Lucid recognition of the ambiguity of the human condition is the leading idea behind Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity. Beauvoir takes over Sartre’s characterization of the human condition and expands on ideas only hinted at in Sartre’s famous lecture, “The Humanism of Existentialism” (1946), in developing a conception of authenticity. According to Beauvoir, Sartre’s conception of the human being as “engaged freedom” implies not just that each individual finds his or her “reason for being” in concrete realizations of freedom, but that willing one’s own freedom necessarily involves willing the freedom of all humans. In achieving one’s own freedom, she writes, freedom must also will “an open future, by seeking to extend itself by means of the freedom of others” (1948: 60). The point here is that a dedication to freedom, when clearly grasped in its full implications, will be seen to call for a future in which an unrestricted range of possibilities is open to all.