Scan barcode
A review by ralowe
The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir
5.0
sister. i was just having some connecting time with my close sibling simone de beauvoir about insurrecto-nihilsts. they have the atavistic fuckers in every age then, huh, like the mcflys. jeepers, the wheel-reinvention. i was like how did my journal get published in 1948? what are we gonna do about these corny weasels? her thought strays away from the ultimate fatalisms of existentialist absurdity but simply rests upon the vexing contingency of the nonsovereign, my buzzword of the hour. the body in the world is a mess, but it doesn't always have to be. you can clearly see the influence of merleau-ponty here, i want to believe she was a reader of his thinking. why does this feel like the first real book i've read? because it's a fucking dazzling light! simone de beauvoir! i have always loved ye! it's taken me so long to finally read her. back in the day nearly everyone i knew was kinda gloomy from nietzsche, sartre, hegel and i think people learn from these writers and i want to honor all that is productive in the gloom, but sometimes at the end when all is said and done, where's the celebration, optimism, comfort. lauren berlant said something about how stanley cavell said that the philosopher is no longer responsible for supplying comfort, but i've been such a noncoherent mess that i'm like totally still in the market for some. this is the book i will recommend to people who wonder about how to be in an absurd world as an existentialist and not be suicidal. not that suicide isn't the worst choice for people. it's really simple. we're all feeling existential nausea: recognition of this offers hope that we can struggle together with our nauseated selves. i was eager for someone writing in the merleau-ponty tradition, and this is it. we're not calling it love, it's something else. this is excellent to read with derrida's gift of death, how we're all abrahams left in the lurch with whether or not to slew our isaacs for god above. haraway too on companion species and her recent thought about getting on together through messiness of living and dying.
"the fact is that the man of action becomes a dictator not in respect to his ends but because these ends are necessarily set up through his will. hegel, in his phenomenology, has emphasized this inextricable confusion between objectivity and subjectivity." pp. 153-154
"but the idea of a total dialectic of history does not imply that any factor is ever determining; on the contrary, if one admits that the life of a man may change the course of events, it is that one adheres to the conception which grants a prepondrerant role to cleopatra's nose and cromwell's wart. one is here playing, with utter dishonesty, on two opposite conceptions of the idea of necessity: one synthetic, and the other analytic; one dialectic, the other deterministic. the first makes history appear as an intelligible becoming within which the particularity of contingent accidents is reabsorbed; the dialectical sequence of the moments is possible only if there is within each moment an indetermination of the particular elements taken one by one. if, on the contrary, one grants the strict determinism of each causal series, one neds in a contingent and disordered vision of the ensemble, the conjunction of the series being brought about by chance. therefore, a marxis must recognize that none of the particular decisions involves the revolution in its totality; it is merely a matter of hastening or retarding its coming, of saving himself the use of other and more costly means. that does not mean that he must retreat from violence but that he must not regard it as justified a priori of its ends. if he considers his enterprise in its truth, that is, in its finiteness, he will understand that he has never anything but a finite stake to oppose to the sacrifices which he calls for, and that it is an uncertain stake. of course, this uncertainty should not keep him from pursuing his goals; but it requires that one concern himself in each case with finding a balance between the goal and hte means." pp. 147-148
"the fact is that the man of action becomes a dictator not in respect to his ends but because these ends are necessarily set up through his will. hegel, in his phenomenology, has emphasized this inextricable confusion between objectivity and subjectivity." pp. 153-154
"but the idea of a total dialectic of history does not imply that any factor is ever determining; on the contrary, if one admits that the life of a man may change the course of events, it is that one adheres to the conception which grants a prepondrerant role to cleopatra's nose and cromwell's wart. one is here playing, with utter dishonesty, on two opposite conceptions of the idea of necessity: one synthetic, and the other analytic; one dialectic, the other deterministic. the first makes history appear as an intelligible becoming within which the particularity of contingent accidents is reabsorbed; the dialectical sequence of the moments is possible only if there is within each moment an indetermination of the particular elements taken one by one. if, on the contrary, one grants the strict determinism of each causal series, one neds in a contingent and disordered vision of the ensemble, the conjunction of the series being brought about by chance. therefore, a marxis must recognize that none of the particular decisions involves the revolution in its totality; it is merely a matter of hastening or retarding its coming, of saving himself the use of other and more costly means. that does not mean that he must retreat from violence but that he must not regard it as justified a priori of its ends. if he considers his enterprise in its truth, that is, in its finiteness, he will understand that he has never anything but a finite stake to oppose to the sacrifices which he calls for, and that it is an uncertain stake. of course, this uncertainty should not keep him from pursuing his goals; but it requires that one concern himself in each case with finding a balance between the goal and hte means." pp. 147-148