The Ethics of Ambiguity (French title: Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté) is Simone de Beauvoir's second major non-fiction work, nearly twice as long as her first, Pyrrhus and Cineas. After giving a lecture in 1945, she found herself claiming that it was impossible to base an ethic upon the foundations of Sartre's Being and Nothingness (French title: L'Être et le néant), and a year later she took up the challenge, taking some six months over the task and publishing the text first in installments in Les Temps modernes, then as a book in November 1947.
Famous quotes containing the words ethics and/or ambiguity:
“The most powerful lessons about ethics and morality do not come from school discussions or classes in character building. They come from family life where people treat one another with respect, consideration, and love.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“Unlike the ambiguity of life, the ambiguity of language does reach a limit.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)