ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Sonia Kruks starts with an apparent shift between The Second Sex and Old Age: whereas the former values the authentic pursuit of freedom even in situations of alterity, the latter describes sympathetically many kinds of behavior that she would previously have condemned as bad faith. This switch raises the question of whether Beauvoir has abandoned her prior ethical framework entirely—a question that Kruks answers with a firm no. Rather, for those whose prior lives have been impoverished materially as well as culturally and existentially, the authentic pursuit of freedom is effectively blocked by the conditions of old age, and Beauvoir does not condemn their resignation as bad faith. For those, on the other hand, who have lived prior lives of creativity and material abundance, authentic freedom remains possible in old age—and yet, Beauvoir does not condemn them when they fall into resigned passivity due to failing health and other losses. Kruks concludes by arguing that free, authentic action might be exercised in apparently trivial acts that can nevertheless be very significant to the person performing them, such as crossing the street, walking up a staircase, or preparing one’s own food.
