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Women Phenomenologists on Social Ontology pp 217–229Cite as

Simone de Beauvoir on Sexual Difference

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Part of the book series: Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences ((WHPS,volume 1))

Abstract

In the introduction to The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir clarifies her philosophical approach to embodiment and sexual difference by writing: “However, it is said, in the perspective which I adopt—that of Heidegger , Sartre and Merleau-Ponty —that if the body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp upon the world and an outline of our projects.”

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Notes

  1. 1.

    de Beauvoir was familiar with Husserl’s works primarily through the discussions of Eugen Fink, Emmanuel Levinas ([1930] 1994, 1947), Sartre ([1943] 1998) and Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 1993), but she also reports reading Husserl’s early work on time-consciousness (de Beauvoir [1960] 1995, 231, 1981, 201). Moreover, she knew Husserl’s Cartesian Meditation (Cartesianische Meditationen 1950) in French translation, Méditations cartésiennes (1931), by Gabrielle Peifer and Emmanuel Levinas.

  2. 2.

    For a more detailed account of the phenomenology of embodiment, see Heinämaa (2018).

  3. 3.

    Cf. de Beauvoir ([1949] 1993, 18–19, 96, 121–122, 130, 241, 1987, 18–19, 102, 109, 114, 174).

  4. 4.

    Cf. Scheler’s “Zum Sinn der Frauenbewegung” (“On the Meaning of the Women’s Movement”) (1913/1914).

  5. 5.

    The most important original sources were Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, IdeasII, Experience and Judgment (Erfahrung und Urteil 1939) and Heidegger’s Being and Time (Sein und Zeit 1927). Merleau-Ponty studied the second book of Ideas in manuscript form in the Husserl-archive in Louvain under the guidance of Eugen Fink. Compare also to Heidegger’s Zollikon Seminars (Zollikoner Seminare 1987).

  6. 6.

    In his analyses of passive syntheses, Husserl characterizes percepts as affecting us, directing our attention and thus motivating our movements (Husserl 1966, cf. [1939] 1985). He uses the metaphors of invitation, call, and attraction to characterize the power and control that things exercise over us. This Husserlian analysis influenced both Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, but we can find traces of it also in contemporary enactivist and externalist theories of perception, inspired by readings of Merleau-Ponty (e.g., Hutto and Myin 2013; Rietveld 2013; Nöe 2004).

  7. 7.

    Thus understood, the fetus is a sensing moving being, but not yet a person with highly developed self-reflective capacities.

  8. 8.

    de Beauvoir ([1949] 1991, 221, 1987, 109–110). de Beauvoir puts this argument forward by using the French term “semblable”. It seems to me that the use of this term conflates two ideas: the political idea of an equal and the epistemic idea of an alter ego. The latter has a background in the Hegelian theory of recognition, but de Beauvoir combines this with the phenomenological analysis of the experience of another self.

  9. 9.

    Cf. de Beauvoir ([1949] 1993, 15–32, 280–281, [1949] 1991, 646–647, 1987, 16–29, 201–202, 727–728, 2001, 6–17, 187–188, 755).

  10. 10.

    For de Beauvoir’s discourse of erotic relations, see Bergoffen (1997), Heinämaa (2006). For her conception of friendship, see The Mandarins (Les mandarins 1954).

  11. 11.

    Beauvoir develops this understanding of the basic units of social relation in her literary works, from the early novel She Came to Stay (L’invitée 1943) to the celebrated The Mandarins (Les mandarins 1954) (cf. Merleau-Ponty 1964, 112–113/80–82).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Academy of Finland, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylän, Finland

    Sara Heinämaa

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  1. Sara Heinämaa
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Correspondence to Sara Heinämaa .

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Sebastian Luft

  2. Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists, Institut für Humanwissenschaften, University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Ruth Hagengruber

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Heinämaa, S. (2018). Simone de Beauvoir on Sexual Difference. In: Luft, S., Hagengruber, R. (eds) Women Phenomenologists on Social Ontology. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97861-1_16

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