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The Pennsylvania State University the Graduate School College of The The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts BEAUVOIR‘S MORAL PERIOD PHILOSOPHY A Dissertation in Philosophy by David Saul Seltzer © 2011 David Saul Seltzer Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2011 The dissertation of David Saul Seltzer was reviewed and approved* by the following: Emily Grosholz Professor of Philosophy, African American Studies, and English Fellow of the Institute of Arts and Humanities Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee Shannon Sullivan Professor of Philosophy, Women‘s Studies, and African and African American Studies Head of the Department of Philosophy Brady Bowman Assistant Professor of Philosophy Allan Stoekl Professor of French and Comparative Literature *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. ii Abstract My dissertation is about Simone de Beauvoir‘s moral period works, a series of works she wrote in the mid-1940‘s, including Pyrrhus and Cinéas and The Ethics of Ambiguity, in which she tries to develop a workable version of existentialist ethics. I argue that Beauvoir‘s moral period works exhibit a complex relation to the tradition of ethical philosophy beginning with Kant and continuing through Hegel. On the one hand, Beauvoir, like Kant and Hegel, builds her ethics around the freedom and autonomy of the self, which in turn grounds the dignity of the self, and its demands for respect and recognition. On the other hand, Beauvoir rejects Kantian and Hegelian metaphysics in favor of phenomenology, and this has consequences for her ethics. For Beauvoir, we need to realize the ideals of dignity, respect, and recognition through action in the concrete world of particular and situated human beings. This position creates a tension in her work. Because people are heterogeneous, it is impossible to act for some without simultaneously acting against others, so that the ideal of universal respect and recognition in a kingdom of ends or a community of mutual recognition turns out to be impossible. Beauvoir responds to this tension by offering a loose set of guidelines to help us navigate the complex ethical dilemmas we face in our everyday lives. Beauvoir‘s project, if successful, would preserve the powerful normative ethics of Kant and Hegel, but without the need to accept problematic metaphysical positions such as the noumena/phenomena distinction or the completion of the System. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... v Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. Preparatory Material .............................................................................................. 13 Kant and Hegel ........................................................................................................................ 13 Beauvoir Biography ................................................................................................................. 29 Chapter 2. Beauvoir’s Agreement with Kant and Hegel ........................................................ 61 Freedom and Autonomy ......................................................................................................... 61 Dignity, Respect, and Recognition ......................................................................................... 76 Retributive Justice ................................................................................................................... 94 Summary ................................................................................................................................ 103 Chapter 3. Beauvoir’s Disagreement with Kant and Hegel .................................................. 107 Kant......................................................................................................................................... 110 Hegel ....................................................................................................................................... 117 Moral Realism ........................................................................................................................ 123 Problems of Moral Realism .................................................................................................. 126 The Calculus of Freedom ...................................................................................................... 137 Chapter 4. Beauvoir’s Literary Works ................................................................................... 148 Useless Mouths ....................................................................................................................... 149 The Blood of Others................................................................................................................ 156 All Men Are Mortal ................................................................................................................ 170 Chapter 5. Critical Assessment ................................................................................................ 180 Criticisms of the Moral Period ............................................................................................. 180 Philosophical Replies ............................................................................................................. 192 Historical Context .................................................................................................................. 197 Notes ........................................................................................................................................... 204 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 232 iv Acknowledgements There are many people without whom this dissertation would not have been possible. The original idea for this dissertation came out of a meeting with Mitchell Aboulafia, Catherine Kemp, Dan Conway, and Claire Katz in the summer of 2005. Mitchell and Cathy continued to support me even after they had left Penn State, and helped me to work out the topic paragraphs and the organizational structure. The actual writing took place under the direction of Emily Grosholz, who gave me the information and the guidance I needed to turn an idea into a fully fledged dissertation. Shannon Sullivan, Brady Bowman, and Allan Stoekl gave of their time to serve on my committee. Terry McGrail and Roxann Kormanik helped me to navigate the formal requirements of the Philosophy Department and the Graduate School. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Margie and Joe, for the love and support they provided during the long and often stressful process of writing such an extended piece of work. v Introduction Simone de Beauvoir identified the years 1942-1946 as a distinct ―moral period‖ in her career as a writer.1 During this time, she produced two major philosophical essays, Pyrrhus and Cinéas and The Ethics of Ambiguity, two novels, The Blood of Others and All Men Are Mortal, and several shorter works in a variety of genres. All of these works, as the label ―moral period‖ suggests, somehow concern matters of ethics. Many of them directly address the historical events that were happening in France at the time – the war, occupation, liberation, and purge – and all of them were influenced by these events. The moral period works fit within the intellectual movement in mid-20th century France that ultimately became known as Existentialism, although Beauvoir herself tried to resist the label, and only reluctantly accepts the term in her 1945 essay ―Existentialism and Popular Wisdom.‖2 Beauvoir‘s moral period works exhibit a complex relationship to the tradition of modern ethical philosophy beginning with Kant and continuing through Hegel. On the one hand, Beauvoir accepts the basic concepts of Kantian and Hegelian normative ethics. Beauvoir, like Kant and Hegel, builds her ethics around the freedom and autonomy of the self. This freedom and autonomy, as in Kant and Hegel, grounds the dignity of the self, which must be respected and recognized. Beauvoir‘s underlying agreement with Kant and Hegel also leads her to agree with them about smaller points such as paternalism and the purpose of punishment. Beauvoir is quite open about these connections. She says that, in the early 1940‘s, she took extensive notes on Kant, and used Kant as ―a focal point or sounding board, or the standard upon which my own arguments and the arguments of other philosophers must be judged.‖3 In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir explicitly states that existentialism ―carries on the tradition of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel‖; she also explicitly identifies her philosophy as a form of radical humanism, in the 1 tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Marx4 Later in The Ethics of Ambiguity, she seems to imply that her position is an ethics of autonomy, a tradition which she sees as starting with Kantian ethics,5 and in good Kantian fashion she announces that she intends to formulate ethical principles which can apply universally to all human beings.6 Throughout her moral period works, Beauvoir often calls attention to smaller points of agreement with these philosophers, or marks her agreement by using obviously Kantian and Hegelian language, such as dignity, respect, recognition, and the ends/means distinction. On
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