They either emphasize the pure objectivity of the world, or deny the world as an illusion or as something the mind or spirit can overcome. The fault in other philosophies as de Beauvoir sees it is that they try and deny this ambiguity by denying one of the two aspects of existence. He is a subject in a world of objects, but also “nothing more than an individual in the collectivity on which he depends.” In a word, his condition is ambiguous. He can both assert himself and be crushed by the weight of other things. A human is freed from being a pure object in the world through his consciousness, and yet can never escape the world fully. “The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning,” and so Simone de Beauvoir devotes the first chapter of Ethics of Ambiguity to describe the board, players, and rules of this game.ĭe Beauvoir first starts off by describing the human condition.
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