was inadequate to base an entire ethical system, Simone de Beauvoir approached existential ethics through the basis of human freedom, which she declared the foundation of morality instead of a binary between good and bad. Above all, she argues one must ‘act to defend and develop the moral freedom of oneself and others.’ Across the three sections of The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir takes a philosophical deep dive into the ambiguity of existence, examining ethical attitudes and ‘ways of being’ people may take in relation to our own freedoms as well as the freedoms of others, arguing that even without a fixed moral absolutism, existentialism provides a path of virtuous and praiseworthy living all the same.
'Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity.'
The Ethics of Ambiguity is a highly readable book, and at just under 200pgs it is one that never feels like biting off more than one can chew despite it being a heady and nuanced work worth giving plenty of space to digest. It is a delicious meal of thought, however, and I’ve always found the ways Beauvoir relates her own thinking with the writings of other philosophers to be rather inviting, giving the reader enough context to follow along even if they are unfamiliar with the other’s work. This book offers some excellent looks at her ideas set against the big picture of other ethical systems as well as in context with other existentialist ideas, often writing in defense against criticisms against existentialism for being too bleak or not offering any distinction between right and wrong. Beauvoir asserting that morality is something people develop through life in relation to the current contexts of life instead of a fixed and universal code. She cites and rebuts Fyodor Dostoevsky’s famous line from the The Brothers Karamazov ‘if God is dead, everything is permitted, ’ as she posits that whole humans are ontologically free, life is not a nihilistic free-for-all under existentialism and she also develops criteria that can determine if actions are moral or not.
‘[L]et us therefore try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting.’
A tenant of existentialist thought is that ‘existence precedes essence,’ namely that objects or ideas exist before value is assigned to them and that, as Sartre argues, life has no meaning until we assign a meaning or essence to it. In this way, Beauvoir argues against any idea of absolute goodness, stating ‘there exists no absolute value’ and that instead value is developed from our choices. So while morality is subjective it is still meaningful because all meaning is subjective. In this way, Beauvoir follows Sartre’s ideas against ‘bad-faith’ living, and that we must desire to always be ‘willing ourselves free’ in authenticity of the self instead of having our value defined by others.
So what is ambiguity? We need to break this down a bit. Beauvoir draws heavily on Sartre’s works in Being and Nothingness on the distinction of anything being ‘in-itself’ or ‘for-itself’ (roughly: using Martin Heidegger’s concept of daesein, or being-in-itself, Sartre looks at in-itself as the object in the world and for-itself as the consciousness of existence/purpose/activity/etc) and sees the friction between the two as creating much of the ambiguity in existence. She shows how as individuals we see ourselves as, say, the main character in our lives, but also must acknowledge that we are side or background characters in the lives of others. We are both subject and object, and while we are free we also exist in the lives of others as ‘factic’ and operating under all the factors of reality and forces of society (laws, socioeconomics, social codes, and social barriers of prejudices/racism/sexism/etc to name a few). This is our ambiguity, and life is ambiguous. We set out with goals and feelings and inevitably die.
She draws a distinction between ambiguity and absurdism as well. ‘To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning,’ she writes, ‘to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won.’ While Camus leaned into the absurdity in life, writing that we find happiness in the struggle itself, Beauvoir looks at how that does not form an ethical system that enhances freedoms for all.
‘Absurdity challenges every ethics; but also the finished rationalization of the real would leave no room for ethics; it is because man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure and outrageousness, to save his existence. Thus, to say that action has to be lived in its truth, that is, in the consciousness of the antinomies which it involves, does not mean that one has to renounce it.’
In a way it makes Camus feel overtly nihilistic and Beauvoir argues that freedom comes from the pursuit of it. Transcendence much be found by itself but never actually fulfilled as we inevitably die and the world continues on. As an example, she argues artists don’t set out to “finish” art but instead to capture it in its moment, time always marches on and expands on what came before, which she also addresses in terms of how society and politics are always changing over time.
’Freedom is the source from which all significations and all values spring. It is the original condition of all justification of existence.’
Freedom creates values but this sort of subjective approach has an objective morality of responsibility with freedom. Beauvoir teaches us to remember that our will to freedom affects all those around us, creating a sense of morality that enhancing freedom is ethically correct, but restricting freedom of others even in enhancing our own, is not.
‘A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.’
There is a good look at the ways systems purported to promote freedom often become restrictive. Freedom must be employed productively or it becomes oppressive, and a large part of The Second Sex shows that subjugation comes when a person (women, in this instance) is denied being thought of as for-itself and viewed instead as an object/property or other aspect of materialism. She also shows how moral evil for existentialists is essentially anything preventing us from accepting life’s ambiguity being able to improve both yourself and the world together. Or, anything that makes your valuation the object of another’s will.
‘Man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it.’
