Passion
Simone De Beauvoir elucidates, “Man’s passion is useless; he has no means for becoming the being that he is not. That too is true. And it is also true that in Being and Nothingness Sartre has insisted above all on the abortive aspect of the human adventure. It is only in the last pages that he opens up the perspective for an ethics.” Passion is meaningless in a human’s life. Passion may not effectual in transforming man’s nature and his weaknesses. Accordingly, cannot fill the void of "nothingness."
Freedom
Simone De Beauvoir expounds, "in practice, Marxism does not always deny freedom. The very notion of action would lose all meaning if history were a mechanical unrolling in which man appears only as a passive conductor of outside forces. By acting, as also by preaching action, the Marxist revolutionary asserts himself as a veritable agent; he assumes himself to be free." The revolutionary embraces the Marxist ideology and circulates it out of free will. Marx does not coerce agents to believe in his principles. The agent has a conviction about the effectiveness of Marxist policies; hence, campaigns for them at will.
‘Infantile world’
Simone De Beauvoir writes, “There are beings whose life slips by in an infantile world because, having been kept in a state of servitude and ignorance, they have no means of breaking the ceiling which is stretched over their heads. Like the child, they can exercise their freedom, but only within this universe which has been set up before them, without them. This is the case, for example, of slaves who have not raised themselves to the consciousness of their slavery.” An ‘infantile world’ denotes an environment or circumstances which hinder individuals from exercising free thought. The lack of freedom hinders individuals enslaved in such a world from thinking independently. Their thinking is restricted by the entities that enslave them.
Ambiguity versus Absurdity
Simone De Beauvoir expounds, “The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won. Absurdity challenges every ethics; but also the finished rationalization of the real would leave no room for ethics.” In as much as humanity’s existence is ambiguous, it cannot be summed as absurd. Human beings are continuously seeking to disentangle the ambiguity which governs their existence. Absurdity enables human beings to point out the inconsistencies which govern ethics. If the world were utterly perfect, there would be no need for ethics because all human beings would automatically uphold morality.
War
Simone De Beauvoir remarks, “In Plutarch Lied Pierrefeu rightly says that in war there is no victory which cannot be regarded as unsuccessful, for the objective which one aims at is the total annihilation of the enemy and this result is never attained; yet there are wars which are won and wars which are lost. So is it with any activity; failure and success are two aspects of reality which at the start are not perceptible." Outcomes of war cannot be predicted; they are known once the war is over. A war could culminate in either a 'failure or success.' Moreover, combatants are not assured of success when they commence the war but they have faith about being triumphant. They brace themselves for any of the outcomes which are expected in cases of war.
