An idea · Twentieth Century (to mid-century) · first attested 1947
Ethics of Ambiguity
We are at once free subjects and conditioned objects. Ethics begins there.
Beauvoir's name for the human condition: we are simultaneously consciousness (free, transcending) and body (situated, conditioned). Ethics cannot dissolve this ambiguity into either pole. Authentic existence holds both — affirming our freedom while taking responsibility for the situation that conditions, and is conditioned by, the freedom of others.