PHIL304: Existentialism

8a. Identify Simone de Beauvoir's place in the history of existentialism

• What is de Beauvoir's place in the history of existentialism?
• What was de Beauvoir's relationship with Sartre?

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) said she was "the midwife of Sartre's existential ethics" and claimed she was an author, not a philosopher. However, the strength of her original ideas secures her place in the history of existentialism. While she and Sartre worked closely together and deeply influenced each other's thoughts, de Beauvoir's work stands on its own merits. Of particular note is her influential feminist work, The Second Sex (1949).
 
Scholars debate how Beauvoir and Sartre influenced one another and struggled to disentangle each philosopher's contributions, which followed 50 years of "discussions and critiques of each other's work". 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.
 
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 number of books she has written shows how deeply she cares about being in the world.
 
To review, see Simone de Beauvoir and Existentialism and The Meaning of Life.
 

8b. Summarize de Beauvoir's existentialist ethics

• What is the ethics of ambiguity?
• How did previous existentialists inform her philosophy?

Ambiguity includes the ideas of duality and uncertainty, and many people think that duality causes uncertainty. A human being's lived experience is one of ambiguity. For example, at the most basic level, we are aware of our own death as we live. When we think about life and death, we learn more about how the ambiguity of being human affects our moral choices. The ethics of ambiguity do not try to mask the problem or offer a false solution like an immortal soul. Instead, it looks at the problem head-on.
 
Because people make mistakes, ethics is possible because it gives us something to strive for. 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.
 
To review, see From Absurdity to Authenticity.
 

8c. Define de Beauvoir's notions of woman and the feminine

• What is one of the fundamental critiques of patriarchal societies in The Second Sex?
• How does gender essentialism relate to the racial essentialism that Du Bois discusses?

De Beauvoir says that patriarchal societies have made it so that women have to meet impossible standards that often clash. These measures permeate all aspects of European literary, social, political, economic, and religious traditions. Understanding ourselves as embodied beings, "woman" becomes the other in this context. Woman is not man's equal, but his inferior. According to de Beauvoir, difference does not entail inequality.
 
To review, see The Second Sex.
 

8d. Analyze de Beauvoir's applied existentialism

• What is one relation between de Beauvoir's existential concerns and her feminism?
• How does de Beauvoir generate urgency related to phenomenology?

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. Still, she incorporates 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.
 
To review, see Simone de Beauvoir and Franz Fanon.
 

Unit 8 Vocabulary

Be sure you understand these terms as you study for the final exam. Try to think of the reason why each term is included.

• Ambiguity
• applied existentialism
• fallibility
• feminism
• mask
• patriarchy
• Simone de Beauvoir
• the other
• The Second Sex