Simone de Beauvoir
Laura Maguire

29 February 2016

Simone de Beauvoir was probably best known as a novelist, and a feminist thinker and writer, but she was also an existentialist philosopher in her own right and, like her lover Sartre, thought a lot about the human struggle to be free. As a philosopher trained in the analytic tradition, I have to admit, I don’t know a whole lot about existentialism, so I’m curious to discover on this week’s show with guest Shannon Mussett how Beauvoir’s feminist thought relates to her existentialist philosophy.

Beauvoir’s most famous work wasThe Second Sexfrom 1949, a hugely influential book which laid the groundwork for second-wave feminism. Where first-wave feminism was concerned with women’s suffrage and property rights, the second wave broadened these concerns to include sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, and so on. All that started with Beauvoir’sThe Second Sex, where Beauvoir outlines the ways in which woman is perceived as “other” in a patriarchal society, second to man, which is considered—and treated as—the “first” or default sex.

One of the most famous lines from that work is: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” What I think Beauvoir means by this is that the roles we associate with women are not given to them in birth, by virtue of their biology, but rather are socially constructed. Women are taught what they’re supposed to be in life, what kind of roles they can or can’t perform in virtue of being of "the second sex." Today we might express this idea using the distinction between sex and gender, where one’s sex is just a biological fact, but one’s gender identity is socially constructed. In 1949, this was a truly radical idea.

So how does this idea relate to existentialist concerns about freedom? One of the main questions existentialists worry about is how to achieve “radical freedom,” or the kind of freedom that comes from making decisions in what Sartre called “good faith.” These are the decisions that come from and express an authentic self. If someone is living in “bad faith,” they allow themselves to be ruled by identities imposed on them from the outside. Their decisions do not reflect who they truly are.

It makes sense, then, that if someone is taught her entire life that to be a woman, she must look a certain way, act a certain way, play a subservient role within her family, and work only certain kinds of jobs, it is going to affect her sense of freedom and authenticity. Being seen—and seeing yourself—as “the second sex” certainly seems to complicate the question of how to achieve this radical freedom existentialists worried about. Indeed, it makes the struggle to achieve this kind of freedom sound like a white male problem, something you have to be in a privileged position to even think about at all.

Although third-wave feminism often critiques second-wave feminism for its focus on the struggles of white middle-class women, ignoring the plight of women of color, poor women, women in the developing world, disabled women, etc., Beauvoir’s insight about the experience of being a woman in a patriarchal world can naturally be extended to include the experience of being black in a white world, or being “other” in any world where you’re constantly taught that you’re second class. That’s going to shape what you think your life choices are—it’s going to change how you perceive your own freedom.

波伏娃本人明确地将女性的困境与黑人奴隶的困境联系起来，所以我想知道她会如何看待今天的女权主义思想及其对第二波女权主义的批评。I also wonder what she would think about the progress women have made in the 65 years since she wroteThe Second Sex.

I often think about the differences between my own life and that of my mother, who grew up in Ireland during the Second World War. She, like all her sisters before her, had to leave school in her early teens in order to get a fulltime job to help support the family; that is, until she was married and pregnant and was no longer permitted to work outside the home. Her brother, of course, was allowed to complete his secondary education, pursue a career, and have a family.

As I was growing up, I too was taught that a woman’s role in life was that of wife and mother. Almost all the adult women I knew did just that and most of the girls I grew up with repeated the pattern. Despite all this, things had changed sufficiently between my mother’s generation and mine that not only did I attend college in Ireland, which was certainly not expected, but I went on to get a PhD in Philosophy, a discipline that to this day is very male-dominated.

Was I expressing my “radical freedom” in making these life choices? Was my mother living in “bad faith”? What Beauvoir might say is that, because of the very real differences in our situations, I saw and therefore had different choices than my mother. The gender roles prescribed for women were, for my mother, so strongly enforced on a social level and so deeply entrenched on a psychological level, that none of what I did seemed even remotely possible for her. It simply wasn’t a choice that was available, given my mother’s lived experience.

