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A Study in the Philosophy of Simone De Beauvoir A i ENGENDERING SUBJECTIVITY: A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Jina M. Fast December 2014 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Lewis Gordon, Chair, Temple University, Philosophy Department Dr. Joseph Margolis, Temple University, Philosophy Department Dr. Miriam Solomon, Temple University, Philosophy Department Dr. Sally Scholz, External Member, Villanova University, Philosophy Department ii ABSTRACT In this study I advance the thesis that Simone de Beauvoir’s account of the development of subjectivity is based in a consideration of the Hegelian description of the development of subjectivity in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Like Hegel, Beauvoir argues that an aspect of the development of subjectivity is the ability to discover oneself as related to the collective world. Additionally, she shows through her various works that individual identity and freedom are conditioned by the possibility for intersubjective recognition, and development of a project within an ambiguous relationship between the self, others, and the shared social world. Nevertheless, throughout history this foundation for the possibility of freedom has often been lacking and more so for some groups than others, which points us to an important difference in focus in Hegel and Beauvoir’s work. For one, the subject in the idealized Hegelian account comes to recognize its power and freedom as it progresses in its connections and influence within the world. But, for those who have historically lacked options (women, those who happen to be black, the poor, etc.) transcendence in terms of the actualization of one’s identity and recognized participation in the collective is at best often co-opted or concealed and at worst impossible. Thus, one of the central differences between Hegel’s narrative in the Phenomenology and Beauvoir’s in The Second Sex is that for women the cycle is a building up of deception, not a progression to clarity and understanding. This progression as Beauvoir shows is neither natural nor perfect, rather it depends upon the possibilities historically granted to specific social groups and denied to others. The central focus of this study is Beauvoir’s analysis of the process of becoming (a) woman, but it is not limited to this. Rather, I argue that through engaging with iii Beauvoir’s philosophy, including her appeal to Hegel, we (1) come to understand the ambiguity of the human condition, desire, intention, and identity, (2) the bad faith that often manifests in our relations with others, and (3) the existence of the spectrums of oppression and privilege. There are, of course, several ways to approach the study of historical figures in philosophy. We can treat them as though they are our contemporaries, analyzing their arguments and clarifying their ideas with the intention of showing their relevance to our contemporary concerns. Or, we can study them in their historical contexts with an eye toward tracing the development of their doctrines, attempting as we go to restructure them within their historical situations and as individuals. Both of these approaches have their benefits and drawbacks. In the former, we succeed in making Beauvoir and Hegel relevant as participants in our contemporary dialogues; but we may be making them relevant through reading our own contemporary views and concerns into their texts. In taking the latter approach, we do not use these historical figures as mere mouths, but through reifying them in their historical context we may find them to be less relevant. In what follows I seek to strike a balance between these approaches, especially in that I am engaging a philosophical predecessor (Beauvoir) who is engaging a philosophical predecessor (Hegel). In order to do this I look at the context in which Beauvoir is using Hegel, the influence of her closest philosophical companions on her use of Hegel, and how feminists have since used Beauvoir’s philosophy to address contemporary problems. And while I understand the purpose of philosophy to be in fact engagement, rather than a process of historical excavation, I believe that through examining these various relations we can use historical figures to analyze and resolve the urgent social, political, and theoretical issues of our time, while iv simultaneously understanding that the times in which they originally philosophized may be vastly different from our own. v CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................1 2. SITUATING BEAUVOIR WITHIN THE HEGELIAN REVIVAL IN FRANCE…………………………………………………………………………30 The Concept versus the Life………………………….............................35 Shift to the Phenomenology………………………..........……………...46 Toward and Existential Reading…………...…………………………...58 3. THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE OTHER IN BAD FAITH…………………….74 The Master-Slave Dialectic in the Second Sex.……………..……….…..81 On the Road to a Mature Position Regarding Oppression…………...…111 4. A SPLIT SELF: THE FEMININE, THE SUBJECT AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION………………………………………………………………..128 Intentionality and Femininity……………………………………….….133 Problems Regarding the Sex/Gender Distinction…………………..….141 The Elimination of Excess and Lesbian Desire in She Came to Stay.....160 5. CO-OPTED DESIRE AS A SHARED FOUNDATION FOR THE GROUP WOMAN………………………………………………………………………..180 Emotion and Identity: An Existential Constructivist Perspective………185 Understanding the Social Form of Emotions and Identity……………..202 The Category of Woman as Objective, Not Absolute………………….217 6. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF PRIVILEGE: INVESTIGATING THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN RACE AND GENDER………………………..237 vi Privilege: What Is It, Who Has It, and What Does It Mean for Those Who Don’t…………………………………..………………………………..242 Using Beauvoir to Understand Privilege and Social Power as a Spectrum………………………………………………………………..245 In Search for a Way to Move Beyond Privilege……………………..…254 Conclusion………..…………………………………………………….272 WORKS CITED……………………………………………………………………….279 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION I here advance the thesis that Simone de Beauvoir’s description of the development of subjectivity for women is based in a consideration of the Hegelian account of the development of subjectivity in the Phenomenology of Spirit. That said, there are acute divergences within Beauvoir’s account that make this a consideration of the development of subjectivity as detailed in the Phenomenology and not a direct application regarding the development of women in The Second Sex. For one, as Beauvoir asserts, the female gendered body experiences the development of subjectivity in a degraded manner and often fails to come to liberation and freedom through renegotiating her options in a concrete manner. Thus, we cannot identify Beauvoir’s appeal to Hegel’s developmental account of subjectivity as a simple adoption or adaptation to fit the situation(s) within which we find women. Rather, Beauvoir’s critical engagement with Hegel is a complicated affair. For example, in The Second Sex she makes varied, and at times seemingly contradictory, references to the Hegelian master-slave dialectic. Yet, commentators generally assume that the conflict of consciousnesses as it unfolds in Hegel’s master-slave dialectic plays the central role in Beauvoir’s theory of oppression and recent feminist scholarship understands Beauvoir’s appeal this dialectic in The Second Sex as functioning primarily in one of two manners. The first group argues Beauvoir intends the reader to understand woman as occupying a particular space within the dialectic or outside the dialectic. Woman, these scholars argue, is opposed to man as the slave is to the master in Hegel’s famous dialectic.1 The second group claims that woman, as she is the absolute Other and not 1 See Mussett (2006), James (2003), Anderson (2006), and Veltman (2004). 2 merely just another other, is unable or barred from engaging in the relational structure of the master-slave dialectic. Unlike man, woman supposedly does not risk her life (in the physical sense) in the life and death struggle; thus she is apparently prevented from attaining reciprocal recognition with man.2 These two approaches, however, result in a criticism of Beauvoir; namely, that Beauvoir fundamentally misappropriates Hegel’s dialectic as a static representation of the relationship between men and women. This static representation is most apparent in the first group where women are understood as akin to Hegel’s slave consciousness, but the second typical reading fails in two other important manners. First, it sets up the physical struggle as the primary manner in which the risk of life is conducted and places women as having to relate to others in a way that has been based upon and set up for interactions between men. Second, it renders invisible specific historical encounters between women, for instance in situations of racial slavery, where there arose conflicts between women who possessed absolute authority as slaver mistresses over other women understood as their “property”. In this case, however, we should recognize there is already a divergence from the typified Hegelian body-to-body struggle in that the slaver mistress is protected by a system as she wages violence on the enslaved.3 Finally, while the master-slave dialectic
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