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Today's episode is part two on Simone de Beauvoir. I hope you love the show today.

So last episode we talked about Sarge's idea that at the foundation of who we are, there's a constant tug of

war that's going on between what he calls our facticity and our transcendence. Our facticity, being the facts that are

true about us at any given moment, and our transcendence, being the possibilities that we have at our disposal.

Last episode, what followed from this, if you're Sarge, is that people are made massively uncomfortable by this constant tug of

war that's going on and we all tend to gravitate towards removing one side of the people pulling on the rope.

We either want to ignore the facts that are true about us or the possibilities that we have so that one side will just

fall into the mud pit already and we can all stop pulling on this stupid rope.

But unfortunately, Sarge would say the game never actually ends.

Despite the fact you may view yourself as some sort of completed project, the reality is that through your actions,

you are constantly creating and recreating yourself in each passing moment. Every second that passes, you change in some small way.

The reality is, we all exist in this place of tension, this tug of war that's going on between two sides of a duality,

called our facticity and transcendence. But Simone did before I was going to take that one step further.

The implications of which is the basis of her book, The Ethics of Ambiguity.

Just listen for a second to the very first paragraph of the book and then we'll talk about what she's getting at.

The continuous work of our life says, is to build death. Man knows and thinks this tragic ambivalence, which the animal and plant merely undergo.

A new paradox is thereby introduced into his destiny, rational animal, thinking read.

He escapes from his natural condition without, however, freeing himself from it.

...