Quotation
Last reviewed:
“The genuine human being will not agree to recognise any foreign absolute.”
Simone de Beauvoir · Existentialism · Modern · 1947
What does it mean?
The genuine human being will not recognise a foreign absolute, a value set up outside freedom that one merely obeys. The serious man, in her portrait, does exactly that, and hides from his own choice behind the absolute's seriousness. A rival reading hears a ban on any commitment, as if a cause were always bad faith. She thinks a cause that is willed as freedom, including other people's freedom, is not foreign. A cause that demands you as an instrument is.
Did Simone de Beauvoir really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Frechtman writes: 'The first implication of such an attitude is that the genuine man will not agree to recognize any foreign absolute.' The card uses 'human being' and British spelling. The absolute would be a value imposed from outside freedom.
Where it comes from
The Ethics of Ambiguity, in Bernard Frechtman's translation
Approximate date: 1947.
How to use it
A party line, or a company value statement in a London office, asks you to treat it as beyond question. She would call that a foreign absolute if the price of belonging is that you stop willing it and start kneeling to it. You can still share the aim. The test is whether the aim can be taken up as your freedom or only as your instruction. The test is sterner than 'think for yourself' as a poster.
A mindset reading
Seriousness is the vice of the chapter, not seriousness as in carefulness. She wants the second and attacks the first. The word is a trap in English. Frechtman's 'serious man' is a technical portrait.
Understand the philosophy
The Ethics of Ambiguity sorts ways of fleeing freedom: the serious, the nihilist, the adventurer, the passionate man. This sentence is the positive implication she draws before the sorting gets cruel. It is 1947, before The Second Sex.
- freedom
- ethics
- power
FAQ
What does it mean?
The genuine human being will not recognise a foreign absolute, a value set up outside freedom that one merely obeys. The serious man, in her portrait, does exactly that, and hides from his own choice behind the absolute's seriousness. A rival reading hears a ban on any commitment, as if a cause were always bad faith. She thinks a cause that is willed as freedom, including other people's freedom, is not foreign. A cause that demands you as an instrument is.
Did Simone de Beauvoir really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Frechtman writes: 'The first implication of such an attitude is that the genuine man will not agree to recognize any foreign absolute.' The card uses 'human being' and British spelling. The absolute would be a value imposed from outside freedom.
Which work is it in?
The Ethics of Ambiguity, in Bernard Frechtman's translation Approximate date: 1947.