Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy, and Feminism

Bauer, Nancy

doi:10.7312/baue11664

Cited by 133 publications

(41 citation statements)

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“…Second, woman is not positioned in the dialectic: woman does not enter into a struggle to the death with man because she is absolutely othered (Hutchings, 2003;. 21 Third, Hegel's master-slave dialectic facilitates the goal of reciprocal recognition between the sexes (Bauer, 2001). Fourth, within Hegel's master-slave dialectic there is the potential feminist reading of emphasizing the failure of the master-subject in attaining the recognition he needs from the slave; thus, such failure renders possible a moment of self-reflexivity and re-engagement with the other on more ethical terms (Changfoot, 2004a).…”

Section: An Unacknowledged Reversalmentioning

confidence: 98%

Transcendence in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex

Changfoot

2009

Philosophy & Social Criticism

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A large number of feminist philosophers and social critics accept that Simone de Beauvoir's conception of transcendence in The Second Sex relies on masculinist ontology. In contrast with feminist interpretations that see Beauvoir claiming the success of masculinist ontology, this article argues that transcendence as masculinist ontology does not succeed in The Second Sex because it requires a relation of domination, something contrary to its own definition of freedom-producing relations. The Second Sex obliquely reveals this failure, but Beauvoir does not ruminate upon it. Instead, Beauvoir turns to imagine freedom-producing gender relations in the future where the body and consciousness are already emancipated from constitutive domination. This is a future that resonates with G. W. F. Hegel's 'Stoic Consciousness'. The significance of this finding is that the location of freedom neither resides in the intertwinement of the male body and consciousness previously argued to be the case, for Beauvoir, nor does it reside in the intertwinement of the female body and consciousness. Rather, freedom resides in the intertwinement of male and female bodies and consciousness where domination is already absent, that is, a place outside of history. Thus, the conclusion of The Second Sex can be read as a consolation and an escape from the inescapable limits of the present.

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Section: An Unacknowledged Reversalmentioning

confidence: 98%

Transcendence in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex

Changfoot

2009

Philosophy & Social Criticism

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“…42 I owe a special debt to Hollywood for her reading of the body of the female mystic in each of Beauvoir and Irigaray, and strongly recommend Hollywood (2002). For other philosophical readings of Beauvoir's feminism, see Bauer (2001) and Doeuff (2004, especially pp. 22-36).…”

Section: A Woman In Solitude and In Companymentioning

confidence: 98%

“…My own debt in this essay is largely to Beauvoir's reading of Hegel and its influence upon French feminisms; cf. Bauer (2001). 8 I owe this conception of equalitarian reciprocity to Le Doeuff (1991, pp.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Life, death and (inter)subjectivity: realism and recognition in continental feminism

Anderson

2006

Int J Philos Relig

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I begin with the assumption that a philosophically significant tension exists today in feminist philosophy of religion between those subjects who seek to become divine and those who seek their identity in mutual recognition. My critical engagement with the ambiguous assertions of Luce Irigaray seeks to demonstrate, on the one hand, that a woman needs to recognize her own identity but, on the other hand, that each subject whether male or female must struggle in relation to the other in order to maintain realism about life and death. No one can avoid the recognition that we are each given life but each of us also dies. In addition, I raise a more general, philosophical problem for analytic philosophers who attempt to read Continental philosophy of religion: how should philosophers interpret deliberately ambiguous assertions? For example, what does Irigaray mean in asserting, 'Divinity is what we need to become free, autonomous, sovereign'? To find an answer, I turn to the distinctively French readings of the Hegelian struggle for recognition which have preoccupied Continental philosophers especially since the first half of the last century. I explore the struggle for mutual recognition between women and men who must face the reality of life and death in order to avoid the projection of their fear of mortality onto the other sex. This includes a critical look at Irigaray's account of subjectivity and divinity. I turn to the French philosopher Michèle Le Doeuff in order to shift the focus from divinity to intersubjectivity. I conclude that taking seriously the struggle for mutual recognition between subjects forces contemporary philosophers of religion to be realist in their living and dying. With this in mind, the lesson from the Continent for philosophy of religion is that we must not stop yearning for recognition. Indeed, we must even risk our autonomy/divinity in seeking to recognize intersubjectivity.

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“… This is similar to the way in which Bauer understands Beauvoir as actively engaging with the ideas of canonical figures, in particular Sartre and Hegel. See Bauer , 182. …”

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confidence: 99%

Beauvoir on Women's Complicity in Their Own Unfreedom

Knowles¹

2019

Hypatia

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In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir argues that women are often complicit in reinforcing their own unfreedom. But why women become complicit remains an open question. The aim of this article is to offer a systematic analysis of complicity by focusing on the Heideggerian strands of Beauvoir's account. I begin by evaluating Susan James's interpretation of complicity qua republican freedom, which emphasizes the dependent situation of women as the primary cause of their complicity. I argue that James's analysis is compelling as far as it goes, but that it implies complicity is the inevitable outcome of women's current existence and fails to adequately account for Beauvoir's claim that women actively embrace their own unfreedom. I then draw out the Heideggerian strands of Beauvoir's analysis, demonstrating how this enables us to systematize Beauvoir's account of women's oppressive situation with her claims regarding the active role women can play in reinforcing their own unfreedom. I argue that this approach preserves the strengths of the republican interpretation, but provides a better account of cases where complicity may not be inevitable and yet some women still act to reinforce rather than resist their own unfreedom.

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Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy, and Feminism

Cited by 133 publications

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Transcendence in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex

Transcendence in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex

Life, death and (inter)subjectivity: realism and recognition in continental feminism

Beauvoir on Women's Complicity in Their Own Unfreedom

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