Beauvoir: ambiguity and existential ethics

[@kedarrout1523]

I am a student of philosophy for the last 20 years. Ellie is simply brilliant. She simplifies very difficult concepts so easily.... Thanks dear....

[@mariaclaras88]

I couldn't help but notice the Clarice Lispector's book in the background. Fantastique!

[@monicavilhauer]

Thank you, Ellie! Fabulous! I'd love to hear more about the role of violence in Beauvoir's thought, and controversies around it. So politically relevant.

[@davidburne9477]

Gavin Rae & Emma Ingala’s anthology ‘The Meanings of Violence’ is quite broad and instructive, with Butler, Agamben and others used as stepping off points. I have a heavily tagged copy I regularly refer to…

[@FreiaNomad]

Such a lovely video, a powerful women of true knowledge is such a ray of sunshine. As a pronunciation and accent coach, I love the way you emphasize your words and use intonation to attract the interlocutor emotionally to make this such a smooth lecture that is easy to digest and reap the benefits ^.^ Thank you!

[@courtneydolly6538]

Thank you Dr. Anderson, this is such an incredible summary.

[@surajsood1258]

I gave my copy of *Ethics of Ambiguity* away after barely having read it. Thank you for the accessible portal into de Beauvoir's thought! Very easy to grasp in relation to Sartre's thought re. freedom and subjectivity/objectivity.

[@cradlebrouch9642]

We have to respect freedom only when it is intended for freedom, not when it strays, flees itself, and resigns itself. A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. -Beauvoir (EofA)

[@terrysmith7441]

The human factor reborn for me with your presentations, much read in my youth, now much more pertinent,brilliant one of the best, I applaud you Madame !!

[@marybethtimmermann]

What a great overview of Simone de Beauvoir's important book-length essay that argues for an ethics of ambiguity!

[@MsVorpalBlade]

I often find myself re-reading La Beauvoir. Thanks for a great precis of my favourite book of hers.

[@Backwoodsandblades]

Wow. Again Bravo. So well summarized and offered. Bravo.

[@Marcello.Lextra]

I noticed the Clarice Lispector book. I am Brazilian and a big fan of hers. Good reads!

[@KristinP-zi2dj]

Thank you for simplifying my largely technical book.

[@doc.lightplayer8438]

"THE AIM OF ETHICS IS TO REALISE FREEDOM" WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF LOVE IT

[@cellomansings]

This ( channel) is such a good project! I appreciated this distillation so much, and it came at a good time for me. Keep up the beautiful work!

[@robertmeyers9313]

Hello, I am new to Simone, and enjoying her views, broadening my vocabulary, concepts and most important for me, the invention of new questions in my mind. The concepts of freedom and ambiguity discuss ethics and the relationships with others. My question is, how do I reconcile the fact of human competition in our nature and the ethics of respecting and acting to protect another’s freedom. In sport the rules and circumstances are known and agreed and the players solve problems to achieve goals, but possibly at the expense of their opponents freedom. Ethically this might be viewed as ok as all players knew the risk to their freedom. In the world at large, competition is natural and is governed in various ways. Extreme competition like colonization or even war, we agree is against all that is right and ethical. However eliminating competition is also unethical in many ways. I will stop there. My question is how does Simone du Beauvoir reconcile freedom with competition. If anyone has a link to point me, I’d appreciate it. Thx.

[@dasteven10]

What a great prof! Solid and clear.

[@Dave.Mustaine.Is.Genius]

Indeed... I am a philosophy student too at master's degree.... I wish she took me as an assistant. :((( I would happily do that....

[@rabbitandbug]

Oh that’s so interesting! I just finished reading invisible man by Ralph Waldo Emerson and when you speak about Oppression and Mystification I think about how the protagonist doesn’t realize they are being oppressed by the people who are using him as an object instead of a multidimensional fellow subject. I loved your video it was very helpful!

[@rabbitandbug]

@Davidson 1 Darn still get those mixed up when typing my bad

[@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy]

Beauvoir and Ellison were actually friends, and his work was a big inspiration for her!

[@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy]

www.jstor.org/stable/467459

[@Dave.Mustaine.Is.Genius]

@@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy hello very respectable mam, my name is Enes Acar. I am a philosophy student from Turkey, currently at the process of my master's degree. I know English, Turkish, Arabic and little bit of German and French - currently learning these two. Is there possibly a way/set of things we can do, to be taken by you as your assistant? :) Sincerely yours....

[@Summer-kb2dm]

I just read up on it fascinating - thank you for bringing it up. Now on my reading list.

[@bayarearealestatebymegan]

Thank you for making such an obscure reading palatable for an average reader.

