Thinking with Beauvoir on the Freedom of the Child

Hypatia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-155
Author(s):  
Lior Levy
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Phenomenological Account ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

Among philosophers, Simone de Beauvoir is unique in treating childhood as a philosophical phenomenon. In both The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex, she examines the relationship between childhood and human freedom and considers its role in the development of subjectivity. Despite this, few sustained analyses of her treatment of the phenomenon exist. I argue that Beauvoir's conception of childhood is not uniform, but changes from The Ethics of Ambiguity to The Second Sex. Whereas the former presents children as lacking moral freedom, as not fully sovereign individuals, the latter suggests that children are just as free as adults. When children do not fully possess or exercise freedom, it is not because they are not in a position to do so, but rather because various social institutions hinder them. I find this position useful for developing a phenomenological account of childhood as a site for freedom. Hence, Beauvoir becomes a source for thinking of issues in philosophical anthropology concerning the temporality of human existence and the nature of human agency over a lifespan.

Gender as Lived Time: Reading The Second Sex for a Feminist Phenomenology of Temporality

Hypatia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan M. Burke
Keyword(s):  
Human Existence ◽  
Underlying Structure ◽  
Sexual Objectification ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
Phenomenological Account ◽  
Time Reading ◽  
Feminist Phenomenology ◽  
Lived Time

This article suggests that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex offers an important contribution to a feminist phenomenology of temporality. In contrast to readings of The Second Sex that focus on the notion of “becoming” as the main claim about the relation between “woman” and time, this article suggests that Beauvoir's discussion of temporality in volume II of The Second Sex shows that Beauvoir understands the temporality of waiting, or a passive present, to be an underlying structure of women's existence and subordination. Accordingly, I argue that Beauvoir does not see “woman” as a mere becoming, as that which unfolds in time, but instead understands becoming a woman to be realized as lived time. As such, Beauvoir's account shows that gender and temporality are deeply entangled, and thus she challenges the classic phenomenological account of temporality as a general, given structure of human existence. More specifically, I argue that her account shows how a particular experience of time is an underlying structure of sexual objectification, a claim that expands on the feminist phenomenological claim that a particular relation to space becomes a way in which women take up and negotiate their own subordination and objectification.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret A. Simons
Keyword(s):  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Dramatic Form ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
Insight Into

This introductory chapter presents the literary writings of Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86), the renowned French existentialist author of The Second Sex. Such insight into her own thought is often provided by Beauvoir's prefaces to works by other authors. For instance, Beauvoir's 1964 “Preface” to La Bâtarde has been described as more reflective of her philosophy than of author Violet Leduc's life. Beauvoir's confrontation with her critics is another source of drama in this study. A criticism that spans the decades of these texts is the charge that an existential novel, with its focus on action and philosophical questions, forsakes the aesthetic function of literature. Yet, for Beauvoir, the true mission of the writer is to describe in dramatic form the relationship of the individual to the world in which he stakes his freedom.

French Women Become, German Women Are Made?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Lisa Baumeister
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Full Text ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Philosophical Basis ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Phenomenological Account

“On ne naît pas femme: on le devient” is the sentence most commonly associated with Simone de Beauvoir. This chapter discusses some of the peculiarities that have emerged in the translation and quotation of the sentence in the German-speaking world. Comparing the translation of Beauvoir’s sentence in the hands of German feminist and activist Alice Schwarzer with the version that appears in both existing full text translations of The Second Sex into German, the author argues that the latter version aligns with Beauvoir’s phenomenological account of womanhood, whereas Schwarzer’s translation elides the statement’s philosophical basis. Schwarzer’s rendering of the sentence made a significant contribution to 20th-century German feminism in its own right. Yet Beauvoir’s authorship of Schwarzer’s version of the translation, which is taken for granted, must be questioned.

