A life that only maintains itself is indistinguishable from vegetation
Evidence
Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying, and human existence is indistinguishable from an absurd vegetation; a life justifies itself only if its effort to perpetuate itself is integrated into its surpassing and if this surpassing has no other limits than those which the subject assigns himself. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 86
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- XREF: Lays out the criterion against which the ‘sub-man’ typology can be tested — those who merely maintain are the sub-men of chapter 1.