I cannot compare it with Sartre’s Existentialism and Humanism, which was also written in the period immediately after the end of the Second World War and has a similar goal, because I have not read that work yet. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity is an essay, or rather series of essays, that aims to introduce existentialism to the common reader. For that reason it has appealed to many artists and people who are engaged in the business of being alive. Its focus is on the concrete, the practical, the real and the possible. Those questions are simple – what is a good life, what must we do, where does our meaning come from, and is it to be found at all? Existentialism appeals because it deals with questions relating to our existence, rather than that which may lie beyond it or beneath it. I myself am not particularly interested in questions about metaphysics or the meaning and origin of knowledge, even though plenty of thinkers believe that without understanding these things we cannot even begin to approach those questions which I do find interesting. I appreciate that most people are not much interested in philosophy.
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