The Ethics of Ambiguity summary

What does it mean to be human?

Are we free-floating minds who like to reflect on the nature of existence or just animals steered by our innate drives? Are we rational individuals who act in our own interests or social beings defined by larger communities? 

Clearly, the question of what it means to be human isn't at all simple.

The key message here is: Human existence is fundamentally ambiguous.

Throughout the ages, philosophers have observed that the way humans think of themselves isn't very coherent and seems to change all the time. Most of these thinkers tried to resolve this incoherence by reducing humanity to a single thing. Thus, humanist scientists reduced the human to a rational animal, and Christian theologians reduced the human to an immortal soul.

While every attempt to come up with a single definition does capture some aspect of humanity's nature, these simple answers always end up feeling like ill-fitting clothes that we want to tear off the moment we put them on.

Existentialism, by contrast, takes a unique approach to the question of human existence. How? By refusing to reduce humanity to a single definition. 

Instead of denying the ambiguous nature of what it means to be human, existentialists embrace it. Instead of forcing humans into a rigid identity, existentialists claim that humans have no fixed identity. In other words, the way humans think of themselves and the meaning they ascribe to their lives is never fixed, but constantly in flux.

So, in one moment, you can think of yourself as a lover to your partner, and in the next, as a parent to your child. In one moment, you're an employee of your company, and in the next, you're a citizen of the world.

This is what existentialists mean when they say humans are essentially nothing – or, more literally, no thing. Because things tend to stay the same over time, whereas humans never settle, humans are not things.

This might be annoying for philosophers, theologians, and scientists who want a clear answer to the question of what human beings are. But, actually, not having a fixed identity is a good thing because it's the basis for a radical kind of freedom. 

It means we're never confined within a single mode of being. It also means that we're capable of changing ourselves. By setting ourselves goals and striving toward them, we can transform ourselves into any beings we want to become.

In the previous blink, we came to the conclusion that human beings are capable of changing and improving themselves. But what exactly should you change? In other words, what goals should you set to live a good life?

If you look at most doctrines of religion or philosophy, you'll find plenty of prepackaged answers to these questions. A Christian, for example, would likely tell you to be charitable to strangers, whereas a hedonist might tell you to maximize your pleasure.

Despite their differences, every moral doctrine is alike in their attempt to reduce the complexity of human life to a ready-made blueprint of rules and values that can be applied to every situation. Existentialism doesn't work that way.

The key message here is: Unlike most moral doctrines, existentialism emphasizes personal freedom to determine your own life and values.

Life is complicated. And, even with ethical guidelines, it's not always clear how we should act in any given situation. Rather than try to deny the complexity of the situations we find ourselves in, as moral doctrines do, existentialists ask us to face the complexity head-on. 

So, instead of prescribing any particular rules for action, existentialists say that the best thing we can do is treat every situation as unique and reflect carefully before we act.

Moral doctrines that prescribe fixed rules can be dangerous and unethical because they encourage people not to think for themselves. As a result, they can lead people to do abhorrent things in the name of morality, just like the young Nazis who took the party's doctrine at face value.

Or consider another ethical dilemma, in which a good friend of yours who's addicted to a harmful drug asks you for money so that he can maintain his habit. On the one hand, you don't want to give him money and be an enabler in degrading his life. But on the other hand, you know that if you don't give him money, he may turn to crime or cause himself more serious harm.

In situations like this, abstract moral precepts like be charitable or maximize pleasure won't be very helpful for making concrete decisions about how you should act. For an existentialist, the point isn't that there is a correct solution to this problem. The point is that you're responsible for your actions, so you'd better weigh your options carefully before you decide what to do.

As children, we're given ready-made world views and moral codes, and in our naivety, we take them at face value. But as we grow up, we learn, often to our dismay, that our parents aren't infallible, that the things we were told aren't indisputable, and that the values handed to us aren't immutable.

According to author de Beauvoir's moral taxonomy of people, different people mature to different extents. The more we mature, the more we become aware of our freedom. Unfortunately, many people don't fully mature, which means that many of us aren’t living up to our full potential.

The key message here is: Most of us don't take full advantage of our freedom.

