ABSTRACT
Simone de Beauvoir's first published philosophical treatise was her short book on absurdity and morality, Pyrrhus and Cineas. Beauvoir's view is that we simply cannot accept this. Pursuing projects with values at their core is not an optional feature of human life like keeping pets or reading newspapers. Beauvoir's strategy is to solve the existential aspect of the problem through its moral aspect. Beauvoir's choice of Pyrrhus as her defining example of the pursuit of projects stands in sharp contrast to The Myth of Sisyphus, even though she does not directly mention that book anywhere in her analysis of absurdity. Beauvoir argues that the continuing value of an end that has been achieved must therefore lie in its status as a potential means, rather than in its actual use as a means. Beauvoir's conclusion in Pyrrhus and Cineas is a categorical imperative that closely resembles Kant's formula of humanity.
