Simone de Beauvoir's Existentialist Ethics: What the Visible Can Teach Us About the

Ethical

by

Christinia Ryan Landry

Honours Bachelor of Arts (Philosophy), The University of Western Ontario, 2002

Masters of Arts (Philosophy), Brock University, 2006

DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Department of Philosophy

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for

Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy

Wilfrid Laurier University

2011

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•+• Canada Abstract

This thesis is an investigation into Simone de Beauvoir's existentialist ethics and the

problem that woman's situation presents in realizing that ethics. I argue that Beauvoir

does not take her existential-phenomenological commitments far enough given the

ontological influence of Sartre on her ethics. By failing to truly push her

phenomenological thinking her examination of woman's situation risks closing off a

brilliant ethics that accounts for the complexity of the human reality. I show that

Beauvoir's ethics can speak to contemporary Western woman's situation if Beauvoir

takes seriously the implications of her notion of disclosure and brings it to bear on the

patriarchal power-terrain of contemporary Western culture. Disclosure creates a bridge by

way of appropriating and recognizing the possibilities for reciprocity. Disclosure

demonstrates that we cannot simply close down the ethical relationship by reducing the

other to a body-object, thus woman's situation as body-object is not final rather it is

creatively co-constituted through her interaction with the other. In thinking through the

possibilities for inter subjective relationships this thesis unpacks the ontological, ethical,

and existential-phenomenological work of Beauvoir and brings her into dialogue with her predecessors and colleagues. In order to push Beauvoir's phenomenological thinking on intersubjectivity beyond her original formulation, I turn to the work of Maurice Merleau-

Ponty, who assists me in achieving a viable existentialist ethics by way of the visible.

1 Acknowledgments

This dissertation would not have been possible without the patience, passion, and tireless work of Dr. Christine Daigle and Dr. Helen Fielding. Both professors gave me years of their precious time and cultivated within me a passion for philosophy in their capacities as professors at Brock University and The University of Western Ontario and as dissertation advisors. Dr. Daigle encouraged me to workshop my ideas and was generous with her own. She always had time to review my work even in its very rough beginnings and for this I am thankful. Dr. Fielding directed me toward sources and discussed the ideas presented therein which helped to push my own thinking farther. I am most grateful that both thinkers provided me not only with dissertation advising, but more importantly they served as mentors. I would also like to thank Dr. Allison Weir and Dr.

Rebekah Johnston for their helpful suggestions. Finally, I would like to thank Dr.

Margaret Toye and Dr. Dorothea Olkowski for reviewing my thesis with fresh eyes and encouraging me to take my work in new and exciting directions.

It would have been next to impossible to write this dissertation without the financial support of Wilfrid Laurier University and the Ontario Government. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the travel funding I received from the Wilfrid Laurier University

Department of Philosophy, the Dean of Arts, the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral

Studies, and the Graduate Students' Association. Without these travel monies I would not have been able to engage in the philosophical community to the extent that I did.

Finally, I would like to thank my partner David, my family, and my colleagues in

Waterloo and across Canada for all their emotional support. Their friendship and encouragement mitigated the isolation of research and writing.

2 Table of Contents Abstract 1 Acknowledgments 2 Introduction 4 Section I: Beauvoir's Ontological Beginnings 28 Chapter 1: Hegel's Ontological Influence 31 Chapter 2: Heidegger's Ontological Influence 55 Chapter 3: Sartre's Ontological Influence 69 Conclusion to Beauvoir's Ontology 89 Section II: Beauvoir's Existentialist Ethics 91 Chapter 1: Beauvoir's Existentialism 94 Chapter 2: Beauvoir's Ethical Beginnings 105 Chapter 3: Beauvoir's Explicit Ethics of Ambiguity 121 Chapter 4: Beauvoir's Situated Existentialist Ethics 133 Conclusion to Beauvoir's Existentialist Ethics 146 Section III: Woman's Situation 148 Chapter 1: Exploring the Biological Situation of Woman 153 Chapter 2: Exploring the Psychological Situation of Woman 169 Chapter 3: Exploring the Comportmentality of Woman 187 Chapter 4: Exploring the Historical Situation of Woman 196 Conclusion to Woman's Situation 212 Section IV: Beauvoir's Existentialist Ethics and the Role of the Visible 215 Chapter 1: Becoming Woman—Becoming Visible 218 Chapter 2: Appearance and the Appeal 235 Chapter 3: Visibility and the Ethical 250 Conclusion to Beauvoir's Existentialist Ethics and the Role of the Visible 268 Conclusion 270 Works Cited 278

