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The Second Sex
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes The Second Sex as correcting, reworking, and materially situating the more abstract analysis of The Ethics of Ambiguity.
The Ethics of Ambiguity
Beauvoir's 1947 essay giving existentialism the ethics Sartre never got around to writing — the philosophical statement of the argument She Came to Stay had put in a novel and The Second Sex would put in a thousand pages two years later.
- 1947
- Spare
- political
- challenging
- voice-driven
About Simone de Beauvoir
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeSimone de Beauvoir's Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté (1947) is the single clearest statement of the existentialist ethics she and Sartre were writing. It answers the sharpest objection made to Being and Nothingness three years earlier: if there is no God, no fixed moral law, and no essence to human beings before their choices, why should anyone care about another person? Beauvoir's answer runs a hundred and fifty pages. Human beings are both free subjects and situated bodies whose freedom depends on the world other free subjects make with them; an ethical life is one that works for the freedom of others as the condition of its own. She Came to Stay in 1943 had staged the problem in a novel; The Ethics of Ambiguity states it philosophically; and The Second Sex two years later carries the same argument into the situation of women.
The story, in more detail
Beauvoir wrote Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté in the summer and autumn of 1946, largely at the Café de Flore, and Gallimard published it in Paris in November 1947. Bernard Frechtman's English translation appeared from Philosophical Library in New York in 1948 as The Ethics of Ambiguity. The essay is short by Beauvoir's standards (about a hundred and sixty pages in most editions) and highly structured. Its argument was Sartre's argument too, but Sartre never wrote the ethics volume Being and Nothingness (1943) had promised, and Beauvoir's Ethics is the closest thing existentialism ever produced to a systematic moral philosophy in its own voice.
The book has three parts. Part I ('Ambiguity and Freedom') establishes the ontological ground: a human being is neither a pure consciousness nor a pure object but the ambiguous unity of both, and moral life is what happens between them. Part II ('Personal Freedom and Others') gives the book's most quoted material — a portrait gallery of characters (the sub-man, the serious man, the nihilist, the adventurer, the passionate man) who represent characteristic evasions of freedom. Part III ('The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity') is the political section: it deals with oppression, with when violence is justified against oppressors, with the difficulty of choosing when every action has consequences one cannot make pure, and with the argument that no cause is ever worth the sacrifice of a real human being — even in the pursuit of freeing others.
The Ethics of Ambiguity is the philosophical statement of what Beauvoir's fiction had been testing since 1943 and would carry into her feminism from 1949 onward. She Came to Stay ends with a murder because the novel has posed the ethical problem in its sharpest form and refused to solve it. The Ethics of Ambiguity solves it. The Second Sex then takes the same solution — that freedom requires the affirmation of others' freedom — and applies it to the situation of one specific 'other,' the female half of the human population.
The argument
Part I ('Ambiguity and Freedom') sets up the ontology. Human beings are neither pure consciousness nor pure object; they are the ambiguity of both. Moral action is possible only for a being that is aware of its freedom, situated in a world it did not choose, and mortal.
Part II ('Personal Freedom and Others') is the book's most-quoted stretch. Beauvoir describes characteristic ways people evade the freedom their situation gives them: the sub-man (who denies his freedom entirely), the serious man (who submerges himself in a cause treated as absolute), the nihilist (who denies value altogether), the adventurer (who wills action for its own sake without caring about consequences), and the passionate man (who makes an object of his desire and denies the freedom of the person it attaches to). These are attitudes rather than personality types.
Part III ('The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity') turns to political action. When is violence against oppressors justified? What does one do when every action has consequences one cannot make pure? Beauvoir argues that no cause is ever worth the sacrifice of a real human being — even in the pursuit of freeing others — and that the person who acts must remain answerable to the actual people the action reaches.
Themes and analysis
Freedom in the presence of others
At the close of Part II, Beauvoir reverses the fear that other people merely diminish one's freedom. Their projects give the world meanings that an isolated person could not supply; their future actions can also carry an undertaking beyond its maker's lifetime. Dependence is therefore not an unfortunate exception to freedom but part of what makes it possible. The imagined café conversation suggests this reversal through listening: another voice can change the terms of an exchange without becoming an enemy. Respect for the other person's independence matters more here than securing agreement or treating them as an audience.
Making room for another's freedom
In 'Freedom and Liberation', Beauvoir tests an abstract commitment to freedom against what people can actually do. Inventions and works of art matter because they enable further activity, not because they bring human striving to a final resting place. The repaired walkway offers a modest visual analogy: its value lies in the journeys it permits, rather than in the builders' satisfaction alone. Yet Beauvoir also distinguishes a difficult material obstacle from oppression imposed by people. A damaged path is not itself a political diagnosis; the question is who is prevented from pursuing possibilities, and by whom.
Documented connections
Why we recommend it
Why it matters
It is the best single introduction to Beauvoir's own philosophical voice before or alongside The Second Sex.
Where it fits
Read The Blood of Others next to see the ethical problem tested under occupation and resistance.
What lingers
The book is the ethics volume Sartre's Being and Nothingness had promised and never delivered — Beauvoir wrote the systematic moral philosophy Sartre could not finish, and did it in a hundred and sixty pages while he was still trying to write his own thousand.
What this book explores
Bring it to book club
- Beauvoir opens with the objection that if there is no God and no fixed moral law, no ethical argument is possible. Where in the book does she answer that objection, and does the answer depend on existentialism being right about consciousness?
