Objectives for the week:
This week, will start reading de Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity together.
By the end of this week's teaching, you will have:
Been introduced to de Beauvoir's work and considered what objections we might have
to Sartre that she might respond to.
Considered the concepts of disclosure and what de Beauvoir describes as 'the crisis of
adolescence'.
Debated de Beauvoir's ideas in your seminars.
Lecture Prep
Simone De Beauvoir - The Ethics of Ambiguity
Personal freedom and Others
35-42
According to Descartes, man's unhappiness comes from being a child that has not helped
establish the universe he was born in to
The things that we can establish as a child seem futile to us, as the important things have
already been established by adults, and we just have to accept them. We are "happily
irresponsible"
Being punished and rewarded show us as children that there is good and evil in the world -
like there is a sun and moon (you don't doubt that it is there, because it is there)
Some exercise their freedom (like the child) but they only exercise it in the world that is set
up for them, without them - they are serious
E.g., women in some societies are only able to submit to the laws, customs, gods, and truths
of men/created by men. Even in some other societies, women submit themselves to the
views/opinions of their husband and this allows them to develop childish qualities based on a
feeling of irresponsibility
When the child is growing up, and are cast out into a world that they aren't chained up in, that
isn't ready-made for them, he is abandoned and the "prey of freedom" - the child must decide
what they will do in the face of freedom
A child doesn't contain the man that he will become - the man that he wants to be is decided
by the man he has been
His motivations of his moral character are drawn from the character he gave himself
He was ignorant of his freedom while he was exercising it
45-50
The sub-man makes himself insert his freedom into the content that the serious man accepts
from society
Lecture notes
Reminder about Sartre
Simone's Ethics and ambiguity 1947 responding to Sartre's being and nothingness
A phenomenological approach to what it means to be a human being
If we do a phenomenological analysis we will come to realise that we have freedom
Nothing about our situation can determine what we do in the present
Relations with the Other are always marked by conflict and opposition
Existentialism is profoundly individualistic
Existentialism has no concrete ethical content
o Existentialism is an ethics
, o But Sartre hasn’t done anything in telling us what kids of things we are allowed to do
- what kind of duties do we have to other people
o Are we in bad faith? - only ethical judgement we can make in being and nothingness
o Ethical judgements don't really concern what we actually do - not enough for a proper
ethics
Ethical judgements do not concern what we do but the spirit in which our actions are
performed
The Ethics of Ambiguity - Simone De Beauvoir
Wants to turn the existentialism into a proper ethics - description of how we can go about
living the right kind of life
If we are to do this, we must do more than solely considering someone's relationship with
their freedom, need to consider what people are actually doing with their freedom
She agrees with Sartre that living in full consciousness of individual freedom is necessary -
BUT not sufficient for an ethical life
We need an existentialist ethics that doesn't only consider the individual's attitude towards
their own freedom
We want to be able to consider the content of the individual's actions and what they do with
their freedom
The disclosure of being
Once consciousness comes along, it invests the world in meaning and purpose, etc
Intentionality: consciousness is always consciousness of something
The capacity to invest the world with meaning isn't something that we just do once
It is consciousness that brings meaning, value and purpose into being
De Beauvoir characterizes this as the disclosure of being
The disclosure of being is an ongoing movement or process
The process of disclosure communicates with and can be prolonged by the freedom of others
The process of disclosure will sometimes expand and sometimes be blocked/repressed
The child and the adolescent
o We are all involved in the disclosure of being
o But children do this in a particular way - they are curious beings, always asking
questions
o They tend to accept what they are told about the world
o The disclosure of being involves a process of discovery
o Children don’t put being itself into question
o Discovering a world whose values and meaning is ready-made
The crisis of adolescence
o Children start to realise that adults are not Gods, they are weak and uncertain
o The crisis of adolescence involves a realisation of the contingency and arbitrariness of
meaning and value
o The adolescent realises that the disclosure of being involves authorship and creativitiy
o They assume their own subjectivity and freedom
How do we respond to this?
o We discover our subjectivity and freedom
o Freedom is the desire to disclose being - invest the world with meaning - we should desire it
for ourselves
o Even though in the crisis of adolescence, we assume subjectivity, there is a risk we slip back
into bad faith, in Sarterian terms
o SDB thinks that "only the freedom of others keeps each one of us from hardening into the
absurdity of facticity"
o Freedom is a movement that makes being 'be'; that will disclose being in a particular way
o To live one's freedom is to want to extend and prolong the disclosure of being indefinitely
o The freedom of others expands my freedom
This week, will start reading de Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity together.
