The sub-man refuses the risks and tensions of existing as a lack.

Evidence

If we were to try to establish a kind of hierarchy among men, we would put those who are denuded of this living warmth — the tepidity which the Gospel speaks of — on the lowest rung of the ladder. To exist is to make oneself a lack of being; it is to cast oneself into the world. Those who occupy themselves in restraining this original movement can be considered as sub-men. They have eyes and ears, but from their childhood on they make themselves blind and deaf, without love and without desire. This apathy manifests a fundamental fear in the face of existence, in the face of the risks and tensions which it implies. The sub-man rejects this “passion” which is his human condition, the laceration and the failure of that drive toward being which always misses its goal, but which thereby is the very existence which he rejects. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 38

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definition of the sub-man: one who restrains the original movement of casting oneself into the world out of fear.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s goal of sorting real people into Beauvoir’s typology — this is the lowest rung, the apathetic refusal of existence.