The first person we meet in the taxonomy of people is the sub-man. Whether out of laziness, indifference, or lack of imagination, the sub-man avoids taking any meaningful action in life. He doesn't know that he's free, so he fails to make use of his freedom. He aims at becoming nothing more than what he already is and is thus no better than an inanimate object.

More aware of his freedom is the serious man, a category into which most people fall. The serious man tries to improve his situation by taking action and striving toward goals that he deems good. He fails, however, to recognize the subjective nature of his moral code, believing it to be a real, objective thing. This makes him an unthinking follower – or, to put it bluntly, a sheep.

Next up, we have the nihilist who recognizes the subjective nature of human values. However, her belief that subjective values aren't real values leads to a view that all human projects are arbitrary and worthless at their core. The nihilist reflects this worthlessness by choosing not to do anything constructive with her freedom.

More enlightened than the nihilist is the adventurer. She recognizes the subjective nature of human values and embraces this as a positive freedom to determine her own life. The adventurer throws herself with gaiety into a variety of projects of her own devising. She's essentially an amoral libertine, which means that she's overly concerned with herself and doesn't much care how her actions affect others. 

Humans can't expect to be free if they only act selfishly in the world. A lot depends on the freedom of the people around us – our culture, the means for undertaking our projects, and even our very survival. So, if the adventurer couples her joy for life with a concern for other people, she becomes the genuinely free person.

Imagine your best friend recommends you watch a certain film or listen to a certain album. It's not quite your usual thing, but you decide to keep an open mind and give it a go.

What you just did is similar to what many professional critics do. They try to put their own tastes, prejudices, and biases aside so that they can take an honest, objective view of the art.

This is known in aesthetic philosophy as disinterested contemplation. It's all about separating your personal interests in order to experience and enjoy art for its own sake. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

The key message here is: It's not possible to adopt a completely disinterested perspective.

This disinterested perspective is the position that many intellectuals, scientists, and creatives claim to adopt when it comes to politics and global events. They take refuge in their work while the events of the world unfold around them. They claim not to take sides, and, in the name of being non-partisan, they refuse to take action. They believe themselves to be above it all.

This is the position that many public figures and intellectuals took during the Nazi occupation of Paris. They were willing to turn a blind eye to the new regime on the grounds that, in the grand view of things, power changes were common. Many of them simply didn't want to disrupt their work.

De Beauvoir was shocked and dismayed at such passivity from many in the French elite. She argued that there's no such thing as a disinterested position, in art or in politics, and condemned these people for being complicit in the occupation.

Disinterested contemplation is an impossible vantage point because we can never truly detach ourselves from our own subjective perspective. Claiming to adopt a disinterested position is like pretending you've stepped out of your own viewpoint into an imaginary outside world.

In the case of art criticism, where the stakes aren't very high, the consequences might not be anything more than a biased review in a magazine. But in the world of politics, the consequences can be grave. 

Claiming to adopt a disinterested position on politics is taking a clear political stance. It's nothing less than the evasion of responsibility and complicity with the current regime. In other words, as long as we exist, our actions and our inaction have consequences in the world.

Existentialists are often criticized for overstating just how free humans actually are. Surely we're not free to do whatever we want, right? After all, it’s just not within your power to change the weather or overthrow the government.

Well, existentialists would agree with you. Their position on human freedom can be summarized as radical free will but radically limited power. 

While we're completely free to make choices at a subjective level, we're limited in how we can express these choices in the world. But while you can't topple a dictator with will power alone, that doesn’t exempt you from responsibility.

The key message here is: We have a responsibility to resist oppression wherever it emerges.

There are two kinds of limitations on the expression of our freedom. There are the physical limitations of the natural world, and there are the limits placed on us by other people. 

For example, if an earthquake demolished your house, that’s a big limitation on your freedom, although you probably wouldn't accuse the tectonic plates of acting immorally. But when humans limit our freedom, that's a different matter.

For an existentialist, oppression is a situation in which one group of people decides another group's future on their behalf and forces this vision upon them. Because the oppressed group are refused the freedom to determine their own destinies and the ability to improve their own situation, they are reduced to things, which, as mentioned in an earlier blink, is a violation of their humanity.

Oppression is forced upon others because it serves the ruling group. However, there’s always the possibility, no matter how small it may seem, to overthrow that rule. To prevent this from happening, oppressors try to convince the oppressed that their oppression is, in fact, the natural state of affairs.

