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Assignment: Explain in 2500 words De Beauvoir on freedom. De Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity turns on the point that there is no freedom independent of facticity. This is behind her emphasis that ethics just is the triumph of freedom over facticity-yet we can never do away with facticity. There are always going to be facts, contingencies, histories, some of these beyond our own control, that are at issue in our freedom and being ethical. The fact that our freedom begins from and works itself out of factical situations is no doubt behind her remark on “that no action can be generated for man without its being immediately generated against men” (107/99). This is because the actions through which we free ourselves or create values takes place in a factical situation where such action has an impact on the freedom of others. A critic might say things such as: “Freedom isn’t freedom if it is subject to such factical and situational conditions. The only freedom worth having, the only freedom that merits our calling ourselves ethical beings, must be a freedom of choice that is at work within us, prior to such freedom issuing into action. Don’t we have such freedom? If we didn’t have such freedom, rooted within us as individuals, how could we praise or blame, or even assess, the actions of others as e

thical? How can I hold someone responsible for their actions, for being ethical or not, if their freedom (not just their decision about how to exercise freedom, but their freedom itself) is somehow tied to their facticity? Doesn’t this pose problems for the very possibility of ethics? That is, in ethics, don’t we have to start by asking “Who’s responsible?” and if it turns out that situations impact on responsibility, doesn’t responsibility get undermined?” You are to develop a variation of this counterclaim against de Beauvoir. How might the critic pursue this line of analysis against de Beauvoir, and how might de Beauvoir respond? In following this criticism and the response to it, you need to take seriously the key notion of ambiguity in Beauvoir’s book. The point of this paper is not necessarily to come out for or against Beauvoir, but to better appreciate Beauvoir’s project, what’s behind it, and the sort of re-orientation of ethical issues that she is trying to pursue.
In the INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH(S) briefly introduce your overall project, any conclusion you might be coming to, and outline the main points of your discussion. This introduction can probably be covered by 2 to 5 well-chosen sentences that get right to the point and give a sense of how the rest of the essay will unfold.