Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T07:46:49.580Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics of Freedom and Absolute Evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Anne Morgan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Simone de Beauvoir held that human experience is intrinsically ambiguous and that there are no values extrinsic to experience, but she also designated some actions as absolute evil. This essay explains how Beauvoir utilized an intrinsic absolute value to ground an action-guiding principle of freedom that justifies her notion of evil. Morgan's analysis counters Robin May Schott's objections that Beauvoir failed to systematically justify her notion of absolute evil and that Beauvoir shifted from a “logic of action” to a “logic of history” when she utilized the concept.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 75 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

De Beauvoir, Simone. 1944/2004. Pyrrhus and Cineas. In Simons, , Simone de Beauvoir.Google Scholar
De Beauvoir, Simone. 1946/2004. An eye for an eye. In Simons, , Simone de Beauvoir.Google Scholar
De Beauvoir, Simone. 1948/1964. The ethics of ambiguity. Trans. Frechtman, Bernard. New York: The Citadel Press.Google Scholar
De Beauvoir, Simone. 1952/1993. The second sex. Trans. and ed. Parshley, H. M.New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Deacon, Terrence. 1997. The symbolic species: The co‐evolution of language and the brain. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Geary, David C. 2005. The origin of mind: Evolution of brain, cognition, and general intelligence. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Husserl, Edmund. 1950/1999. Cartesian meditations: An introduction to phenomenology. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Schott, Robin May. 2003. Beauvoir on the ambiguity of evil. In The Cambridge companion to Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Card, Claudia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Simons, Margaret A., ed. 2004. Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophical writings. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Staub, Ervin. 1989. The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar