Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Existentialism

Simone’s Existentialist Ethics

Anja Steinbauer on Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity.

“My life is my work,” Simone de Beauvoir once said. Spoken like a true Existentialist: to her, life and thought were inextricably linked; we are what we do. Existentialism is a philosophy that outlines the conditions of human existence but rejects any conception of human nature; a philosophy that affirms human freedom but emphasises that it brings with it not happy empowerment but anguish and despair, a philosophy that stresses that humans have choices but expresses little optimism that we will make good use of them or even understand what it would mean to make the right choice. It is on this last point that Simone de Beauvoir most markedly departs from her lifelong partner Jean-Paul Sartre.

Simone de Beauvoir portrait by Gail Campbell 2016

Beauvoir’s Existentialism is scattered through her many works, both literary and theoretical, including her classic feminist text The Second Sex.

…