De Beauvoir’s Existentialism: Moral and Political Dilemmas (Part Two)

Simone de Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947).

We continue discussing Part III of the book, turning explicitly to political dilemmas: Embracing our freedom means willing the freedom of others, but what if the other person is (according to Beauvoir's formula) failing at freedom by oppressing you or someone else? Stopping the oppression typically at some level requires violence, which means ceasing to will the oppressor's freedom, and (if military action is involved) most likely sacrificing the lives both of your own soldiers, of the oppressor's less guilty cohorts, and innocent bystanders.

Beauvoir does not in the end tell us what to do (that's not what ethics is about), but stresses the need to understand the stakes involved: A sacrifice of a human life is the loss of a world, and that fact doesn't change even if it was "justified" by its prevention of a greater loss. You don't get to sit back with the self-satisfaction of "having done the right thing" when you make such terrible (though often necessary) choices. The fact that there's no objectively "right" answer in such situations, no expiation if only you always follow the utiliatarian calculus, the categorical imperative, or God-given laws, exemplifies her (Nietzschean) claim that morality is a creative act, requiring independent, authentic thought, not rule following.

Seth had dropped out of the conversation due to illness by this point, so Mark, Wes, and Dylan remain to hash things out. Do you think that Beauvoir's solution allows for morality within atheist, anti-obediance existentialism?

End song: "Indiscretion (Mess Things Up)" from the 1993 Mark Lint album Spanish Armada: Songs of Love and Related Neuroses.

Simone De Beauvoir picture by Solomon Grundy. #beauvoir #existentialism #ethics #ambiguity #freedom #violence #hegel #sartre Go to the blog: http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2016/06/20/episode-141-2-beauvoir/