Applied Existentialism: On Kristiana Arp's The Bonds of Freedom: Simone de Beauvoir's Existentialist Ethics

Abstract

In her recently published book, The Bonds of Freedom ,K ristina Arp finds in the work of Simone de Beauvoir grounds to put existentialist ethics on a sound philosophical footing (152). Building on ethical framework by examining the philosopher's earlier essays and literary works, but concentrating primarily on Ethics of Ambiguity ,A rp discovers what she calls Beauvoir's innovative con- ception of moral (151). Indeed, moral freedom is an innova- tive idea, and Arp's clearly written explication and elaboration of concept is well thought through and philosophically inno- vative in its own right. Arp argues that in The Ethics of Ambiguity Beauvoir distinguishes Sartre's ontological freedom from her own the- ory of moral freedom. Further, this conception of a specifically moral level of freedom has an important contribution to make to theorizing oppression in general and women's oppression in particular (145). To demonstrate this second point, Arp compares The Ethics of Ambiguity with The Second Sex ,a rguing convincingly that emphasis in the former on moral freedom offers a better framework for a specif- ically sexually based analysis of oppression, given that the oppressed