Chapter 10: Your Freedom and Mine

A Request at the Café Counter

Mirela is thirty-seven and owns a small café on a busy street. She opened it six years ago with her savings and a loan, and she works there almost every day. She has three employees. One of them, Tomi, a quiet and reliable young man of twenty-two, asks to speak with her after closing time one evening.

Tomi explains that he has been accepted on a part-time course to train as a nurse. The classes are on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, which are two of his regular shifts. He asks whether he could change his hours to afternoons and weekends. He says he loves working at the café, but he has always wanted to work in health care, and this is his chance.

Mirela's first reaction is irritation. Tuesday and Thursday mornings are busy, and Tomi is her best worker. Changing his hours will mean reorganizing the schedule, training someone new and possibly losing money. She built this café through her own freedom and hard work. Why should she put it at risk for someone else's plans? She almost says no.

But that night, she thinks about her own story. Eight years ago, she was working for someone else, dreaming of opening her own café. Her manager at the time refused to let her take a business course, and she had to quit her job to do it. She remembers how much that refusal hurt. She asks herself: do I value freedom only for myself? Or do I value it as something everyone deserves? This chapter is about that question, and about the philosopher who answered it most clearly: Simone de Beauvoir.

A Philosophy of Ambiguity

In 1947, Simone de Beauvoir published a book called The Ethics of Ambiguity. It was partly a response to a common criticism of existentialism: that if each person is free to make their own values, then existentialism cannot tell us how to treat other people. De Beauvoir set out to show that existentialism does have an ethics, and that it begins with a clear understanding of the human condition.

That condition, she argued, is ambiguous. The word "ambiguous" here means having two sides at once that cannot be separated. We are free beings who choose and create meaning, and we are also bodies, objects in the world, limited by our situation and by time. We are individuals, each living our own life from the inside, and we are also members of a world full of other people, on whom we depend. We are alive and aware, and we are going to die. None of these sides cancels the other. We must live with both.

De Beauvoir believed that many of the ways people go wrong come from trying to escape this ambiguity: pretending to be only free, or only an object; only an individual, or only a member of a group; ignoring death, or being paralysed by it. An honest ethics, she argued, must accept the ambiguity and work within it.

This idea connects with what we explored in the chapter on bad faith, where we saw Sartre's warning against pretending to be only our facts or only our freedom. De Beauvoir took this further, asking how a person who accepts the ambiguity of their condition should live, especially in relation to others.

De Beauvoir described several attitudes that people take toward their freedom, each of which goes wrong in its own way. Some people try to avoid freedom altogether, drifting through life without real commitments, letting things happen to them. Some, as we will see, hand their freedom over to an outside cause or rule. Some decide that, since nothing has a given meaning, nothing matters at all, and fall into a kind of bitter emptiness. Others throw themselves into adventures and pleasures for their own sake, without caring much about the people around them. In each case, de Beauvoir saw a failure to face the full truth of the human condition: that we are free, and that our freedom lives among other people.

The Serious Person

One of the most memorable parts of The Ethics of Ambiguity is de Beauvoir's description of different ways people avoid their freedom. One type she described with particular care is what she called the serious man, or, as we might say today, the serious person.

The serious person, in de Beauvoir's sense, is not simply someone who takes things seriously. It is someone who takes an outside value, such as a cause, a rule, an institution, a career, money or a nation, and treats it as absolute, as if it existed on its own and had a claim on them that does not depend on their choice. The serious person then subordinates their freedom to this value. They say, in effect: "I do not choose this. It simply is the right thing, and I serve it."

This can look admirable. Serious people are often hard-working, loyal and committed. But de Beauvoir saw a danger. By treating a value as absolute, the serious person hides from their own freedom and responsibility. They no longer ask whether the value is worth serving, or whether it is being served in a good way. And because the value seems more important than any person, they may be willing to sacrifice people to it, including themselves and others.