If we’re going to talk about “radical freedom” at all, then it should be in the context of the real-life choices we are presented with in our lived experiences. It can’t be an abstract choice to be free. This was one of Beauvoir’s biggest insights.

Comments(12)

ryoudelman@gmail.com's picture

ryoudelman@gmail.com

Saturday, March 15, 2014 -- 5:00 PM

Thank you, Philosophy Talk,

Thank you, Philosophy Talk, for a fascinating podcast on Simone de Beauvoir with Shannon Musset and for the essay above by Laura Maguire.
关于第三波女权主义对第二波女权主义的批判，因为它被认为是对白人中产阶级女性的关注，可以认为任何为人类潜能的自由而进行的特定运动(如民权运动、同性恋权利运动等)都是排外的。
As Laura suggests, paraphrasing de Beauvoir, the larger human-potential movement really entails the life of anyone who is arbitrarily forced to be " 'other' in any world where you?re constantly taught that you?re second class" . . . for any given pretext.
So all of these constructs, "woman," "gay," "black," etc are in a sense ways of reinforcing the power & dominance of the white male.
To quote one of the women in the documentary film "Salt of the Earth," about a 1954 New Mexico miner's strike, whose struggle with her husband amidst the group's struggle against the mine management, "Do you still think you can have dignity only if I have none? ? Do you feel better having someone lower than you? Whose neck shall I stand on to make me feel superior? ? I want to rise and push everything up as I go."
我认为这句话完美地说明了内在的、内在的精神动力，它推动了各种压迫，它也印证了我在这个博客的其他地方说过的，男性情感是一种非常强大的力量，不合理地压制进步和他人的贡献，因为他们的性别、性取向或种族。
Thank you again for stimulating thinking!

MJA's picture

MJA

Saturday, March 15, 2014 -- 5:00 PM

Freedom and Truth

Freedom and Truth
If you are still searching for the truth or One's true self, study Nature and remove any thoughts of faith, uncertainty or doubt. Enlightenment is this Way. Underneath it All is just you.
As for freedom: if you think you have a grasp of it, let go! =

ryoudelman@gmail.com's picture

ryoudelman@gmail.com

Sunday, March 16, 2014 -- 5:00 PM

Correction: The 1954 film

Correction: The 1954 film "Salt of the Earth" is not a documentary; it's a dramatization. It anticipates both the feminist movement and the Chicano rights movement.
May be a diversion from the current topic, but here's a link to a recent story about the film:http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/03/03/3801434/atonement-meets-salt-of-the-...

