Introduction

INTRODUCTION

Tove Pettersen and Annlaug Bjørsnøs

Since Ancient Greece, the humanities has studied human beings in their per- sonal, social, and political context. The disciplines subsumed under the humanities has fostered new understandings of what it means to be human, and of our cultural interactions. They have shaped our perception of the world. A person studying one or several of these disciplines is—in a broad understand- ing of the term—a humanist. The knowledge gained from humanistic research is considered to be the cornerstone of well-functioning democracies (Nuss- baum, 2010, p. 72). In today’s society, where almost all research and every academic disci- pline is expected to adapt to the market’s demands for immediate commercial and financial profitability, the humanities is required to prove its worth and significance. To meet these challenges, the humanities must clearly articulate, as well as broadly proclaim its important contributions to society. At the same time, humanistic research must also continue to pursue scientific excellence for its own sake, as well as renew itself in order to engage more overtly with the actual problems of our time. Simone de Beauvoir—A Humanist Thinker is a contribution to the de- fense of the importance of the humanities. The overall intention of this volume is to demonstrate the significance and value of humanistic research through the work of Simone de Beauvoir.

1. Beauvoir—A Humanist

“The humanities”—which includes the academic disciplines where studies of human beings are the center of attention—is a term coined from the Latin word humanus. From humanus, which translates as human being or man, is also derived the term “humanism.” The most common, and broadest under- standing of humanism is, “whatever is characteristic of human beings, proper to man,” or what is “generally pertaining to man” (Giustiniani, 1985, pp. 168, 171). Humanism aims at pinpointing what distinguishes human beings from both non-human animals and God. Nevertheless, the comprehension of humanism fluctuates in and between different languages, historical epochs, and different thinkers (ibid., p. 178). Although human-centered reasoning and mindset can be found in Ancient Greece—for example, when the pre-Socratic philosopher Protagoras, according to Plato, claimed, “man is the measure of all things”—this thinking fully advanced with the rise of the Italian Renaissance. Many Renaissance thinkers viewed human beings as free beings, able to guide themselves through their 2 TOVE PETTERSEN AND ANNLAUG BJØRSNØS own reasoning and capable of achieving happiness and moral perfection with- out guidance from religious authorities (ibid., p. 179). Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam manifested this view in his educational work of 1570 when he as- serted, “man is certainly not born, but made man” (1985, p. 304). Reflection on what generally pertains to man is a “philosophy of human beings.” According to German-British philosopher F. C. S. Schiller:

“Humanism is really in itself the simplest of philosophical standpoints; it is merely the perception that the philosophical problem concerns human beings striving to comprehend a world of human experience by the re- sources of human minds.” (1912, p. 12)

Humanism defends indeterminism and freedom (ibid., p. 392). In this under- standing of humanism, human beings are taken to be free beings, and there- fore not obligated to subjugate themselves to any external legislator. On the contrary; individuals should create and shape their own lives. They should aim at unfolding their full potential, and in order to do so, education is considered to play an important role (Giustiniani, 1985, p. 190). Existential philosophy, the philosophical tradition of which Simone de Beauvoir is a part, shares these basic conceptions of human beings. This shared metaphysics is the most obvious reason for this volume’s claim that Beauvoir is a humanist thinker and why Jean-Paul Sartre declared, “Existen- tialism is a Humanism” in his legendary 1946 lecture (2007), a view disputed by Martin Heidegger in Uber den Humanismus (About humanism) (1947). Despite the apparent connection between Beauvoir’s fundamental ideas and the humanist tradition, as well as the proximity to her contemporary de- bate on humanism, the relationship between her thinking and humanism has not been much explored before now. In 1985, Iris Marion Young dismissed and criticized what she termed Beauvoir’s humanist feminism in her article “Humanism, Gynocentrism, and Feminist Politics.” Young based her reading of Beauvoir on a limited access to Beauvoir’s work; her only source was H. M. Parshley’s much-criticized 1953 translation of Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Beauvoir’s humanism is also mentioned by Prudence Allen, but described in too narrow a way: “Simone de Beauvoir’s existential humanism, like Sartre’s, concentrates only on one aspect of human consciousness, or what they called the ‘for-itself’” (2004, p. 270). In recent years, only Sonia Kruks has contrib- uted to the exploration of Beauvoir’s humanism in Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity (2012). All the chapters in this volume explore and demonstrate how Beauvoir is dedicated to a secular humanist view of human beings: the center of Beau- voir’s entire output is precisely about human experiences, freedom, and au- thentic choices. Beauvoir’s works reveal and discuss how values, norms, cultures, and social structures are human-made. She also discloses how the social construction of value hierarchies and privileges benefit some at the