beauvoir on woman as other
TRANSCRIPT
BEAUVOIR ON WOMAN AS OTHERPrepared by Noelle Leslie dela Cruz, Ph.D.
Philosophy Department, De La Salle University
Double Secret by Rene Magritte (1927)
Key points
Beauvoir’s framework: Existentialism Woman as Other
Remarks by male philosophers about women
Gendered dualisms/dichotomies (Illustrative case: Ethic of justice vs. ethic of care)
Four main points of the feminist critique of discourses
Beauvoir’s framework: Existentialism
Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir, c. 1946
Beauvoir was an existentialist thinker and writer. Existentialism, a term coined by Sartre, refers to a 20th-century philosophical movement which emphasized individual freedom and responsibility
Beauvoir’s framework: Existentialism
Since the human being is pure nothingness, I do not have a fixed or pre-given nature or essence
Rather, I continually create my own essence through my actions and choices
Existence precedes essence!
Beauvoir’s framework: Existentialism
Based on an existentialist framework, Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) is a comprehensive account of women’s situation, ranging from a discussion of biology, history, and myths to the specific formative years, situations and “justifications”
Beauvoir’s framework: Existentialism
Due to her philosophical analysis of otherness/Woman as Other, Beauvoir’s views marked the beginning of the “Second Wave” of feminist thought
Beauvoir’s framework: Existentialism
Whereas First Wave feminism (18th-19th century) was about equality, Second Wave feminism (20th century onwards) focused on a critique of gender roles
Woman as Other
“But first we must ask: what is a woman?.... To state the question is, to me, to suggest, at once, a preliminary answer. The fact that I ask it is in itself significant. A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be based all further discussion. A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man.”
--Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
Woman as Other
“Thus, humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being.... She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.”
--Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
Woman as Other
“If woman seems to be the inessential which never becomes the essential, it is because she herself fails to bring about this change.... The reason for this is that women lack concrete means for organizing themselves into a unit.... They have no past, no history, no religion of their own; and they have no solidarity of work and interest.... They live dispersed among the males, attached through residence, housework, economic condition, and social standing to certain men—fathers or husbands—more firmly than they are to other women.”
--Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
Male philosophers on women
There is a good principle which created order, light, and man, and an evil principle which created chaos, darkness, and woman.
Pythagoras
Of those who were born as men, all that were cowardly and spent their life in wrongdoing were transformed at the second birth into women.... Such is the origin of women and of all that is female.
Plato
Male philosophers on women
The husband hath by law power and dominion over his wife, and may keep her by force, within the bounds of duty, and may beat her, but not in a violent or cruel manner.
Francis Bacon
As between male and female, the former is by nature superior and ruler, the latter inferior and subject.
Aristotle
Male philosophers on women
The husband and wife, though they have but one common concern, yet having different understandings, will unavoidably sometimes have different wills too. It therefore being necessary that the last determination (i.e., the rule) should be placed somewhere, it naturally falls to the man’s share as the abler and the stronger.
John LockeJean Jacques Rousseau
Women have, in general, no love of any art; they have no proper knowledge of any; and they have no genius.
Male philosophers on women
Women will avoid the wicked not because it is unright, but only because it is ugly.... Nothing of duty, nothing of obligation!.... They do something only because it pleases them.... I hardly believe that the fair sex is capable of principles.
Immanuel Kant
In an uncorrupted woman the sexual impulse does not manifest at all, but only love; and this love is the natural impulse of a woman to satisfy a man....
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Male philosophers on women
Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all their life long.
Arthur Schopenhauer
With regard to sexual relations, we should note that in giving herself to intercourse, the [unmarried] girl renounces her honour.... Girls have their essential destiny in marriage and there only.
GWF Hegel
Male philosophers on women
The obscenity of the feminine sex is that of everything which ‘gapes open.’”
Jean-Paul Sartre
The being of woman.... is rightly described as charm, an expression which suggests plant life; she is a flower, the poets like to say, and even the spiritual in her is present in a vegetative manner.Søren Kierkegaard
Male philosophers on women
Man should be trained for war and woman for the recreation of the warrior; all else is folly.Woman [should be conceived]
as a possession, as property that can be locked, as something predestined for service and achieving her perfection in that.
Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman has one solution—it is called pregnancy.
Guess who?
Some gendered dualisms*
man/woman culture/nature
mind/bodyrational/irrational
public sphere/private spherepolitical/personal
justice/carecivilized/uncivilized (savage)
white (race)/black (race)
* The terms on the left are privileged, while the terms on the right are othered or devalued
Illustrative case: Ethic of justice vs. ethic of care
Feminist Carol Gilligan, in her book In a Different Voice (1980), critiqued psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s findings about children’s moral development as biased against girls
Kohlberg’s levels of moral reasoning
Illustrative case: Ethic of justice vs. ethic of care
Gilligan argued that girls scored low in Kolhberg’s scale not because they were morally deficient, but that the moral paradigm (the ethics of justice) was biased for males
Thus she suggested an alternative, the ethics of care
Illustrative case: Ethic of justice vs. ethic of care
Four main points in the feminist critique of discourses
The predominance of men and the general absence of women
The application of male standards in “universal” accounts of life and human nature
The denigration of women’s nature and experience by male writers, historians, philosophers, scientists, psychologists, etc.
The persistence of gendered dualisms wherein the masculine-identified terms are privileged at the expense of the feminine-identified terms