Appealing to transcendent values secretly denies one’s own freedom as the source of normativity.

Evidence

In eff ect, Beauvoir off ers something like a hypothetical imperative. In the case of Kant, the fact that a certain action is a means to some desired end gives you a reason to perform that action. If you do not perform the means, then you cannot achieve the goal. In the case of Beauvoir, the fact that freedom provides the (only) means to normatively justify action gives you a reason to value freedom. If you do not value freedom, you cannot normatively justify your goals. It might, however, seem that the two cases are not strictly homologous and that something has gone wrong. If freedom is always implicitly valued in every uncoerced action, then doesn’t the free mental act of justifi cation, even if it appeals to transcendent values, automatically justify those values? Th e answer is no, but this is not immediately obvious. Th us, Marcel’s appeal to God for justifi cation only apparently values God as a source of action guidance. What he really values, albeit implicitly, is the comfort derived from the tacit denial of his freedom, where such a tacit denial is motivated by his unwillingness to bear the burden of inventing values. Th e tacit denial of freedom, however, undercuts the normative force of his explicit assertion, because it denies the source of normativity. As stated above, Marcel’s feigned eff ort to value God as a guarantor of his actions defeats itself, because he simultaneously invents the value of God, where the value of God masquerades as uninvented. Marcel is like the mythomaniac: he sends himself love letters and believes that he has a secret admirer. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 198

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Beauvoir’s hypothetical-imperative structure of freedom as the sole means to normative justification, and the tacit self-deception in appeals to transcendent values.
• XREF: The mythomaniac/love-letters image of self-deceived justification echoes Sartre’s bad faith and La Rochefoucauld’s self-love tradition, and the Kantian contrast grounds Beauvoir’s ethics against the categorical imperative. — connects to: The spirit of seriousness treats values as absolute rather than made by human freedom — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1520; Giving birth cannot confer existential meaning because freedom must found itself. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1450; Freedom that withdraws into self-interest denies its own nature (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Nothing justifies the values a free being adopts since freedom grounds all values #corroborates (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 250
• Freedom that withdraws into self-interest denies its own nature #expands (0.88)
• Truths that compel assent cannot sustain a freedom-based movement. #expands (0.82) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 178
• Appeals to common sense and proportion serve reigning power, not truth #corroborates (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 84
• Bad faith is making excuses from circumstance rather than acknowledging one’s own freedom #corroborates (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 507