Part two examines how as we enter adulthood we realize that we not only have freedom but responsibility and our actions shape the world. She breaks down several ‘ways of being’ and how that relates to ideas of ambiguity and freedom which I suppose could serve as a replacement for the enneagram if you wanted. These include examples like the sub-man who is so afraid of action they deny their own freedom and aims to do nothing at all, the adventurer who seeks their freedom but often runs over that of others, or the passionate man who is similar but allows diminishment of his own freedoms for others. Problems arise due to either rejecting the experience of freedom or misunderstanding the meaning of it, and one should live with passion and generosity while protecting both themselves and others from becoming an object of another’s will. We must accept the burdens of freedom and not avoid them.
‘The oppressed can fulfill his freedom as a man only in revolt.’
The third section emphasizes actions and how they relate in her concept of ethical ambiguity. Much of this addresses the misuse of freedom, particularly in ways that oppress others and how this is always evil. Yet because oppression always exists, and because oppressors go to great lengths to convince the oppress this is just the “natural” order or way of things (think how under capitalism the poor are mistakenly socially framed as failures to mislead from acknowledging them as victims) and thereby we must always be in revolt. She addresses Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and how his works acknowledges 'the struggle will never cease' and 'does not dare delude himself with the idea of a stationary future.'
'The fundemental ambiguity of the human condition will always open up to men the possibility of opposing choices; there will always be within them the desire to be that being of whom they have made themsleves a lack, the flight from the anguish of freedom; the plane of hell, of struggle, will never be eliminated; freedom will never be given; it will always have to be won.'
I’m reminded of Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and how society is an endlessly revolving series of revolutions and must always be aimed at expanded ethical freedoms. She cites Leon Trotsky envisaging 'the future as a permanent revolution' and once again reiterates than ethics is of the moment and not a mark on a static line through time.
When it comes to revolt, Beauvoir looks at how during revolt 'we can conquor our enemies only by acting on their facticity, by reducing them to things,' and how, in the process of this, we 'have to make ourselves things' in return. This also gets into the issue of violence and she asks if there are circumstances when violence is justified against oppressors (this comes after the occupation of France by the Nazis during which Beauvoir worked with the Underground).
‘In order for a liberating action to be a thoroughly moral action, it would have to be achieved through a conversion of the oppressors: there would then be a reconciliation of all freedoms. But no one any longer dares to abandon himself today to these utopian reveries.’
She posits that when violene is done to, say, a 16 year old Nazi on the battlefield 'it was not he whom we hated but his masters,' but also that 'the oppressors would not be so strong if they did not have accomplices among the oppressed themselves.' She admits that, ideally, we should re-educate those who have been persuayed to serve the oppressors in violence and unethical action, but the 'urgency of struggle forbits slow labor.' The conclusion she arrives at is 'we are obliged to destroy not only the oppressor but also those who serve him, whether they do so out of ignorance or out of constraint.'
Overall, we are called to ask how we commit to freedom for the self while also making room to the freedom of all others. This is explored in many aspects of ambiguity and ethical conundrums where the point of objectivity in the subjective reality is always freedom. The Ethics of Ambiguity is a great and worthwhile read that would serve as a perfect introduction to existentialism ethics or simply to anyone interested in ethical philosophy in general. Perhaps not her strongest work, yet still plenty engaging and interesting. I’ve always found her method of examining concepts to be very effective and promote understanding without being overly obfuscating. I also enjoyed many ways how I could see her expanding or using these ideas in the underpinnings of her later work, The Second Sex. Short, but not short on big ideas to wrestle with, The Ethics of Ambiguity is a staple of existentialist works.
‘ we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite.’
Want to read
July 23, 2023responding to my reading slump by becoming an existentialist
June 17, 2013
Oh, Simone. You lend thoughtful sobriety to Sartrean and Camus-ian existential whingeing.
Frankly though, existentialist writings (in the form of philosophical treatises, NOT novels - in fact, NEVER novels) tire me. This one got a bit tedious - I dislike zigzagging from grandiosity to brutal specifics - but things picked up in the end.
Favorite lines:
(1) "My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy."
(2) "The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won. Absurdity challenges every ethics; but also the finished rationalization of the real would leave no room for ethics; it is because man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure and outrageousness, to save his existence."
I really should stop talking to dead philosophers. The conversations with the living ones are those that will land me a job.
Frankly though, existentialist writings (in the form of philosophical treatises, NOT novels - in fact, NEVER novels) tire me. This one got a bit tedious - I dislike zigzagging from grandiosity to brutal specifics - but things picked up in the end.
Favorite lines:
(1) "My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy."
(2) "The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won. Absurdity challenges every ethics; but also the finished rationalization of the real would leave no room for ethics; it is because man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure and outrageousness, to save his existence."
I really should stop talking to dead philosophers. The conversations with the living ones are those that will land me a job.
Read
September 2, 2014
L’homme est une passion inutile.
- Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Etre et le Néant (1943)
Le propre de toute morale c'est de considérer la vie humaine comme une partie que l'on peut gagner ou perdre, et d'enseigner à l'homme le moyen de gagner.
