The Ethics of Ambiguity

an absolute must read for philosophers and lovers of life who want to understand the duality, dyads, and unresolved dynamics of the self that interact with the external world and set conventional decrees.

Un trabajo de filosofía que da más sustancia a su trabajo del segundo sexo, recomiendo que lo lean junto a su novel "La invitada" también. Es interesante compararla con Sartre, hay similitudes y diferencias importantes.

After spending some time reading Stoic philosophy, I decided to take a detour into existentialism. One of the first books I picked up was The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir. I didn’t approach the book from an academic angle; rather, I was curious about what existentialism had to say about how to live a meaningful life. At the end of Being and Nothingness, Sartre notes that an ethics of existentialism remained to be written. In the Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir takes up the challenge of developing a system of ethics – how we ought to live - based on existentialist principles. I found the beginning of the book somewhat difficult to get through. Existentialism is grounded on several key concepts, such as facticity and bad faith, which have specific meanings that are essential to grasp in order to fully appreciate de Beauvoir’s arguments. The book was also originally written in French, so perhaps some of its readability may be affected by the translation into English. However, after the first chapter, I found the book easier to follow. The discussion turned to more concrete ideas, such as the different ways people respond to the ambiguity inherent in human freedom (e.g., the sub-man, the serious man, the nihilist, etc.). Despite often being abstract, I found The Ethics of Ambiguity to have some interesting insights into human freedom and responsibility. De Beauvoir argues that we must accept the ambiguity inherent in our freedom by creating our own values and meaning through action and engagement with the world. Moreover, true freedom involves not only taking responsibility for our own freedom but also working to promote the freedom of others. Therefore, our actions and the projects we take on must respect both our own personal freedom and that of others. Is existentialist philosophy worth reading? Interest in existentialism seems to have declined in academic philosophy. It can also be criticized for being abstract, difficult to apply practically, and written in a dense, intellectual style that can be challenging for non-academic readers. Still, I believe there is value in its message of the need to take responsibility for one’s own freedom by creating meaning through action and deliberate choices. Personally, however, I find more value in reading Stoic philosophy due to its relative ease of understanding, its emphasis on developing internal character, and its focus on controlling what we can while accepting everything else with equanimity. For those new to existentialism, I recommend finding an edition of this book that has a preface or introduction by an expert providing a general overview of the key concepts of existentialism. Such an introduction would help readers new to existentialist thought better understand and appreciate de Beauvoir's arguments.

While I am able to wrap my head around the presented ideas, the quality of the translation makes it hard to understand some of the text. Not being a native English or French speaker, I have difficulties with the sentence structure sometimes. First I thought I have to blame myself for not being able to understand more complicated philosophical writing but the grammar is also not entirely correct all the time and some sentences are unnecessarily long. (If you find any mistakes within this review: I am sorry, and I don't mean any harm and I don't mean to be a hypocrite. Just warning people who - like me - rely on very clear sentence structure).

This book is a nice introduction to abstract ideas and understanding human conditioning that shapes people's ways of life. I enjoyed reading it and found it to be an easy read, though not one that's easily understood.