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A review by sssummer
The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir
5.0
I enjoyed this book! It's one of those philosophy books you pick and can immediately tell the author is just a whole different level of intelligence, both intellectually and emotionally. I annotated the first half and there were just so many great lines and sections to make note of that I had to stop or never finish reading it. The main thesis/purpose of the book is Beauvoir's belief that existentialism does implicate an ethical theory, but honestly, I found some of the more notable parts to be the less relevant commentary she writes here and there. She has a way of explaining even things you already know so clearly that you feel like you have a refreshed insight. Even with the translation from French, I would consider this an easy to medium level of readability for a continental philosophy book. There are a lot of references to other philosophy, art, and history that a lot of went over my head.
To significantly reduce the main idea, she argues that the goal of ethics is the optimization of freedom. It's a great theory, and the fact that she builds her metaethics on her metaphysics makes it all so much more interesting and compelling. It's consequentialist heavy, so it's subject to the same issues as other consequentialist theories, but I do think it's one of the better ones. I also think of note is that 'optimizing freedom' is also much more complicated than other consequentialist theories. For example, consider how it compares to the Utilitarian idea goal of 'maximizing pleasure'. Pleasure is a much more tactile and measurable unit than freedom. And 'maximizing' is also more straightforward than 'optimizing'.
I have one other thing about this philosophy that I think is odd: the way emotion is discussed and handled is almost non-existent, and when existent: eerie. The reason I believe this to be is that (existentialist theory as far as I've explored) also largely ignores human emotion or writes it off in an unsatisfying way. My personal take is that this is because the existence of emotions presents somewhat of a hole in the underlying metaphysical theory of existentialism - but don't worry I won't go into that too much here, I promise. So while I do think this book is incredibly intelligent, there's a lot that I actually do not agree with at the end of the day.
Also, not to be a feminist, but her idea for an existentialist ethics is way better than Sarte's (Exsistnatalism is Humanism).
To significantly reduce the main idea, she argues that the goal of ethics is the optimization of freedom. It's a great theory, and the fact that she builds her metaethics on her metaphysics makes it all so much more interesting and compelling. It's consequentialist heavy, so it's subject to the same issues as other consequentialist theories, but I do think it's one of the better ones. I also think of note is that 'optimizing freedom' is also much more complicated than other consequentialist theories. For example, consider how it compares to the Utilitarian idea goal of 'maximizing pleasure'. Pleasure is a much more tactile and measurable unit than freedom. And 'maximizing' is also more straightforward than 'optimizing'.
I have one other thing about this philosophy that I think is odd: the way emotion is discussed and handled is almost non-existent, and when existent: eerie. The reason I believe this to be is that (existentialist theory as far as I've explored) also largely ignores human emotion or writes it off in an unsatisfying way. My personal take is that this is because the existence of emotions presents somewhat of a hole in the underlying metaphysical theory of existentialism - but don't worry I won't go into that too much here, I promise. So while I do think this book is incredibly intelligent, there's a lot that I actually do not agree with at the end of the day.
Also, not to be a feminist, but her idea for an existentialist ethics is way better than Sarte's (Exsistnatalism is Humanism).