The Ethics of Ambiguity

by Simone de Beauvoir

As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.

This means that man, in his vain attempt to be God, makes himself exist as man,

Man’s unhappiness, says Descartes, is due to his having first been a child.

Instead of the independent mind he claims to be, he is only the shameful servant of a cause to which he has not chosen to rally.