The word “useful” is meaningless except in relation to some goal seen as valuable—nothing is good because it is “useful,” but only ever because the thing it is
useful for is good. The only true kind of usefulness, then, is that which is useful for the sake of freedom. While the tyrant can easily shift the terms of debate by insisting that his concept of “useful” should be the same for everyone else’s, de Beauvoir’s task is more difficult, because she must define what is useful for the sake of freedom without assuming that helping someone’s freedom means helping
everyone’s freedom (which comes from her distinction between freedom being
interdependent and
identical).