John Kaszan 1 PHIL 702-001

Abstract

While time has proven Simone de Beauvoir to be one of the most important feminist thinkers, and existentialist thinkers of all time, the close attention that she paid to Nature, in particular, women’s connections to Nature, has not been given its due recognition. In this paper I will argue that throughout all of Simone de Beauvoir’s major philosophical works there is a philosophy of

Nature and an environmental ethic that connects all of her major philosophical works. This connection prizes the role that women play in Nature. I will then try to extend the mitsein that

Beauvoir places women and men in to also include Nature.

John Kaszan 2 PHIL 702-001

Conversing with Nature as Other: Simone de Beauvoir’s Philosophy of Nature

Throughout her major writings, Simone de Beauvoir wrote about what she referred to as

“Nature,” and developed of a philosophy of Nature that has been overlooked by both those who study Beauvoir as well as those who took the critiques that feminist philosophy provides to develop a philosophy of Nature, namely eco-feminists. By “Nature” Beauvoir intended to speak about Nature as a construct outside of humanity, that is, Nature as it exists as, to use Beauvoir’s language, Other to culture. By “nature,” she refers to deterministic impulses. These deterministic impulses can often be features of a particular thing. We use “nature” this way when we describe it to be in a frog’s nature to live near water, or when we talk about “human nature.” Beauvoir never claimed to be a philosopher of Nature. The ecological crisis, commonly marked as beginning with the social movements and environmental writings of the 1960’s, such as Rachel

Carson’s Silent Spring published in 19621, was hardly recognized as a reality until the later portion of Beauvoir’s life. Despite having proclaimed a love of Nature in her autobiographical works,2 few have written on Beauvoir’s thoughts on Nature.3 From statements about Nature throughout all of her major texts, I will argue, Beauvoir’s forms a philosophy of Nature that comes to the forefront in The Second Sex. Here, within her critiques of patriarchy and the myth of the “Eternal Feminine,”4 Beauvoir lays out a conception of Nature that works alongside her

1John S. Dryzek and David Schlosberg, ed., Debating the Earth: The Environmental Politics Reader (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998), 5. 2 Karen Vintges, “Introduction to Jean-Paul Sartre,” in Philosophical Works, ed. Margaret A. Simons (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 226. 3 While eco-feminists often identify Beauvoir as a major influence of the feminist critique and philosophy that forms the basis of eco-feminism, few have noticed her thoughts on Nature. The exception is Ynestra King in her essay “Toward an Ecological Feminism.” Even in this instance, King only takes note of the link that women and Nature have in The Second Sex, failing to recognize the extent which Beauvoir offers contributions to the philosophy of Nature. 4 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 266. The greatest difference between the Parshley translation , Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (New York: Vintage Books, 1989) is that where Beauvoir refers to Nature as an it Parshley makes the next step and refers to Nature as “she.” To describe Nature as “she” ultimately conflicts with John Kaszan 3 PHIL 702-001 feminist critique which emphasizes the role that woman has been interpreted to have with

Nature. I will argue that based on her conception of Nature, Beauvoir’s works on ethics, Pyrrhus and Cineas and The Ethics of Ambiguity, imply an environmental ethic. Beauvoir’s environmental ethic is supplemented by her critique of patriarchy in The Second Sex. It is in The

Second Sex that she calls for recognition of the human mitsein,5 the intersubjective relationship of mutual dependency in which men and women exist. I will then argue that the mitsein Beauvoir describes can and must include Nature.

Beauvoir’s philosophy of Nature is by no means explicit, and is clearly not the main focus of any of her texts where Nature is mentioned. I have taken on the task of explaining and connecting the fragmented thoughts on Nature throughout Beauvoir’s writings6 because when her thoughts on Nature are taken together, they form a coherent philosophy of Nature.

Recognizing Beauvoir’s thoughts on Nature would be a valuable resource for theorists interested in ecology, feminism, and the intersection of the two fields in what is commonly referred to as eco-feminism. Beauvoir’s thoughts, which show an ecologically mindful feminism and ethic, predate even the earliest eco-feminist critiques by at least 20 years and are thus able to provide a more accurate view of the trajectory of environmental thought. With Beauvoir’s writing of The

Second Sex, her thoughts on Nature come to the fore. Examining what Beauvoir has to say provides a historically accurate and more comprehensive understanding of eco-feminism, environmental thought as a whole, and gives Beauvoir the due recognition she deserves for her

Beauvoir’s argument that it is not necessary that woman be seen as an intermediary to Nature because Man’s problem is that he has forgotten his own connection to Nature. Nevertheless, Parshley’s translation helps to emphasize the importance of the relationship that woman does have with Nature. 5 The term mitsein originates from the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, and will be dealt with in greater depth in the section on Nature as Language. For the time being, this simplified definition, devoid of all of the traits that characterize a mitsein will suffice for an introduction to the idea. 6 I will be discussing Pyrrhus and Cineas, The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir’s review of Maurice Merleau- Ponty’s The Phenomenology of Perception, and The Second Sex. John Kaszan 4 PHIL 702-001 insights into the relationship between patriarchal institutions and Nature, something for which she is not yet recognized. I will make the case that the mitsein that Beauvoir describes in The

Second Sex must be expanded to include Nature, in other words, I will show that an intersubjective relationship with Nature exists in the philosophical framework that Beauvoir establishes. When referring to Nature, my use of the term “man” will literally mean men, that is those who are male, not a sexist abstraction of humanity. The reason for using man in relation to humanity’s relationship to Nature, as Beauvoir will show, is that it is man who has dictated the relationship that humanity has with Nature and interpreted woman’s role as the intermediary to

Nature.

