The Ethics Of Ambiguity

De Beauvoir dedicates a significant portion of the text to describing the sub-man because he is perhaps the most dangerous of all the archetypes. The sub-man, who avoids critical thinking at all costs, can be easily manipulated in the service of dictators, tyrants, and oppressors of all stripes to do their bidding. The sub-man takes refuge in the “serious world,”meaning, he lives in the world as it exists without question its tenets. De Beauvoir sees the sub-man as a fearful creature, another reason why he is so easily manipulated: “Weighted down by present events, he is bewildered before the darkness of the future which is haunted by frightful specters, war, sickness, revolution, fascism, bolshevism” (48).

Unlike existentialists, the serious man does not embrace paradox in the world and instead believes in absolute values: “The thing that matters to the serious man is not so much the nature of the object which he prefers to himself, but rather the fact of being able to lose himself in it” (50). Examples of the serious man from everyday life include those who blindly subscribe to religious or political beliefs.