Becoming A Woman

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan M. Burke
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Phenomenological Account ◽  
The Common ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Way

The author argues that the exclusion of the indefinite article in Borde and Malovany-Chevallier’s translation of “the famous sentence” in The Second Sex obscures Beauvoir’s phenomenological account of feminine existence. While it is best to understand the recent translation as an informed, interpretative reading of Beauvoir, this essay suggests that reading the end of the sentence as “becoming a woman” undoes the common Anglo-American reading of Simone de Beauvoir as a social constructionist (for example, in the work of Judith Butler). This undoing is important for the way readers become oriented to Beauvoir’s phenomenological commitments. Thus the inclusion of the “a” gestures to a phenomenological sensibility. There is a sphere within the lived experience of femininity that the exclusion cannot capture.

scholarly journals Tactics for Forsaken Territories: Infrastructural Catalysis Within Disturbed Residual Spaces

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tim Patrick Cook
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Technical Problem ◽  
Rigid Object ◽  
Surrounding Landscape ◽  
A Site ◽  
Industrial Landscapes ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Industrial Context ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

<p><b>The perceived dichotomy between the industrial and the ecological or amenity has led to a loss or misperception of identity and value of industrial landscapes. Conventional industrial precinct greening moves or the design of parks within these spaces fail to establish any sense of identity or contribute to the growth and development of these environments. Looking beyond the notion of a park as a respite from the urban condition, the challenge lies in developing parks that capitalise on what is perceived as negative and exploit it as amenity.</b></p> <p>In search of a strategy, the discourse on the relationship between landscape and infrastructure and the ensuing paradigm shift in the way we understand infrastructure, is examined. What has conventionally existed as a mono-programmatic object for the sake of managing a technical problem is being redefined into a multi-layered spatial field, performing over time as well as space. However care must be taken in how we go about redefining the notion of infrastructure; when we keep broadening its definition it begins to lose significance. If infrastructure is to be reinterpreted from a rigid object to a field that is able to engage with open and unpredictable systems, rather than defining what an infrastructural thing may be, it becomes more important to define how something might perform or develop ‘infrastructurally’. Much of the discourse surrounding landscape infrastructure focuses on the efficiency that is to be gained by the layering of multiple flexible systems or employing it as a means to remediate a site. While many contemporary landscape infrastructure projects seek to reintroduce the ecological histories that have been suppressed by urban development, their attempts to do so often erase much of what is too readily dismissed as negative, and with it meaningful social histories and qualities that may be exploited as opportunity.</p> <p>In focussing on the disturbed and residual spaces and the opportunities these territories offer, this thesis seeks to explore the potential of designing infrastructurally to not only reintegrate these forgotten spaces in the urban fabric of their industrial context but to coordinate their development and/or their deterioration in such a way that they become fundamental to the area’s identity and growth.</p> <p>Drawing on Stan Allen’s propositions for infrastructure and reinterpreting them through the lens of landscape as a catalytic infrastructure, an architectural strategy is proposed that capitalises upon the qualities found within the abandoned landscapes of the Seaview/Gracefield industrial precinct in Wellington, New Zealand, and recognises them as an opportunity to develop the concept of park in this context into something that reflects the important social histories of these sites while also presenting a proving ground for future operations. These spaces aim to question the way in which we assess infrastructural efficiency, their performance valued not just in quantitative output but also in qualitative terms.</p>

The Question of the Subject and the Matter of Violence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra Bergoffen
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
Luce Irigaray ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Phenomenological Account ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Abuse Of Women ◽  
The Human Condition

Negotiating the distance between Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray reveals that, despite their diverse starting points and philosophical commitments, they arrive at similar conclusions regarding the issue of violence against woman. Beauvoir’s existential–phenomenological account of the embodied vicissitudes of freedom and Irigaray’s psychoanalytic account of the bodied drives that structure human symbolic existence reveal that so long as women are signified as woman, the second sex (Beauvoir) and the power of masculine symbolic to silence all other articulations the human endures (Irigaray), men can and will imagine they are immune from the vulnerabilities of the human condition. Understanding the abuse of women throughout the ages and across the globe marks it as a symptom of the flight from vulnerability, identifies the high stakes of this flight, and directs us to develop strategies of resistance that, by resignifying the meaning of vulnerability, gets at the roots of the violence.

