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Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics, the Master/Slave Dialectic, and Eichmann as a Sub-Man

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Anne Morgan
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Abstract

Simone de Beauvoir incorporates a significantly altered form of the Hegelian master/slave dialectic into The Ethics of Ambiguity. Her ethical theory explains and denounces extreme wrongdoing, such as the mass murder of millions of Jews at the hands of the Nazis. This essay demonstrates that, in the Beauvoirean dialectic, the Nazi value system (and Hitler) was the master, Adolf Eichmann was a slave, and Jews were denied human status. The analysis counters Robin May Schott's claims that “Beauvoir portrays the attitudes of the oppressor as defined fundamentally in relation to the oppressed” and that her use of the dialectic is “inadequate to account for how human beings create extreme situations of evil, such as that of genocide.”

Type
Original Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , Spring 2009 , pp. 39 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by Anne Morgan

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References

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