- The five 'characters' in Part II — the sub-man, serious man, nihilist, adventurer, passionate man — are said to be attitudes anyone can fall into. Read one chapter and try to name a public figure or a moment in your own life that fits it. Do the categories still describe the twenty-first century?
- In Part III Beauvoir argues that no cause is ever worth the sacrifice of a real human being. That is a hard claim in politics. Where does it hold, and where do you think she is wrong?
- The Ethics is often described as the ethics volume Sartre never wrote. Read the last chapter of Being and Nothingness alongside Beauvoir's book — what does she do that Sartre could not?
Timeline
1943
Sartre publishes Being and Nothingness, promising an ethics volume that will never appear.
1943
Beauvoir publishes She Came to Stay, staging the ethical problem she will state philosophically four years later.
1944
Beauvoir publishes Pyrrhus and Cineas, the shorter forerunner of the argument The Ethics of Ambiguity will develop.
Summer–Autumn 1946
Beauvoir writes Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté at the Café de Flore.
November 1947
Gallimard publishes Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté in Paris.
1948
Bernard Frechtman's English translation, The Ethics of Ambiguity, appears from Philosophical Library in New York.
1949
The Second Sex — the application of the Ethics's argument to the situation of women — is published by Gallimard.
Modern editions
Citadel Press keeps the Frechtman translation continuously in print in the United States; Éditions Gallimard reprint the French text in the Folio essais paperback series.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Gallimard
- 1947
- Paperback
- Citadel Press
- 1976
- 9780806501604
- Bernard Frechtman
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
Pyrrhus and Cineas
Beauvoir's first philosophical essay, written under the Occupation and published a few months after the Liberation — the shorter, earlier statement of the argument The Ethics of Ambiguity would work out at book length three years later.
Read our takeThe Second Sex
Beauvoir's thousand-page 1949 argument that femininity is made and not born — the founding book of second-wave feminism and the century's most influential work of feminist philosophy.
Read our takeThe Ethics of Ambiguity: frequently asked questions
What is The Ethics of Ambiguity about?
Beauvoir's 1947 essay answers the sharpest objection made to existentialism: if there is no God and no fixed moral law, why should anyone care about another person? Her answer runs a hundred and sixty pages. Human beings are both free subjects and situated bodies whose freedom depends on the world other free subjects make with them; an ethical life is one that works for the freedom of others as the condition of its own. The book is the clearest statement of the ethics that existentialism was writing but had not yet published.
When was The Ethics of Ambiguity published?
Gallimard published Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté in Paris in November 1947. Bernard Frechtman's English translation appeared from Philosophical Library in New York in 1948 as The Ethics of Ambiguity.
Why is The Ethics of Ambiguity important in existentialist philosophy?
Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943) had promised an ethics volume that Sartre never wrote. Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity is that ethics — the closest thing existentialism ever produced to a systematic moral philosophy in its own voice, and the piece of philosophical writing that shows Beauvoir was doing original philosophical work of her own alongside her partnership with Sartre.
What is the 'ambiguity' Beauvoir names in the title?
A human being is neither a pure consciousness nor a pure object. We are aware of our freedom but embodied, mortal, situated in a world we did not choose. Beauvoir's argument is that this ambiguity is the condition of moral action rather than an obstacle to it. Ethics is what happens between the two sides of what we are.
What are the characters in Part II — the sub-man, serious man, nihilist, adventurer, and passionate man?
They are Beauvoir's portrait gallery of characteristic ways people evade the freedom their situation gives them. The sub-man denies his freedom entirely. The serious man submerges himself in a cause treated as absolute. The nihilist denies value altogether. The adventurer wills action for its own sake without caring about consequences. The passionate man makes an object of his desire and denies the freedom of the person it attaches to. They are attitudes rather than personality types — none of them can be evaded once and for all, and everyone has been most of them at some point.
How does The Ethics of Ambiguity relate to The Second Sex?
The Ethics of Ambiguity states the general argument: individual freedom is meaningless if it does not affirm the freedom of others. The Second Sex, two years later, applies the same argument to the situation of one specific 'other,' the female half of the human population. Reading the Ethics first makes the theoretical scaffolding of The Second Sex visible; reading The Second Sex first shows what the ethics is for.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document The Ethics of Ambiguity, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1The Ethics of Ambiguity — Bernard Frechtman translation, public transcription
EssaysMarxists Internet ArchiveUsed forBernard Frechtman's translation, publicly transcribed by the Marxists Internet Archive. The new readings use the end of Part II and the opening of Part III's Freedom and Liberation; the illustrations remain imagined analogies, not events in the essay.
2The Ethics of Ambiguity — 1976 Citadel Press edition
Official recordColorado College Libraries, 1976Used forThe library catalogue verifies Bernard Frechtman's translation, the Citadel Press paperback edition, publication year, ISBN, and page count.
3Simone de Beauvoir
WebsiteÉditions GallimardUsed forUsed to place The Ethics of Ambiguity within Simone de Beauvoir's published work and verify its bibliographic context.
4Works catalogued under Simone de Beauvoir
ArchiveBibliothèque nationale de FranceUsed forUsed for independent biographical, archival, or historical context surrounding Simone de Beauvoir's career and the period in which The Ethics of Ambiguity appeared.
5Simone de Beauvoir
EssaysStanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyUsed forUsed to cross-check authorship, chronology, and the work's place in Simone de Beauvoir's wider catalogue.
6Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–1986)
Official recordBibliothèque nationale de FranceUsed forUsed to verify Simone de Beauvoir's bibliography and place The Ethics of Ambiguity within the broader chronology of Simone de Beauvoir's career.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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