3 "What circumstances limit woman's liberty and how can they be overcome?"1

Introduction

This thesis is an investigation into Simone de Beauvoir's existentialist ethics and the

problem that woman's situation presents in realizing Beauvoir's ethics. I argue that

Beauvoir's ethics falls short in thinking through intersubjective relationships, such that

her examination of woman's situation risks closing off a brilliant ethics that can account

for the complexity of the human reality. However, it is possible to push her existential -

phenomenological thinking further by considering the human being's corporeal aspect

offered up through the visible. The tension between Beauvoir's existentialist ethics and

woman's situation hinges specifically on the role of woman's appearance and the way in

which woman learns to appeal to the other. Beauvoir argues that woman often works

against her ambiguity and reinforces her body-objectivity through her appeal to the other

as a body-object. This bodily habituation presents problems for Beauvoir's existentialist

ethics and raises the question of necessity. Although the way in which woman appears to

the other may not readily be conceived of as a concept worthy of ethical inquiry, the

apparent body is the existential-phenomenological pretext against which a woman's

choices and a woman's barriers are foregrounded, iterated, and idealized.

In order to locate a bridge between Beauvoir's existentialist ethics and her notion of

(woman's) situation, I employ Beauvoir's ethical phenomenological inquiries, as found

1 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, ed. and trans. H.M. Parshley (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), XXXV. 2 The question of woman as essence underlies the discussion of woman's situation. Although I deal with the question of to whom 'woman' refers in this Introduction, it is really in Section III, Chapter 1, that I deal with the question of essentialism given that it is best unpacked in the context of Beauvoir's discussion of biology.' 4 primarily in Pyrrhus and Cineas, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Second Sex. These

works provide a fertile philosophical ground from which to unpack woman as an

embodied ethical being and further, to explore woman's possibilities for engaging in

reciprocal ethical relationships. As this thesis will demonstrate, it is through the

transcending and yet open activity of disclosure that one may appeal to the other as an

ambiguous being and not merely as an immanent body-objectivity.6 Beauvoir's notion of

disclosure will figure in taking her thinking beyond the weight of woman's situation as

explained in The Second Sex. It will do so because it highlights the vulnerability of being-

in-the-world. More specifically, disclosure demonstrates that the other cannot simply

close down the ethical relationship by reducing the other to a body-object, given this

failure woman's situation is not final, but is rather creatively co-constituted through her

interaction with the other. Ironically, Beauvoir explains this in thinking through woman's

situation, but her commitment to phenomenology comes up short in her adherence to a

Sartrean model of intersubjectivity.

In short, Beauvoir argues that contemporary Western culture's patriarchal hierarchy

mediates individual and social identities by relegating woman to the position of the

inessential Other7 and elevating man to the status of the absolute One. Beauvoir uses the

term 'woman' to denote a human being who "is defined and differentiated with reference

Simone de Beauvoir, Pyrrhus and Cineas, in Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophical Writings, ed. Margaret A. Simons with Marybeth Timmermann and Mary Beth Mader, trans. Marybeth Timmermann (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004a). 4 Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Citadel Press, 1976). 5 For an explanation as to why I use this translation see my Methodology. 6 The notion of disclosure (devoilement) means to unveil or to unmask. Beauvoir takes disclosure from Heidegger's notion of Dasein as the being whose ontological task is to unveil being. This Heideggerian term will be discussed further in Section II, Chapter 2. 7 Beauvoir understands the situation of woman to be that of the Other. This notion is taken from the Hegelian notion of the Other as will be shown Section I, Chapter 1. The capitalized 'O' indicates the quintessential other. I capitalize 'Other' to signify the same meaning in my work. 5 to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other."8 For Beauvoir

'woman' is the socio-historical placeholder or multi-faceted otherness that women occupy.

Unsurprisingly, Beauvoir has been taken to task for this generalization of women's situation.

In "Simone de Beauvoir and Woman: Just who does she think 'We' is?",9 Elizabeth V.

Spelman maintains that although Beauvoir's account of women's situation makes all the provisions necessary for a rich account of woman's lives, the result is a narrow conception that does not account for other oppressions that affect an individual's situation such as race or class. Spelman argues that "in de Beauvoir's work, we have all the essential ingredients of a feminist account of 'women's lives' that would not conflate 'woman' with a small group of women—namely, white middle-class heterosexual Christian women in

Western countries. Yet de Beauvoir ends up producing an account which does just that."10

Although this criticism is legitimate, we must not lose sight of Beauvoir's methodology, and what she is able to accomplish given the task that she undertakes.11 Beauvoir's work overflows with examples from the everyday life with which she is familiar. She takes up these examples, reflects on them, and asks what they individually and collectively reveal.12 Much of what she writes in The Second Sex is autobiographical, literary, or political. Her examples work because they begin with her life and reach out into the lives of other women by addressing issues of freedom and situation that are not specific to

