The denial of embodiment is itself a flight from human freedom’s risks

Evidence

Montherlant never wanted to assume the human condition; what he calls his pride is, from the beginning, a panicked flight from the risks contained in a freedom engaged in the world through flesh; he claims to affirm freedom but to refuse engagement; without ties, without roots, he dreams he is a subjectivity majestically withdrawn upon itself; the memory of his carnal origins disturbs this dream, and he resorts to a familiar process: instead of prevailing over it, he repudiates it. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 455

Categorization

• DEFINE: Beauvoir’s existentialist diagnosis: refusing the flesh is refusing engaged freedom, not attaining transcendence.
• XREF: connects to: Technological utopias mask a fear of our embodied vulnerability; Exceptionalist denial of past wrongs is itself a threat to freedom — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 206; Anxiety about freedom drives subjects to alienate themselves in things — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Technological utopias mask a fear of our embodied vulnerability #corroborates (0.85)
• Existentialist anxiety is the vertigo of realizing one’s own freedom #corroborates (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 61
• Exceptionalist denial of past wrongs is itself a threat to freedom #expands (0.80) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 206
• Anxiety about freedom drives subjects to alienate themselves in things #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128
• Embodiment is the necessary contingent condition anchoring consciousness in the world for Sartre #expands (0.78) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 97
• Fear apprehends the self as a passive destructible object among external causes #complicates (0.75)