- Simone de Beauvoir, Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté (1947)
(*)
Any philosophical work is an expression of a culture at a particular moment of time as well as of the individual author's personality and experience. The middle class Parisian intellectuals who produced one of the many quite loosely related "Existentialisms" were writing at the end of and immediately following the most widely destructive self-immolation humankind has heretofore wreaked upon itself. As devastating to morale and value systems as the First World War had been, at the end of the Second Europe was lying stunned on its back wondering if anything had any value except possibly naked life itself, that genetically programmed need of all animals to hold onto life.
This is part of the context in which Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus and a few others modified earlier ""Existentialisms" to produce an apparently radical sweeping-the-board-clear in an effort initially to focus on the individual stripped of all his bonds to failed societies and discredited value systems. That was just the right moment and place for this effort, and, because it grew out of and expressed a widely shared sentiment, a bowdlerized caricature became quite fashionable for a time (along with goatees and black sweaters).
When I was a very young man who rejected nearly everything his culture and time said was valuable, reading the works of the French Existentialists was exactly what I needed to help me go my own way. Of course, being psychologically and intellectually useful to me and being a coherent, well thought out philosophy are not identical. Which is not to say that I am going to participate in the GR snark directed at existentialism.(**)
No, what I am going to do is review a particularly nice booklength essay by Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté - translated into English under the title The Ethics of Ambiguity - which works out the ethical consequences of Sartre's highly metaphysical musings in L’Etre et le Néant.
Sartre's deliberately provocative formula at the top of the review notwithstanding, one of de Beauvoir's purposes in this essay is to explain why despair need not be a consequence of Sartre's metaphysical position. On the contrary - and this is how I received Sartre's message as a young man - it can also lead to a joyful and explorative liberation.
For Sartre and de Beauvoir, it is self-consciousness that distinguishes humankind from all other animals, and it is this self-consciousness, this standing at a pondering distance from both oneself and the rest of existence, that alienates him from himself and all the rest. In certain sects of Buddhism, precisely this self-consciousness is to be discarded as an illusion in favor of returning to the actual: the great sea of being out of which all the "ten thousand things" emerge for a time and then return. For Sartre and de Beauvoir, by contrast, in order to be "authentic," one must "assume," i.e. recognize and accept, this alienation as a basic attribute of humankind. They deny all transcendent entities and values - what is here in this world is all there is, and all values, goals and projects are completely up to us. And precisely because they are up to us and not imposed transcendentally from elsewhere, we, and nothing else, are responsible for what we make of our lives and the world.
But how does one go about choosing these values, goals and projects? Does one follow urges, whims, etc.; does one accept the values, goals and projects of the culture we find ourselves born into; does one do something else altogether, instead? One is free to make one of the first two choices, though it is clear that the philosophers do not approve of thoughtlessly going along with pure contingence; one would, in terms of her quote at the top, have lost the game.
de Beauvoir proposes methods - methods that are largely aimed at benefiting other persons as well as oneself - one can employ to answer the first question; she does not propose rules. And like many of the classical authors' works on ethics, she examines concrete situations. She emphasizes that humankind is always making decisions - also ethical decisions - in a state of incomplete information, so one always risks making a mistake in every choice. That is another basic attribute of humankind one must "assume."
Because every individual has free choice, individuals can make choices that impinge upon the freedom of choice of other persons. When this constraint on one's own freedom reaches a certain point - where this point lies will depend upon the individual - de Beauvoir recognizes the necessity for the individual to remove this constraint by any means necessary, including force. One can hardly wonder, since she had witnessed the rampages of the Nazis, that she explicitly recognizes the moral necessity of war. The liberty of others can turn into a real problem, but that one also must "assume."
Oh how this word "liberty," this freedom to choose and create, must have resonated at the end of the Second World War, and how it did resonate in my young breast much later! By pulling back from the world and one's self-in-the-world through this act of self-consciousness, one finds oneself in the position to formulate both value and the meaning of what one observes. In the words of one of de Beauvoir's striking, though somewhat misleading formulas:
La liberté est la source d'où surgissent toutes les significations et toutes les valeurs.
(Liberty is the source whence surges all significations and all values.)
Later in life I learned that the existentialists' works were written in a philosophical context that lessened somewhat the radicality of their vision. The subject-object dichotomy was made the central point of all the German Idealists' metaphysics beginning at least with Kant, and despite the phenomenological aspects of their work, a strong scent of idealism was not to be overlooked in the early and middle periods of Sartre's and de Beauvoir's texts. Nonetheless, they consistently rejected the Idealists' absolutes, both metaphysical and ethical, and tried to work out a way to live with their absence. Despite all the snark I've read, I consider their effort to be admirable.
It is true that the French Existentialists loved their formules, but that is true of nearly every French intellectual I've ever read. It's part of the culture. It's also true that a certain kind of serious play is being carried out in language games like
C'est dire qu'il ne saurait y avoir de devoir être que pour un être qui, selon la définition existentialiste, se met en question dans son être, un être qui est à distance de soi-même et qui a à être son être.
where de Beauvoir capitalizes upon the fact that in French "être" means "to be","being" in the sense of "entity," and "being" in the metaphysical sense.(***) She is certainly not alone in playing such games. None of this disturbs me, on the contrary, though I acknowledge that it certainly can drive some readers up the wall. Fair warning...
