A liberty that stays only an attitude becomes self-imprisoning mimicry, not freedom.
Evidence
Because, in truth, this is a question of dreams. Because he denies them any objective content, the words Montherlant juggles with—“grandeur,” “holiness,” and “heroism”—are merely eye-catchers. Montherlant is afraid of risking his own superiority among men; to be intoxicated on this exalting wine, he retreats into the clouds: the Unique is obviously supreme. He closes himself up in a museum of mirages: mirrors reflect his own image infinitely, and he thinks that he can thus populate the earth; but he is no more than a reclusive prisoner of himself. He thinks he is free; but he alienates his liberty in the interests of his ego; he models the Montherlant statue on postcard-imagery standards. … Without an aim, action is impossible, so he consoles himself with gestures: it is mimicry. Women are convenient partners; they give him his lines, he takes the leading role, he crowns himself with laurels and drapes himself in purple: but everything takes place on his private stage; thrown onto the public square, in real light, under a real sky, the actor no longer sees clearly, cannot stand, staggers, and falls. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 493
Categorization
- XREF: Beauvoir’s charge that Montherlant’s ‘liberty is an attitude, not a reality’ pairs with the book’s later treatment of woman’s situation: a liberty divorced from real aims and the recognition of others is empty, echoing how woman’s transcendence is denied by her situation. — connects to: Freedom is only real once it chooses its own finitude. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1176; Pseudo-rebellions just substitute one irrational authority for another. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 421; Freedom that withdraws into self-interest denies its own nature (+3 more)
- DEFINE: Distinguishes genuine transcendence (aimed action in a public, real world) from immanence disguised as style — as mimicked gesture.
Broader Connections
- Freedom that withdraws into self-interest denies its own nature
#corroborates(0.85) - Free will that succumbs to evil influence is self-contradictory
#corroborates(0.80)