8 Beauvoir 1989, xxii. 9 Elizabeth V. Spelman, "Simone de Beauvoir and Women: Just who does she think 'We' is?" in Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988). 10 Ibid, 58. 1' This will be discussed further in the Methodology. 12 For example, her famous assertion: "On ne nait pas femme : on le devient" means that one is not born woman; one becomes woman. Beauvoir understands an individual's becoming woman to reveal a shared becoming woman. 6 white middle-class heterosexual Christian women in Western countries. As

phenomenological, Beauvoir's investigation is able to uncover not only the particulars of

her own experience, but the style of oppression that women face. Her examples link

together, producing patterns that form the general condition of women's lives. This does

not gloss over the particular sort of oppression that Black women experience, but rather

points to a shared sort of oppression that White women, Black women, Jewish women,

and so forth, experience. It speaks to the general oppression of the Other(s) by the

One(s).13

This traditional model of subject/object or One/Other problematizes the existential-

phenomenological possibilities for reciprocity. Furthermore, Beauvoir's account of and

adherence to this duplicitous socio-historical relationship of woman and man serves to

limit Beauvoir's possibilities for thinking through human existence as primarily

ambiguous. For Beauvoir, becoming a woman under the shackles of patriarchal culture

rests on developing (intentionally or unintentionally) an awareness of one's objectification and permanent visibility when one is a young woman and one's invisibility when one is an older woman.14 This awareness of being visible or invisible shapes individual women's style of being-in-the-world which is an integral part of individual women's reaction to and reiteration of their visibility. This reiteration (centered on self- obj edification) has extensive consequences which close off the possibilities presented in

Beauvoir's ethical thinking. If women want to become full-fledged subjects, their

13 Beauvoir only briefly addresses the problem of colonization and slavery in the chapter "Freedom and Liberation" in The Ethics of Ambiguity. 14 Although I will not be discussing the predicament of the aged woman in this thesis, the aged woman arguably finds herself in a similar situation as (the young) woman. Beauvoir explains that both are objectified and occupy the space of the inessential Other to man's absolute One. For a detailed phenomenological account of the older woman see Beauvoir's Old Age, trans. Patrick O'Brian, (London: Andre Deutsch, 1972). 7 relationship to their bodies and the bodies of others must be transformed. However, it is not only up to women to reshape these relationships. For this reshaping to be possible, a woman's appeal to the other as an embodied being must not ensnare woman in her immanence. She must not be reduced to a fleshy body-objectivity. Instead, woman's appeal to the other ought to find its roots in her socio-historical body and its investment in something beyond the body—in her ambiguity. This can be achieved through disclosure—a seemingly paradoxical double moment of merging with the world

(presencing the self) and uprooting oneself from the world (presencing the world).

This thesis will show that Beauvoir's body-subject can engage in reciprocal relationships if the subject cultivates a critical ethical attitude toward the patriarchal power-terrain of contemporary Western culture by way of appropriating and recognizing the possibilities for reciprocity inherent in the visible realm. In thinking through the possibilities for the intersubjective relationship, this thesis unpacks the philosophical work of Beauvoir and brings her into dialogue with other important contributors on appearance and intersubjectivity.

8 Extant Literature

My investigation differs from the extant literature insofar as it calls on the visible to

think through the possibilities for an existentialist ethics rooted in Beauvoir's notion of

disclosure. Although Sartre's existentialist ethics were not able to get off the ground (his

notion of the visible interchange exemplifies this failure),151 argue that it is Beauvoir's

attention to the first intentional moment, our fundamental being and not the second

intentional moment that allows her ethics to flourish. The first intentional moment—

disclosure, is described by Beauvoir to be a moment of joy which stands in an ambiguous

relationship to the second intentional moment. The second intentional moment is marked

by the identification of the T with the being it discloses.16 Approaching Beauvoir's

existentialist ethics with this framework in mind allows for an understanding of

Beauvoir's thinking that nurtures her notion of ambiguity. Although others have

approached Beauvoir's existentialist ethics from a similar framework, I am able to open

1 7

up new possibilities by bringing the visible to bear on her ethics. Perhaps it is the case

that Sartre's reading of the visible, as it unfolds in the second intentional moment and not

the first, negates the possibility for considering the visible to be a space wherein

ambiguity may flourish. However, Merleau-Ponty's work on the visible shows us

otherwise.

