Existentialist ‘choice’ rhetoric can become a form of torment toward the suffering

Evidence

Chantal plays the existentialist: “Your resignation is in fact a defi nite choice: you chose peace.” But Anne begs her: “Don’t torment me… . I can’t take it anymore” (W, 140; A, 238–39). — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 561

Categorization

• XREF: Articulates a criticism sometimes leveled at existentialist ethics — that freedom/choice language blames the oppressed. Echoes the later critique of Beauvoir’s ‘Ethics of Ambiguity’; also relevant to the Beauvoir–Sartre influence debate about who originated this account of situated freedom. — connects to: Accusations of existentialist pessimism mask anxiety about real choice — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 5; Nietzsche and Kierkegaard defined existence as choice, action and self-assertion; Mailer reframed existentialist authenticity as a pro-psychopathy stance — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 897 (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The passage shows Beauvoir dramatizing the dark underside of her own philosophical vocabulary of choice — a self-critical move that bears on authorship questions and the ethics of existentialism.