Simone de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher. She had a relationship with another famous existentialist, Jean Paul Sartre. De Beauvoir wrote novels, plays, and philosophical works. In 1949 she wrote The Second Sex which is generally acknowledged as a classic of feminism. She influenced Sartre and Sartre influenced her. It was a relationship of equality where they worked on philosophical problems together. Like many existentialists, De Beauvoir felt that personal freedom was suppressed in society and daily life, but she thought that for women this suppression was often more extreme.
Simone asks what we are as humans. What is the human condition? A consciousness, a body, free, conditioned, solitary? Your existence is ambiguous, she says. It is never clear exactly what you are. Therefore, we must face our problems through life itself, as we live. There is no divorce between philosophy and life for the existentialist (De Beauvoir is often considered an existentialist).
Three Responses to Ambiguity
Nihilism is one attempt to resolve the ambiguity of life—withdraw into yourself and observe the outside world, and all significance is gone. Nihilism is the belief that there is no meaning to life. That feeling that everything around you is pointless, that no matter what you do, say, or think, it does not matter. Nothing matters.
But De Beauvoir sees nihilism as a vain attempt to avoid the ambiguity of life. It is an escape, it is inauthentic (it chooses one option when there are really many). The world must be justified in itself. The world must be justified by you, using your freedom. The nihilist is like the cynic or the humorist, for De Beauvoir. These are methods of denying the absurdity of life.
Another response to an ambiguous life is something De Beauvoir calls seriousness. To understand this, we'll have to look at the way people, in general, are brought up, conditioned. Children begin life with a level of seriousness: a child is born into a world he cannot change. He cannot change the way things are, he can only submit. For instance, when his mother tells him that stealing is wrong, he accepts it as an absolute moral law. He does not question it and ask why it's wrong.
But cracks in this worldview develop during adolescence. As a teenager, the child notices the contradictions of adults, his parents, and the world as a whole. For example, he might notice that his father has lied to his mother, after being told by his father that lying is wrong. Or he might catch his mother sneaking a cigarette after being told by her that cigarettes can kill him. If he looks deep enough, the child sees that his own values and customs come from adults.
It is at this point that the child realizes his freedom. He realizes he, too, will have to become an adult and make choices. But this is a mixed blessing. For the world is no longer outside of the child’s control—he has to make it, he has to contribute.
In the image above, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre are talking to the Argentine political leader, Che Guevara. Sartre would later say that Guevara was a rare example of a person who truly lives his philosophy.
De Beauvoir influenced many people, including Judith Butler (above), an American philosopher who teaches at UC Berkeley.
De Beauvoir says that life is ambiguous, that we never really know what we are. A rock just is, but humans entail a process. She says that there are three ways people ordinarily respond to this ambiguity:
1st Response: Nihilism - a person withdraws into meaninglessness of life, like someone who laughs at everything, or a cynic.
2nd Response: Seriousness - a person joins a group or organization (usually a religion) in order to return to the simplicity of life as a child, where everything is clearcut..
3rd Response: Adventurer - a person loves the ambiguity of life and rejoices in it. Historical figures like Genghis Khan (represented below) and Alexander the Great fit this category.
He may reach the point where he is afraid of his freedom, afraid of the fact that he must interact with the world. And he will all his life be nostalgic for a time when he did not have to choose and everything was laid out before him: his childhood. Have you not at some point in your life longed for some moment or time in your childhood, where you felt completely free?
Instead, the man takes refuge in the serious world that he once knew as a child. But this time, the man pretends that the values are still objective (authorized by God, for example), real, independent of other men, when in fact they are created by other men, according to De Beauvoir. So, unlike the child, the man is choosing, even if he doesn’t think he is. De Beauvoir says it is like a woman who, while reading a love letter, pretends to forget that she sent it to herself. In other words, the serious person claims to take refuge in values that are of non-human origin, but there are no such values! He thinks his values are unconditioned, but he is lying to himself.
The serious man joins a group of people such as Christians or Communists (or whatever) —and these identifications supply him with rights. He believes in these rights as though they are objective, but really he has chosen them. Again, the love letter. This serious attitude can easily lead to fanaticism, where the freedom of others is ignored for some supposedly objective ideal. The serious man sacrifices himself to an ideal that he has chosen.
Now, there is still a third response to an ambiguous life, and it is the adventurer. Unlike the nihilist or the serious man, the adventurer rejoices in the ambiguity of existence. He likes that he does not have values, that life is uncertain. He does not take refuge in any system, and he does not care how his adventures effect others. He cares only about glory. These men are indifferent to everyone and everything. One example is Alexander the Great, the Greek king who dominated much of Europe and died very young.
