Simone de Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity | Childhood, Adolescence, and Moral Choice | Core Concepts

hi this is dr gregory sadler i'm a professor of philosophy and the president and founder of an educational consulting company called reason i o where we put philosophy into practice i've studied and taught philosophy for over 20 years and i find that many people run into difficulties reading classic philosophical texts sometimes it's the way things are said or how the text is structured but the concepts themselves are not always that complicated and that's where i come in to help students and lifelong learners i've been producing longer lecture videos and posting them to youtube many viewers say they find them useful what you're currently watching is part of a new series of shorter videos each of them focused on one core concept from an important philosophical text i hope you find it useful as well simone de beauvoir begins section two of the ethics of ambiguity by talking about childhood and adolescence and the condition of people who are kept within what she calls the infantile world and she begins with a reference to descartes man's unhappiness is due to his having first been a child and then she says indeed the unfortunate choices which most men make can only be explained by the fact that they've taken place on the basis of childhood and there's sort of a double meaning to this given what she's saying part of it is is that we whether we realize it or not we have imposed upon us or we really nearly commit ourselves to things in childhood that that we should probably reconsider but the other is that people continue to act in relation to the world in the way that that children do as adults and that's not particularly helpful as well she talks about the child as living in a serious world and indeed very soon afterwards she will talk about the serious person as engaging in something that that has a similar attitude what does this mean to live in a serious world she tells us that the child situation is characterized by finding oneself cast into a universe they have not helped to establish which has been fashioned without them which appears as an absolute to which he can only submit in his eyes human inventions words customs values are given facts as inevitable as the sky and the trees this means the world in which he lives is a serious world since the characteristic of the spirit of seriousness is to consider values as ready made things and so you know this is the human condition we are all born as children into families into cultures into dynamics into situations that we did not choose and many children do in fact experience this as unfreedom why do i have to go to school today i'll give you another prime example of this my uh one of my daughters said um why do we have to take all these standardized tests you know they're really a waste of of time and well that's the product of choices of people in that particular state who thought that standardized tests are really something important worth spending you know scarce curriculum hours upon and so the you know this we could talk about example after example after example why do we have to rise at this time why do we have to go to school on these days why is it pizza in the cafeteria today you know and we can go further and further and further that doesn't mean that the child's world is one that is totally lacking in freedom but they are taking the things that are there as if they are ready mate as if they are just facts of life as we say now i do have to point out before we jump into the next discussion that de bevoir is not talking about every case of every child in the world you know when we look at cases of children who are put to labor very young or who suffered horrific abuse i think that a lot of what she's saying here probably doesn't apply as as well as it does to other you know types of childhood but it does cover an awful lot so she goes on and she says it doesn't mean that the child him or herself is serious on the contrary they're allowed to play what does that mean to expend their existence freely kids get away with you know spending lots and lots of time doing things that you know have no practical purpose whatsoever as a child i remember being assigned chores getting the chores done then going out to play and it might be games with other people it might be imagining ourselves as in you know nights of old and getting sticks and going after each other and going on adventures it could be pretending that we were in the show battlestar galactica and you know we used our imagination so much that we dug trenches in the ground and that was sitting in the viper and then we'd load up you know torpedoes as just logs that people had cut silly stuff right spending hours and hours and hours in coloring things so children get to do that and they passionately set up and pursue goals you know prime example for for myself again was we would go to new construction sites and take the the uh various pallets and we would build forts out in the woods and we would spend all this time discussing should this wall go this way or this way and what about you know should we build another story on it just stuff where an adult would come along and be like what's the point of all this and we we thought there was a point so as human beings we're always engaged in some sort of goal setting and the child gets to do that for himself and and as she says if the child fulfills this experience in all tranquility it's precisely because the domain open to their subjectivity seems insignificant and pure aisle they feel themselves happily irresponsible the real world is that of adults where they're allowed only to respect and obey and we could also say there's what about children who can test that they're still contesting it within that that framework right so there's another key aspect of this a moral aspect she says that um the child takes you know parents teachers others as divinities which they vainly try to be and whose appearance they would like to borrow before their eyes rewards punishments prizes words of praise or blame instill in them the conviction that there exist a good and an evil which like a sun and a moon exist in ends in themselves so one can be a good boy or a bad boy right and it's measured by this good and evil that exists out there they're not just human-created values or human-oriented values they are things that humans discover and then tell you about and you know you find out how to be a good boy or good girl through all of these promptings and like she goes on to say normally the child escapes the anguish of freedom they can if they like be recalcitrant lazy their whims and concerns concern only them they do not weigh on the earth they cannot make a dent in the serene order of a world which existed before them so then she goes on to discuss adults adults who live within an infantile world and here we're looking at something that is is you know we could say it is normal in the sense that it's been widespread but it's not a normal part of human development in that it doesn't have to be that way so she says 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 stretched over their head and she gives a number of examples that we'll look at in just a moment she says like the child they can exercise their freedom but only within this universe which has been set up before them without them a little bit later on she talks about