Simone de Beauvoir: Existentialism and Feminism

Simone de Beauvoir

• Born in Paris in 1908
• In 1929, became the youngest person to obtain the agrégation in philosophy at the Sorbonne, placing second to Jean-Paul Sartre
• Taught in lycées in Marseille and Rouen from 1931 to 1937, and in Paris from 1938 to 1943
• Emerged as a leader of the existentialist movement after the war, working with Sartre on Les Temps Modernes
• Authored many books, including The Mandarins, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1957
• Considered one of the most influential thinkers of her generation, died in 1986

Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier

• Have lived in Paris for over forty years
• Both are graduates of Rutgers University, New Jersey
• Served as faculty members at the Institut d'Études Politiques
• Have translated books and articles on social science, art, and feminist literature for many years
• Jointly authored numerous books in English and French on subjects ranging from grammar to politics to American cooking

Introduction to "The Second Sex"

• Subject of women is irritating and not new, but volumes of idiocies have not clarified the problem
• Key question: Are there even women?
• Some believe woman is losing herself, while others adhere to the theory of the eternal feminine
• Raises the question: What is a woman?
• Challenges the notion that being female necessarily equates being a "woman."
• Conceptualism has lost ground, biological and social sciences no longer believe in immutably determined entities
• Femininity is a mysterious reality that is endangered and secreted by the ovaries
• Nominalism is a doctrine that falls a bit short and does not consider women as human beings
• Being a woman is not a liberation for those concerned but an inauthentic flight because humanity is split into two categories of individuals with different characteristics
• Humanity is male, and man defines woman, not in herself, but in relation to himself
• Woman is viewed as "the sex," meaning the male sees her essentially as a sexed being
• She is determined and differentiated in relation to man, while he is not in relation to her; she is the inessential in front of the essential
• The category of Other is as original as consciousness itself
• No group ever defines itself as One without immediately setting up the Other opposite itself
• There have always been women by their physiological structure; women have always been subordinate to men, and it did not happen because there is no moment in human history of this occurring
• No country has a legal status identical to man's, and often it puts her at a considerable disadvantage; women are heavily handicapped
• Refusing to be the Other, refusing complicity with man, would mean renouncing all the advantages an alliance with the superior caste confers on them
• Lord-man will materially protect liege-woman and will be in charge of justifying her existence
• Males have always paraded their satisfaction of feeling they are kings of creation
• Men profit in many subtle ways from woman's alterity
• Attacks against women and self-serving attitudes will not win women over
• Question the assumption of superiority, inferiority, and equality and discard these notions

Examining the Facts

• Focus on how the fact of being women has affected lives
• The UN has not ceased to imperiously demand equality of the sexes

The Perspective

• Perspective is from an existentialist morality
• Acknowledges that every subject posits itself as freedom, surpassing toward other freedoms
• Questions how women can accomplish themselves in the feminine condition, find independence within dependence, and overcome limitations to their freedom

Looking Forward

• Discusses woman from biological, psychoanalytical, and historical materialist points of view
• Attempts to demonstrate how "feminine reality" has been constituted and the consequences from men's point of view
• Describes the world from the woman's point of view and the difficulties women face in trying to escape the sphere they have been assigned