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Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity

Simone de Beauvoir was deeply religious as a child but lost her faith at age 14. She studied philosophy, mathematics, languages, and literature. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Chapter 1, de Beauvoir discusses the ambiguity of being both an object for others and a free subject. She argues that ethics arises from the differences between what we want and reality. De Beauvoir denies strong determinism and says that even Marxists rely on ethics implicitly. She concludes that asserting our own freedom requires allowing the freedom of others to be realized.

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302 views5 pages

Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity

Simone de Beauvoir was deeply religious as a child but lost her faith at age 14. She studied philosophy, mathematics, languages, and literature. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Chapter 1, de Beauvoir discusses the ambiguity of being both an object for others and a free subject. She argues that ethics arises from the differences between what we want and reality. De Beauvoir denies strong determinism and says that even Marxists rely on ethics implicitly. She concludes that asserting our own freedom requires allowing the freedom of others to be realized.

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© © All Rights Reserved
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Simone

de Beauvoir
• 1908-1986
• Deeply religious as a
child, lost her faith at 14
• She studied philosophy,
mathematics, languages,
and literature
The Ethics of Ambiguity, Chapter 1
• What is the “ambiguity”?
- Being an object (for others) and a free for-itself (7)
- “He wants to be, and to the extent that he coincides with this wish, he fails” (23)
• The escape: “But man also wills himself to be a disclosure of being, and if
he coincides with this wish, he wins” (23)
• Ethics arises because what we want differs from the way things are
• Existential reduction like the phenomenological reduction: reveals our
purposes as contingent, as not “absolutes” (14).
• This inverts Dostoevsky’s (actually, Ivan’s) warning
• Warning: “particularity” often is a translation of “singularity”
• Notice how cautious the formulation on page 18
The Ethics of Ambiguity, Chapter 1
• The discussion of Marxism: de Beauvoir denies strong historical
determinism; even the Marxists implicitly rely upon ethics
• “To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same
decision” (24)
• We are condemned to be free, but we can fail to assert our
freedom—in laziness, cowardice, etc. (25)
• “It is only by prolonging itself through the freedom of others that
[freedom] manages to surpass death itself and realize itself as a
definite unity”
Freedoms implicit in B discussion
• Freedoms
• W-freedom. Free will: ability to do otherwise. Power to choose otherwise.
Supposedly we have absolute metaphysical freedom. As per Descartes, one
has or does not have such freedom.
• I-freedom. Informed freedom: range of action possible given one’s
understanding. This seems to assume that there is a fact of the matter in
each situation about what freedom/disclosure requires (so that more
knowledge never results in less freedom).
• P-freedom. Political freedom. The way that action and i-freedom are affected
by social organization.
- Negative P-freedom. Lack of restraints.
- Positive P-freedom. Providing resources to enable free action.
An argument?
1. We want to express freedom.
2. To express freedom is disclosure of being.
3. We want disclosure of being. (By 1, 2 and substitution of identicals)
4. If we want disclosure of being, then we want more disclosure of more being.
5. We want more disclosure of more being. (MP 3, 4)
6. If we want more disclosure of more being, then we want it to be more possible for there
to be more disclosure of more being.
7. We want it to be more possible for there to be more disclosure of more being. (MP 5, 6)
8. Other people are more free if and only if it is more possible for there to be more
disclosure of more being. (Because other human beings create the meanings of being
when they are free, and we cannot create all or much of those meanings ourselves.)
9. If (PßàQ) and we want Q ,then we should want P.
10. We should want that other people are more free. (By instance of 9 and MP with 8)

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