|
 Philosopher
of the Month
October
2001 - Simone de Beauvoir
Ion
Georgiou
Simone
de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre studied at the Sorbonne for their
postgraduate agrégation in philosophy in 1928-29 (fellow
students included Claude Lévi-Strauss and Maurice Merleau-Ponty).
Both distinguished themselves, of that there is no doubt. During
the examination, Sartre presented his case with typical confidence
and self-possession. "The entire jury, particularly the president,
Lalande, were captivated," said Maurice de Gandillac –
future eminent professor of philosophy. Of de Beauvoir, he said
she was:
"rigorous,
demanding, precise, very technical… she was the youngest in
the promotion. Only twenty-one, three years younger than
Sartre… As two members of the jury, Davy and Wahl, told me
later, it had not been easy to decide whether to give the first
place to Sartre or to her. If Sartre showed great intelligence and
a solid, if at times inexact, culture, everybody agreed that, of
the two, she was the real philosopher… The examiners were so
impressed by the precision of her philosophical expression that
they wanted to give her the first place. Finally, they decided it
had to be given to Sartre, because he was the normalien (student
at an École Normal supérieure) and, besides, he was taking it for
the second time."
In
the complex marking system, Simone de Beauvoir missed first place
by a mere one fiftieth of a point.
The
period 1943-49 saw the peak of de Beauvoir’s literary and philosophical
output, beginning with her first novel, L’Invitée,
(She Came To Stay) and culminating in her most famous philosophical
work, Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex). During this time
she also published her other important, shorter philosophical work:
Pour Une Morale de L’Ambiguïté (The Ethics of Ambiguity).
In
reading de Beauvoir, one must also bear in mind Sartre. Whereas
Sartre’s ontology (description of existence) is a-situational,
de Beauvoir shies away from absolutes. In fact, throughout her work,
her ontology rejects absolutes. In the Morale she describes
a psychologically-linked ontology, assuming implicitly that her
psychological descriptions are universal to mankind. In Le Deuxième
Sexe, her ontology is linked with history and socio-politics.
By creating such links, de Beauvoir shows us that the moods of joy
or anguish are as much linked to contingent circumstances as they
are to ontological rigour. In the Morale she illustrates
this by situating her argument within the process of human psychological
development, from childhood, through adolescence and into adulthood.
In Le Deuxième Sexe the illustration focuses on women’s
historical and socio-political development. In doing this, de Beauvoir
argues, against Sartre, that there are circumstances when Bad Faith
(Sartre’s most famous contribution defined as the phenomenon
of self-deception) does not apply: in circumstances when one is
unable to recognise the potential freedom in one’s situation.
For instance, children are not aware of freedom for they live attuned
to the world of the other. It is only in adolescence that they reach
the crisis of existential freedom. Similarly, de Beauvoir shows
that women, in living attuned to the world of the other, were ignorant
of their own ability to recognise freedom. Where such ignorance
exists, Bad Faith cannot be applied. That is not to say that de
Beauvoir rejects Sartre’s concept of Bad Faith but that she
defines the terms of its existence. Not engaging in the anguish
of freedom is not necessarily a sign of refusal to engage; it could
just as well be a sign of the other’s success in confining
me inside a certain condition. Bad Faith can only arise in proportion
to the degree of experienced conditions which trigger the possibility
of a challenge. By situating the ontology in this way, de Beauvoir
upholds and develops the importance Sartre places on the particular
circumstances of any situation.
The
Morale provided the foundational concepts which would be
expanded upon in Le Deuxième Sexe. The analogy between
slaves and women, for instance, has so often been misinterpreted
by ignoring the extensive use of the slave analogy in the Morale.
Its purpose is not to compare the material well-being of women to
that of slaves (an argument used extensively by feminists), but
to compare the similarities of mystification which both groups experience.
Mystification is shown by de Beauvoir to be a major condition where
Bad Faith has no significance as a concept. Mystification is the
root of the creation of the inessential other, the foundation of
her famous phrase: "one is not born, one becomes a woman".
De
Beauvoir has only recently begun to be taken seriously as a philosopher,
though her work has shown all along that she not only supported
Sartre’s argument but that she made significant new contributions.
One must not discredit the genius of Sartre. It is perhaps time,
however, to begin to consider whether he was the seed of a much
more robust body of work – the work of Simone de Beauvoir.
A
new philosopher of the month will be featured from mid-November
2001
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