(*) Man is a useless passion.
The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.
(**) Which, from what I have read, seems to be directed at the bowdlerized caricature and appears not to be informed by a careful reading of the original texts.
(***) An approximation:
That is to say there would be no "should be" except for a being who, according to the existentialist definition, questions his own "being", a being who stands at a distance from himself and who has to be his "being."
This is meaningfully decipherable, but, let's face it, it's likely that here she let the language guide the thought instead of the thought guide the language.
Rating
http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/974...
May 3, 2017
Good tips on how to not accidentally become a fascist, and other stuff. I'm not at all well-read in philosophy, but this relatively short text seemed to me to be an excellent introduction to existentialism. The whole idea around "ambiguity" (as I understand it) is that life isn't going to plop down a nicely wrapped package of Meaning into your lap - you have to create meaning in every moment. This contrasts with the idea of "absurdity" (see Camus), which suggests that not only can meaning not be given to you, it ultimately can not be created at all. De Beauvoir also discusses freedom and oppression with great subtly, in ways that are still highly applicable to today's world politics. I really enjoyed this book.
July 23, 2023
With the the Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir outlines an existentialist ethics, of which she was inspired to write by Jean-Paul Sartre’s promise to do so at the end of 'Being and Nothingness' in 1943. A book that he wrote many notes for, but which he never completed. The Ethics of Ambiguity is one of de Beauvoir’s most intriguing and original philosophical works. But is the theory it contains defensible? And does it give us practical guidance for how to live our lives? This, of course is simply down to the reader, and how most of what she says is perceived. I personally don't think it's her best work (including novels), but if you are a fan of her work, its still worth a read.
de Beauvoir begins with the central existentialist premise that existence precedes essence. Basically, we humans create our own essence or nature through our choices and actions. When de Beauvoir discusses human essence, she refers not only to this general notion, but also to German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s assertion in Being and Time that our creation of ourselves in the present is based both on our past actions and on the choices that we make while projecting ourselves into the future. The aspect of her ethics dealing with choice stems from Sartre’s distinction between the in-itself and the for-itself – but with de Beauvoir’s own take on the subject.
de Beauvoir's investigation of the space of freedom vs structure provides an insight into the need for structure in order for freedom to exist. She provides a contrast between the ontological freedom given at our birth, and the moral freedom we act through choice and goes on to contrast choice against decision and action. In all of these contrasts de Beauvoir works through the paradoxical nature of human existence and offers a way to a moral freedom which accepts ambiguity as a necessary structure of human existence, thus providing a further contrast between the deconstructive science we need for the natural sciences and the structured freedom of ambiguity which supports human existence.
It's no doubt a deep and thoughtful read that requires complete and utter attention, however, even for me, I still found it a bit too intellectually academic, so its more one for the budding enthusiast studying philosophy/existentialism.
3.5/5
December 12, 2008
De Beauvoir largely succeeds here in refuting the ridiculous claims that people used when trying to argue against the existentialists. Her prose is fairly straight forward (at least compared to Sartre's) and her arguments are very well crafted. You really get a sense in this work of how existential thought arose as a response to the butchery of the second world war. She puts a more human face on her ideas than Sartre. Her concept of ambiguity in the book's conclusion deftly predicts much of the rest of 20th century philosophy and critical thought.
May 19, 2024
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Erroneamente alla parola "esistenzialismo" appare unicamente alla mente Sartre e la sua produzione. Ecco, l'esistenzialismo di de Beauvoir è altrettanto interessante e degno di nota del corrispondente più conosciuto. Oltre a "Il secondo sesso" (fortunatamente) Simone de Beauvoir ha scritto anche altro. E' tempo di scoprirlo.
Erroneamente alla parola "esistenzialismo" appare unicamente alla mente Sartre e la sua produzione. Ecco, l'esistenzialismo di de Beauvoir è altrettanto interessante e degno di nota del corrispondente più conosciuto. Oltre a "Il secondo sesso" (fortunatamente) Simone de Beauvoir ha scritto anche altro. E' tempo di scoprirlo.
Read
February 21, 2014The term "existentialism" has been, like "postmodern" or "hipster," so stretched to death that it has long since stopped meaning anything at all. But Simone de Beauvoir makes a good go of trying to fit the ethics of an existentialist age-- one defined, not by meaninglessness as is so often presupposed as ambiguity-- into a more comprehensive framework for understanding the world. She finds herself, in true existentialist fashion, developing more questions than answers, and more negations and dead ends than positive solutions. She's especially good at calling out anyone who thinks they figured it out, and yet she doesn't use her intellectual agnosticism as a smokescreen against any other argument. I like to read philosophy for its provocative quality, and I feel plenty provoked, so for me it was a success.
November 22, 2008
This is one of my favorite books, and definitely my favorite philosophy book. It is by far one of the best books on existentialism. As you can tell from looking at the length of the book, she is very concise in her writing. This is a good thing as you don't have to put up with the fluff that some philosophers seem to enjoy so much. Don't be fooled by the length - this is not an easy read. I've read it 3 times and constantly want to go back for more because I get something new each time. For those who want to read about existentialism and don't want to worry about the "almost depressing" works of Sartre and the "still not quite sure I understood that" works of Kierkegaard.
