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Simone De Beauvoir and the Problem of the Other's Simone de Beauvoir and The Problem of The Other’s Consciousness: Risk, Responsibility and Recognition by Wendy O’Brien A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2013 ©Wendy O’Brien 2013 AUTHOR'S DECLARATION I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii Abstract In an interview with Jessica Benjamin and Margaret Simons in 1979, Simone de Beauvoir identified the problem that had preoccupied her across her lifetime, that is, “her” problem, as the problem of the “the consciousness of the other”. In making this claim, she echoed words she had written almost fifty years earlier, when in 1927 as an undergraduate student, she wrote in her journal that what interested her was “almost always this opposition of self and other that I have felt since beginning to live”. In bookending her career in this manner, Beauvoir points her readers to consider her work as a sustained engagement with Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, for it is in this text that this problem takes shape. Hegel traces the journey of spirit from consciousness to Absolute Knowledge. In so doing he provides a description of how it is that the self comes to reside in the other and the other to reside in the self as the hostility that initially leads to the objectification of one by the other gives way to recognition. This study investigates the development of Beauvoir’s understanding of the problem of the other’s consciousness. Three times across her career Beauvoir would turn to Hegel’s text. Using these readings as guideposts, it traces her account of the relationship between self and other from her study of hostility in her early works, through to her discovery of the force of history and the interdependence of subjectivities in her moral period, to her exploration of the forms of reciprocity in her mature studies, finally through to her acknowledgement of mutual recognition via her reflections on writing in her late works. It examines the ways in which Beauvoir thinks with Hegel, picking up his project, contextualizing and criticizing it, thus giving it life. iii Acknowledgements This dissertation has been a lifetime’s work. Literally. And so there are many people to thank for their contributions both to the content and to the completion of this study. Some special recognitions must be made. First, let me thank Dr. Richard Holmes for his patience and commitment to this project. He taught me not only the works of the philosophers whose ideas mark these pages but also through his example taught me how to be a good teacher and a good person. My thanks goes as well to Dr. Margaret Simons for her willingness to serve as my external evaluator for this project. Her comments, insights and enthusiasm have greatly enhanced the development of my understanding of Beauvoir’s philosophy. Lastly, to Dr. Shannon Dea, Dr. Patricia Marino and Dr. John H. Smith, my heartfelt thanks for their patient and careful reading of this work. Your contributions are evident on every page. This thesis has been a community project. Each one of these individuals in their own unique way contributed to the whole. Through their lived experience I learned the truth of the Hegelian dialectic; that self and other are always already intertwined and that we are never alone. Many thanks to Edna and Gerald O’Brien, Roy and Luella Nafziger, Sheryl Nafziger, Gail Nafziger, Lester Embree, Richard Nutbrown, Mano Daniels, Scott Stewart, Bruce Janz, Debbie Deitrich, Joseph Fernando, William Hanna, Pamela Hanft, Clive Cockerton, John Elias, Melanie Chaparian, Joe Kertes, David and Lorelei Smith, Bill Whitehead, Trevor Green, Edward Primrose, Paula Gouevia, Jason Galea, Eileen DeCourcey, and to my students and my colleagues at Humber, The University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University who I have had the honour to teach and to learn from. A special thanks for their unending “support” to Wayson Choy, Alejandro Cervantes-Carson, Becky and Sami Sappong, and Maureen and Ijaz Ahmed. Finally, to Monday Ewara who was there with me through it all: words cannot express my gratitude for all that you have given me. iv Dedication For Emelia, Eyo, Emmanuel, Antonia and Naana who taught me how to write and how to live this story. the life of the Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastations, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when in utter dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which close its eyes to the negative, as when we say of something that is nothing or is false, and then, having done with it, turn away and pass on to something else; on the contrary, Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. – Hegel, Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit . .I decided to begin writing again: this, it seemed to me, was an act of faith and hope. – Beauvoir, The Prime of Life v Table of Contents AUTHOR'S DECLARATION ............................................................................................................... ii! Abstract ................................................................................................................................................. iii! Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................... iv! Dedication ............................................................................................................................................... v! Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................. vi! List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................................................... viii! Chapter 1 Introduction: Beauvoir, Hegel and The Problem of The Other .............................................. 1! 1.1 Simone de Beauvoir and The Problem of the Other’s Consciousness .......................................... 1! 1.2 Reading and Re-reading Hegel ..................................................................................................... 7! Chapter 2 Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit ............................................................................... 13! 2.1 Hegel ........................................................................................................................................... 13! 2.2 The Phenomenology .................................................................................................................... 17! 2.3 First Moment: Consciousness ..................................................................................................... 20! 2.4 From Consciousness to Self-Consciousness ............................................................................... 24! 2.5 The Second Moment: The Master-Slave Dialectic ..................................................................... 27! 2.6 Transition: From Self-Consciousness to Recognition ................................................................. 33! 2.7 The Third Moment: Recognition ................................................................................................. 35! 2.8 Beauvoir and Hegel: The Commentaries .................................................................................... 40! Chapter 3 Risk ....................................................................................................................................... 47! 3.1 The Early Works ......................................................................................................................... 47! 3.2 A Matter of Influence .................................................................................................................. 48! 3.3 The Diaries .................................................................................................................................. 56! 3.4 On Love ....................................................................................................................................... 60! 3.5 Self and Others ............................................................................................................................ 64! 3.6 Philosophy and Literature ........................................................................................................... 68! 3.7 She Came to Stay ......................................................................................................................... 71! Chapter 4 Responsibility ....................................................................................................................... 91! 4.1 The Moral Period ........................................................................................................................ 91! 4.2 Reading Hegel’s Phenomenology ............................................................................................... 96! 4.3 Pyrrhus and Cinéas ................................................................................................................... 109! 4.4 Reframing the Problem: On Violence and Generosity .............................................................
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