In Praise of Ambiguity

Christina Schües, in her chapter, “In Praise of Ambiguity,” goes into the concept of ambiguity in the work of Simone de Beauvoir especially, building on Vasterling’s work, which demonstrates that interrelating the work of Arendt, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty enriches phenomenological and hermeneutic research. Schües argues in line with Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty that human existence is inherently ambiguous. She understands ambiguity as a non-universal ontology between self and other, deception and freedom, immanence and transcendence, and non-knowledge and knowledge. Her aim in the essay is to show that this irreducible ambiguity is also found in cases of inhibited intentionality and transgressive intentionality. The former is related by Iris Marion Young to women who have internalized the rules of not taking their space, while the latter is ascribed, for instance, to persons with dementia whose so-called “challenging” behavior may transgress their own space, intruding upon someone else’s. An understanding of these different ways of embodiment and interactions with the person’s environment requires a phenomenological approach that recognizes and explores the fundamental ambiguity of the human condition.