“Nature” vs. “nature”

Beauvoir’s use of the term “Nature” remains somewhat ambiguous throughout her texts.

In Pyrrhus and Cineas, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and her review of The Phenomenology of

Perception when referring to Nature, Beauvoir would often describe the natural landscape or use the term “earth.” Although Beauvoir does use the term “Nature” once in her review of The

Phenomenology of Perception it is still characterized by descriptions of the natural world.

Beauvoir has an intention between separating the terms “Nature” and “nature,” but she is not explicit about why she does this. The interpretation that follows of the difference between these two terms is my own, while the distinction remains Beauvoir’s.

It is in The Second Sex where Beauvoir uses the terms “Nature” and “nature” (the difference being in the capitalization of the first letter). While Beauvoir never explains why she distinguishes between “Nature” and “nature,” she does provide a definition, albeit vague, for

“Nature.” She remains silent, however, on what “nature” is. The term “nature” appears most often in the chapter “Biological Data.” Here, Beauvoir is largely using nature to refer to the John Kaszan 5 PHIL 702-001 deterministic instinctual desires of creatures and innate abilities of a species, such as the way we use nature when we refer to the idea of reason being part of human nature. The use of “Nature” on the other hand seems to refer to Nature as an outside entity to humanity, what we commonly think of when we talk about Nature as separate from human constructs, that is, nature in an ecological sense. The use of “nature” in “Biological Data” is still not entirely clear. For example,

Beauvoir uses the term nature when Nature as a construct could be substituted. To quote an example from The Second Sex, “it has to be pointed out first that the very meaning of division of the species into two sexes is not clear. It does not occur universally in nature.”7 The use of

“nature” here, I take to mean that the division of the sexes is not a biological universal that determines all species. In other words, the human value that we ascribe to the traits of each particular sex is not found as a cross-species nature of that sex. Beauvoir makes this point to show that the things which we believe are intrinsic to the natures of men and women are not present in other species, and that the sexes have no inherent traits with intrinsic values. Another example of Beauvoir’s use of the term “nature” occurs when Beauvoir describes how woman is set apart from other female animals through her biological functions. Beauvoir writes, “nature does not provide woman with sterile periods as it does for other female mammals”8 The use of

“nature” here is vague, but I argue that it could be read, all the same, that “woman has not been determined to have sterile periods, as other females animals have.” Both of these examples, granted, could just as well mean “Nature” as I think Beauvoir means to use the term. Substituting what I have designated to mean “Nature” for Beauvoir, that is a construction of Nature that is external to humanity as opposed to a deterministic desire inherent to an individual or species, could work, but would prove to be incoherent in how Beauvoir uses “Nature.”

7 Beauvoir, Second Sex, 21. 8 Ibid., 72. John Kaszan 6 PHIL 702-001

When Beauvoir uses “Nature” she is specifically referring to ecological Nature as a construct opposed to human culture and society. When Beauvoir uses “Nature” in this way, descriptions of that natural world are not far behind. Beauvoir’s definition of Nature appears in the first chapter on the section titled “Myths,” where she describes it, in its relation to man as,

“the source of his being and the kingdom he bends to his will; it is a material envelope in which the soul is held prisoner, and it is the supreme reality; it is contingency and Idea, finitude and totality; it is that which opposes Spirit and himself.”9 Given this description, it makes sense to claim that “Nature” refers to that which is other than culture and society, that is, an outside

Nature. The above description becomes more confusing however when Beauvoir ends the paragraph by saying, “woman embodies nature as Mother, Spouse, and Idea; these figures are sometimes confounded and sometimes in opposition, and each has a double face.”10 I think that distinction I have detailed with respect to Beauvoir’s usage of “Nature” and “nature” still stands.

Beauvoir seems to be saying that it is in woman’s nature to assume these roles; these roles, however, to use Beauvoir’s language, “[have] a double face.” By “a double face,” Beauvoir means that these roles that are typically seen to be subservient are able be used as sources of empowerment for women. At the same time, there is no imperative, for Beauvoir, to follow one’s

“nature,” so though women may be naturally or socially predisposed to these roles there is absolutely no reason for them to be confined to them.

The Beginnings of an Environmental Ethic: Pyrrhus and Cineas

In Pyrrhus and Cineas, Beauvoir shows how the value we place upon Nature should come from a position of restraint rather than one of consumption. In talking about Nature,

Beauvoir notes, “if God’s oeuvre is completely good, it is because it is completely useful to the

9 Beauvoir, Second Sex, 163. 10 Ibid., 163: the emphasis is my own. John Kaszan 7 PHIL 702-001 salvation of man. It is therefore not an end in itself, but a means that gets its justification from how we use it.”11 Though it seems like Beauvoir is advocating that we value Nature simply because it is useful, her statements that follow discredit a reading that suggests the value of

Nature lies in its utility. Beauvoir questions this conception of Nature that values utility by asking, “How do we know if the melon was really invented to be eaten with our family?”12 She continues on to assert that, “Maybe it was invented to not be eaten; maybe the goods of this world are good only because man can refuse them. This is why Saint Francis of Assisi smiled at the world but did not partake of it.”13 Beauvoir, who maintains that all values originate from human beings, allows for our valuing of Nature to come through our lack of consumption.

