Most philosophy has systematically masked rather than faced human ambiguity

Evidence

As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it. They have striven to reduce mind to matter, or to reabsorb matter into mind, or to merge them within a single substance. Those who have accepted the dualism have established a hierarchy between body and soul which permits of considering as negligible the part of the self which cannot be saved. They have denied death, either by integrating it with life or by promising to man immortality. Or, again they have denied life, considering it as a veil of illusion beneath which is hidden the truth of Nirvana. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 2

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: This typology of evasions — reducing to matter, spirit, denial of death or life — prefigures the later typology of bad faith types (sub-man, serious man, nihilist).

Related

• Flight into contemplation masks a refusal to face worldly ambiguity (similarity 0.81)
• Attempts to eliminate ambiguity only underscore the disorder humans suffer (similarity 0.80)