The Ethics of Ambiguity

by Simone de Beauvoir

The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.

So is it with any activity; failure and success are two aspects of reality which at the start are not perceptible. That is what makes criticism so easy and art so difficult: the critic is always in a good position to show the limits that every artist gives himself in choosing himself;

the example of the unknown person who throws himself in to the Seine and whom I hesitate whether or not to fish out is quite abstract; in the absence of a concrete bond with this desperate person my choice will never be anything but a contingent facticity.