Beauvoir settles on valuing Nature through conservation when she categorizes asceticism as

“another form of pleasure.”14 Beauvoir does not find anything wrong in pleasure; she is merely categorizing asceticism as another type of pleasure. She goes on to emphasize the connection between conservation and value further by saying, “Whatever he does, man makes use of earthly goods because through them he accomplishes his redemption or his ruin. He must therefore decide how to make use of them.”15 This passage, I think, is equal parts critique as well as a reiteration of the importance of responsibility for the existential ethics she lays out in Pyrrhus and Cineas. The critique being that humanity has not chosen to value the earth through finding restraint from consuming the earth as a joy.

Nature as Language: The Phenomenology of Perception and the Human Mitsein

11 Simone de Beauvoir, “Pyrrhus and Cineas,” in Philosophical Works, ed. Margaret A. Simons (Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 103. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. John Kaszan 8 PHIL 702-001

Before I begin to examine Beauvoir’s thoughts on Nature in her review of The

Phenomenology of Perception, I would like to draw attention to the philosophical relationship that Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty shared with the intent of showing that where the ideas that

Beauvoir is highlighting in her review of The Phenomenology of Perception originated is irrelevant to her application of the ideas. Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir were not only contemporaries, but were greatly influential upon each other’s work, as Gail Weiss points out in mapping the philosophical connection between Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty in her essay

“Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty: Philosophers of Ambiguity.”16 In Weiss’ words, Merleau-Ponty,

“develops an account of perceptual ambiguity as…lived, embodied experience.”17 Weiss points out that, though we often see philosophers being a one-way influence on another philosopher,

Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty’s relationship is altogether different; not only were they contemporaries, they had gone to school together, were close friends, and continued to write to one another long afterward.18 Many of their ideas share very common themes, Weiss notes, such as, “the essential human ambiguity that defines human existence…an understanding of subjectivity as always already grounded in, and therefore arising out of, intersubjective experiences…and the powerful influence exercised by one’s cultural and political situation in shaping the meanings and values an individual ascribes to her or his existence.”19 What we are dealing with in the philosophy of Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty is a mutually influential relationship. The task of tracing the ideas found both in The Phenomenology of Perception and

Beauvoir’s work falls greatly outside of the scopes of my current project which is to outline

16 Gail Weiss, “Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty: Philosophers of Ambiguity,” in Beauvoir and Western Thought from Plato to Butler, ed. Shannon M. Mussett and William S. Wilkerson (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2012), 171. 17 Ibid., 172 18 Ibid., 171. 19 Ibid., 172. John Kaszan 9 PHIL 702-001

Beauvoir’s thoughts on Nature and show how an intersubjective relationship with Nature is possible in her philosophy. To ask where her ideas originated is outside of the scope of this paper and irrelevant to the problem being addressed. Regardless of whether was influenced by or influenced Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir adopted the ideas found the review of The Phenomenology of Perception and fully embraced them in both The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex, two of her most important philosophical pieces. Whether she or Merleau-Ponty was the originator of these ideas is a distraction from Beauvoir’s defense and application of them in her own work.

Beauvoir lays out the conditions that make an intersubjective relationship with Nature possible in her review of The Phenomenology of Perception. Beauvoir says of Nature in her reading of Merleau-Ponty,

Things speak to us, and one must not give these words a figurative or symbolic meaning. Nature is truly language, a language that would teach itself, where signification would be secreted by the very structure of signs. With this, one understands that we could never be out of place [dépaysés] in the world. The most savage desert, the most hidden cave still secrete a human meaning. The universe is our domain. However, at the same time as they offer this familiar aspect, things offer another side: they also are silence and mystery, an Other who escapes us. They are never completely given, but on the contrary always open. The world in the full sense of the word is not an object…20 Nature, as language, shows that we are constantly in a relationship with Nature. There is no escaping this relationship with Nature; the world is our abode and it secretes human meaning.

The relationship with Nature is not one of possession where we attempt to dominate Nature, but rather reciprocity where we find ourselves at home in Nature and are able to derive meaning from its foreignness to us. Nature is not an object, but rather is able to appear to us as a subject.

20 Simone de Beauvoir, “A Review of The Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty,” in Philosophical Works, ed. Margaret A. Simons (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 162. John Kaszan 10 PHIL 702-001

Many of these things that characterize Nature for Beauvoir are required in order for

Nature to fit into Beauvoir’s understanding of the notion of mitsein. Beauvoir first introduces the idea of a mitsein in The Second Sex. The term mitsein comes from the philosophy of Martin

Heidegger and is literally translated as “being-with.”21 “Being-with” requires a moment of intersubjectivity where the alterity of the Other is recognized and is met with “solidarity and friendship.”22 Woman is excluded from the human mitsein because in order to be recognized as a subject and not merely as an object, she must deny her subjectivity. Beauvoir recounts her own personal experience of having to deny her own subjectivity to be allowed admittance into the human mitsein. She writes,

I used to get annoyed in abstract discussions to hear men tell me: ‘you think such and such a thing because you’re a woman.’ But I know my only defense is to answer, ‘I think it because it is true,’ thereby eliminating my subjectivity; it was out of the question to answer, ‘And you think the contrary because you are a man,’ because it is understood that being a man is not a particularity; a man is in his right by virtue of being man; it is the woman who is in the wrong.23 Woman—in this particular case, Beauvoir—is denied access to the human mitsein because she is a woman. She cannot assert her subjectivity and be recognized as an independent subject unless she steps into the realm of men. Stepping into the realm of men, however, is inevitable because as she shows in the above passage, “man is not a particular.”24 Man represents in society (and thereby language) both the masculine position, as well as the neutral stand point as well. Thus, in order to make any sort of truth claim woman must deny herself as such in order to be recognized, denying her subjectivity and making an intersubjective relationship impossible.

