Existentialist themes in Simone de Beauvoir’s literary works

Russell Van Edsinga

Professor Gilliland

Philosophy 408

Existentialist themes in Simone de Beauvoir’s literary works

January/09/1908 – April/14/1986

Was a French writer, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist, however Beauvoir identified herself as an author rather than a philosopher

It’s already been mentioned in the presentations before, that Sartre and Beauvoir we ‘life partners’, it was noted in multiple sources that Sartre and de Beauvoir always read one another's work. Debates rage on about the extent to which they influenced each other in their existentialist works, such as Sartre's Being and Nothingness and de Beauvoir's She Came to Stay. However, recent studies of de Beauvoir's work focus on influences other than Sartre, including Hegel and Leibniz

As for her connection with existentialism and the topics we have been covering-

The Second Sex, published in French, sets out a feminist existentialism which prescribes a moral revolution. As an existentialist, Beauvoir believed that existence precedes essence; hence one is not born a woman, but becomes one. Her analysis focuses on the Hegelian concept of the “Other.” It is the (social) construction of Woman as the quintessential “Other” that Beauvoir identifies as fundamental to women's oppression. The “Other” has also become a critical concept in many theories that analyze the situation of marginalized people. The Second Sex was an event. It opened the way for the consciousness-raising that characterized second wave feminism; it validated women's experiences of injustice; and it provided a program for liberation. From the existential-phenomenological perspective, The Second Sex was a detailed analysis of the lived body, and an ethical and political indictment of the ways in which patriarchy alienated women from their embodied capacities; from the feminist perspective, it was also an appeal—an analysis (both concrete and theoretical) that called on women to take up the cause of their liberation.

In 1944 Beauvoir wrote her first philosophical essay, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, a discussion of an existentialist ethics. She continued her exploration of existentialism through her second essay, The Ethics of Ambiguity, (1947) is perhaps the most accessible entry into French existentialism. Its simplicity keeps it understandable, in contrast to the abstruse character of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (which we should be blatantly obvious to each one of us by now). In the essay Beauvoir clears up some inconsistencies that many, Sartre included, have found in major existentialist works such as Being and Nothingness. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir confronts the existentialist dilemma of absolute freedom vs. the constraints of circumstance.

Just to reiterate, Beauvoir considers herself as an existentialist and identifies existentialism as the philosophy of our (her) times because it is the only philosophy that takes the question of evil seriously. It is the only philosophy prepared to counter Dostoevsky's claim that without God everything is permissible. That we are alone in the world and that we exist without guarantees, however, Beauvoir asserted that they are not the only truths of the human condition. There is also the truth of our freedom and this truth, as detailed in The Ethics of Ambiguity, entails a logic of reciprocity and responsibility that contests the terrors of a world ruled only by the authority of power.

Beauvoir's argument for ethical freedom begins by noting a fundamental fact of the human condition. That: we begin our lives as children who are dependent on others and embedded in a world already endowed with meaning. We are born into the condition which Beauvoir calls the “serious world.” This is a world of ready-made values and established authorities. This is a world where obedience is demanded. For children, this world is neither alienating nor stifling; at that age we are not yet ready for the responsibilities of freedom. As children who create imaginary worlds, we are in effect learning the lessons of freedom — that we are creators of the meaning and value of the world.

All of us pass through the age of adolescence; but not all of us take up its ethical demands. The fact of our initial dependency has moral implications, for it predisposes us to the temptations of bad faith, strategies by which we deny our existential freedom and our moral responsibility, and it sets our desire in the direction of nostalgia for those lost tranquil days free from disturbance or care. Looking to return to the security of that metaphysically privileged time, some of us evade the responsibilities of freedom by choosing to remain children, that is, to submit to the authority of others.

Beauvoir does not object to the mystification of childhood. She acknowledges that parental authority is necessary for the child's survival. To treat other adults as children, however, is immoral and evil. To choose to remain a child is an act of bad faith. Whether or not we live a moral life depends on the material conditions of our situation and on our response to the ambiguities and failures of intentionality. If we are exploited and terrorized, we cannot be accused of refusing to be free — of bad faith. In all other cases, according to Beauvoir, we are accountable for our response to the experience of freedom. We cannot use the anxieties of freedom as an excuse for either our active participation in or our passive acceptance of the exploitation of others. Hiding behind the authority of others, or establishing ourselves as authorities over others, however, are culpable offenses.

(As previously stated in a past lecture) Beauvoir portrays the complexity of the ways in which we either avoid or accept the responsibilities of freedom in the imaginary and (sometimes) historical figures of the sub-man, the serious man, the nihilist, the adventurer, the passionate man, the critical thinker and the artist-writer (or “the creator” which is the term we given) we didn’t really have enough time to fully go over the significance of these figures, so I figured I would briefly touch upon their importance and relevance.

These figures are a way of distinguishing between two types of unethical positions. One type, portrayed in the portraits of the sub-man and the serious man, refuses to recognize the experience of freedom. The other type, which is depicted in the pictures of the nihilist, the adventurer, and the maniacally passionate man, misreads the meanings of freedom. The ethical man is also driven by passion. Unlike the egoistic, maniacal passion of the tyrant, ethical passion is defined by its generosity — specifically the generosity of recognizing the other's difference and protecting the other in his difference from becoming an object of another's will. This passion is both the ground of the ethical life and the source of the distinct ethical position of the artist-writer. In describing the different ways in which freedom is evaded or misused, Beauvoir establishes the difference between ontological and ethical freedom. She shows us that acknowledging our freedom is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for ethical action. To meet the conditions of the ethical, freedom must be used properly.

The Ethics of Ambiguity provides an analysis of our existential-ethical situation that joins a hard-headed realism (violence is an unavoidable fact of our condition) with demanding requirements