We can find serious people in many places. A manager who follows company targets so devotedly that they ignore the human cost to their staff. A parent so devoted to their child's academic success that the child's happiness no longer counts. A person so committed to a cause that they treat those who disagree as obstacles rather than people. In each case, a value that may be good in itself becomes an idol, and freedom, both their own and others', is sacrificed to it.

De Beauvoir's alternative was not to give up all commitments. It was to hold our commitments as our own free choices, to keep asking whether they serve human freedom and to never let them become more important than the people they are supposed to serve.

Freedom Is Not Solitary

The heart of de Beauvoir's ethics is a simple but powerful idea. She argued that nobody can honestly want freedom for themselves without also wanting it for others. My freedom and yours are not separate. They are bound together.

Why should this be so? One reason is that freedom, in the existentialist sense, is the power to create meaning and to shape one's life through projects. But our projects always involve other people. We need others to work with, to love, to talk with, to learn from and to carry on what we begin. A world in which others are not free, in which they are oppressed, silenced or controlled, is a world in which my own projects are limited. I cannot have a free conversation with someone who is not free to speak. I cannot have a real friendship with someone who is not free to choose me.

Another reason is consistency. If I value freedom because it allows human beings to create meaning, then I must value it wherever it is found, not only in myself. To value my own freedom while denying it to others would be a kind of contradiction. It would mean treating myself as a free being and others as objects, which is exactly the kind of bad faith that existentialism warns against.

De Beauvoir put the idea in different ways throughout her book. The main thought, in my own words, is that wanting your own freedom fully and honestly already includes wanting other people to be free. Freedom that is only for oneself is not really freedom; it is privilege.

This gives existentialist ethics a strong, practical centre. When we face a choice about how to treat others, we can ask: does this action increase or decrease the freedom of the people it affects? Does it open possibilities for them, or close them? Does it treat them as free beings, capable of their own choices, or as objects to be used?

For Mirela, this question changes the shape of her decision about Tomi. Saying no would protect her café's schedule, but it would close a door in Tomi's life, just as her old manager closed one in hers. Saying yes would cost her some trouble and money, but it would open a possibility for someone else, and in doing so, it would honour the very value, freedom, that led her to build her café.

Helping Others Be Free

If we value others' freedom, how should we help them? De Beauvoir made an important point here. Helping someone be free is not the same as doing things for them or deciding for them. It means opening possibilities that they can choose to take up.

Think of the difference between a parent who chooses everything for their teenager, from clothes to friends to future career, and a parent who gives their teenager information, support and gradually increasing room to make their own choices. The first parent may mean well, but they are treating their child as an object to be shaped. The second is helping their child become a free person.

The same applies in many relationships. A teacher can give students answers, or can help them learn to think. A manager can control every detail, or can give workers the skills and trust to make decisions. A friend can tell us what to do, or can help us see our options more clearly. In each case, the second approach respects and strengthens the other person's freedom.

This does not mean we should never help people directly. When someone is hungry, sick or in danger, the most freeing thing we can do may be to feed them, care for them or protect them. Freedom needs basic conditions: food, shelter, health, safety and education. De Beauvoir was very aware of this. Helping people meet these basic needs is often the first step in helping them be free.

The key question is whether our help aims at the other person's own freedom and future, or whether it keeps them dependent on us. Good help, in de Beauvoir's sense, aims to make itself less necessary over time, as the other person grows in their own power to choose.

There is a simple test that can help in everyday situations. After helping someone, ask: is this person now more able to act on their own, or less? A friend who helps you prepare for a job interview by practising questions with you has made you more able. A friend who writes your application for you, every time, may have made you less able, however kindly they meant it. Both kinds of help can be appropriate at different moments. But over time, help that builds the other person's own power tends to honour their freedom more.

When Freedom Is Blocked

De Beauvoir was not naive about freedom. She knew that many people in the world live under conditions that severely limit their freedom: poverty, discrimination, violence, lack of education, unjust laws and social expectations that close off possibilities. She wrote about these conditions directly, and her later book The Second Sex, which we will explore in the next chapter, examined in great detail how women's freedom had been limited by society.