21 Beauvoir, Second Sex, 7*. 22 Ibid., 7. 23 Ibid., 5. 24 Ibid. John Kaszan 11 PHIL 702-001

The case for Nature being a participant in a mitsein with human beings comes through how Beauvoir categorizes Nature in her review of Merleau-Ponty’s The Phenomenology of

Perception. In categorizing Nature as “truly a language, a language that would teach itself, where signification would be secreted by the very structure of signs,”25 Beauvoir makes an intersubjective relationship with Nature possible. Beauvoir goes further with her understanding of Nature in The Second Sex by highlighting the role that gender plays in our relationship with and understanding of Nature. Humans are able to recognize one another as sovereign subjects largely through their uses of language. Beauvoir characterizes Nature itself as a language that constantly secretes meaning to humans, in which, in Beauvoir’s words, “the most savage desert, the most hidden cave, still secrete human meaning.”26 Nature, insofar as it is a language, enables us to experience Nature intersubjectively. We recognize Nature as a subject, and not merely an object in the world. Nature is simultaneously speaking to us; we are constantly interpreting it.

We speak to Nature through our actions towards it and the way that we appropriate it to create meaning, both in our consumption or appreciation of Nature. “The world” as Beauvoir sees it “is not an object; it transcends all the perspective views that I take of it.”27 The relationship we can have with the world is an intersubjective one because, as Beauvoir notes, “although real, the world is always incomplete, and this contradiction corresponds to the one that opposes the ubiquity of consciousness to its engagement in a field of presence. In order to perceive, I must be situated.”28 The world, as Beauvoir has stated, is incomplete without its being perceived. Insofar as Nature is language, what we are able to bring to the world is the interpretation of the language of Nature. Due to the fact that Nature is secreting human meaning, humans are able to interpret

25 Beauvoir, “Review of Phenomenology of Perception,” in Philosophical Works, 162. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. John Kaszan 12 PHIL 702-001

Nature’s signs and thus “could never be out of place [dépaysés] in the world.”29 Our mutual dependency with Nature, namely that Nature needs an interpreter and that we rely upon it for quite literally everything, as all things come from Nature, begins to put humanity in a mitsein with Nature. In this mitsein solidarity and friendship are possible, even if Nature is the antithesis to how human society conceives of itself. A mitsein with Nature is possible because Nature is a language that is constantly speaking to us, which we are constantly interpreting. Language requires interpretation; for Nature to be language an interpreter is necessary. Nature is an Other to us. Nature, as is often the case with Others, has not been met with solidarity and friendship, but rather with a fervent hostility that patriarchy has equated women to, which will I will show in the discussion of Beauvoir’s categorization of Nature in The Second Sex.

Beauvoir’s interest in the idea of Nature as a language can be seen as originating prior to her writing of her review of The Phenomenology of Perception. Pyrrhus and Cineas30 was published one year prior to her review of The Phenomenology of Perception31. It is here, in

Pyrrhus and Cineas, where Beauvoir notes that, “I will not meet God himself outside of myself anymore than within myself. I will never notice any celestial sign written on the earth. If it is written down, it is earthly.”32 While it is possible that this passage could simply mean that if there is a celestial sign it originates from those who live on earth, that is, human beings, I don’t think that such a reading is likely given the trajectory of Beauvoir’s thought on the subject. Due to the fact that she goes on to fully embrace the conception of Nature as a language speaking to human beings in her review of The Phenomenology of Perception, I think it is very likely

Beauvoir is here alluding to Nature itself being a language in Pyrrhus and Cineas.

29 Beauvoir, “Review of Phenomenology of Perception,” in Philosophical Works, 162. 30 Beauvoir, “Pyrrhus and Cineas,” in Philosophical Works, 89n. 31 Beauvoir, “Review of Phenomenology of Perception,” in Philosophical Works, 159n. 32 Beauvoir, “Pyrrhus and Cineas,” in Philosophical Works, 105. John Kaszan 13 PHIL 702-001

Nature as Other: The Ethics of Ambiguity

The appearance of Nature as Other appears again, apart from Beauvoir’s review of The

Phenomenology of Perception, in The Ethics of Ambiguity. Nature here appears as the first Other that is encountered by a human being. By being Other, Beauvoir is recognizes that humans are distinct from Nature, yet owe their existence to Nature at the same time. Beauvoir points out that

“by uprooting himself from the world, man makes himself present to the world and makes the world present to him.”33 Our reflection upon Nature cannot take place while completely embedded in the immanence of Nature. It is the human act of transcendence that allows for the recognition of Nature that Beauvoir is talking about. When encountering Nature as other,

Beauvoir notes that

I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves, within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I can not appropriate the snow field where I slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession.34 Beauvoir shows us how transcendence is possible in this passage. Nature is the first Other that a human being encounters. When “the subject attempts to assert himself,” Beauvoir says, “the