people who have no instruments whether it be in thought or by astonishment or anger which would permit them to attack the civilization that oppresses them and she says in this case we have to judge them only within this given situation and you know it's possible in this situation limited like every other one they realize an assertion of their freedom but they don't have a possibility of liberation so they can't actually uh they don't have the access to human freedom that others do so servitude ignorance submission these are things representing a world that is imposed upon them by other individuals but also by social structures so what are some examples of this she talks about um you know a little bit later on the slave of the 18th century the african slave the islamic woman enclosed in a harem not every single woman but those who are you know put into a leader's harem where that's it for them that that has become their world she talks about southern planters considering that the africans who docile submitted to their paternalism were grown-up children she says to the extent that they respected the world of the whites the situation of the black slaves was exactly an infantile situation they were not allowed to progress they were kept in a infantile situation and if they didn't then they were they were you know brutalized until they would go along with it she talks about the situation of women in many civilizations they can only submit to the laws the gods the customs and truths created by the males and then she says no she's writing this you know in her time even today in western countries among women who have not had in their work an apprenticeship of freedom there are still many who take shelter in the shadow of men they adopt without discussion the opinions and value values recognized by their husband or their lover that allows them to develop childish qualities forbidden to adults because they're based on a feeling of irresponsibility so this is the case for for many people she goes on to say that in some some cases you know this is actually something that a person is responsible for so you could think of you know the woman who decides that she's going to be a kept person and just go along with all the opinions of her lover to keep the peace in a way she's choosing that and and she talks about choosing or consenting she also talks about complicity complicity with that very power and thought structure she she says that [Music] here we go in many cases this thoughtlessness this gaity these charming inventions imply a deep complicity with the world of men which they seem so graciously to be contesting it is a mistake to be astonished once the structure seems to be in danger to see sensitive ingenious and like-minded women show themselves harder more bitter and even more furious or cruel than their masters and she says it's then we discover the difference which distinguishes them from an actual child the child situation is imposed on them the person who is consenting is in a certain way going along with it because they're deriving some sort of benefit from it and you know we could say something similar a similar critique arises within mary wollstonecraft's vindication of the rights of women in her discussions of this now she's also got this discussion about adolescence and she's not saying that adolescence is normally the phase in which all this happens notice that she says it's rare for the infantile world to maintain itself beyond adolescence for some children it could be before adolescence that they're like this isn't real this is not the way things have to be that happens for some very young four five six years old for many they go beyond at you know that point and into adolescence and in adolescence they're confronted with a lot of different changes some of them will still you know decide they want to exist in the world of childhood but they are at that point choosing it so she says from childhood on flaws begin to be revealed in this world with astonishment revolt and disrespect the child little by little asks themselves why must i act that way what good is it and what will happen if i ask if i act in another way she says that in this time they are discovering their own subjectivity and they're also discovering the subjectivity of others they're discovering that the adults don't actually know as much as they thought that they did and they're discovering that the stereotypes that they rely upon often turn out to be false as well so like she says language customs ethics values they have sources in these contingent creatures what are the contingent creatures the current existing adults the adults who came before when these adults were merely children and they realized that you know things are not as natural as grounded as necessary as they've been made out to be or as they thought that they were as they bought into says the moment has come when they're going to be called upon to participate in their operation of these things his acts weigh upon the earth as much as other people he will have to choose and decide so she tells us that there's there's two sides to this um adolescence is uh she she goes on a um the collapsing of the serious world is a deliverance although he was irresponsible the child felt himself defenseless before obscure powers whatever the joy of this liberation may be it's not without great confusion right so adolescence is a time she goes on to say of moral choice it is the moment of moral choice freedom is revealed he must decide upon his attitude in the face of it and so you know moral choice like she says moral choice is free and therefore unforeseeable the child does not contain the man he will become but it's always on the basis of what he has been that a person decides upon what they want to be there's also this realization of responsibility which could be rejected which could be suppressed but you know you're gonna identify typical uh existentialist themes here there is a conditionment of abandonment being stuck in a world where now there there really is no longer anything that you can take refuge in as a safe haven when it comes to values uh being unjustified having to come up with the justifications oneself and freedom freedom and responsibility there's also a positive side to this as well she talks about the joy of existing that there can be manifesting existence as a happiness and the world as a source of joy but it's up to us to do that and that does happen for many people in adolescence that isn't an automatic guaranteed thing that will happen through that so you know all these adults that are existing in infantile states so long as they haven't been completely stuck within a power structure and meaning structure that keeps them infantilized they will have gone through adolescence they may be at a great disadvantage you know the position of women versus men even in contemporary society in many sectors of our society is not exactly the same and and we can talk about many other uh types of of distinctions as well but her point is we transition from a world of childhood in which we do have freedom but it's not a freedom that that is a freedom with responsibility to a condition in which we as adults do have to take responsibility and existentialism provides us with the framework to do that you

Channel: Gregory B. Sadler

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Length: 17min 17sec (1037 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020