November 2, 2021
"We are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite."
May 10, 2019
To attain his truth, man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it.
September 24, 2020
“For a freedom wills itself genuinely only by willing itself as an indefinite movement through the freedom of others; as soon as it withdraws into itself, it denies itself on behalf of some object which it prefers to itself: we know well enough what sort of freedom the P. R. L. demands: it is property, the feeling of possession, capital, comfort, moral security. We have to respect freedom only when it is intended for freedom, not when it strays, flees itself, and resigns itself. A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.”
April 7, 2024
"Existence asserts itself as an absolute which must seek its justification within itself and not suppress itself, even though it may be lost by preserving itself. To attain this truth, man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it. He rejoins himself only to the extent that he agrees to remain at a distance from himself." (12)In The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), Simone de Beauvoir takes up a challenge that she was apparently given during a lecture: to ground an ethical system in existentialism—or, more specifically, to show how one can derive a concrete ethical system from Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness. She thus responds to a prominent criticism of existentialism that it is too abstract to guide action and to answer questions about how one ought to live. Beauvoir takes on the challenge of showing how the metaphysical and ontological underpinnings of existentialism—radical freedom, the absence of God and absolute values, the ambiguity of human beings being both objects and subjects in the world, being both beings in-themselves and beings for-themselves—can give rise to a practicable and convincing ethics.
To that end, I don't think she quite succeeds—as interesting and instructive as some of her arguments in The Ethics of Ambiguity might be. The main idea is that any absolute goals and anything given or taken as absolute must be questioned—placed between parentheses—from the perspective of the freedom that human beings have and the ambiguities that our existence necessarily entails.
Even if you share all of Beauvoir's and existentialism's metaphysical and ontological assumptions (if you don't, then the system does not get off the ground), the ethics that she ultimately derives is not only still quite abstract (which she acknowledged years after writing The Ethics), but it is also a little thin. Ultimately, I'm not convinced that the ethics of ambiguity gets us a full-fledged ethics; nor that it is fundamentally different ethics from the Kantian approach that she uses in later parts of the book (treating others always as ends-in-themselves) or even the Millian kind of liberty arguments about one person's freedom (only) being limited by that of others. The question about others, in any case, and how exactly to treat them remains too vague, perhaps, to be truly instructive. Furthermore, even though the starting point of existentialism is that there are no absolutes to rely on (God, values, and so on), it seems that some values do sneak in toward the end of the book—for example, when she affirms happiness and the 'joy of existence' on page 146 (where does this joy come from, and why wouldn't we begin with an affirmation of the joy of existence instead?).
Nevertheless, the fundamental ambiguity of human existence and the awareness of our freedom and responsibility in having to make choices (not making a choice also always means choosing!)—avoiding becoming what Beauvoir calls a serious person or even, somewhat problematically, a sub-human—are points well worth taking.
August 27, 2016
Moral redigida a partir de O Ser e o Nada de Jean Paul Sartre, está dividido da seguinte forma:
Parte 1: Explanação dos conceitos de ambiguidade e liberdade presentes na obra de Sartre, Beauvoir explicita que valores não são inatos e sim advindos de escolhas.
Parte 2: Elabora o conceito de liberdade pessoal e a interação com o Outro, de como os indivíduos fazem de tudo para negar a própria liberdade assimilando os valores dos outros ao invés de construir sua própria moral, embora há quem desenvolva uma liberdade genuína onde o querer-se livre é também querer livre o outro.
Parte 3: Dividida em cinco sessões, A Atitude Estética, Liberdade e Libertação, As Antinomias da Ação, O Presente e o Futuro, A Ambiguidade e uma conclusão. Todo o capítulo explora as nuances da liberdade ativa no mundo.
Enfim, altamente recomendável, não só para os amantes do existencialismo, mas para todos interessados no ser humano e suas deliberações éticas.
Parte 1: Explanação dos conceitos de ambiguidade e liberdade presentes na obra de Sartre, Beauvoir explicita que valores não são inatos e sim advindos de escolhas.
Parte 2: Elabora o conceito de liberdade pessoal e a interação com o Outro, de como os indivíduos fazem de tudo para negar a própria liberdade assimilando os valores dos outros ao invés de construir sua própria moral, embora há quem desenvolva uma liberdade genuína onde o querer-se livre é também querer livre o outro.
Parte 3: Dividida em cinco sessões, A Atitude Estética, Liberdade e Libertação, As Antinomias da Ação, O Presente e o Futuro, A Ambiguidade e uma conclusão. Todo o capítulo explora as nuances da liberdade ativa no mundo.
Enfim, altamente recomendável, não só para os amantes do existencialismo, mas para todos interessados no ser humano e suas deliberações éticas.
June 1, 2018
I don’t know what de Beauvoir I’d saying half the time, but when I do know what she’s saying blows my mind.
January 2, 2022
“Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity.”