A Feminist Reading of Anderson's Speak

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-23
Author(s):  
Arsto Nasir Ahmed ◽  
Rebwar Zainalddin Mohammed
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rape Victims ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Gender Performativity ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Patriarchal System ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
A Site

Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak (1999) is her first landmark work addressing a social problem—rape—that is all too common to girls entering adolescence in the United States. This paper employs a feminist approach that presents the painful narrative of the rape victim and investigates the novel’s promotion of individual, resistant action within the oppressive social structure, achieved through what the postmodernist feminist Judith Butler calls “gender performativity”. It is this individual agency or subjectivity that enables the protagonist in Speak to overcome the adverse effects of rape, which is the product of a patriarchal system that regards females the second sex, to borrow the term by the French, feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir. As such, Speak functions as a site of discursive resistance against such a patriarchal system by resisting some of the popularly held myths that discredit rape victims' narratives.

Romantic Love, Altruism, and Self‐Respect: An Analysis of Simone De Beauvoir

Hypatia ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Pauly Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Romantic Love ◽  
Double Bind ◽  
Separate Analysis ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Moral Nature ◽  
Moral Assessment ◽  
The Relationship

I examine Beauvoir's moral assessment of Romantic Love in The Second Sex.I first set out Beauvoir's central philosophical assumptions concerning the nature and situations of women, setting the framework for her analysis of the intersubjective dynamic which constitutes the phenomenology of romantic loving. In this process four double‐bind paradoxes are generated which can lead, ultimately, to servility in the woman who loves.In a separate analysis, I ask whether it is wrong for a woman to aspire to and/or choose this form of servitude. I distinguish two kinds of considerations: (1) those having to do with the intrinsic moral nature of the commitment or decision, and (2) those based on considerations of harm: first, to the woman who loves; second, to the loved Other; third to the nature of the relationship; and fourth, to society in general.

Simone de Beauvoir

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra Bergoffen
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Lived Body ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Gender And Age ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Phenomenological Account ◽  
Ongoing Dialogue

Identifying herself as a philosopher, author, and feminist, Simone de Beauvoir took the phenomenological ideas of the lived body, situated freedom, intentionality, intersubjective vulnerability, and the existential ethical-political concepts of critique, responsibility, and justice, in new directions. She distinguished two moments in an ongoing dialogue of intentionality: the joys of disclosure and the desires of mastery. She disrupted the phenomenological account of perception, revealing its hidden ideological dimensions. Attending to the embodied experience of sex, gender, and age, she challenged the privilege accorded to the working body and introduced us to the unique humanity of the erotic body. Her categories of the Other and the Second Sex exposed the patriarchal norms that are naturalized in the taken-for-granted givens of the life-world. In translating the phenomenological-existential concepts of transcendence and freedom into an activist ethics of critique, hope, and liberation, her work continues to influence phenomenology, existentialism, and feminist theory and practice.

Kulturelle Existenz und anthropologische Konstanten

2009 ◽  
Vol 2009 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-220
Author(s):  
Christian Möckel
Keyword(s):  
Critical Points ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Philosophy Of Culture ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

This contribution deals with Ernst Cassirer's appreciative attitude to the philosophical anthropology of his time and its self-conception. The question of the relationship between Cassirer's philosophical anthropology and his philosophy of culture with its basis in the theory of symbolism presuppose or explain one another is investigated on the basis of four critical points. The unpublished texts on the subject (ECN 6) and in particular the concluding remarks revolve around the question of the interrelationship between the biological and the symbolic or cultural dimensions of human existence. The final demonstration of six possible anthropological »constants« of human existence serve to supplement the methodological discussion with substantive issues.

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