Contact
Privacy
Book: The Ethics of Ambiguity
Quotes of Book: The Ethics of Ambiguity
TOP TAGS :stuartunited-kingdomvitaepicuruslabdisrespecthardshipfirst-impressions

  1. Simone de Beauvoir _ The Ethics of Ambiguity

    Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself & in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying, & human existence is indistinguishable from an absurd vegetation; a life justifies itself only if its effort to perpetuate itself is integrated into its surpassing & if this surpassing has no other limits than those which the subject assigns himself.
    book-quote

  2. Simone de Beauvoir _ The Ethics of Ambiguity

    Some men, instead of building their existence upon the indefinite unfolding of time, propose to assert it in its eternal aspect & to achieve it as an absolute. They hope, thereby, to surmount the ambiguity of their condition. Thus, many intellectuals seek their salvation in either in critical thought or creative activity.
    book-quote

  3. Simone de Beauvoir _ The Ethics of Ambiguity

    Men of today seem to feel more acutely than ever the paradox of their condition. They know themselves to be the supreme end to which all action should be subordinated, but the exigencies of action force them to treat one another as instruments or obstacles, as means. The more widespread their mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by uncontrollable forces. Though they are masters of the atomic bomb, yet it is created only to destroy them. Each one has the incomparable taste in his mouth of his own life, and yet each feels himself more insignificant than an insect within the immense collectivity whose limits are one with the earth's. Perhaps in no other age have they manifested their grandeur more brilliantly, and in no other age has this grandeur been so horribly flouted. In spite of so many stubborn lies, at every moment, at every opportunity, the truth comes to light, the truth of life and death, of my solitude and my bond with the world, of my freedom and my servitude, of the insignificance and the sovereign importance of each man and all men.
    book-quoteparadox

  4. Simone de Beauvoir _ The Ethics of Ambiguity

    I should like this sky, this quiet water, to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me.
    book-quote

  5. Simone de Beauvoir _ The Ethics of Ambiguity

    The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; so to say it is ambiguous is to assert that it's meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won. Absurdity challenges every ethics; but also the finished rationalization of the real would leave no room for ethics; it is because man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure & outrageousness, to save his existence.
    book-quote

  6. Simone de Beauvoir _ The Ethics of Ambiguity

    My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy.
    book-quotejoyexcruciation

  7. Simone de Beauvoir _ The Ethics of Ambiguity

    Freedom is the source from which all significations and all values spring. It is the original condition of all justification of existence.
    book-quote

  8. Simone de Beauvoir _ The Ethics of Ambiguity

    Therefore the misfortune which comes to man as a result of the fact that he was a child is that his freedom was first concealed from him and that all his life he will be nostalgic for the time when he did not know it's exigencies.
    book-quote

  9. Simone de Beauvoir _ The Ethics of Ambiguity

    The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.
    book-quote

  10. Simone de Beauvoir _ The Ethics of Ambiguity

    Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.
    book-quotewar

  11. Simone de Beauvoir _ The Ethics of Ambiguity

    Man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it.
    book-quote

  12. Simone de Beauvoir _ The Ethics of Ambiguity

    I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I can not appropriate the snow field where i slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat.
    book-quote
Categories