The Ethics of Ambiguity
Charlotte Moore freely subjects de Beauvoir’s ethics to a discerning scrutiny.
Here, however, I always go back to the existential parameters of freedom in a No God world. If you think yourself into believing that sans God freedom becomes the embodiment of “in the absense of God all things are permitted”, then you can choose to behave as, say, the sociopath does. And, more to point, justify that frame of mind…philosophically? If there is no omniscient/omnipresent entity able to grasp everything that you do and, in being omnipotent, able to punish you for doing objectively wrong – sinful – things, then why not choose a morality that revolves around “what’s in it for me”?
You can still choose to fit into a community based on the accepted mores of that community…if it is to your advantage. But then choose not to if it is not to your advantage. You merely shift gears so as to focus more on not getting caught.
Again, back to this: In what particular context? We would have focus in on this clash between assessments of freedom and moral obligation, given a set of circumstances in which moral and political value judgments come into conflict. How would someone who embraces de Beauvoir’s reaction differ from someone who embraced Sartre’s?
Inherently free, perhaps. But only given the assumption that the exercise of this freedom is always going to be situated within the parameters of the particular worlds experienced existentially in particular historical and cultural contexts. Isn’t it the fact of this that precipitates philosophical discussions that revolve around ethics either construed or not construed to be within the rational and virtuous parameters of deontology?