“… the truth is that if division and violence define war, the world has always been at war and always will be; if man is waiting for universal peace in order to establish his existence validly, he will wait indefinitely: there will never be any other future”. (Beauvoir, 1948, p.128-9)
It is hard to look at the state of the world sometimes and not lose faith. Historically and currently war and division are seen everywhere, just as Beauvoir wrote. How do we make sense of many ambiguous translations of events and all the pain and suffering that emerges out of them? How do we find a way to feel and express our vitality within the messiness of human existence?
I often feel there are a lack of stories about the significance of division, rupture and brokenness and how some sort of freedom and subjectivity might well emerge and journey out of the fractures and uncertainties we encounter. We are told and often feel we must be stable, certain, knowing, healed, happy, at peace, integrated, and become whole or unified first. We must feel safe and comfortable. But as Beauvoir points out, are we ever able to feel those things for long, if at all? Of course these are not insignificant needs, feelings and experiences. The need to know and the drive for self-preservation and safety are important for our survival. However, we could be curious about the notion that we have to be sure footed to thrive and flourish. What if that is not always the case? Can we press up against all the uncertainties and intensities of life (the joys, the divisions, the sufferings and the ambiguities) and get curious? Wonder about these currents of life, affirm them rather than disavow or become nihilistic, cut it off or avoid?
As Beauvoir asks of us, in the ethics of ambiguity, can we imagine an ethical life that is not in a fixed or diminishing position, or one that throws us into a nihilistic angst, but a living of life in a continual responsiveness to ambiguity and our fundamental uncertainties? Like Nietzsche, Beauvoir highlights the significance of affirmation “the joy of existence must be asserted … if we are not moved by the laugh of a child at play. If we do not love life on our own account and through others, it is futile to seek to justify it in any way.” (p. 146). Whilst also recognising our ontological ambiguity and its paradoxes. Those being something like; yes, life happens to you, there are forces beyond our control, but we must work with this ambiguity, adopt an active not passive attitude and work dynamically with the obscurity and ambivalences. Ethics, like life, are not a forever known shape and collection of principles and ideals. It is an ongoing, affirmed and active creation and movement, “Ethics is not an ensemble of constituted values and principles; it is the constituting movement through which values and principles are constituted”. (Beauvoir, 1948, p. 188)
Sometimes we fall into despair and hopelessness. It is unavoidable and we all experience this at times, some more than others which can feel so unjust. Can the perilous journey of pain, of not knowing, of falling, getting disturbed, affected and inconvenienced, or even being broken-hearted and betrayed, become a creative gift and the very way to transformation? I am not entirely sure we can think ourselves out of these dilemmas or paradoxes. I believe we must directly and intimately feel them, somehow. Become affected and more aware of the continual movements in and as life. Somehow embody and accept these understandings and make attempts to respond actively not passively.
Can therapy be a space where all the forces in living be considered and explored, and felt intimately, in solidarity? Can we look at it together and imagine, experiment and engage with our ethics, values, passions, capacities and capabilities as they are, in continual movement, often uncertain and ambiguous? Can we consider them and allow them to be generative and life affirming? As Beauvoir’s states (1948) living a life politically and ethically “resides in the painfulness of an indefinite questioning.” (p.144) and grasping not evading the paradoxes. This ambiguous ethics asserts that existence’s “…meaning is never fixed …it must be constantly won” (p. 139).
To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Susanna, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.
Susanna Petitpierre, UKCP accredited, is an experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor, providing long and short term counselling. Her approach is primarily grounded in existential therapy and she works with individuals. Susanna is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.
Further reading by Susanna Petitpierre
Some ponderings on nihilism, with some inspiration from Paglia, Nietzsche and Beauvoir (part one)
On living as becoming – (part two)
References:
Beauvoir, S. de ((1976) The Ethics of ambiguity, Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New
York: Citadel Press
Beauvoir, S. de. (2004) Philosophical writings, Chicago: University of Illinois Press
