The Ethics Of Ambiguity

In Part I, Beauvoir establishes the two conceptual pillars upholding existentialist ethics: ambiguousness and freedom. How these concepts animate and interact with human life are the basis for The Ethics of Ambiguity.

Beauvoir begins by asserting that paradox is embedded in the human condition in that human beings are simultaneously both subject and object. That is, every human is the main character of their own life, while simultaneously being a minor character in someone else’s: “Each [human being] has the incomparable taste in his mouth of his own life, and yet each feels himself more insignificant than an insect within the immense collectivity whose limits are one with the earth’s” (8). This is but one of many paradoxes of the human condition, all of which point to one glaring fact: Life is a messy, ambiguous thing. But if one embraces this messiness—which, as de Beauvoir sees it, is the “genuine conditions” of our life, we “draw our strength to live and our reason for acting” (8).

Ambiguousness is a complex term for de Beauvoir and existentialists at large, but for the most part it refers to the paradoxes of human existence. De Beauvoir notes that many philosophers have tried to ignore or rectify contradiction in human existence: “As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it” (6).