On History 133 !

“History burst over me and I dissolved into fragments.” 521

- Beauvoir In many ways Hélène’s story in The Blood of Others mirrors Beauvoir’s own wartime experiences. In her journals and autobiography, Beauvoir notes that reading Hegel lead her to the recognition of the

519 _{BO 240, SDA 226.} 520 _{PL 542, FA 550.} 521 _{PL 369, FA 381.}

importance of History. As noted earlier, she describes how “history burst over me.”522 _{In the novel} history takes hold of Hélène in a similar manner. Beauvoir recognizes that she could no longer adhere to the radical form of individualism or solipsism that had characterized her pre-war work. Nor could she hold onto the kind of ahistoricism on which it was premised. Reading Hegel had led her to conclude that, “To suppress one’s awareness of the Other’s existence is mere childishness.”523 _She had lived through History and had come to understand that its legacy of meanings could not be overlooked nor could the call to re-create it be left unheeded. To study the problem of the other’s consciousness, was to study history for all present relations between self and other were framed by past situations, by situations which continued to exert their influence on attempts to transcend the present and move toward the future.

Mahon argues that The Blood of Others “is perhaps best seen as a statement of an

existentialist theory of human history.”524 But what does this theory entail? To begin this analysis it is perhaps best to look at the theories of history explicitly rejected by Beauvoir in this text. Blomart rejects the account of history offered by both Paul, his communist friend, and by his father.

Communism, with its adherence to historical materialism, is a form of historical determinism guided by belief in revolution. The outcome of history was rule by the proletariat. Blomart rejects the belief that there is any kind of necessary outcome of history. He notes how in adhering to this idea the “Communists treat human beings like pawns on a chessboard, the game must be won at all costs; the pawns themselves are unimportant.”525 _{For Blomart the outcome of history cannot be anticipated.} There are no guarantees that the proletariat will win the game, for the “pawns” are free and their actions have affects that cannot be predicted. Neither revolution nor salvation is assured. His criticism is not limited to communism: Blomart rejects all accounts of History that are grounded in a belief in

522 _Ibid.

523 _{PL 546, FA 560.} 524 _{Mahon, 1997, 34.} 525 _{BO 59, SDA 57.}

progress, regardless if that progress is the communist dream of a classless society or his father’s vision of a capitalist future. His father “did not think of stopping the blind progress of the world.”526 But Blomart sees no progress. He sees atrocities that have no cause, no reason. And he must intervene or become implicated in those actions.

In this regard, Beauvoir uses her character of Blomart to offer up her critique of Hegel’s notion of history. History is, for Beauvoir, the unfolding of human freedom. It is not determined as agents are, by definition, free. Individuals are free not limited by either their biology or the historical settings in which they were born and raised. Beauvoir, from her standpoint, did not see history as necessarily moving forward towards some better future. History was motion but there was no

assurance that such movement would result in progress. As individuals are free, they do not know that they will choose what is better over what is worse. They do not know that they will choose what they wish they would. The future is open. To believe otherwise was to fall prey to what Beauvoir describes as the “tranquilizing effect” of Hegel’s philosophy, described earlier. That is, it is to develop a faith in future progress that gives way to withdrawal from recognition of present atrocities and from the acknowledgement of personal responsibilities. She recognizes that

Reading the Hegelian system is so comforting. I remember having experienced a great feeling of calm on reading Hegel in the impersonal framework of the Bibliothèque Nationale in August 1940. But once I got into the street again, into my life, out of the system, beneath a real sky, the system was no longer of any use to me: what it had offered me, under a show of the infinite, was the consolations of death; and again, I wanted to live in the midst of living men.527

Aware of its pull, acknowledging the solace to be offered by losing oneself in the pull of something bigger and something grander than her self and in so doing, to absolve her self of accountability, she rejects his view of history. But what theory of history does this leave open for her?

526 _{BO 14, SDA 15.}

For Beauvoir, history is neither the unfolding of universal principles nor is it a series of random events. History entails meaning, meaning that it acquires from those who enact it and those who tell of it. It is not a meaning ascribed to it by outward and predetermined forces. It is a human construct, and, hence, a sign of freedom. But it is not an easy freedom. As Mahon notes, in The Blood

of Others Beauvoir makes clear that “humans make history that we humans are free, but this freedom

is constantly imposed upon and often overwhelmed by such apocalyptic forces as war, fanaticism, and class struggle.”528 _{There is no easy meaning to be ascribed to history. It is not a series of events.} But it also is not a litany of words. Rather, it is a series of meanings ascribed to events via action and word.

