simone de beauvoir the ethics of ambiguity sparknotes

And these early ruminations, if nurtured, can lead to even more wisdom later on. Their natural curiosity, if taken seriously, can guide adults through philosophical quandaries, as Scott Hershovitz demonstrates when he follows his own children down this path in the book Nasty, Brutish, and Short. Kids are another source of unexpected profundity. The sitcom guides viewers through some of the most famous names in the discipline: One episode title in the last season ingeniously twists the French playwright Jean-Paul Sartre’s declaration that “Hell is other people” into something much more tender that might be seen as the show’s overall message- help is other people. For example, many Americans got their introduction to moral philosophy not at a college seminar but on television, by watching The Good Place. With a wider pool, enlightenment could come from anywhere. Fichte’s ideas, particularly his assertion that all people have free will, are still foundational to virtually all modern Western thought. Another consequential development came when the rebellious and anti-authoritarian thinker Johann Gottlieb Fichte argued that philosophy should be accessible to the masses, Andrea Wulf writes in her book Magnificent Rebels.

For example, the women in Penaluna’s book laid the groundwork for modern feminism. Some of the most exciting revelations in philosophy have come from efforts to include new voices. One’s understanding of the world is invariably shaped by one’s experience in it, so when only certain people become philosophers, the resulting canon is correspondingly narrow and warped, Stewart continued. Focusing on them is valuable not just because of the luminosity of each one’s thinking but also because of the argument implicit in such a choice: that women have an indispensable role to play in the male-dominated field of philosophy, Sophia Stewart wrote last week. In her new book, How to Think Like a Woman, the journalist Regan Penaluna zooms in on four overlooked female philosophers.

Simone de beauvoir the ethics of ambiguity sparknotes