Humans vs. Objects
Beyond the possible responses one can have to ambiguity, De Beauvoir goes on to say some interesting things about humans in general. What is the nature of an object like a rock? A rock, just is. It is nothing else but a rock. Whereas a human is a lack of something. A human is constantly growing, changing, incomplete, interacting with the world. But this interaction is not passive. Existence is dynamic, active, always engaged in projects. We are always doing things, constantly creating ourselves. We are constantly filling this lack that is in our nature (unlike a rock). Although we can never completely fill this lack, this is no cause for despair according to De Beauvoir. We can take delight in this effort toward impossible completion. Nothing we do is a diversion: hunting, fishing, writing books, playing GTA IV—all these are movements towards realizing ourselves, and they are valuable insofar as we give value to them. A project has value in itself.
The problem arises when we think that there will be some final end. In fact, everything we do can be surpassed. A scientist creates a theory, thinking it will be the last word on some subject. But, as history has taught, theories are created, refuted, modified. A new engine is invented, but newer engines will come after that. There is no reason to be pessimistic about these things. For this is what life is. We can never complete ourselves. Life is a process of creating goals and striving to achieve them. It is a process.
Once we accept this, we will be better off. It is easy to revert to humor, or nihilism, or pessimism, and deny our freedom. The adventurer knows this (although there are other things he doesn’t know).
On Women
De Beauvoir's most famous work is probably The Second Sex, mentioned above. This is where she discusses the role of women in history and society. It is also the source of this famous quote: “A Woman is not born, but rather becomes a woman." What she's pointing out here is that social conditions shape femininity more than anything else.
She also claims that a woman feels more alienated from her body than a man. Childbearing is a burden for a woman, and demands heavy sacrifices on her body. In other words, her sexual life is, in some sense, in opposition to her existence as a person. Whereas a man’s sexual life is not in opposition to his life as a person. This claim may be less credible now in contemporary America. What do you think?
De Beauvoir also notes that, physically, women are less robust, more delicate, and smaller than men. The world is bound to seem very different from either perspective, since the body is the instrument of our grasp upon the world.
But De Beauvoir denies that these biological facts give women a fixed destiny. In other words, they can be transcended. These are just facts about biological situation. What matters is not facts, but how we react as humans to these facts. (This attitude distinguishes De Beauvoir from some other feminists.)
Although women are more biologically constrained than men, she says, how much this matters depends on 1) how many children society demands 2) the quality of care given to pregnant women.
To understand this deeper, Simone turns to history. Women have always been understood as an other. In other words, men have always been understood as those capable of achieving excellence, while women have been understood only in relation to men (as the other). This is symbolized in Genesis from the bible, where Adam is created whole but Eve is made from Adam’s flesh. Man represents humanity, while woman is only valuable insofar as they she is related to man.
It's safe to say that, despite the other great ideas they introduced, most philosophers generally reflect this view. There have been some exceptions--for instance John Stuart Mill's work On the Subjection of Women.
While it is true that there can be conflict between two men, where each sees the other as inferior. But it is more extreme between a man and a woman since the two sexes have never shared the world equally.
Why have males dominated for so long?
But the question becomes, why is male dominance so widespread? De Beauvoir gives a few reasons:
- Women have lacked the economic and educational resources given to men
- They feel the species tie to men
- Biological difference are a factor
But the strongest reason, according to Simone, that women are the Second Sex (the Other) is that they are content to be. There are advantages to being the other. Let men fight other men in their honor, let men provide the material protection. Let men dictate and provide her freedom. All of this takes tremendous strain off of the woman. Is she right about this ladies? I'll let you be the judge.
From the man’s point of view, men find a “helper” or “assistant” in women, and a subservient sexual partner. Furthermore, even the lowliest man on the social ladder feels his power over women. He is a demigod compared to women, and he feels strength in this even if he finds it nowhere else (at work, for example).
De Beauvoir tells us that both men and women are guilty of living inauthentically in this situation. Women are living an inauthentic life when they conform to the will of men, when they fall back on the man to provide for them. Just as men are living inauthentically when they relish the dominant role they have over women. A woman must understand what history has done to her sex of the species and transcend it, says De Beauvoir. We are all born with certain facts, but we must get around these facts to exercise our freedom.
If a boy starts wearing necklaces and dresses, what will his parents think? And what if a girl starts playing with G.I. Joes and toy guns? De Beauvoir's point in saying that a woman becomes a woman is that, from a very young age, girls are given dolls and made to think about their appearance, whereas boys are made to appear and act strong and in control.
There do seem to be some fairly significant differences between men's and women's brains physiologically, as briefly discusssed in this Scientific American article. The question is, how many of the differences between men and women are a result of nurture (as De Beauvoir claims) and how many are a result of nature?