More specifically, history is the account of the relationships between self and other placed into context. Each individual is born into a time and a place, into a situation that was already inhabited by meanings borne out by others. As such, history reveals that subjects are always already caught up in relations with others regardless of their intentions and despite their actions. It is never personal but always necessarily entails the meanings ascribed to it by others. It entails many

meanings and, further, is ever open to re-writing. Beauvoir would further reflect on the meaning and influence of history in All Men are Mortal and in the essays she writes during this period, although it would not be until she re-reads Hegel’s Phenomenology in 1947 and begins writing The Second Sex that she begins to develop a more complete theory. For therein, taking up in yet an even more direct manner Hegel’s philosophy, she will have to consider if the self and the other can be reconciled.

As Tidd notes, Beauvoir’s discovery of history and her turn away from solipsism necessitates a more complex understanding of self and other.529 _{In The Blood of Others, the problem of the other’s} consciousness is complicated by the influence of history, the recognition of the interdependence of

528 _{Mahon, 1997, 34.} 529 _{Tidd, 2006, 203.}

freedoms, and the acknowledgement of the ambiguities that define human existence. Recognizing that the self is always already in a world where others exist, gives rise to her discussion of guilt and responsibility. Blomart can no more escape his sense that he has done wrong by his friends than he can change the events that lead to their death. Thus it is that history gives rise to ethics in Beauvoir’s writings.

To consider the history of a relation between self and other is to simultaneously engage in ethical reflections, for while history tells of what has been, ethics reflects on what might have been. This focus leads Beauvoir to dramatically reconceive of this kind of reasoning. Ethics, for Beauvoir, is not a collection of rules: it is not, as she states in The Ethics of Ambiguity, “a collection of

recipes,”530 a list of “do’s” and “don’ts.” Rejecting both deontological and teleological models of ethical reasoning, Beauvoir attempts to redefine the field grounding her ethics in the recognition of the ambiguity of human existence and in human freedom. None live in such a manner that they can know all the effects of their actions. How they act influences people in far off places and in distant times in ways that they cannot begin to imagine. Yet this should not, it cannot lead to paralysis. It cannot lead to inaction. For as seen in The Blood of Others, even inaction is action. Regardless of the limitations of their knowledge, regardless of their inability to control and anticipate consequences, individuals must nonetheless act. And, because they act, they are responsible for those actions. Framed by these conditions, there can be no “recipes” for living. Ethics, rather, becomes a method. Or, perhaps more specifically, it becomes what Vintges has described as “the art of living.”531 _It entails reflections on the way the world could be grounded on an understanding of the way the world has been.

530 _{EA 134, PMA 194.} 531 _{Vintges, 1996, 9.}

The final paragraph of The Blood of Others sets forth the philosophical agenda that Beauvoir takes up until 1947. In the conclusion of the novel, Hélène dies and Blomart considers his next action. He claims that,

For you, only an innocent stone – you had chosen. Those who will be shot tomorrow have not chosen; I am the rock that crushes them; I shall not escape the curse; forever I shall be to them another being, forever separated from them. But if only I dedicate myself to defend that supreme good, which makes innocent and vain all the stones and the rocks, that good saves each man from all the others, and from myself. Freedom – then my passion will not have been in vain. You have not given me peace, but why should I desire peace? You have given me the courage to accept forever the risk and the anguish, to bear my crimes, and my guilt, which will rend me eternally. There is no way.532

This quotation pulls together the themes explored in the novel – the need to choose, the paradox of freedom, the intertwining of actions, the risks entailed in acting, the responsibility for others and the guilt that is inevitably shared, and the need for History to go forward. In the novels and essays that would follow the publication of The Blood of Others, Beauvoir would provide further reflections on these subjects and offer up a theoretical defense of the philosophy it entails, a philosophy that would take up many of the assumptions grounding Hegel’s Phenomenology.