De Beauvoir on the Ambiguous Human Condition (Part Two)

Continuing on Simone de Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity(1947), parts I and II.

We discuss all the various ways to fail to wholly will your own freedom, i.e., will it all the way to where you will the freedom of others. The first step is admitting that human consciousness is an ontological negative, i.e., it doesn't have static being in the way a rock or tree or even an instinct-driven squirrel is, and some people just stop there, really willing nothing at all. These are the "sub-men."

Or maybe you sign on to some cause, some goal with all your being: you fill your negativity up with something external (like God, or wanting with all your heart to become an Olympic gymnast, or devotion to doing your job well) and thereby pretend to be determined just like a squirrel is. This is the "serious man," and it's a serious abrogation of your freedom!

Or maybe you react against this seriousness and just deny that any such external thing has a hold on you, and actively will to have no values at all. This is nihilism, and it fails the existential test too.

…And there are several more iterations before you're really a fully freedom-embracing, authentic human being; in the process she ends up distinguishing herself from other existentialist atheists like Nietzsche (whom she thinks to be too solipsistic) and Camus (p. 129: "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.").

Listen to part 1 before this, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen edition with your PEL Citizenship. Please support PEL!

End song: "Reasonably Lonely," by Mark Lint & the Simulacra from The Sinking and the Aftermath, recorded in 2000 and 2003, newly mixed. #beauvoir #existentialism #ethics #ambiguity #freedom #violence #hegel #sartre Go to the blog: http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2016/06/06/episode-140-2-beauvoir/