Beauvoir did a brilliant analysis of the ethical condition of man which Sartre at the end of his masterpiece Being and nothingness promised he would do,but he was unable to kept his promise. Since man is only an useless passion in Sartre's view,then how can we give any sense of ethical meaning in our daily conduct?That's why, people very often complained about the impracticality of existential philosophy. But Beauvoir, in this book,just made it clear what really existentialism means in the daily situation of man's life. In a word,she completed the task for her boyfriend. So this book also can be seen as the final conclusion of Sartre's Being and nothingness. Here,Beauvoir started with Sartre's notion of freedom and little by little explained how man in order to escape the anguish of his freedom strives futilely to be the foundation of his own being or something fixed or in Sartre's words, ‘to become God’. And this is how,Beauvoir claims,fascism and so many political tyranny arise to condemn man again in his own freedom. But how should a men act then if there are no objective ethics? Beauvoir says that the condition of human being is ambiguous, so are his ethics. But he must choose. And to choose in this world in the midsts of others,he first and foremost have to realize that “he is lack of being which flees itself perpetually to be a lack of being again” who exist also for others and that's how man usually gives value to his everyday situation and circumstances. And to realize is to assert this lack at the heart of his being;that man can never know the universal outcome, but only his fixed finite goals,the value of which must be shifted perpetually. So as existence is ambiguous, never something fixed,we can only find meaning continuously by our own individual choice. And it is only then possible for man to act in an ethical manner.
This is where we can see how Beauvoir's analysis of man's condition contradicts Albert Camus's view of absurdity.
Beauvoir says:
“The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; so to say it is ambiguous is to assert that it's meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won. Absurdity challenges every ethics; but also the finished rationalization of the real would leave no room for ethics; it is because man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure & outrageousness, to save his existence.”
Beauvoir did a brilliant analysis of the ethical condition of man which Sartre at the end of his masterpiece Being and nothingness promised he would do,but he was unable to kept his promise. Since man is only an useless passion in Sartre's view,then how can we give any sense of ethical meaning in our daily conduct?That's why, people very often complained about the impracticality of existential philosophy. But Beauvoir, in this book,just made it clear what really existentialism means in the daily situation of man's life. In a word,she completed the task for her boyfriend. So this book also can be seen as the final conclusion of Sartre's Being and nothingness. Here,Beauvoir started with Sartre's notion of freedom and little by little explained how man in order to escape the anguish of his freedom strives futilely to be the foundation of his own being or something fixed or in Sartre's words, ‘to become God’. And this is how,Beauvoir claims,fascism and so many political tyranny arise to condemn man again in his own freedom. But how should a men act then if there are no objective ethics? Beauvoir says that the condition of human being is ambiguous, so are his ethics. But he must choose. And to choose in this world in the midsts of others,he first and foremost have to realize that “he is lack of being which flees itself perpetually to be a lack of being again” who exist also for others and that's how man usually gives value to his everyday situation and circumstances. And to realize is to assert this lack at the heart of his being;that man can never know the universal outcome, but only his fixed finite goals,the value of which must be shifted perpetually. So as existence is ambiguous, never something fixed,we can only find meaning continuously by our own individual choice. And it is only then possible for man to act in an ethical manner.
This is where we can see how Beauvoir's analysis of man's condition contradicts Albert Camus's view of absurdity.
Beauvoir says:
“The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; so to say it is ambiguous is to assert that it's meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won. Absurdity challenges every ethics; but also the finished rationalization of the real would leave no room for ethics; it is because man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure & outrageousness, to save his existence.”
January 31, 2019
What is it that makes this book so terrible? Is it the futility of seeking to enshrine an absolutist view of ethics that is based on self-chosen existentialist grounds rather than to admit that absolute moral standards require a transcendent creator? Is it her self-serving double standards of not judging the Soviet gulag (to say nothing of the Chinese laogai) by the same standards by which she shows hatred for the Nazi concentration camp? Is it the way that the author seeks to combine the most unpleasant aspects of politically motivated ambiguity with the most unpleasant aspects of a stridently authoritarian use of language as a club against the reader who has a different worldview? Perhaps it is all of these reasons and more besides. It is difficult to see who it would be--aside from someone whose worldview is as defective as the author's, who is as intoxicated with self-idolatry and the refusal to give credit where it is due--that would appreciate a book like this at all. This author has about the same level of credibility in writing about ethics as does the immoral bioethicisists of our contemporary world who see it as moral to corrupt nature and to debase the dignity of life, that is to say, none at all. As is often the case, books about ethics seldom demonstrate their authors to be moral and ethical people.
This book is at least mercifully short at less than 200 pages, because it would have been far more intolerable at a larger length. It is plenty long enough as it is to be incoherent in the extreme. The author begins this book with a look at the relationship between ambiguity and freedom, seeking to make morals absolute while also seeking to free herself from authority. The author then moves on to the question of personal freedom and one's relationship (and obligations) to others. After this the author spends the rest of the book discussing what in her mind are some positive aspects of ambiguity, first tackling the aesthetic attitude towards life, the question between freedom and liberation, where she stumbles in her desire to explain and justify Soviet atrocities as having a noble end, the antinomies of action, which cause her to look at the problem of avoiding action against Nazis in World War II and what this led to, as well as a look at the present and the future and ambiguity as a whole. At this point the author mercifully ends the book with a conclusion and index.
