In other words, there is an ambiguity for Beauvoir between an individual’s past as a given thing determining the nature of the present and the future they are about to freely create. When Beauvoir speaks of human essence, she is referring not only to this broad concept, but also to Heidegger’s assertion in being and time that our creation of ourselves in the present is based on both our past actions and the choices we make while projecting ourselves into the future. Essentially, humans create our own essence or nature through their choices and actions. The central existentialist premise that ‘existence precedes essence’ is the starting point for The Ethics of Ambiguity. However, de Beauvoir, like many other feminist thinkers, sees the tendency embedded in the Western philosophical tradition to prioritize one side of an apparent dualism as problematic. Human consciousness, according to Beauvoir, is dependent on but not identical to bodily or material aspects of our being. However, is the theory that Beauvoir’s text contains, defensible? And does it provide us with practical advice on how to live our lives?

She was inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s promise at the end of Being and Nothingness (1943), a project for which he wrote many notes but never finished.

Reading the book and thinking about being human will make you feel compelled to take advantage of the best part of life: freedom. Despite being written more than a half-decade ago, Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical text The Ethics of Ambiguity is still relevant today and is regarded as a foundational text of existentialist philosophy.

De beauvoir the ethics of ambiguity