Other, who limits and denies him, is nonetheless necessary for him: he attains himself only through the reality that he is not.”35 In recognizing Nature as Other, transcendence becomes possible. Without encountering Nature as the Other to human beings and their actions, transcendence would not be meaningful. The background of an Other is necessary in order to distinguish one’s own efforts, for, as Beauvoir states, “the category of Other is as original as

33 Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Citadel Press, 1976), 12. 34 Ibid. 35 Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 159. John Kaszan 14 PHIL 702-001 consciousness itself.”36 Others are encountered in other individuals, of course; however, Nature is the Other to a collective humanity. It is the ultimate Other; it is, as Beauvoir has stated,

“Silence and mystery, an Other who escapes us.”37 Nature as an Other is not entirely foreign to me, as Beauvoir shows communication with Nature taking place; a desire to dwell in the natural world is present, but it is only through my difference from Nature that I am able to act of my own accord. The acts of human transcendence stand in contrast to the immanence of Nature.

What is also of note is that when Beauvoir categorizes the impossible possession of Nature as a joy.38 By classifying Nature as a joy, Beauvoir acknowledges that there is something meaningful for us in the experience of Nature, even if human meaning is created through the acts of transcendence that stand opposed to Nature. Joy also seems to suggest the possibility for a different type of valuation of Nature, which Beauvoir began to express in Pyrrhus and Cineas, where Nature is able to be valued by conservation.

For Beauvoir, Nature is something that human beings can have a relation to as a fellow subject; Nature is most certainly something that we can experience as Other. The few thoughts on Nature that Beauvoir has provided thus far do not create a comprehensive philosophy of

Nature. It is in The Second Sex that Beauvoir shows the implications of these small statements about Nature in her prior works, and with careful attention subtly introduces a comprehensive philosophy of Nature that includes her critiques of patriarchal society. Beauvoir here takes a different point of view on the relation of Nature than that which she portrays in her review of The

Phenomenology of Perception. In her review, Beauvoir characterizes the relationship with

Nature as a language that continually speaks to us, which recognizes humanity as “never out of

36 Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 6. 37 Beauvoir, “Review of Phenomenology of Perception,” in Philosophical Works, 162. 38 Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity, 12. John Kaszan 15 PHIL 702-001 place in the world,” even in “the most savage desert” and “the most hidden cave.”39 Recognizing

Nature as language is an idealized view of how human beings interact with Nature. The account of Beauvoir’s philosophy that I have provided thus far does not account for the present state of the world. To see how our relationship with Nature actually exists I turn to The Second Sex.

Nature in Actuality: The Second Sex and the Different Relations of the Sexes to Nature.

It is in The Second Sex where Beauvoir is able to give us a realistic view of how our relationship toward nature exists in actuality. Thus far Beauvoir has shown us an idealized relationship with Nature that does not take into account how humans have acted toward Nature in history. In The Second Sex Nature is something sought to be possessed by man. Beauvoir tells us that Nature is something “he tries to appropriate it for himself. But it cannot satisfy him.

Either it realizes itself as purely abstract opposition—it is an obstacle and remains foreign—or it passively submits to man’s desire and allows itself to be assimilated by him; he possesses it only in consuming it, that is, in destroying it.”40 Possession of Nature will always fail, as the attempt to possess Nature can only be realized in the literal consumption of Nature. Consumption is not a possession of Nature, but rather an attempt at possession that avoids the failure of possession.

Man cannot consume at all times, so there are moments where Nature is liberated albeit brief.

Man then equates Nature with something which it is possible for him to put into subservience, which is woman. Unlike Nature, which can only fleetingly be possessed in man’s consumption of it, woman is able to be possessed through the various social relations she has with man. Due to the fact she has been equated with Nature, the possession of woman serves to satisfy man’s desire to possess Nature, which is impossible to possess. Woman, Beauvoir says, is “the perfect

39 Beauvoir, “Review of Phenomenology of Perception,” in Philosophical Works, 162. 40 Beauvoir, Second Sex, 159. John Kaszan 16 PHIL 702-001 intermediary between nature that is foreign to man and the peer who is too identical to him.”41

She cannot transcend her body in the way that man can; her menstrual cycles are tied to the cycles of the moon, her motherhood risks making her “prey to the species,” leaving her “riveted to her body like the animal.”42 It is the fact that woman exists intermediately between man and

Nature in the myth of femininity that allows for her subjugation to serve as a subjugation of

Nature.

Beauvoir shows that man, who has defined himself as transcendence fears Nature.

Woman, whose body has been interpreted as having left her embedded in Nature, is also feared by man insofar as she is seen as being like Nature. It must be subdued. Man finds the Other as

Nature in Woman; he “seeks the Other in woman as Nature and his peer,”43 as Beauvoir has told us. Nature, however, is opposed to man due to the fact that he has come to understand himself in opposition to it.44 As Beauvoir explains, “he exploits it, but it crushes him; he is born from and he dies in it; it is the source of his being and the kingdom he bends to his will; it is a material envelope in which the soul is held prisoner, and it is the supreme reality; it is contingency and

Idea, finitude and totality; it is that which opposes Spirit and himself.”45 It is here from which man has come, and to which he will return in death. In subjugating woman, man seeks to subjugate Nature. Man sees woman as seeking to, in Beauvoir’s words, “imprison him in the mud of the earth.”46 She represents both fertility as well as death as the intermediary between man and Nature. Man is, as Beauvoir puts it, “horrified by death’s gratuitousness…horrified at having been engendered; he would like to rescind his animal attachments; because of his birth,