A book like this can only be seen as admirable if one sees the life and thinking and behavior of the author as admirable. I do not. The author's political views in particular as well as her own behavior were both immoral and wicked in the extreme, and neither the ends nor the means of her beloved Communist governments have ever been just at any point in their trials around the world, which served as a tribulation to the longsuffering masses who were punished for the sins of their wicked rulers. It is clear why the author would wish to absolutize her own moral worldview and rebel against any authority over her. She shows the typical and lamentable Janus-faced attitude that the followers of Satan have always had towards matters of morals and behavior, a spirited rebellion against authority over them that would punish them for their sins and constrain them to a moral standard of thinking and behaving and a tyrannical absolutism over whatever unfortunate souls come under their influence and authority. Anarchy towards those above and tyranny of those below well describes the sort of ungodly ambiguity that is celebrated here, making this book a fitting if accidental description of the demonic attitude within the thinking and action of human beings in life and politics.
This book is at least mercifully short at less than 200 pages, because it would have been far more intolerable at a larger length. It is plenty long enough as it is to be incoherent in the extreme. The author begins this book with a look at the relationship between ambiguity and freedom, seeking to make morals absolute while also seeking to free herself from authority. The author then moves on to the question of personal freedom and one's relationship (and obligations) to others. After this the author spends the rest of the book discussing what in her mind are some positive aspects of ambiguity, first tackling the aesthetic attitude towards life, the question between freedom and liberation, where she stumbles in her desire to explain and justify Soviet atrocities as having a noble end, the antinomies of action, which cause her to look at the problem of avoiding action against Nazis in World War II and what this led to, as well as a look at the present and the future and ambiguity as a whole. At this point the author mercifully ends the book with a conclusion and index.
A book like this can only be seen as admirable if one sees the life and thinking and behavior of the author as admirable. I do not. The author's political views in particular as well as her own behavior were both immoral and wicked in the extreme, and neither the ends nor the means of her beloved Communist governments have ever been just at any point in their trials around the world, which served as a tribulation to the longsuffering masses who were punished for the sins of their wicked rulers. It is clear why the author would wish to absolutize her own moral worldview and rebel against any authority over her. She shows the typical and lamentable Janus-faced attitude that the followers of Satan have always had towards matters of morals and behavior, a spirited rebellion against authority over them that would punish them for their sins and constrain them to a moral standard of thinking and behaving and a tyrannical absolutism over whatever unfortunate souls come under their influence and authority. Anarchy towards those above and tyranny of those below well describes the sort of ungodly ambiguity that is celebrated here, making this book a fitting if accidental description of the demonic attitude within the thinking and action of human beings in life and politics.
May 8, 2024
The resistance did not aspire to a positive effectiveness; it was a negation, a revolt, a martyrdom; and in this negative movement freedom was positively and absolutely confirmed.
May 8, 2016
It surprised me that I enjoyed this book so much, because normally I can't stand studying ethics. However Simone de Beauvoir made some very strong, valid points in this piece. Having lived through both the world wars and being very involved, along with Sartre, in the French political scene she was able to gain tremendous insight into the ethical dilemmas that come around with any human action on a large scale. The section titled 'The Antimonies of Action' was particularly interesting as she dissected human action in regards specifically to how it relates to other people. I tend to agree with her that most politicians are quick to value the Idea over the content (the people whom the politician is supposed to rule) and will sacrifice innocent life in order to further their future goals whose existence has yet to be fulfilled. Her idea that humans are forced to undergo projects which could possibly fail and most surely will not be realized in their lifetime has a lot of weight behind it. This is the ambiguous nature that modern humans finds themselves in once they realize that the subjective nature of his existence excludes the possibility of a purely objective point of view on which to base life. She also does a very good job of addressing some of the common objections that are brought against Existentialism: it is solipsistic, it results in chaos or inaction, things of that nature. So if you just have questions about how Existentialism can work in real life this is a good text to start with. Her prose and reasoning are very clear and easy to follow, much easier than Sartre's as far as I can tell. All in all a good read with lucid and pressing arguments about issues we still face today.
September 10, 2012
"Existentialism does not offer to the reader the consolation of an abstract evasion; existentialism proposes no evasion." SdB
As a nascent reader of philosophy I was fatigued by the on-again-off-again lucidity of her discourse, but not enough to quit. The accessibility and meaning of her prose oscillated; for me comprehension ebbed and flowed from page to page. However, the steadfast reader endures, trusting that at some point her heady prose will make sense and then BAM! they do, the proverbial fog clears and such precision clarity is enlightening. You continue reading, and as quickly as the clarity had come upon you confusion sets in again, (i.e. "The first makes History appear as an intelligible becoming within which the particularity of contingent accidents is reabsorbed...," if anyone has insight to this passage on page 147, I'll buy you a cup of tea for explaining it to me). That said, as suggested I was enlightened by her writings, particularly her notion of man's states of being: child, man, subman, serious, nihilist. With thoughts like, "the child's condition is metaphysically privileged," and "There is the serious from the moment that freedom denies itself to the advantage of ends which one claims are absolute," she conveys solid logic and began for me a starting point from which to finally access existentialism. I closed the 160th and final page of the book immensely satisfied and ready for more.