Tim Smith's picture

Tim Smith

Monday, March 17, 2014 -- 5:00 PM

There is an elephant in the

There is an elephant in the blog/show/chat regarding Simone de Beauvoir. I lurked in the chat but couldn't type out my questions to my satisfaction. It takes a blind person to describe an elephant so let me give this a whack.
Philosophy has a problem with women. Thinkers need to right that ship - fix that problem - but Beauvoir is not the peg to hang that hat on.
西蒙娜·德·波伏娃是个有严重缺陷的人。至少可以说，她与萨特的关系很有趣，但如果非要说得更多的话，这很令人不安。这个节目采取了最少说的策略，这是我要谈到的大象的第一部分。
De Beauvoir was a sexual predator of a selective cadre of her students. She along with Sartre sexually entwined these young students using their role as philosopher and teacher in what I would consider bad faith but to them, in the time, was good fun. The sexual politic of these liasons is as troubling as is the use of sexual politic to begin with perhaps. I do agree that Simone should not simply be defined by her romantic liasons - but there is no attempt at complexity by skirting them as this show did. The benefit of this ignorance is a closer look at the philosophy of de Beauvoir which is another part of the elephant that I would touch upon.
肯和香农就萨特激进的自由和波伏娃更复杂的，我认为更现实的角色理解，现实生活的选择和她自己关于存在主义自由的概念之间的差异进行了很好的交流。波伏娃的哲学不同于萨特。我相信这个节目帮助我开始思考这一差异。这使得让·保罗和西蒙娜之间缺乏分歧的说法令人恼火。萨特和德·波弗尔的和谐相处有些令人不安。这两位哲学巨擘之间本应就激进的自由和环境展开的对话却没有进行。我倒想听听穆塞特医生怎么说。德·波伏娃在她与萨特的关系中站在“另一边”，我想知道，首先这是真的吗?其次，她在后来的生活中是否发生了很大的变化——我相信我可以读一些关于这一点的传记。
Finally one last piece of elephant not touched on too well in the chat or show is the preponderance of what I think to be good science in gender studies and sexuality since The Second Sex came out. It's interesting that it shared the bookstore shelf with the Kinsey Reports in its initial publication. Not that I take that to be sound science, but I do think these discussions started the path to liberation and equality that we are still walking. I take John's point that men are being feminized much more than women are taking on the roles of the "First" sex. At the heart of this role reversal is the fact that men and women are not from Mars and Venus. I would like to have heard the science to get a feel for the long lasting relevance of de Beauvoir's projects.
As it is I don't think I know how to take this show. I had and still have different views on Simone de Beauvoir as a philosopher and mind...and I might be worse off than before the show in grasping her legacy. That is probably a good thing.

Laura Maguire's picture

Laura Maguire

Thursday, April 10, 2014 -- 5:00 PM

Wow! Thanks for the great

Wow! Thanks for the great comments!

Tim, there's a lot to digest there, but very informative. It's a pity you didn't join in on the chat with Shannon.

Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Tuesday, March 1, 2016 -- 4:00 PM

Average people, with whom I

Average people, with whom I have daily contact and cordial conversation, are mostly ambivalent about philosophy and, usually, disinterested in any sort of philosophizing whatsoever. They simply do not see how any of it has a meaningful place in their lives, much less how even a few of their friends and acquaintances might be interested in something so, well, philosophical. Science? Now that is a different story altogether. Most everyone I know is terminally infatuated with information technology and its role in making their lives easier; responses to circumstances faster; and safety and security immeasurably improved. We have been socially engineered and culturally controlled for several centuries and more recent developments have only accelerated and streamlined this process. So, looking at the big picture, including the radicalization of change itself, it is not so surprising to see the questioning of traditional roles and rejection of antiquated customs which were always about maintaining status quo. DeBeauvoir's morality (or failings thereof) are peripheral to any objective discussion of her philosophy, as would be those of Sartre, seems to me. Their contributions to the world of philosophy are more significant than any of our possible objections to their personal behavior(s).
I came very late to an appreciation of and interest in philosophy-mostly for the reasons stated at the beginning of these comments. But, in the fullness of time, I acquired an intuition that was socially and culturally impossible for me as a much younger person. One achieves a different level of consciousness when one chooses to stray from the confines and comforts of the herd. Sooner or later, though, some sort of dissatisfaction with the status quo propels us to seek something more than grass and water. Kudos to you, Laura. Terrific job!
Harold G. Neuman

Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Saturday, March 5, 2016 -- 4:00 PM

For a review of

For a review of existentialist sexual morality, see the movie Amigo. Good for a laugh.
抱怨违反道德惯例似乎有点愚蠢，因为整个目的是拒绝它们。但即便如此，这样的抱怨也是不公平的。萨特的职业生涯证明，道德价值不再基于对某些预先确定的道德法则的服从。个人责任是最重要的。这样的道德观不太可能是无端的或肆意的。《寻回逝去的时光》的主人公(我不会说“英雄”)可能爱过，也离开过，但萨特和波伏娃将责任作为他们社会关系的中心主题。萨特确实和他的一个学生(有些事被认为是不体面的，但并不是不道德的)有过一段婚外情，然后又和她的妹妹有过一段婚外情，但他一直支持他们，直到他们得到其他方面的照顾(在那个时候，一个女人不可能合理地指望自己养活自己)。
Is it possible to have a morality founded on the principle of radical responsibility? It could be said that both Sartre and Beauvoir failed. But they, like all others before them, regarded freedom as a personal property, rather than a response enabled by the act of rigor of another. If the most rigorous term is the loss of its antecedent determinant or guide, the freedom that results is most articulate as responsibility, of the worth of that loss being recognized, enabled in those of us in place to respond. It is a subversive process that is covert to any a priori or pre-determining terms or authority. The gods cannot be privy to their own demise! Hence the difficulty in explaining it.

Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Sunday, March 6, 2016 -- 4:00 PM

I think that comes under the

我认为这属于“真实，但无趣”的范畴。
在一位不知名作家的未出版的小说中，有这样一个场景:在一个小型社区大学，一位哲学教授正在向有抱负的技术官僚教授逻辑。他把这节课讲到了整个逻辑系统的缺陷变得明显的地方，并试图向全班解释逻辑/技术大厦的这种缺陷实际上是如何为现实中更重要的人类存在开辟道路的，当然，接着引入了各种存在主义和道德问题。学生们愤怒地回应说，他们在无聊的主题上浪费时间，他们认为这些主题不能促进他们的职业目标。

Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Tuesday, March 8, 2016 -- 4:00 PM

我假设没有这样的事情。

我假设没有这样的事情。作为一个自学成才的思想家，我对你的抱怨表示同情。但学院所做的是确保对现有材料进行全面审查。曾几何时，大学学费还是可以负担得起的，现在也有可能再次如此。教授们不设定学费标准，而且他们大多数人的收入都比以往低得多。现在，高等教育中的大多数教学都是由“兼职教师”进行的，这些教师没有合同，也没有任何你和其他人极其讨厌的特权。但你和其他人忘记了，这些“奢侈品”在大学很容易负担得起的时候正处于鼎盛时期。
The suggestion of a Sanders/Trump or Trump/Sanders ticket makes me doubt you sanity, and hopelessly confuses your political message. But it gives me the opportunity to put in my two cents about the great mystery of Trump "success" (with less than a third of voting Republicans, or, less than seven percent of eligible Americans). The use of brazen racial innuendo convinces white males that their feudal overlords are really on their side. But the notion that T. Rump (THE Rump, more joker than wild-card) is going to DC to shout "You're Fired!" at everyone is just fatuous. He offers mania, but would, if he could be elected, provide only depression. As for Clinton, I am leery of a nominee that only wins in states that the Democrats will not win in November. But a Clinton/Warren ticket, with a placated Sanders, could be the answer here. But no president can substitute for a lack of public representation in Congress. Electoral reform is the real answer.
As for Beauvoir (the nominal subject of this thread) it is not unusual for the avant-garde to be seen as anachronism by the time it becomes a publicly familiar theme. That's not her fault. I have not focused a lot on her work because there is little in it of philosophical interest that Sartre did not originate and elaborate more fully. I think it a dereliction on the part of current philosophy to be so dismissive of existentialism, though I also think that the existentialists were bit derelict themselves in presuming much too much in their terms, which fall flat upon closer examination. Contingent can mean exigent (imminence), as well as immanence. And it is not at all clear which they intended or why they do not clarify this. The point is, existence is the proven term that the logical hermeticity of antecedence and conclusion simply does not explain the real. And it is the human, not the divine, nor bloodless number, which supplies the deficit.
魏地拉先生，我不知道您是站在封建领主一边，还是站在人民一边。

Gary M Washburn's picture

Gary M Washburn

Tuesday, March 8, 2016 -- 4:00 PM

Definition?

Definition?
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华大基因波尔多吉伦德投资(法国投资机构;Bordeaux, France)
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Philosophy Talk's picture

中国伊朗亚洲杯比赛直播

Tuesday, March 8, 2016 -- 4:00 PM

Gary, we have blocked the

Gary, we have blocked the user with whom you were dialoging, and we've deleted the content. (I don't know what BGI is either!) :-)