41 Beauvoir, Second Sex, 160. 42 Ibid., 75. 43 Ibid., 163. 44 For a further discussion on this point see: Sherry Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?,” in Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996). 45 Beauvoir, Second Sex, 163. 46 Ibid., 164. John Kaszan 17 PHIL 702-001 murderous Nature has a grip on him.”47 The womb becomes synonymous with his tomb. To overcome his connection to Nature he seeks to carnally possess the female. Man’s connection to

Nature is also why Beauvoir says that “an adolescent boy becomes embarrassed, blushes if he meets his mother, sisters, or women in his family when he is out with his friends: their presence recalls the regions of immanence from which he wants to escape; she reveals the roots [quite literally] that he wants to pull himself away from.”48

It is not by accident that the language of the harms that patriarchal society has carried out against the Earth are often personified as rape in relation to man’s possession of the Earth by key writers in the development of science. Carolyn Merchant, points out many of these trends: the

Earth is personified as having “veins” of ore, undiscovered land is deemed “virgin.” Sir Francis

Bacon talks about Nature’s secrets being still laid up in its womb.49 Merchant shows that we still use this language today in “praising a scientist’s ‘hard facts,’ ‘penetrating mind,’ or the ‘thrust of his argument.’ The constraints against penetration in Natura’s lament over her torn garments of modesty have been turned into sanctions in language that legitimates the exploitation and ‘rape’ of nature for human good.”50 Or, as Beauvoir points out,

in the same way that woman was identified with furrows, the phallus was identified with the plow, and vice versa. In a drawing representing a plow from the Kassite period, there are traces of the symbols of the generative act; afterward, the phallus-plow identity was frequently reproduced in art forms. The word lak in some Austro-Asian languages designates both phallus and plow. An Assyrian prayer addresses a god whose ‘plow fertilized the earth.’51

47 Beauvoir, Second Sex, 165. 48 Ibid. 49 Carolyn Merchant, “The Death of Nature,” in Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, ed. Michael E. Zimmerman (Upper Saddle River: NJ, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 2001), 277. 50 Ibid., 279. 51 Beauvoir, Second Sex, n. 10, 87. John Kaszan 18 PHIL 702-001

There are countless similar examples of Nature throughout the literature of the scientific revolution, however, the examples provided are sufficient enough for the point I am trying to make. Similarly, Beauvoir categorizes women’s dress as a means of binding them to Nature. She writes,

the role of dress is both to link the body more closely to and to wrest it away from nature…Woman was turned into plant, panther, diamond, or mother-of-pearl by mingling flowers, furs precious stones, shells, and feathers on her body; she perfumed herself so as to smell of roses and lilies: but feathers, silk, pearls, and perfumes also worked to hide the animal rawness from its flesh and odor…in the embellished woman, Nature was present but captive, shaped by human will in accordance with man’s desire.52 These historical examples that Beauvoir and Merchant use show very clearly how man seeks to make woman intermediary between himself and Nature, all the while attempting to escape his own connection to Nature through subjugation and domination of woman.

While the majority of her thoughts on Nature appear in the section on myths in The

Second Sex, Beauvoir does not seem to find the connection between women and Nature to be a myth that needs to be dispelled. Nature appears as a non-oppositional force in woman’s lived experience of the world. Beauvoir notes that, before fully becoming woman, a young girl “will devote a special love to Nature: more than the adolescent boy, she worships it. Untamed and inhuman, Nature encompasses most obviously the totality of what is.”53 “The Woman who maintained her independence through all her servitudes” says Beauvoir, “will ardently love her own freedom in Nature.”54 Woman is aware of the relation between society and the earth;

Beauvoir states, “Society subjugates Nature; but Nature dominates it; the Spirit affirms itself over Life; but it dies if life no longer supports it. Woman uses this ambivalence to assign more

52 Beauvoir, Second Sex, 177-178. 53 Ibid., 374. 54 Ibid., 657. John Kaszan 19 PHIL 702-001 truth to a garden than a city, to an illness than an idea, to a birth than a revolution; she tries to reestablish this reign of the earth.”55 Meanwhile, Beauvoir says, man is “climbing trees, fighting with his companions, confronting them in violent games, he grasps his body as a means to dominate nature and as a fighting tool.”56 Man also alienates himself in Nature by seeking to make himself nothing but pure spirit; he becomes embarrassed when confronted by the women in his life amongst his male friends because his immanence is made present to him through woman.57

It is not a necessity that woman experiences Nature so closely, or that man flees from

Nature. Beauvoir concludes in her chapter entitled “Biological Data” that Society’s “customs cannot be deduced from biology; individuals are never left to their nature; they obey this second nature, that is, customs in which the desires and fears that express their ontological attitude are reflected.”58 Our social values that society has instilled in us act as a second nature. Though

Beauvoir has noted that woman experiences Nature more closely than man, it does not mean that woman necessarily will experience Nature so closely. Existing in society, woman is never free from society’s influence, and because this is a patriarchal society, woman is embedded in Nature because she has been put there by man and therefore experiences it more closely because that is the lot she has been given in life. Simply because she menstruates or gives birth does not tie her to Nature. Beauvoir uses her chapter on Biology to show that simply because women give birth and menstruate, does not physically tie them to nature. The value placed upon these physiological facts is an interpretation of biological data that is conditional to the situation in which it is interpreted. It is a fact that women give birth and menstruate; it is conditional data

55 Beauvoir, Second Sex, 656. 56 Ibid., 294. 57 Ibid., 165. 58 Ibid., 47. John Kaszan 20 PHIL 702-001 that this makes woman, in the narrative that surrounds woman and Nature, closer to Nature.

