Review: The Ethics of Ambiguity

The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was an excellent, truly essential read! Of the few existentialism books I have read, this is by far the one that best describes its aims, that best explains what is trying to say - it should be considered the pinnacle of existentialist thought, and is the best book on ethics and morality I have read! I was amazed by all the themes discussed within it - this is a really important book, it should be required reading for life!

First, de Beauvoir is by far the most readable of all existentialists, none of the other writers even comes close to being as easy to understand as she is (not that she’s easy to understand, just easier).

Second, I was surprised by the themes that were discussed in this book. I was expecting more about ethics of personal matters, but instead most of the book is about discussions of politics and sociology, and how philosophy can inform us how we should during extreme historical events - it's mostly about political activism and related activities, revolution, and war. The author presents great historical and political analyses from a philosophical point of view, to be contrasted, as the author does, with Hegel and Marx. The discussions are centered on citizenship and also what a person should do in the face of war, dictatorships, fascism, right-wing government, and other extreme ideologies and situations, such as slavery, paternalism, and anti-feminism.

I like a digression she had about the "adventurer", who detaches himself from the world, in search for adventure, glory and riches, which is kinda like the right-wing hero: "It is not a matter of chance, but a dialectical necessity which leads the adventurer to be complacent regarding all regimes which defend the privilege of a class or a party, and more particularly authoritarian regimes and fascism. He needs fortune, leisure, and enjoyment, and he will take these goods as supreme ends in order to be prepared to remain free in regard to any end." - An adventurer is actually an accomplice of the tyrants and dictators, if only by taciturn acceptance so that they can retain their privileged position.

The book is clearly a product of its time. It discusses freedom, oppression, capitalism, and conservatism in the context of totalitarian regimes and wars, which was very relevant to the time existentialism flourished, during WWII. I initially thought this made this discussion less universal, but then as I read more and more, and I saw how the author explored these themes, I realized that it was actually extremely relevant, as it applies directly to our time, with the ongoing anti-vax and anti-mask movement, the rise of right-wing governments and fascism all over the world, and with Russia starting its war on Ukraine. The political aspects of existentialism are, sadly, as relevant today as they were when written.

Part 2 elaborates on what it means "to will freedom" - to me, this finally resolved what Nietzsche had been talking about, with that whole “impose your will on the world” stuff he kept going on about in his books. Here we arrive at the main theme of de Beauvoir's ethics, which is very humanistic - that although there is nothing uniting us a priori, we are still bound together. "that the ethics which have given solutions by effacing the fact of the separation of men are not valid precisely because there is this separation. An ethics of ambiguity will be one which will refuse to deny a priori that separate existants can, at the same time, be bound to each other, that their individual freedoms can forge laws valid for all." Also, my freedom requires that it emerges into an "open future" - and it’s others that open this future for me. Part 2 concludes with the central tenet of de Beauvoir ethics is thus: "to will oneself free, is also to will others free".

The end expands on this proposition, and it does include a discussion about personal ethics. The author specifically mentions that ethics is not about telling you exactly what to do in a given situation, but it’s about giving you a framework with which you can make decisions. Further, she uses existentialism to inform us how to make this kind of ethics, and it’s not that she’s trying to develop whole new set of rules or guidelines on how to behave, but more like she is just trying to ground existing guidelines or existing rules or just common sense using existentialism as a framework for those rules and guidelines. Which I do find extremely interesting because it’s all about the question why should we behave a certain way, why do we have to be good, what defines being good? In the framework of extentialism, with the whole Nietzschean notion that "God is Dead", what is the standard for what is good? And here Simone De Beauvoir makes a very compelling case that existentialism can be standard of what is a good, can help you think about what is good, that you don’t need a God to ground your ethics: "It is not a matter of being right in the eyes of a God, but of being right in his own eye"; [Man] "bears the responsibility for a world which is not the work of a strange power, but of himself".

I also like that the author has a good grasp of the role science: it fails to fulfill one’s life, but it’s extremely successful in giving means to fulfill one’s life (specially when it comes to extending it, and increasing its reach).

One last interesting passage I wrote down:

"For, in a metaphysics of transcendence, in the classical sense of the term, evil is reduced to error; and in humanistic philosophies it is impossible to account for it, man being defined as complete in a complete world. Existentialism alone gives — like religions — a real role to evil, and it is this, perhaps, which make its judgments so gloomy. Men do not like to feel themselves in danger. Yet, it is because there are real dangers, real failures and real earthly damnation that words like victory, wisdom, or joy have meaning. Nothing is decided in advance, and it is because man has something to lose and because he can lose that he can also win."

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