I read Bernard Frechtman's translation. I wonder if there may be a more lucid translation.
As a nascent reader of philosophy I was fatigued by the on-again-off-again lucidity of her discourse, but not enough to quit. The accessibility and meaning of her prose oscillated; for me comprehension ebbed and flowed from page to page. However, the steadfast reader endures, trusting that at some point her heady prose will make sense and then BAM! they do, the proverbial fog clears and such precision clarity is enlightening. You continue reading, and as quickly as the clarity had come upon you confusion sets in again, (i.e. "The first makes History appear as an intelligible becoming within which the particularity of contingent accidents is reabsorbed...," if anyone has insight to this passage on page 147, I'll buy you a cup of tea for explaining it to me). That said, as suggested I was enlightened by her writings, particularly her notion of man's states of being: child, man, subman, serious, nihilist. With thoughts like, "the child's condition is metaphysically privileged," and "There is the serious from the moment that freedom denies itself to the advantage of ends which one claims are absolute," she conveys solid logic and began for me a starting point from which to finally access existentialism. I closed the 160th and final page of the book immensely satisfied and ready for more.
I read Bernard Frechtman's translation. I wonder if there may be a more lucid translation.
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March 17, 2024I liked this book, but I am not sure I will remember it in a few weeks. I don't read a lot of philosophy, and I probably picked up this book because it was cheap at Half-Priced Books and because I like SdB and Sartre, and their separate discussion about freedom. However, I have not read Being and Nothingness, which I should read and then reread this book to know what the exact critique is. Still, I found it useful in "diagnosing" different people's types of covering up their knowledge that they are free and the ambiguity of human condition. I found the explanation of how to judge relative good - which was not very instructive and left extremely vague - to be unconvincingly limited, so much so that it was not difficult, within the course of a single plane ride, to come up with numerous examples that would prove contradictory and difficult in her Ethical system. But I guess if your ethics are only about ambiguity (something that I think is probably sorely lacking in understanding in the contemporary political-social environment), you can have lots of contradictory things.
August 14, 2017
I was told this was a good book for "beginners" but I struggled so much with this, have been reading it since May and had to push myself through. What Simone says is nevertheless fascinating and vital to the existential school of thought but the density of this text was too heavy for me. I am going to try Simone's fiction and read some hopefully easier texts and then maybe I can revisit this.
July 23, 2016
I occaisionally wake in the night and have difficulty getting back to sleep. During a difficult part of my life I was reading Seven Types of Ambiguity and noticed it put me to sleep. I started reading it when I woke in the night and found it helped. Over the last year The Ethics of Ambiguity has had this role. This is probably way more than you want to know about my sleeping habits, but it explains why it has taken me so long to finish this book.
It also points-up how dense the writing is, and that I stuck with the book. I am currently making an effort to understand Existentialism and I found that de Beauvoir's writing most often connected to something in my experience or thinking; this is opposed to Being and Nothingness: an essay in phenomenological ontology, which I quit after 30 pages wondering WTF Sartre was talking about. I especially found a philosophical foundation for Existential psychotherapy. I want to reread this book and believe I would find much more in it.
It also points-up how dense the writing is, and that I stuck with the book. I am currently making an effort to understand Existentialism and I found that de Beauvoir's writing most often connected to something in my experience or thinking; this is opposed to Being and Nothingness: an essay in phenomenological ontology, which I quit after 30 pages wondering WTF Sartre was talking about. I especially found a philosophical foundation for Existential psychotherapy. I want to reread this book and believe I would find much more in it.
March 26, 2021
After reading Being and Nothingness I want to give The Ethics of Ambiguity not five but six stars. Unlike Sartre, De Beauvoir understood that there is no tradeoff between depth of ideas and clarity of writing. Moreover, she has the much needed existentialist ethics that Sartre lacks; he is metaphysics, she is life.
May 24, 2008
It is indeed a tour de force on de Beauvoir's part to succeed in turning the absurdity of the human condition into a dialectic of ambiguity which proposes that "we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite." This book is actually a very uplifting and liberating book which does not propose an evasion from our human condition but a way to transcend it.
August 7, 2008
Definately the most readable overview of existentialism around, and a good crack at what an existential ethics would mean. She twists herself up in knots trying to cope with Stalinism, but other than that is philosophically consistent in her political approach.
July 26, 2016
This book is not only the attempt for an ethics to Sartre's humanist existentialism but also the attempt for a new ethics in a world where the idea of inhuman objectivity doesn't stand anymore. One of the best works of continental philosophy.
April 16, 2013
Read this long ago in college. Just now adding it.
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