A review by melissa_muses
The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir

reflective slow-paced

2.5

I definitely bit of more than I could chew with this one, out of a sense of obligation to read classic feminist texts. I desperately wanted to love this, but didn’t feel connected to the content at all. Sadly for me this is so often the case with philosophy as a genre, at least, most philosophy written before the 21st century… much to my dismay. I didn’t have the inclination to catch up on my Hegel and Descartes and Marx in order to fully absorb the message of this. 

I was a bit shocked by how some of the language around atrocities of WW2 was handled especially to have been written so close to the time. 

There were some moments of lucidity for me… the parallels in observations of tyrants of her time that are still gut-wrenchingly and seemingly impossibly relevant today in a still-not-bloody-post-Trump era. 

Notable quotes: 

“He cannot be regarded as a nothing, since the consciousness of all things is within him”

“No one governs innocently” - Saint-Just

Overall I might return to classic philosophy in years to come.