For de Beauvoir, it was not enough to say that everyone is free inside, whatever their situation. Freedom must be lived in the world, through real possibilities. A person who is denied education, work or a voice is genuinely less free, whatever their inner attitude. And because my freedom is bound up with others', their oppression is my concern.

This leads to a call for solidarity. If we truly value freedom, we cannot be indifferent to conditions that block it for others. This does not mean that every person must become a full-time activist or campaigner. But it does mean noticing where freedom is blocked around us, in our families, workplaces, communities and wider world, and doing what we reasonably can to open it.

This might be as simple as listening to a colleague who is being treated unfairly, supporting an organization that helps people learn to read, sharing opportunities with those who have fewer or changing a habit in our own household that limits someone else's possibilities. Each act of this kind is a small step toward a world in which more people can live as free beings.

The World of the Child

De Beauvoir included a striking reflection about childhood in The Ethics of Ambiguity. A young child, she observed, lives in a world that seems already made. Rules, values and meanings appear to be simply there, fixed and given by adults, like the sky or the trees. The child does not yet see that these values were chosen by people and could be different. In this sense, the child lives in a serious world, without responsibility for its values.

As children grow into adolescence, many begin to discover that the values of the adult world are not fixed facts but human choices. This discovery can be exciting and frightening. Suddenly, they realize that they, too, must choose. Many of the struggles of adolescence, de Beauvoir suggested, come from this awakening to freedom.

Her reflection helps explain why adults sometimes long to return to the child's world, where values seemed simply given and responsibility belonged to someone else. The serious person, in a way, is trying to stay in that world, by treating some outside value as fixed and unquestionable. But de Beauvoir believed that we cannot truly go back. Once we have discovered our freedom, we can only hide from it, not undo it.

This reflection also has a practical side for anyone who raises or teaches children. Children need structure and guidance. But they also need, as they grow, increasing opportunities to see that values are chosen, to question, to discuss and to make their own decisions. Helping a child move from the given world of childhood to the chosen world of adulthood, gently and at the right pace, is one of the most important ways of helping them become free.

This idea can also help adults understand their own moments of longing for certainty. When life becomes very hard, many of us wish someone would simply tell us what to do and what is right, as parents once did. That wish is understandable and human. De Beauvoir's point is not that we should be ashamed of it, but that we should recognize it, and then return, gently, to the adult task of choosing for ourselves.

Four Lives, Many Freedoms

Sunil is fifty-two and has always wanted his daughter to become a doctor, as he did not have the chance to. He has paid for extra lessons, chosen her subjects and told her repeatedly how important it is. At eighteen, she tells him that she wants to study music. Sunil is angry and hurt. He feels that his sacrifices have been rejected. After many difficult conversations, with the help of his wife and his own sister, he begins to see that he has been treating his daughter's future as his project rather than hers. It is hard for him. But he finally tells her that he will support her choice. He realizes that what he truly wants for her is not a particular career, but the freedom to make her own life, which he did not have.

Dorota is thirty-three. Her husband has a long-term illness that sometimes makes him tired and weak. Out of love and worry, she began doing more and more for him, making decisions about his food, his activities and even his friendships. One day, he tells her that he feels like a patient in his own home. Dorota is shocked. She realizes that, in trying to help, she had been taking away his freedom. They talk honestly, and she learns to ask him what he wants rather than deciding for him. He takes back responsibility for many things, even if they take him longer. Both of them feel more like partners again.

Kai is twenty and studies engineering at a university. Every Saturday, he volunteers at a community centre, helping teenagers from families with little money with their mathematics homework. He does not just give them answers. He shows them how to work through problems themselves, and he tells them about courses and opportunities they might not have heard of. For Kai, this is a small way of opening doors that were opened for him by a teacher years ago. He says it feels like passing on a gift.

Mirela, from the beginning of this chapter, agrees to change Tomi's hours. It takes some effort to reorganize the schedule, and she hires a student for the Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Tomi stays at the café on weekends and afternoons throughout his training. When he finally qualifies as a nurse, he brings her a cake and a card that says, "Thank you for letting me be free." Mirela keeps the card behind the counter. She realizes that her café has become something more than her own project. It is also a place that helped someone else build theirs.

