QuestionsWhat makes something right?To will one's own freedom is to will the freedom of others
What makes something right?Morality questioned

To will one's own freedom is to will the freedom of others

The ethics of ambiguity

Simone de Beauvoir 1908 · 1986One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
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What it claims

To will one's own freedom is also to will that of others: by turning towards freedom one discovers a principle of action of universal range.

Why

Freedom is the source of all values; since other humans are freedoms too, to will one's own is to will theirs.

In short

"To will one's own freedom is to will the freedom of others" is an argument by Simone de Beauvoir (The Ethics of Ambiguity, I "Ambiguity and Freedom" (1947)) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: morality questioned). Its claim: To will one's own freedom is also to will that of others: by turning towards freedom one discovers a principle of action of universal range. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P6). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

The Ethics of Ambiguity, I "Ambiguity and Freedom" (1947)
Valid with an implicit premise

Many say of existentialism: if God does not exist and everyone invents his values, everything is permitted. Beauvoir answers that the opposite is true. In chapter I of The Ethics of Ambiguity she starts from the idea that no external absolute guarantees values, and that it is freedom that brings them into being. But a freedom that wills itself, she says, wills itself universally. Note: in our corpus we only have this first chapter, in English. She announces and grounds the idea there; the full demonstration that to will one's freedom is to will that of others is developed later in the book, which we do not have. We have filed this argument under the "Morality questioned" camp (like Sartre's): no camp of the question is "freedom as the source of values".

P1No unconditioned value sets itself up against freedom from outside, "like a thing": it is human existence that makes values spring up in the world.
P2Freedom is therefore the source of all significations and all values, and the original condition of all justification of existence.
P3So the man who seeks to justify his life must want freedom itself, absolutely and above everything else.
P4The freedom thus willed requires concrete ends, but also requires itself universally.
P5The fact of being a subject is a universal fact: other human beings are also subjects, and therefore freedoms.
P6 · implicit premiseIf freedom wills itself universally, and if other human beings are freedoms too, then to will freedom is to will theirs also.
Therefore to will one's own freedom is also to will that of others: by turning towards freedom one discovers a principle of action of universal range.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P6, the computer finds a world where everything is true (freedom is the source of values, it wills itself universally, others are subjects) and yet someone wills his own freedom without caring about others': for instance a tyrant who says he wills "freedom" as a principle while silencing his neighbours.
Valid with P6, the bridge linking "freedom wills itself universally" to "I must will the freedom of others". Beauvoir states it later in the book (outside our corpus), not in chapter I. The argument is a construction in steps: values come from freedom (P1, P2), so freedom must be willed (P3), it cannot be willed for one person alone (P4), and others are freedoms (P5). To reject it, one must deny P4 (a freedom can be willed for oneself alone) or P6 (willing freedom "in general" binds one to nothing towards each person).
Analogy. A language exists only if several people speak it. Someone who wanted to speak freely alone, but destroyed every other speaker, would end up with no language to speak. Beauvoir says freedom is like that: it wills itself fully only if it wills itself in others.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals) 1785 · attacks premise 1

Morality has its source not in the projects of concrete persons but in reason, which gives a law valid for all: act only on a maxim you can will to become a universal law. Without that law, "willing freedom" does not say what is permitted and what is forbidden, and one risks being shut up in one's own subjectivity.

Beauvoir replies
Beauvoir
For existentialism, she says, it is not impersonal universal man who is the source of values, but the plurality of concrete, particular men projecting themselves towards their ends on the basis of situations whose particularity is as radical and irreducible as subjectivity itself.
The debate goes on (our summary) She does not answer Kant on the substance: she states the difference of starting point (concrete man rather than universal man) and moves straight on to the difficulty that follows ("how could men, originally separated, get together?"). In the same chapter, she in fact places herself in the tradition of Kant, Fichte and Hegel in saying that the source of values lies in the subject, and criticises Kant for seeing man as a positive will that cannot will evil. A Kantian remains free to ask what criterion decides between two opposing freedoms. She writes later that ethics offers no recipes, only methods (outside our corpus; quoted in Sartre's argument about the student).
Sartre (Existentialism Is a Humanism) 1945 · attacks premise 3

Man is "condemned to be free": he is free whatever he does, even when he flees his freedom. If freedom is given at the start, what can "willing to be free" mean? It is contradictory to set it up as something conquered if it is first given.

Beauvoir replies
Simone de Beauvoir 1947 · Beauvoir formulates the objection herself (§23) before answering it
The objection would mean something only if freedom were a thing, or a quality naturally attached to a thing: one would either have it or not. But it merges with the movement of existence, which is only by making itself be: it is precisely by having to be conquered that it gives itself. To will oneself free is to move from nature to morality by establishing a genuine freedom on the original upsurge of our existence.
The debate goes on (our summary) The objection targets a tension inside existentialism, which Beauvoir herself raises in §23 ("It is contradictory to set freedom up as something conquered if at first it is something given"). Her answer distinguishes a starting freedom, spontaneous, from a moral freedom, willed. Scholars debate what this passage owes to Sartre and what it corrects in him.
The problem of separate consciousnesses (which Beauvoir raises herself) 1947 · attacks premise 6

If each freedom arises from its own situation, singular and irreducible, how can separate freedoms come together? A freedom that wills itself may just as well come into conflict with that of others. Willing freedom "in general" binds one to nothing towards this particular person.

Beauvoir replies
Beauvoir
An ethics of ambiguity will refuse to deny a priori that separate existants can at the same time be bound to each other, and that their individual freedoms can forge laws valid for all.
The debate goes on (our summary) It is a promise of a solution rather than a solution: in this passage she only writes that stating the problem does not demonstrate that it cannot be solved. The detailed answer is in the rest of the book, which we do not have. For us the objection therefore remains open: chapter I establishes that freedom wills itself universally, and leaves intact the passage from this general idea to precise duties towards concrete persons.