Beauvoir's Moral Period Philosophy

Author:

Seltzer, David Saul

Graduate Program:

Philosophy

Degree:

Doctor of Philosophy

Document Type:

Dissertation

Date of Defense:

April 27, 2011

Committee Members:

Emily Rolfe Grosholz, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Emily Rolfe Grosholz, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Shannon Wimberley Sullivan, Committee Member
Brady Lee Bowman, Committee Member
Allan Inlow Stoekl, Committee Member

Keywords:

Pyrrhus and Cineas
ethics
Existentialism
Phenomenology
Hegel
Kant
Beauvoir
The Ethics of Ambiguity
freedom
autonomy

Abstract:

My dissertation is about Simone de Beauvoir's moral period works, a series of works she wrote in the mid-1940's, including Pyrrhus and Cineas and The Ethics of Ambiguity, in which she tries to develop a workable version of existentialist ethics. I argue that Beauvoir's moral period works exhibit a complex relation to the tradition of ethical philosophy beginning with Kant and continuing through Hegel. On the one hand, Beauvoir, like Kant and Hegel, builds her ethics around the freedom and autonomy of the self, which in turn grounds the dignity of the self, and its demands for respect and recognition. On the other hand, Beauvoir rejects Kantian and Hegelian metaphysics in favor of phenomenology, and this has consequences for her ethics. For Beauvoir, we need to realize the ideals of dignity, respect, and recognition through action in the concrete world of particular and situated human beings. This position creates a tension in her work. Because people are heterogeneous, it is impossible to act for some without simultaneously acting against others, so that the ideal of universal respect and recognition in a kingdom of ends or a community of mutual recognition turns out to be impossible. Beauvoir responds to this tension by offering a loose set of guidelines to help us navigate the complex ethical dilemmas we face in our everyday lives. Beauvoir's project, if successful, would preserve the powerful normative ethics of Kant and Hegel, but without the need to accept problematic metaphysical positions such as the noumena/phenomena distinction or the completion of the system.