The Ethics Of Ambiguity

Part III looks at the positive, constructiveaspects of the human condition. It is broken up into five sub-sections.

1.   The Aesthetic Attitude.The first of the sub-sections considers the way some men view the world with “detached contemplation,” much in the way an artist or writer would:

Outside of time and far from menhe [the detached person] thinks he does not belong to, like a pure beholding; this impersonal version equalizes all situations; it apprehends them only in the indifference of their differences; it excludes any preference(80).

De Beauvoir does not believe it is possible to remain truly detached, particularly during war and other times of turmoil. She uses an example from wartime France to illustrate her point: “Those French intellectuals who, in the name of history, poetry, or art, sought to rise above the drama of the age, were willynilly its actors; more or less explicitly, they were playing the occupier’s game” (82). Even the detached observer is forced to act in times of crisis.

2.  Freedom and Liberation. Here,de Beauvoir focuses on the nature of oppression. Drawing on examples from Nazism, American slavery, and Arabian colonialism, de Beauvoir sees oppressive regimes as inevitable. She writes that, while humans do have the option to act morally good, the fact is that “there are men who can justify their life only by a negative action” (87).