For example, colonists tried to justify the oppression of indigenous peoples by appealing to the inherent superiority of their own civilization. Likewise, the subjugation of women was justified on the basis of their so-called inferiority.

We see how baseless this argument is when we observe just how much effort ruling groups put into maintaining the oppressed group's inferior position. For example, women and indigenous peoples have been actively excluded from getting an education, receiving an income, or exercising political self-determination that would allow them to mature and become aware of their oppressed condition. 

Ultimately, oppression sets itself up as both cause and justification. In these and other cases, people living under oppression are right to feel indignation because it’s not a necessary state of affairs.

Appealing to the “natural” state of things isn’t the only argument oppressors have used to justify their rule over other human beings. Another common strategy has been to justify oppression by appealing to its usefulness. 

In this case, oppressors often pay lip-service to the idea that the oppressed group is in an undesirable situation. But, in the end, they argue that it’s necessary for the fulfillment of some “higher value” or other. 

Fascist states, for example, liked to appeal to national culture and identity, whereas socialist states appeal to the coming communist utopia. Nowadays, democratic capitalist countries prefer to invoke the economy. In all these cases, people seem to come last.

The key message here is: Real, concrete individuals should always come before abstract ideals.

In the mid-twentieth century, the fascist Portuguese dictator António Salazar engaged in a major public works project – or, more precisely, an anti-public works project. At great expense to the public, he had all the country's ancient ruined castles rebuilt. 

In the town of Óbidos, he paid for the development with funds appropriated from the local maternity hospital, which was later forced to close. Similarly, when a children's community was to be built near the town of Coimbra, he spent so much money having the houses built in the traditional style that, in the end, they could only afford to house a grand total of four kids.

Intuitively, it seems as though Salazar had his priorities mixed up. He ordered these public works in the name of culture, tradition, and national pride, but they were built at the expense of real, living people. This seems perverse because, if culture and tradition have any value at all, surely they only have value for real, living people?

The same is also true for other abstractions like the economy or the utopian future. Concepts like these only have value to the extent that they benefit real people. So, when Soviet leaders justified repression and genocide in the name of the coming utopia, or when US statesmen justify the poverty of an entire class of people in the name of the economy, their logic is absurd. 

When leaders completely subordinate real human beings to abstract ideals, those ideals become worthless and serve as just another lie that mystifies the people and entrenches their oppression.

We’ve just learned that real people should come before abstract values. If values come first, we end up with the socialist dictator who sacrifices innocents for the sake of the revolution or the equally tyrannical fascist who, in the name of the nation, also treats humans as disposable for the sake of “a greater cause.”

Most of us agree that this kind of oppression isn't justified. But what are we supposed to do about it? One thing we might think is off-limits is the use of violence, which many people believe makes us just as bad as the oppressors. The author believes that in some situations, violence is unfortunately the right option.

The key message here is: Violence is sometimes justified, but only under very specific circumstances.

In situations of oppression, the oppressed have two choices – either allow the violence committed against them to continue or engage in violence themselves. Put practically, the enslaved person must either accept his unfreedom or express it through revolt.

In order to achieve a cause, even a just cause, it's often necessary to sacrifice the safety and security of real people for the sake of a better future. This is what happened during the American Civil War when many people gave up their lives so that slavery would be abolished. 

But this creates a dilemma. To fight oppression, you have to perpetuate it – at least for a while. The concern is that political movements intended to liberate the oppressed can end up resembling the very oppressors they're struggling to overcome. 

To help clarify when the use of violence is justified and when it isn't, consider this dilemma from John Dos Passos's novel, Adventures of a Young Man. During the plot, several miners involved in a strike are sentenced to death. The protagonist has the choice to either save the miners’ lives by appealing through the courts, or take advantage of their martyrdom as a publicity stunt to further the revolutionary cause.

In the end, he chose to save the miners’ lives. He was right to do so because the only benefit from treating them as martyrs would have been an abstract propaganda boost for a dubious cause.

The moral is that any oppressed group that decides to use violence against violence must remain forever vigilant that they never use more force than they need. Violence should only ever be a last resort, in the name of real people, and directed toward clear, tangible goals.