By the end of this week's teaching, you will have:
Been introduced to de Beauvoir's work and considered what objections we might have
to Sartre that she might respond to.
Considered the concepts of disclosure and what de Beauvoir describes as 'the crisis of
adolescence'.
Debated de Beauvoir's ideas in your seminars.
Lecture Prep
Simone De Beauvoir - The Ethics of Ambiguity
Personal freedom and Others
35-42
According to Descartes, man's unhappiness comes from being a child that has not helped
establish the universe he was born in to
The things that we can establish as a child seem futile to us, as the important things have
already been established by adults, and we just have to accept them. We are "happily
irresponsible"
Being punished and rewarded show us as children that there is good and evil in the world -
like there is a sun and moon (you don't doubt that it is there, because it is there)
Some exercise their freedom (like the child) but they only exercise it in the world that is set
up for them, without them - they are serious
E.g., women in some societies are only able to submit to the laws, customs, gods, and truths
of men/created by men. Even in some other societies, women submit themselves to the
views/opinions of their husband and this allows them to develop childish qualities based on a
feeling of irresponsibility
When the child is growing up, and are cast out into a world that they aren't chained up in, that
isn't ready-made for them, he is abandoned and the "prey of freedom" - the child must decide
what they will do in the face of freedom
A child doesn't contain the man that he will become - the man that he wants to be is decided
by the man he has been
His motivations of his moral character are drawn from the character he gave himself
He was ignorant of his freedom while he was exercising it
45-50
The sub-man makes himself insert his freedom into the content that the serious man accepts
from society
Lecture notes
Reminder about Sartre
Simone's Ethics and ambiguity 1947 responding to Sartre's being and nothingness
A phenomenological approach to what it means to be a human being
If we do a phenomenological analysis we will come to realise that we have freedom
Nothing about our situation can determine what we do in the present
Relations with the Other are always marked by conflict and opposition
Existentialism is profoundly individualistic
Existentialism has no concrete ethical content
o Existentialism is an ethics
, o But Sartre hasn’t done anything in telling us what kids of things we are allowed to do
- what kind of duties do we have to other people
o Are we in bad faith? - only ethical judgement we can make in being and nothingness
o Ethical judgements don't really concern what we actually do - not enough for a proper
ethics
Ethical judgements do not concern what we do but the spirit in which our actions are
performed
The Ethics of Ambiguity - Simone De Beauvoir
Wants to turn the existentialism into a proper ethics - description of how we can go about
living the right kind of life
If we are to do this, we must do more than solely considering someone's relationship with
their freedom, need to consider what people are actually doing with their freedom
She agrees with Sartre that living in full consciousness of individual freedom is necessary -
BUT not sufficient for an ethical life
We need an existentialist ethics that doesn't only consider the individual's attitude towards
their own freedom
We want to be able to consider the content of the individual's actions and what they do with
their freedom
The disclosure of being
Once consciousness comes along, it invests the world in meaning and purpose, etc
Intentionality: consciousness is always consciousness of something
The capacity to invest the world with meaning isn't something that we just do once
It is consciousness that brings meaning, value and purpose into being
De Beauvoir characterizes this as the disclosure of being
The disclosure of being is an ongoing movement or process
The process of disclosure communicates with and can be prolonged by the freedom of others
The process of disclosure will sometimes expand and sometimes be blocked/repressed
The child and the adolescent
o We are all involved in the disclosure of being
o But children do this in a particular way - they are curious beings, always asking
questions
o They tend to accept what they are told about the world
o The disclosure of being involves a process of discovery
o Children don’t put being itself into question
o Discovering a world whose values and meaning is ready-made
The crisis of adolescence
o Children start to realise that adults are not Gods, they are weak and uncertain
o The crisis of adolescence involves a realisation of the contingency and arbitrariness of
meaning and value
o The adolescent realises that the disclosure of being involves authorship and creativitiy
o They assume their own subjectivity and freedom
How do we respond to this?
o We discover our subjectivity and freedom
o Freedom is the desire to disclose being - invest the world with meaning - we should desire it
for ourselves
o Even though in the crisis of adolescence, we assume subjectivity, there is a risk we slip back
into bad faith, in Sarterian terms
o SDB thinks that "only the freedom of others keeps each one of us from hardening into the
absurdity of facticity"
o Freedom is a movement that makes being 'be'; that will disclose being in a particular way
o To live one's freedom is to want to extend and prolong the disclosure of being indefinitely
o The freedom of others expands my freedom