Woman’s connection to Nature comes from an interpretation of her biological data. While woman’s subservience is distinguishable from the subduing of Nature, it is present as such in this world as related phenomena. Two different sets of data have found themselves intertwined to be a reality. Women are exploited. Nature too is exploited. Women have become identified as being connected to Nature and Nature became personified as woman.

The Human-Nature Mitsein: How Beauvoir’s Ethics Falls Short and What It Lacks

What is most important in Beauvoir’s understanding of Nature is that women find themselves tied to Nature, as the intermediary between man and Nature. Man has tried in bad faith to escape the reality of his connection to Nature. Beauvoir declares that for women, who have, as Beauvoir says, “not completely abdicated, nature represents what woman represents for man: herself and her negation, a kingdom and a place of exile; she is all in the guise of the other.”59 Women and men, Beauvoir makes clear, exist in a mitsein, being with; they cannot exist without one another. If we take what Beauvoir says about woman’s relation to Nature seriously, it becomes clear that she exists in a mitsein with Nature as well. She experiences

Nature as Other and they are mutually dependent upon each other. The mitsein with Nature is a reality of human existence, but it is not clear whether woman has entered this relationship naturally or whether she was socially forced into it through man’s interpretation of her body.

Woman relies on Nature for all things and interprets its language, making it appear to her as

Other. Men also exist in this mitsein, however, they have tried to subjugate both Nature and woman to avoid the reality of this mitsein, thus leading them to bad faith. This mitsein comes about through human beings’ dependency upon Nature, and Nature’s need for an interpreter of

59 Beauvoir, Second Sex, 747. John Kaszan 21 PHIL 702-001 its signs, which, as Beauvoir has previously stated, even “the most savage desert, the most hidden cave still secrete a human meaning.”60 Everything that human beings consume and use comes from Nature; it is a simple fact of utility. Nature is useful to us because it constitutes everything that we consume. Human beings also cannot exist except as Other to Nature, and this seems to be Beauvoir’s main point. The fact that “no group ever defines itself as One without immediately setting up the Other opposite itself,”61 shows that as a collective humanity, as civilization and society, Nature is that which is Other to us. Nature is a language that secretes human meaning, it is familiar; yet it is also “silence and mystery, an Other who escapes us.”62

Without Nature to contrast it there is no recognizable identity to culture, let alone human projects.

It still remains to be seen why as human beings, following Beauvoir’s philosophy of

Nature that I have laid out, we should bother to care about Nature beyond preserving it anymore than necessary to maintain our consumption of it. When Beauvoir was writing, the ecological crisis we find ourselves in today was hardly a known reality. It was not until the later part of her life that we began to find our existence becoming threatened by the acts that we carried out against the earth in the name of consumption, convenience, and profit. While in Pyrrhus and

Cineas, Beauvoir grounds the value of Nature in utility, it becomes clear in The Ethics of

Ambiguity that the impossible possession of Nature is a joy. The failure to dominate Nature, in any means except consumption, allows for there to be meaning in human existence. To know that we will fail at possessing Nature allows for humans to find meaning through something other than their own transcendence. Nature can only become apparent to us when it is other than

60 Beauvoir, “Review of Phenomenology of Perception,” in Philosophical Works, 162. 61 Beauvoir, Second Sex, 6. 62 Beauvoir, “Review of Phenomenology of Perception,” in Philosophical Works, 162. John Kaszan 22 PHIL 702-001 us, or as Beauvoir remarks, “I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me.”63 The preservation of the antithesis to culture and society makes it so culture and society are able to be a joy for us. Nature brings meaning to our projects by grounding them in the world. Much like the body is the original situation that we face, both men and women, the world is the original situation of humanity as a collective. In order to be in the world we must realize Beauvoir’s point that “perception is not a relationship between subject and an object foreign to one another; it ties us to the world as to our homeland, it is communication and communion.”64 It is important to note that Beauvoir’s values are all human based. Nothing can be valuable in itself. Beauvoir has shown that Nature is not worth anything if there is not an

Other to Nature which can be of and simultaneously separate from Nature. Humanity is Other to

Nature. The value of Nature for Beauvoir lies in human beings appreciation of it rather than the human appropriation of Nature. Such an environmental ethic would require us to attempt to try to speak Nature’s language rather than attempt to understand and decipher it. Due to the fact that

Beauvoir gives value to Nature because of its utility to human beings does not mean that she is advocating its consumption, though some degree is necessary for human existence. The vast majority of Beauvoir’s valuation of Nature comes from the joy that one receives in encountering

Nature as Other. The joy of encountering Nature as Other is something that has no price, much like human freedom.

