In her book, Sonia Kruks seeks to enlarge and deepen her readers’ understanding of Simone de Beauvoir’s political thought, and offers a comprehensive analysis of the philosopher’s political commitments. This analysis is inflected for the theme of ambiguity and considers the troubling uncertainties and irresolutions of political action. Indeed, ambiguity plagues political life, Beauvoir maintains, and to the thoughtful activist this can only sully the singleness of purpose that so often drives political engagement. Despite this necessary disappointment, she insists that we countenance the ambiguity of political action and fully appreciate that there is no pristine, unequivocal truth in political life. To be unaware of the damage that accompanies our ambition, or of the harm that our good intentions cause, is to embrace a dangerous naïveté unaware of the social sphere’s complexity.

Kruks skillfully examines Beauvoir’s approach to the ambiguities of politics by first underscoring the humanist elements of her worldview. As is well known, Beauvoir was an existentialist philosopher who consistently emphasized the intentions of the individual in a world devoid of a priori meaning. If there are only our own principles and values to be upheld in an otherwise meaningless universe, then some modicum of human sovereignty exerts itself, even if it is a sovereignty profoundly mitigated by the fact that we are embodied, situated beings shaped by the surrounding culture. To insist that the world is of our making and reflects our choices denotes the trace of a humanist outlook, even when that humanism acknowledges that the individual’s sense of purpose is both constructed and thwarted by external factors. Beauvoir’s political thought thus occupies a space between the tenets of humanism and posthumanism, denying an absolute human sovereignty yet concurrently underscoring the centrality of human agency. This negotiated space creates parallels between her thought and that of more contemporary thinkers such as Edward Said and Judith Butler, whose attention to the impact of social discourse and political setting does not entirely eradicate human agency. By unpacking these ramifications of Beauvoir’s political thinking, Kruks offers fresh insights that make an important contribution to the scholarship on this influential thinker.

Beauvoir’s political writings center on the theme of oppression, and in her treatment of these writings, Kruks demonstrates her skill at revealing the thematics of ambiguity that run throughout Beauvoir’s treatment of the topic. For in her consideration of such things as political injustice, racism, sexism, sadism, class privilege, and the dynamics of revenge, Kruks unveils the complexities that surround efforts to combat these forms of oppression, complexities that ensure that there is never an unequivocal course of action, clear victory, or simple solution. Insisting on “the necessary failures of political action” (p. 39), Kruks points out that Beauvoir’s keen awareness of the interplay between the Hegelian categories of self and other, master and slave, encourages political activism even as it undercuts the satisfaction of the activist. For indeed, the very presence of political strife reveals that the dynamics of mutual recognition so integral to Hegelian philosophy are at play in ways that know no easy resolution. The sadistic policies of Nazism against the Jews serve as an example. Had Nazism succeeded in utterly exterminating European Jewry, the latter’s disappearance would have deprived the Nazis of the subjectivity necessary to affirm Aryan superiority. Hence, the death of so many Jews would not achieve the desired outcome precisely because of its success. Sadism, then, remains an ambiguous practice, for its manifestation of nefarious cruelty cannot by definition satisfy the deeper longing that drives such cruelty in the first place: the desire for recognition, inasmuch as the omnipotent sovereign, the unrivaled cultural point of reference, is never truly satisfied.

This same ambiguity plagues a host of other political commitments, many of which were near to Beauvoir’s heart. The war in Algeria, the pervasive sexism of the Western tradition, and the question concerning how the privileged should use their position to aid the oppressed: such topics touched her deeply and motivated the careful, thorough scholarly analysis that is Beauvoir’s signature. Skillfully blending biographical information about her activism with a sustained reading of Beauvoir’s political philosophy, Kruks pursues an angle of Beauvoir’s thought that to date has been little examined. The groundswell of feminist scholarship devoted to Beauvoir beginning in the 1980s, for instance, surely keynoted the thematics of female agency and subjectivity in ways that were, for the most part, less attuned to the topic of ambiguity. Indeed, one typically does not associate the author of a groundbreaking text like The Second Sex with ambiguity or failure, yet the latter is a crucial component of her thought.

It would be easy to overstate the case, and thereby to suggest that, for Beauvoir, the call to abandon a “dream of purity” might well lead to abandoning the choice to act. In a study devoted to this theme, it would be simple to lose sight of the delicate balance that demands honest scrutiny but does not jettison the exhortation to make a difference rather than remain passive. For the most part, Kruks commendably resists falling into this trap as she recounts the various political causes to which Beauvoir committed herself. Indeed, Beauvoir was engaged on behalf of the French–Algerian war, the women’s movement, and the struggle of the working class, to name but a few causes. Kruks’s writing on this involvement combines historical chronicling with a lucid, authoritative explanation of philosophical underpinnings. Yet when she discusses the politics of privilege, and the necessity of those in power to “deploy” their influence, a subtle, scarcely discernable overstatement perhaps infuses her writing. True, when the privileged use their position of power on behalf of the oppressed, they can be partly motivated by a need to “purify” themselves, to feel good about their activism and use politics for egotistical ends. It is all about them, the argument goes, not about the oppressed that they have inadvertently objectified and thus abused.

This is a familiar argument, and certainly true. I heard it many times during my involvement with the divestment movement while in graduate school. Our critics dismissed our chanting, protesting, and occupying of the administration building as acts of self-promotion that at bottom cared little for those inhabiting the abject shantytowns of South Africa. Yet if the outcome of our actions ultimately did cause the university to divest the offending investors from its financial portfolio, surely the good it did outweighs the ugliness of self-promotion. Surely the ego trip that, yes, is a part of privileged politics can be forgiven if the outcome helps countless people. After careful introspection and rigorous soul-searching, surely Beauvoir would have concluded “so what?” and endorsed the political activism; her own actions suggest as much. That politics is tainted by failure does not preclude its being a venue for success. Therefore, perhaps Kruks could have introduced a note of optimism in her reflections on the deployment of privilege.

Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity is an otherwise wholly successful project that makes a crucial contribution to the existing literature. Kruks is a graceful writer and careful analyst, and her book is a pleasure to read. The insights that it offers into Beauvoir’s political thought is a tribute to the profound influence that this thinker has had on the intellectual landscape of the contemporary world.