[@davidburne9477]

I’d be interested to see how you respond to de Beauvoir in a postructuralist sense (my ‘ism of interest’), given that so much of it seems to be influenced by the changing structure(s) of meaning, which has impacts on how the ‘ethical self’ is constructed

[@1prettyashley]

thank you so much for this video. I have to make a presentation for my philosophy class and this really helped

[@globuspallidus2457]

I absolutely love your lessons about existentialism 😻

[@davidmatta2727]

Sublime. I never understood the tension between freedom and situatedness and that we'd better assume it.

[@KristinP-zi2dj]

That was very nice. We should all study more Plato, really.

[@sirihedevang4750]

Thank you very much for this!

[@PracticalWisdomPhilosophyDS]

In writing The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir takes her stand. She identifies herself as an existentialist and identifies existentialism as the philosophy of our (her) times because it is the only philosophy that takes the question of evil seriously.

[@SonnyWane]

How does it take the question of evil seriously? By pointing out that it exists?!

[@kairakelvin]

Thank you Ellie

[@gazrater1820]

I loved reading this great work, a very concise overview🎯💡👌.

[@2009Artteacher]

Thanks . passionate presentation . i felt a lot of Hegel (slave master) in the discussion on oppression and mysticism in reference to Marx usage . I listed to this after listening to a interview with Simone de Beauvoir so it tied things together . Thanks again .

[@EmanuelSpader]

Awesome! I'm a huge fan of De Beauvouir. Thank you for making this video!

[@Lvsl_iftdv]

De Beauvoir* 😊

[@rextrinidad6646]

That French accent is perfect! Great overview of a work that I find difficult to grasp.

[@thumpertieder8110]

Excellent! Thank you

[@boommber30]

Beautiful short video :)

[@buddhabillybob]

Thanks for another excellent video!

[@Tomsfunny]

Loved this, thanks!

[@karolinapyrogovska4343]

love this account!!

[@hamedmoradi5291]

The existential psychologist Rollo May referred to this ambiguity as the human dilemma and wrote a book titled "Psychology and the Human Dilemma." He basically believed that the human dilemma is and should be regard as central to psychology. In other words, if psychology is going to merit the name "The Science of Man," it should take this issue seriously.

[@Baczkowa78]

Be the change you want to see.

[@44aske]

The good is it is so easy to understand.

[@lauterunvollkommenheit4344]

"For Beauvoir, there's no ethics without human freedom". Unless, of course, it's a case of freedom of other people: "No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction." (Betty Friedan: A Dialogue with Simone de Beauvoir) No wonder she loved Mao.

[@mattbaron14]

Good point, I both agree and disagree with Beauvoir here. Of course everyone should have that choice, but I see the importance of forcing people outside of their comfort zone as a way of confronting their freedom. One who "chooses" the status quo often does so because confronting the truth of the human condition can be uncomfortable. The question is how does a society actively promote freedom by encouraging people to face the ambiguity of the human condition rather than acting out of bad faith? I think it's a very important question for anyone who considers human freedom to be an ethical principle, but like you said it can lead to contradiction if the freedom for one to avoid their own freedom is not respected. What do you think is the best way to approach the question?

[@lauterunvollkommenheit4344]

@@mattbaron14 No, thank you.

[@off6848]

@@mattbaron14 discomfort has no value unless it’s promoting growth in this case feminism is entropic and valueless and the reproductive mother is growth and life. She should better remain in the comfort of her natural order and in the arms and care of a strong natural male that squashes pedophiles like Sarte and Simone 😉

[@gabbar51ngh]

Ironically same Mao was notorious for sleeping with underage girls. So not surprised Simone supported him. Half of the left-wing philosophers are outright garbage and completely inconsistent with reality.

[@ceriasophis405]

Freedom doesnt involve choice. If it does something outside of you is making you choose..one thing or another.

[@shawnmuench]

Are we objects for others? Or is that awareness just a felt object within our ongoing subjective sense? ie. There is only subjectivity. Obviously the word "within" could be problematic. And then I go on thinking that "subjectivity" is nothing actually there, but just illusion. We name certain sensations subjectivity and create a visualization of the concept, but it can be dissolved by looking more closely. Then you're thinking about pure transparency only observing outside contents. So no subject at all. Or perhaps some sensations are accompanied by an additional overlay of subjectness that we glue onto them. Very difficult to parse first person experience.

[@alexmechnik2465]

To flee freedom or not to flee. That is the question.

[@Elwina-t8c]

so what would she say about someone stealing food for their family to help because they are starving? would she say that is freedom?

[@havenbastion]

Fleeing ambiguity cannot lead to abstraction, which is ambiguous territory.

[@MarkDParker]

How well do you think Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy is holding up to the biological determinism of contemporary neuroscientists like Robert Sapolsky?

