Ambiguity is Merleau-Ponty’s concept, not Sartre’s or Beauvoir’s

Evidence

Beauvoir’s appeal to the concept of ambiguity predates Th e Second Sex. Th e Ethics of Ambiguity— a book Beauvoir tells us she wrote to provide the ethics invited by, but absent in, Being and Nothingness’s analyses of bad faith— invokes the name Sartre throughout its pages. Th e title of the text, however, bears Merleau-Ponty’s signature. Between the name within the text and the signature on the text, we are alerted to the fact that something is going to happen to the concept of bad faith as it is transferred from Sartre’s to Beauvoir’s pen. Merleau- Ponty’s concept of ambiguity is going to set it on edge. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 66

Categorization

• DEFINE: Fixes the provenance of ‘ambiguity’ — critical for any authorship/influence argument about The Ethics of Ambiguity.
• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s core Beauvoir-Sartre influence debate, and echoes the Merleau-Ponty/Beauvoir/Sartre triangulation in Continental scholarship. — connects to: Beauvoir may have misread Sartre through Merleau-Ponty’s interpretive lens — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 212; Beauvoir’s concept of sexual difference derives from Merleau-Ponty, not Sartre. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 399
• QUESTION: Worth checking: how literally does Beauvoir’s telling verify, and was Merleau-Ponty’s influence acknowledged elsewhere?

Broader Connections

• Beauvoir’s concept of sexual difference derives from Merleau-Ponty, not Sartre. #qualifies (0.72) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 399
• Beauvoir may have misread Sartre through Merleau-Ponty’s interpretive lens #expands (0.70) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 212