Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–86)

3. The Second Sex

If a prominent feature of Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophy is its ethical orientation, another is the analysis of oppression. In The Second Sex, the existential anthropology and ethics is transformed under the influence of Hegel and Marx, to be combined with a philosophy of history. Consequently, consciousness is conceptualized as historically mediated and human beings as socially situated. Beauvoir declares, with Merleau-Ponty, that ‘man… is a historical idea’. Following Hegel and Kojève, she understands the origins of humanity as characterized by a struggle for recognition between men, which led to the genesis of inequalities and oppression. This Hegelian master–slave dialectic is combined with a Marxist insistence on the importance of productive activity, or work, as key to the development of both the human being and society. Since women, owing to their reproductive function and their lesser physical strength, stood outside both the struggle for recognition and productive activity, and therefore outside the basic dialectic, they were defined by the males as the absolute Other (l’Autre). They were cast in the role of the object that never became the subject in relation to men, a situation that with the advent of private property and the state became institutionalized into patriarchal society.

The concept of woman as the Other is probably Beauvoir’s most important contribution to philosophy and feminist theory. Accepting the existentialist credo ‘essence does not precede existence’, Beauvoir rejects any idea of an inherent femininity and asserts ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ ([1949] 1953: 273). Gender is therefore conceptualized as simultaneously socially produced and self-created within the confines of the socio-historical situation. Beauvoir emphasizes that because women have historically been the subordinate sex, the Other from the dominant male point of view, they have also been defined as having a determinate nature, be it evil or good. Women have thus not been seen as subjects in their own right, something which Beauvoir criticizes as inauthentic.

The subordination of women is explained in The Second Sex not only as a social and historical phenomenon, but also from an existentialist perspective. If the ‘desire of being’, in Sartrean terms, is equated with an inauthentic flight from freedom and responsibility, it is equally for Beauvoir an explanation of oppression and submission. Man has sought to fulfil his desire by taking possession of a woman; yet the attempt is as ever vain, and ends only in the man’s alienation of himself in the woman. Similarly, woman has tried to fulfil her desire by alienating herself in man as if he were an absolute subject and could take responsibility for her life. The existentialist ‘desire of being’ is combined in The Second Sex with a concept of alienation, influenced by that of the young Marx. This implies a distinction between alienation, which is synonymous with a search for being through the other, or through what one has, and authentic self-fulfilment through objectifying oneself in what one does, through conscious, freely chosen, object-creating activity. This authentic self-fulfilment is also related in The Second Sex to a ‘conversion’, which implies a renunciation of the oppressive ‘possession’ of others and a recognition of the other as a subject.

In The Second Sex, Beauvoir sought to combine an ethics with a theory of oppression and an existentialist phenomenology with a philosophy of history, the latter a combination not unusual in Paris in the 1940s, but none the less fraught with problems. The theory of authenticity, which is developed from Sartre’s ahistorical, dualistic ontology, tends to collide with the dialectical and historical ontology inspired by Hegel and Marx. Even though Beauvoir is a forerunner for modern feminist theory, her philosophy has been criticized by feminists. The central concept of transcendence, which implies being a free, self-determining subject that can realize itself in self-chosen activities, is problematic since it tends not only to be conflated with authenticity, but also to be equated with men’s traditional way of life and activities. For women to leave immanence, the confined animal-like existence that they have been assigned, they have to transcend the traditional female life-world, which is accordingly denigrated in Beauvoir’s philosophy. Bearing and rearing children is not defined as transcendence. Simone de Beauvoir does not question the apparent androcentricity in this, but uses the concept to criticize the exclusion of women from the public sphere and from the arts (see Feminism; Feminist ethics; Feminist political philosophy).