Facing ambiguity honestly is the source of strength to act

Evidence

In spite of so many stubborn lies, at every moment, at every opportunity, the truth comes to light, the truth of life and death, of my solitude and my bond with the world, of my freedom and my servitude, of the insignificance and the sovereign importance of each man and all men. There was Stalingrad and there was Buchenwald, and neither of the two wipes out the other. Since we do not succeed in fleeing it, let us therefore try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 4

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Stalingrad and Buchenwald as simultaneous truths neither of which cancels the other sets up the entire ethic — no consoling synthesis, only assumption of the ambiguity.
• SEED: “Stalingrad and Buchenwald, neither wipes out the other” — essay angle on how contemporary moral discourse keeps trying to settle which historical evils are the “real” one.
• XREF: connects to: Beauvoir holds that Other-encounter need not end in conflict but can achieve authentic ambiguity. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 114