Acting for a cause is inseparable from acting for oneself
Evidence
The fact is that the man of action becomes a dictator not in respect to his ends but because these ends are necessarily set up through his will. Hegel, in his Phenomenology, has emphasized this inextricable confusion between objectivity and subjectivity. A man gives himself to a Cause only by making it his Cause; as he fulfills himself within it, it is also through him that it is expressed, and the will to power is not distinguished in such a case from generosity; when an individual or a party chooses to triumph, whatever the cost may be, it is their own triumph which they take for an end. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 143
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Connects to the liberation-of-others theme the reader is tracking: if willing my freedom requires willing others’ freedom, then genuine generosity and will to power cannot be collapsed — yet Beauvoir here says they are confused in action.
Related
- Willing one’s own freedom and willing others’ freedom are the same act (similarity 0.81)
- Every action for humanity is also an action against some humans (similarity 0.81)
- Moral judgments require presupposing human freedom in oneself and others. (similarity 0.80)
- Even self-assertion requires others to confer lasting meaning on it (similarity 0.79)
- Legitimate causes can require fighting against other valid causes (similarity 0.79)
- Human means cannot be treated as pure instruments because man is himself an end. (similarity 0.79)