“In the original helplessness from which man surges up, nothing is useful, nothing is useless.”

—  Simone de Beauvoir , book The Ethics of Ambiguity

Part I : Ambiguity and Freedom
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Context: The failure described in Being and Nothingness is definitive, but it is also ambiguous. Man, Sartre tells us, is “a being who makes himself a lack of being in order that there might be being.” That means, first of all, that his passion is not inflicted upon him from without. He chooses it. It is his very being and, as such, does not imply the idea of unhappiness. If this choice is considered as useless, it is because there exists no absolute value before the passion of man, outside of it, in relation to which one might distinguish the useless from the useful. The word “useful” has not yet received a meaning on the level of description where Being and Nothingness is situated. It can be defined only in the human world established by man’s projects and the ends he sets up. In the original helplessness from which man surges up, nothing is useful, nothing is useless. It must therefore be understood that the passion to which man has acquiesced finds no external justification. No outside appeal, no objective necessity permits of its being called useful. It has no reason to will itself. But this does not mean that it can not justify itself, that it can not give itself reasons for being that it does not have. And indeed Sartre tells us that man makes himself this lack of being in order that there might be being. The term in order that clearly indicates an intentionality. It is not in vain that man nullifies being. Thanks to him, being is disclosed and he desires this disclosure. There is an original type of attachment to being which is not the relationship “wanting to be” but rather “wanting to disclose being.” Now, here there is not failure, but rather success.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In the original helplessness from which man surges up, nothing is useful, nothing is useless." by Simone de Beauvoir?
Simone de Beauvoir photo
Simone de Beauvoir 152
French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, po… 1908–1986

Related quotes

Jean De La Fontaine photo

“There's nothing useless to a man of sense.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

Il n'est rien d'inutile aux personnes de sens.
Book V (1668), fable 19.
Fables (1668–1679)

Samuel Butler photo

“Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Thought and Word, viii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

Tertullian photo

“We renounce all your spectacles, as strongly as we renounce the matters originating them, which we know were conceived of superstition, when we give up the very things which are the basis of their representations. Among us nothing is ever said, or seen, or heard, which has anything in common with the madness of the circus, the immodesty of the theatre, the atrocities of the arena, the useless exercises of the wrestling-ground.”

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

Source: Apologeticus pro Christianis, Chapter 38

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“We are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves; nothing original, pristine, clear.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1960s, Freedom From The Known (1969)
Context: For centuries we have been spoon-fed by our teachers, by our authorities, by our books, our saints. We say, "Tell me all about it — what lies beyond the hills and the mountains and the earth?" and we are satisfied with their descriptions, which means that we live on words and our life is shallow and empty. We are secondhand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves; nothing original, pristine, clear.

Francis Thompson photo

“The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
Moves all the labouring surges of the world.”

Francis Thompson (1859–1907) British poet

Sister Songs http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/ssngs10.txt, Pt. II (1908).

Paulo Coelho photo

“Nothing in this world is useless in the eyes of God. Not a leaf from a tree falls, not a hair from your head, not even an insect dies because it was of no use. Everything has a reason to exist.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Uselessness

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

On Machiavelli (1827)

Bernard Cornwell photo

“To say anything was useless, to say nothing was cowardly.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Captain Richard Sharpe, in response to the suggestion of whipping sixty men, p. 151
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Eagle (1981)
Context: To say anything was useless, to say nothing was cowardly. "I think it a bad idea, Sir."

Related topics