The world reveals itself only through engagement and rejection

Evidence

But here too we must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible. There have been war, plague, scandal, and treason, and there is no way of our preventing their having taken place; the executioner became an executioner and the victim underwent his fate as a victim without us; all that we can do is to reveal it, to integrate it into the human heritage, to raise it to the dignity of the aesthetic existence which bears within itself its finality; but first this history had to occur: it occurred as scandal, revolt, crime, or sacrifice, and we were able to try to save it only because it first offered us a form. Today must also exist before being confirmed in its existence: it exists only as an engagement and a commitment. If we first considered the world as an object to be manifested, if we thought that it was saved by this destination in such a way that everything about it already seemed justified and that there was no more of it to reject, then there would also be nothing to say about it, for no form would take shape in it; it is revealed only through rejection, desire, hate and love. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 82

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEEPTHINKING: Dense and layered: the artist as concerned redeemer of the past, the present as only real through commitment — this resists one-sentence summary and rewards rereading.