In acting towards Nature, Beauvoir’s ethics of transcendence, as outlined in The Ethics of

Ambiguity, falls short as an environmental ethic. In such an ethics there is still a value to Nature

63 Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity, 12. 64 Beauvoir, “Review of Phenomenology of Perception,” in Philosophical Works, 162. John Kaszan 23 PHIL 702-001 and its preservation, but this value does not come through us, but rather our duty to other people to ensure their freedom. If we destroy Nature, the freedom of others means nothing because as a human collective, as society, our actions as an organization are only understood in contrast to

Nature. Nature, as we can see is not treated as though it had freedom. Freedom is distinctly human, and cannot be transferred to Nature. If Nature were to possess freedom then it would not be Other to humanity. Nature relies entirely on immanence. An ethics that values transcendence fails here. Insofar as Nature has been equated with immanence it has come be at odds with an ethics that values transcendence. Nature is then wrongly opposed as static, as incapable of surpassing itself; however, a closer look at Nature recognizes this view of Nature as untrue. The natural world is constantly in flux, yet never attempting to surpass itself in the ways that

Beauvoir accuses man, who “considers himself a fallen god.”65 Man, however, has interpreted

Nature as immanence, as seen in the myth of the Eternal Feminine. If we want to develop an ethics of Nature, it must come from immanence, from our enmeshment in Nature as opposed to transcendence. At the end of The Second Sex, Beauvoir ultimately seems to advocate transcendence for women as opposed to pulling man back down into his immanence, the reality he tries to escape by thinking himself to be pure spirit and idea.66 To have an ethics of pure immanence, however, does not pull humanity out of Nature so that it may perceive Nature and attempt to speak the language of Nature. What is needed is an ethic that thoughtfully accounts for and respects both transcendence and immanence because it recognizes the mitsein between humanity and Nature, while still allowing human efforts to exist as separate from Nature.

Beauvoir begins to approach such an ethic toward the end of The Second Sex when she says,

“today’s woman is nature’s creation; it must be repeated again that within the human collectivity

65 Beauvoir, Second Sex, 164. 66 Ibid., 163. John Kaszan 24 PHIL 702-001 nothing is natural.”67 Beauvoir ultimately, I think, fails to emphasize the importance of immanence in the face of transcendence; to fail to recognize the importance of immanence in the face of transcendence favors humanity and sees no other meaning possible in the world other than that which human beings create. Such an ethic does not respect Nature and leads us to our current ecological crisis by not even recognizing the possibility of a view outside of anthropocentrism. Transcendence seems to be Beauvoir’s preferred method of ethical action, and as I have made explicit in Beauvoir’s philosophy of Nature, an ethic of transcendence in patriarchal society is what has met both women and Nature with animosity and possession.

Beauvoir’s critique of our relationship to Nature provides a fully formed philosophy of

Nature to which eco-feminists should pay particular attention because of how it prizes woman’s relationship to Nature in order to critique the patriarchal relationship that society has with

Nature. Regardless of our conception of woman’s relationship to Nature, as influenced by the myth of femininity, Beauvoir treats woman’s connection to Nature as a means of reintroducing the forgotten mitsein between human beings and Nature. Neither the mitsein that exists between men and women, nor the mitsein that exists between human beings and Nature can be repaired on their own. The myth of femininity negatively affects both women and Nature. The struggles of feminist liberation and the struggles of earth liberation are connected. It is not necessary that these struggles be connected, but because the myth that has been put forth by patriarchy sees woman as man’s intermediary to Nature, both women and Nature share their oppression. The question that remains is whether that myth should be used to inspire and liberate both women and Nature, or whether women should reject the connection to Nature and their immanence in order to achieve and embody the ethics of transcendence that men have come to embrace. In

67 Beauvoir, Second Sex, 760-761. John Kaszan 25 PHIL 702-001 understanding Beauvoir as a resource for eco-feminism, her feminist critique needs to be recognized as simultaneously containing a philosophy of Nature. This is something which she has not yet been recognized for. It becomes clear that Beauvoir wants to allow immanence to play a role in ethics, yet recognizes both the distinction between humans and Nature and the need for such a distinction to be sustained in order to benefit both parties. Transcendence is needed to set human beings apart from Nature, yet immanence is needed to ground them in this world. The problem is that immanence has been forgotten from our ethical understanding of the world, and especially our perception of ourselves in Nature. Even Beauvoir doesn’t seem to go far enough in emphasizing the importance of immanence for all of humanity in The Second Sex. An ethic of pure immanence, however, would not allow for a distinction to be made between human beings and Nature, which would make a mitsein between humans and Nature impossible as alterity is a key part of that mitsein. Though the fields of eco-feminism and environmental ethics have gone far since Beauvoir had written the texts discussed in this paper, the value that Beauvoir’s texts offer to unexplored perspectives of these fields should be examined in order to develop a more accurate history of eco-feminism and environmental ethics.

While it seems as though the mitsein that Beauvoir presents in The Second Sex were simply between man and woman, upon closer examination it includes nature as well. Due to this mitsein Nature cannot be subjugated or destroyed, rather we must learn to exist amongst Nature.

Nature does not exist except as Other to human experience and culture, in the same way that woman does not exist except as Other to man. It is in this understanding of Nature that Beauvoir had essentially created the groundwork for an ecologically minded feminism, decades prior to the development of eco-feminism as a field of critique. With so much careful attention paid to her own philosophy of Nature which must be drawn out from her major works, we cannot give John Kaszan 26 PHIL 702-001

Beauvoir what is due without recognizing her as a fore-runner to eco-feminism, not just in her feminist philosophy, which has already been influential to many, but in her philosophy of

Nature. At the very least, Beauvoir should be recognized as a valuable resource for eco- feminism whose writings pre-date the earliest eco-feminist thinkers.

John Kaszan 27 PHIL 702-001

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