The Blood of Others : A Novel Approach to The Ethics of Ambiguity

This article shows that the relationship between Simone de Beauvoir's novel, Le Sang des autres (The Blood of Others), first published in 1945, and her essay, Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté (The Ethics of Ambiguity), first published in 1947, illustrates her point in "Littérature et métaphysique" that an abstract phil-osophical theory is grounded in immediate metaphysical experience. An original eth-ical position emerges from Hélène Bertrand's lived experience in the novel, which anticipates feminist issues addressed in The Second Sex more directly than does Beauvoir's essay.