The ethics of ambiguity

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• beat · Aug 30, 2018 · Recommends

  Recommended reading list thread! What have you read this year that you think others should read as well? Here's a few of mine that really stand out. Factfulness, by Hans Rosling The Ethics of Ambiguity, by Simone de Beauvoir Designing Delivery, by Jeff Sussna (re-read) The Cooking Gene, by Michael Twitty Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor The Philosophy of Spinoza The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan

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• beat · Dec 12, 2018 · Recommends

  …interesting - depression, being a bandleader, and being a parent and husband. Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor. An outstanding science fiction novella from an entirely different perspective - an African future. The Ethics of Ambiguity, by Simone de Beauvoir. A mid-century philosophy classic, tackling ethics from an existentialist perspective. Dense and difficult, but also highly entertaining and brilliant. Highly recommended if you…

  on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗
• PheonixPharts · May 12, 2022 · Recommends

  Maybe the problem is you're trying to "feel good" rather than confront feeling bad. My recommendation is Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity. It details various strategies people have for confronting their own existential terror, and ultimately works to develop an ethical system for a world without meaning. I've found it very insightful for…

  on “Ask HN: What are some good inspirational and uplifting books?” ↗
• edna_piranha · Jul 10, 2010 · Recommends

  …phenomenology and/or existentialism and works that are somewhat readable (this is subjective of course), I'd suggest: 1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty - The Phenomenology of Perception 2. Simone de Beauvoir - Ethics of Ambiguity 3. Friedrich Nietzsche - Will to Power I'd highly recommend NOT reading Being and Time by Heidegger - you'll want to stab your eyes out ten times. Outside of pure philosophical texts and more emphasis…

  on “Ask HN: Best Philosophical Books?” ↗
• thrav · Jan 1, 2020 · Recommends

  …publication, which means time has caught up to their ahead of the curve ideas. The most I’ve gotten out of a book, in terms of altering the way I think about the world and life, is Simone De Beauvoir and the Ethics of Ambiguity. Man, I love me some Simone.

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• jtr1 · May 12, 2020 · Recommends

  "The Ethics of Ambiguity" by Simone de Beauvoir helped pull me out of a pretty debilitating bout of nihilism.

  on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?” ↗
• beat · Aug 16, 2018 · Mentions

  This makes me think somewhat of my current reading... The Ethics of Ambiguity, by Simone de Beauvoir. Although she's talking about our relationships with other people and the world, rather than our relationship with our future selves, there is significant overlap. She talks about…

  on “The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do” ↗
• beat · Aug 17, 2018 · Mentions

  …comment, for an overtly hostile audience who obviously doesn't understand even the basics of half the equation. So this will probably fail. Simone de Beauvoir's criticism of Nietzsche, in the context of The Ethics of Ambiguity, arises from her core premise, which is that our own freedom depends on the freedom of others, so we have an ethical obligation to advance the freedom of others in order to make our own freedom meaningful.…

• time_to_smile · Apr 22, 2022 · Mentions

  …system of meaning is largely gone and cannot be trivially replaced. Nietzsche's entire life's work is about confronting this existential horror and coming up with new ways to live. de Beauvoir, in The Ethics of Ambiguity, goes on to catalog all the strategies we have for dealing with this problem. Pointing out that nihilism ultimately leads to the rise of Nazism. Likewise far right extremism in the US can be viewed as…

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• bshepard · Jul 19, 2019 · Mentions

  …him some attachment to existence; his life will be commensurate with this attachment; it will justify itself to the extent that it genuinely justifies the world.” Excerpt From: Simone de Beauvoir. “The Ethics of Ambiguity.

  on “Simone de Beauvoir, The Art of Fiction No. 35 (1965)” ↗
• giantsloth · Jul 5, 2018 · Mentions

  …personal sanity. To Zuckerberg these things are dealt with in a way "lacking in sensitivity, intelligence, and humanity", all that matters is Facebook's bottom line. Further on in Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity she quotes "The rest of the world is a faceless desert. Here again one sees how such a choice is immediately confirmed. If there is being only, for example, in the form of the Army, how could the military…

  on “Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach” ↗
• adamsea · Jan 5, 2020 · Mentions

  …certain direction.“ > “ ... women are generally too stupid to choose what’s best for them in life.” Those are your words, not Simone de Beauvoirs. I haven’t read “The Second Sex” yet but I have read “The Ethics of Ambiguity” by her. I would bet a dollar though that Beauvoir considers stupidity an individual human trait generously distributed across all genders. Here are some other quotes from The Second Sex. "Self-knowledge…

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• tomlockwood · Dec 23, 2019 · Mentions

  …unproveable - but that the unprovability doesn't stop that "truth" from being objective. The faith you're describing seems similar in functional terms to what Simone De Beauvoir describes in her book "The Ethics of Ambiguity".

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