[@bidonbidon7463]

Faith in biological determinism was stronger in Beauvoir's time than it is today with Sapolsky. In The Second Sex, she deals with the subject by taking up the considerations of the time on the differences between male and female in most mammals, which she does not question: the male does not have as much responsibility for reproduction than the female and can therefore more easily individualize, be more independent, conquering, etc. Body transformation at puberty, menstruation, pregnancies, menopause, effect of hormones on psychology, instability, emotionality etc., she picks up on a lot of things typical of how women are conceived as more body-related than men. But she says : "her body is something other than her (...) she is of all mammalian females the one who is most deeply alienated, and the one who most violently refuses this alienation". So what is important is less biological determinism than the rebellion against it which corresponds to the existentialist attitude, the affirmation of freedom as liberation. P.S. : the translation is mine, I don't have the English version of The Second Sex.

[@MarkDParker]

@@bidonbidon7463 thank you for the thoughtful reply. I guess I never realized how completely detached existentialism is from science. What you described is a religious-like faith in an untraceable subjective identity that claims to be the unverifiable center of the universe independent of contingency. Of course Sapolsky would point out that his view is entirely empirical. No faith needed. And he's done a good job building his body of evidence. One can imagine him saying, Show me the evidence of a human will that is independent of biological causes, then I'll believe in "free will." He has a point that's hard to refute without being accused of magical thinking.

[@bidonbidon7463]

@@MarkDParker Not sure how you conclude that existentialism is detached from science when I just said that Beauvoir accepts scientific discourse. The question is that of the fact, of the empirical fact, that a person can try to rebel against biological determinisms, want not to be determined by the heritage of the species, of what is said about her sex, of her destiny etc. Maybe some will call this rebellion "madness", but then, this madness is typically human, is perhaps what characterizes humans compared to other animals incapable of rebelling. How do Sapolsky explain that a human can refuse reproduction, can refuse to serve the specie, can think only for herself as individual?

[@MarkDParker]

@@bidonbidon7463 Sapolsky's view is that there is no such thing as "free will" independent of the biological mechanisms intrinsic to the human organism. What you think of as "freedom" (to rebel or buy a pizza...) is actually the result of neurological processes responding to stimuli driving you to think or do this or that. In other words your sense of self is contingent. There is no self independent of the physical laws that govern the universe and our biological evolution. To assert that a non-contingent self, capable of rebelling against these forces, exists is what I take to be a leap of faith. Sapolsky in his own words: kzbin.info/www/bejne/i4mak6ZqqtuDr8U

[@MarkDParker]

@@bidonbidon7463 let me be clear... I, personally, believe that something like freedom is available to sentient beings. But current neuroscience presents a serious challenge that must be answered. Existentialist arguments of the individual self (from Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, on...) tend to collapse when confronted with the growing body of scientific knowledge (especially in physics and biology). My sense is that human freedom is rooted in a ubiquitous, non-contingent, volitional awareness or what Zizek calls (and rejects) as a "Big Other," or what the Apostle Paul looked forward to as the God that is "all in all." The personal self in isolation, trapped in spacetime as we are, is simply too contingent upon physical laws to be called "free" in any meaningful way. That freedom, if it is anything more than an illusion, may only be traced to a source(s) beyond the rules of spacetime. Does that mean we must turn to pre-modernity for the answers? Not necessarily. The pre-modern worldview was replaced for good reasons. Somehow, perhaps through the application of logic to metaphysics and ethics, philosophers will find their way out of this conundrum.

[@williamkauffman-j9i]

🙏

[@off6848]

One gets the impression that clarity and direction would blow their weak minds so they seek the comfort of ambiguity in bad faith

[@Ronin3Zero9]

❤

[@gomes2151]

_''Clarice Lispector''_

[@imas1239]

Human freed deminish when it is in need for surviver

[@shahdabkhan3782]

Well, it seems the 'mystification' part resonates with the present predicament of the people in India.

[@alpyuce1569]

Philosophers have the thing (not all of them, but most). They make everything moulds. Life is a mould, human is a existential mould. Of course, it is based on the nature of homeostatic (homeodynamic): to understand the world that we live in and act accordingly. Brain does this moulding thing, okay. But there are lots of changing parameters which make the things hard to tie up with an exact one things. Human is a subject, human is an object. Instead human is a box containing viel. and none of them is the one or the aim (telos) No more metaphysic like this please :D . Yes I would say that :D

[@tomlucia6143]

what about common sense,bo all philosophies apply to all people

[@canopus78]

💀🤖😎

[@WilliamTheHeretic]

You're oppressing yourself considering European philosophy of the last 300 years as a way forward. That is, you're not solving problems, you're creating new ones.

[@SonnyWane]

Great overview, but what a degenerate philosophy!

[@bigfat4172]

How so?

[@SonnyWane]

@@bigfat4172 I don't have the time to rewatch and respond. Remind me what the main point of the video is.

[@bigfat4172]

Nothing like a philosophy video to create the weirdest comment sections.

[@magrayfayaz1478]

❤