![]() ![]() ![]() De Beauvoir notes that many philosophers have tried to ignore or rectify contradiction in human existence: “As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it” (6). 07094 Copyright 1948 by Philosophical Library ISBN 0-8065-0160-X SECTION I: AMBIGUITY AND FREEDOM, pp. But if one embraces this messiness-which, as de Beauvoir sees it, is the “genuine conditions” of our life, we “draw our strength to live and our reason for acting” (8).Īmbiguousness is a complex term for de Beauvoir and existentialists at large, but for the most part it refers to the paradoxes of human existence. THE ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY Simone de Beauvoir translated from the French by BERNARD FRECHTMAN Published by Citadel Press, A division of Lyle Stuart Inc. ![]() This is but one of many paradoxes of the human condition, all of which point to one glaring fact: Life is a messy, ambiguous thing. That is, every human is the main character of their own life, while simultaneously being a minor character in someone else’s: “Each has the incomparable taste in his mouth of his own life, and yet each feels himself more insignificant than an insect within the immense collectivity whose limits are one with the earth’s” (8). Beauvoir begins by asserting that paradox is embedded in the human condition in that human beings are simultaneously both subject and object. ![]()
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