PHIL304: Existentialism

7a. Identify Simone de Beauvoir's place in the history of existentialism

• What is de Beauvoir's place in the history of existentialism?

While Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) claimed she was "the midwife of Sartre's existential ethics" (Befgoffen) and described herself an author rather than a philosopher, her place in the history of existentialism is secure based on the strength of her original ideas. While she and Sartre worked closely together and deeply influenced each other's thought, de Beauvoir's work stands on its own merits. Of particular note is her influential feminist work, The Second Sex (1949).

De Beauvoir was active in France's mid-century intellectual circles. She was not only a philosopher, but also a memoirist, novelist, playwright, travel writer, and reporter. The breadth of her authorship is evidence of her existential commitment to being in the world.

Review Reading Beauvoir in the 21st Century by Linda Zerilli and Simone de Beauvoir (pay special attention to "Situating Beauvoir").

7b. Describe de Beauvoir's philosophical interaction with Sartre

• What was de Beauvoir's relationship to Sartre?
• What was de Beauvoir's philosophical interaction with Sartre?

Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre were partners, personal companions, and professional collaborators. Although de Beauvoir claimed "her philosophical voice was merely an elaboration of Sartre's" (Bergoffen), she was trained in philosophy and wrote her graduate thesis on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), the German logician and philosopher before she met Sartre.

Scholars debate how Beauvoir and Sartre influenced one another and struggle to disentangle each philosopher's contributions, which followed 50 years of "discussions and critiques of each other's work." Did de Beauvoir merely elaborate on Sartre's thinking, as she maintained? Did Sartre "steal" the core concepts in Being and Nothingness from de Beauvoir's novel She Came to Stay (also published in 1943)? Their letters and de Beauvoir's diaries do not settle the matter. However, readers study de Beauvoir's literary and philosophical output to decide which philosophical ideas are her own.

Review Simone de Beauvoir. Pay special attention to "Situating Beauvoir."

7c. Summarize de Beauvoir's existentialist ethics

• What is an ethics of ambiguity?

Ambiguity includes the concepts of doubleness and uncertainty, and to many, the former causes the latter.

De Beauvoir writes, "From the very beginning, existentialism defined itself as a philosophy of ambiguity. It was by affirming the irreducible character of ambiguity that Kierkegaard opposed himself to Hegel, and it is by ambiguity that, in our own generation, Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, fundamentally defined man, that being whose being is not to be, that subjectivity which realizes itself only as a presence in the world, that engaged freedom, that surging of the for-oneself which is immediately given for others. But it is also claimed that existentialism is a philosophy of the absurd and of despair. It encloses man in a sterile anguish, in an empty subjectivity. It is incapable of furnishing him with any principle for making choices. Let him do as he pleases. In any case, the game is lost" (Ethics of Ambiguity, Ch. 1, p. 2).

Within this context de Beauvoir develops her ethical theory. First, a human being's lived experience is one of ambiguity. For example, at the most basic level, we are aware of our death as we live. Our awareness of life and death leads us to further realizations about the ethical implications of the ambiguity of human existence. Rather than try to "mask" or propose an illusory solution, such as an immortal soul, the ethics of ambiguity contemplates the difficulty head-on.

The fallibility of human beings makes ethics possible by giving us an ideal to pursue. In other words, our fallibility should not prompt us to give up on improvement. Rather, our fallibility gives us reason to think about what improvement should look like.

Review Chapter 1: Ambiguity and Freedom from The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir, the section "The Ethics of Ambiguity: Bad Faith, the Appeal, and the Artist" in Simone de Beauvoir, and Living with Others' Pain: The Problem of Empathy in Simone de Beauvoir's Le Sang des Autres by Linda Zerilli.

7d. Define de Beauvoir's notions of woman and the feminine

• What is one of the fundamental critiques of patriarchal societies in The Second Sex?

De Beauvoir argues that patriarchal societies have generated impossible standards of femininity that frequently conflict. These measures permeate all aspects of European literary, social, political, economic, and religious traditions. In this context, understanding ourselves as embodied beings, woman becomes the other. Woman is not man's equal, but his inferior. According to de Beauvoir, difference does not entail inequality.

Review What is Woman? The Second Sex and the Republic by Linda Zerilli, "Sex" and "Gender": Philosophical Untranslatables by Emily Apter, and the section "The Second Sex: Woman as Other" from Simone de Beauvoir.

7e. Analyze de Beauvoir's applied existentialism

• What is one relation between de Beauvoir's existential concerns and her feminism?

The phrase "applied existentialism" is redundant. Broadly construed as a philosophy of existence, existentialism is always concerned with being in the world, or being human. We can think about the phrase in terms of de Beauvoir's existentialism, as honing in on the ways that our being (not ontologically distinct substances, such as a Cartesian mind and body) runs up against the restrictions of our situation. This is not to say de Beauvoir rejects the radical freedom Sartre presents in his work, but she incorporates the phenomenology, or the lived experience of being in the world as a person who cannot ignore their situation.

The concept of applied existentialism is particularly evident in de Beauvoir's argument against an abstract concept of "woman" in her book The Second Sex. There is no "woman," only individuals living under the yoke of oppression. Another way to explain this is to think of de Beauvoir's monumental contribution to feminism, and applying existentialism to the problem of patriarchy.

Reivew Silencing Simone: Between Frantz Fanon and The Second Sex by Amy Atkins.

Unit 7 Vocabulary

• Ambiguity
• Femininity
• Feminism
• Freedom
• Patriarchy
• The Second Sex
• Simone de Beauvoir