The Ethics of Ambiguity provide significant ideas that support existentialism. The author affirms the value of oneself as being the universe’s center and the source of power that can single-handedly shape the world. She offers a new look at ethics and challenges the moral codes that have shaped humanity. The traditional ways of perceiving life and its values are challenged as she brings them into a close-up view and attempts to break them down and expose their flaws. While she greatly asserts her opinions by providing sufficient evidence, it’s next to impossible to bring down ideas that humanity has deeply cultivated for however long they have existed. In time though, these fundamental ideas, however small, will eventually come to be accepted and emulated by humanity as time pushes forward, always.
When the ideas of existentialism began to spread, many people rallied against them because they were unbearable and a destructive way of thinking, as described by some. Beauvoir's book, however, gave these ideas a context that was enough to make existentialism more digestible to man. She provides a more stable and fruitful way of living with these ideas. When the book was published, the world had just come off the second World War and people were in great need of a way of life that didn’t result in another war. Beauvoir realized that what the world needed was an idea that was more central to the individual than a single communal idea that persecuted whom it deemed unworthy based on a universal moral code that she argues does not exist beyond the human mind.
The choices that man makes, determine what his future will be. He alone has the power to make himself great or a failure. Beauvoir's asserts that man’s true freedom comes from detaching himself fully from outside influence that might condition them into making certain choices that they wouldn’t otherwise have made had it not been for those external pressures. The choices humans make are completely and unequivocally theirs. Outside influences might work as tools to pressure them into a decision but in the end, the choice comes down to the individual. Whatever that choice may be, it cannot be judged or measured by any external value because none of them can quantify whether it was right or wrong. The choice is what it is.
Beauvoir's also highlights one fundamental trait in the existence of man, doubt. No matter what man does, he will always be in doubt because he will never have a full picture of anything he seeks. No matter what man seeks to understand fully, he must begin in utter darkness as he navigates himself through it. At the start of everything, nothingness lies. In that respect, man has to be willing to take all the risks that might come with whatever he may seek to understand or conquer.
The ideas in The Ethics of Ambiguity challenges everything that humanity has strived for so long to maintain. While some might consider these ideas dangerous and destructive, they offer some level of freedom at a time when everyone and everything is trying to impose their beliefs on others. Freedom is a very easy thing to achieve yet so hard because man is constantly exposed to external pressures that force them to budge at every turn. Ultimate freedom is making a choice fully conscious and sticking with that choice despite what others might have you think.