Sunil, Dorota, Kai and Mirela each faced a question about other people's freedom: a daughter's career, a husband's independence, teenagers' opportunities, an employee's dream. In each case, the most meaningful response was not to control or to ignore, but to open possibilities and let the other person choose.

Practical Steps

First, notice your idols. Ask whether there is any value in your life, such as a career, a rule, a standard or a cause, that you treat as more important than the people it affects. Hold it as a choice, not an absolute.

Second, ask the freedom question. When you make choices that affect others, ask: does this open or close possibilities for them? Does it treat them as free beings?

Third, help without controlling. When you help someone, aim to strengthen their own ability to choose. Offer information, support and room, rather than decisions.

Fourth, look for blocked doors around you. Notice where people in your family, workplace or community are being denied possibilities. Ask what small step you could take to open a door.

Fifth, remember the doors opened for you. Think of the people who helped you become freer. Consider how you might pass that gift on.

Sixth, respect others' different choices. When people use their freedom to choose differently from what you would choose, remember that their freedom is as real as yours.

A Short Exercise: Whose Freedom Does My Life Touch?

This exercise takes about thirty minutes. It helps you see the ways your life affects the freedom of others.

Draw a small circle in the middle of a page and write your name in it. Around it, write the names of the people your daily life affects most: family members, friends, colleagues, employees, students, neighbours, people who serve you in shops or offices. Draw a line from your circle to each name.

Next to each name, write one way your actions open possibilities for that person, and one way your actions might close or limit possibilities for them. Be honest. Most of us do both.

Now choose one person from the page. Think about how you could increase their freedom a little, in a way that respects their own choices. It might be giving them more responsibility, listening to their wishes, sharing an opportunity, changing a habit that limits them or simply asking what they want.

Write down one specific action you will take this week. After the week, write a few sentences about what happened and how it felt, both for you and, as far as you can tell, for them.

You may also want to add, at the edge of the page, a few names of people you will never meet but whose freedom is affected by your choices, such as people who make the things you buy or people in your wider community. This is not meant to make you feel guilty, but to widen your sense of how connected human freedoms are.

Questions People Often Ask

"If I value others' freedom, must I let people do whatever they want?" No. De Beauvoir's ethics is not a rule that every choice must be accepted. Some choices harm or limit other people's freedom, and opposing them can be a way of defending freedom. A parent who stops a small child from running into traffic is protecting that child's future freedom. The question is always whether our action aims at the real freedom of the people involved.

"Is it wrong to be deeply committed to a cause?" Not at all. De Beauvoir herself was deeply committed to many causes. Her warning was against the serious attitude, which treats a cause as an absolute idol, beyond question, and is willing to sacrifice people to it. Deep commitment held as a free choice, open to questioning and always in the service of human beings, is very different.

"How can I respect someone's freedom when I think they are making a mistake?" This is one of the hardest parts of loving others. You can share your concerns honestly, offer information and support, and make clear that you care. But in the end, for adults making choices about their own lives, respecting their freedom means accepting that the choice is theirs. If someone is in danger of seriously harming themselves or others, though, it is right to seek help from appropriate services.

Chapter Summary

In The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), Simone de Beauvoir argued that the human condition is ambiguous: we are free and limited, individual and social, alive and mortal, all at once. Many errors come from trying to escape this ambiguity. She described the serious person, who treats an outside value as absolute and sacrifices freedom, their own and others', to it.

At the heart of her ethics is the idea that our freedoms are bound together, so that an honest wish for our own freedom must include the freedom of others. Helping others be free means opening possibilities, not controlling them, while also meeting the basic needs that freedom requires. Where freedom is blocked by unjust conditions, solidarity calls us to act. Childhood begins in a world of given values; growing up means discovering that values are chosen.

In the next chapter, we look at de Beauvoir's idea that we become who we are, and at how this idea applies to identity, labels and ageing.