TITLE:
Paradoxically Absurd: Clarifying the Ambiguous in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity
AUTHORS:
Ross A. Jackson
KEYWORDS:
Critique, Existentialism, Freedom, Philosophy, Semantics, Themes
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Philosophy,
Vol.16 No.3,
August
27,
2026
ABSTRACT: Conflict reveals a persistent need for a relevant and effective ethics. It is not surprising, then, that new ethical paradigms would have emerged from the ashes of World War II. With the release of The Ethics of Ambiguity in 1947, Simone de Beauvoir provided an existentialist ethics that is as much a response to her times as it is something that transcends them. Given that much of the world is mired in conflict today, there is potential value to be derived from a reexamination of this text. Existentialism is often reduced to being the philosophy of the absurd. In her ethics, de Beauvoir focused on the inherent ambiguity of the human condition rather than its absurdity. Whereas there is a great deal of research on and applications of de Beauvoir’s existentialist ethics, there is a current lack of a comprehensive, textual analysis focused on disambiguating the central terms of this work. This mixed-method, thematic, textual analysis aimed to address this research gap by examining de Beauvoir’s use of the terms absurd, absurdity, ambiguity, and ambiguous in The Ethics of Ambiguity. This study identified 59 occurrences of these terms contained in 55 unique statements. From the comparative analysis of word frequencies, the terms existence and freedom were found to figure prominently across the four categorical terms of this study. The sentiment of these statements was assessed using the AFINN lexicon and revealed an observable degree of consistency in terms of their central tendency and dispersion. A theme of struggle was identified for the category of absurd, whereas a theme of contestability was identified for the category of ambiguity. The results of this study suggest that de Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity is paradoxically absurd, not in the sense that it is self-contradictory, or contrary to common sense, but that her doxa of ambiguity can only be understood alongside (i.e., para) absurdity. From this perspective, one can conclude that ethical action requires one to understand, confront, and incorporate the ambiguity of existence into the ongoing project of one’s becoming as well as into what one ultimately does. This is potentially relevant to all, but especially to those in power and to those subjected to its application and consequences.