Beauvoir’s threefold ambiguity defines the human as immanent-transcendent, free-yet-unmade, and conflicted-with-yet-requiring the Other.

Evidence

Beauvoir had already defi ned the human being as ambiguous in her Ethics of Ambiguity. For her, there is a threefold ambiguity at the heart of the human: the human is immanent and transcendent, the human is free and yet has to make itself free, and the individual is in confl ict with the Other and yet needs the Other to fulfi ll oneself. Th e human being is both consciousness and body; it is an embodied consciousness, and this means that the individual is a sexed embodied consciousness. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 112

Categorization

• DEFINE: Systematizes Beauvoir’s threefold ambiguity from the Ethics of Ambiguity, a compact conceptual framework central to the Continental tradition.
• XREF: connects to: Beauvoir held that human ambiguity is constitutive, not a problem to solve — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 718; Beauvoir’s ethics derive moral obligations from interdependent transcendence — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 578; Beauvoir’s situational freedom confounds any firm distinction between constituting and being constituted — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 502 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• The tyrant’s sophism divides humanity into self-transcendence and others’ immanence #exemplifies (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 103
• Beauvoir held that every Self-Other duality inevitably breeds conflict #expands (0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 265
• Ethics is only possible given a gap between oneself and oneself #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 5
• Beauvoir’s ethics derive moral obligations from interdependent transcendence #expands (0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 578
• Beauvoir distinguishes inborn ontological freedom from willed freedom that facticity can eviscerate #expands (0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 643
• Beauvoir’s situational freedom confounds any firm distinction between constituting and being constituted #expands (0.78) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 502
• The stranger-known-other distinction is unstable yet practically meaningful. #exemplifies (0.75) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 115
• The human ideal of God is a self-contradictory synthesis of the in-itself and for-itself #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 67
• The human is the unique entity whose Being includes questioning Being itself. #expands (0.72)