15 This failure will be explicitly taken up in Section IV, Chapter 1 and 2. 16 The second intentional moment will be unpacked in Section I, Chapter 3. 17 See Debra B. Bergoffen, The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997) and "Simone de Beauvoir: (Re)Counting the Sexual Difference" in The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Claudia Card (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Eva Gothlin, "Beauvoir and Sartre on Appeal, Desire, and Ambiguity" in The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Critical Essays, ed. Margaret A. Simons (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).

9 Debra B. Bergoffen, Kristana Arp, and Sara Heinamaa are three of the philosophers who have taken up Beauvoir's ethics from a similar position, but whose projects, though significant, do not take up this aspect of the visible that allows for a viable existentialist ethics. Bergoffen's work, The Philosophy ofSimone de Beauvoir: Gendered

Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities is most closely aligned with my own project. In fact, it was through this text that I first began to take seriously the possibility of rescuing

Beauvoir's existentialist ethics from the weight of woman's situation. However,

Bergoffen's text did not fully convince me of the possibility for revival given her emphasis on the erotic and the caress.

Bergoffen's often conciliatory text offers up the possibility for an ethics of an erotic generosity which she locates tucked away in Beauvoir's work. Bergoffen argues that a close reading of Beauvoir reveals a muted voice that undergirds Beauvoir's overt voice.

Beauvoir's overt voice, as will be shown throughout this thesis, is that which links her thinking to Sartre's ontology. This is the voice that asserts the ethics of the project by encouraging woman to transcend immanence through actively pursuing her own projects despite the projects of others. The ethics of the project is rooted in the second intentional moment which puts woman in opposition to the other; both woman and man jockey for the position of the One.19 On the other hand, Bergoffen beautifully describes Beauvoir's muted voice as a style of thinking that emphasizes the importance of disclosure (the first intentional moment)—a way of being in the world that relates the human being to others as a being-with others, and thus it is a recognition of the projects of others (the other's

Bergoffen 1997, 161. The ethics of the project will be discussed in Section II, Chapter 2. 10 freedom). Bergoffen argues that this muted voice allows Beauvoir's ethics of ambiguity

to flourish.

As we will explore throughout this thesis, the assertion of the first intentional moment

stands in opposition to an ethics of the project as figured by the Hegelian dialectic or the

Sartrean look, both of which are founded on the second intentional moment. The first

intentional moment fosters an erotic intersubjectivity insofar as it is based on an opening

of the self to the other. According to Bergoffen, the ethic of the erotic is founded on

ambiguity which is overtly typified for Beauvoir in the intermingling of body and

consciousness in the consensual erotic encounter. In this erotic space, ambiguity affirms

the importance of the self and the other. It is through ambiguously being with an other

that we can be more than for-ourselves as a transcendent project or for-others as an

immanent body. The other teaches us of our ambiguous nature. Bergoffen argues that the

risk in this encounter is becoming vulnerable before the other. It is this risk of

vulnerability, and not the risk of violence, that leads us out of the dualism and opposition

upon which contemporary Western patriarchy is based.

However, we would be amiss if we did not detect a red herring in the example of

ambiguity in the erotic encounter. The erotic relationship is idyllic in the face of

Beauvoir's concern in her later writings on woman's situation. It is as if the weight of

woman's situation so aptly described in The Second Sex has been forgotten. Surely we

cannot overlook this albatross. The question then must be asked: is it truly possible (given the weight of situation) to substantiate (or model?) generosity through (atypical)

20 Bergoffen takes up her notion of the muted voice throughout The Philosophy ofSimone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities; however, she delves most deeply into this notion on pages 185-8. 21 Although consciousness is embodied, it can obscure its own bodily being. This opacity would account for Sartre's difficulty in theorizing oppression. For more on Beauvoir and Sartre on embodied desire see Gothlin 2006. 11 ambiguous relationships? Given the gravity of this worry, I follow Bergoffen's thinking in my work, but argue that touch risks a violence that woman cannot afford.22 Citing touch as the basis for an ethics undoes the attention that Beauvoir pays to woman's situation as the inessential Other. We will see that there is an inescapable possession of the touched by the one that touches that breaks down the possibility for a realizable ethics.

On the other hand, the visible is a much more fluid and forgiving way in which to engage the other. Although the gaze can possess the gazed-upon, the space between two remains open in a way that flesh on flesh may and often does close off. Furthermore, if touch is available through the visible, as Merleau-Ponty argues in The Visible and the

Invisible, 3 then we do not have to exchange the tactile for the visible. The visible importantly fosters the first intentional moment of disclosure and does so in a way that does not endanger the other such as in the case of the touch. Given the precarious relationship of the touching and the touched, I decided to explore the possibilities for an ethics inherent in the visible, thus importantly diverging from Bergoffen.

In The Bonds of Freedom: Simone de Beauvoir's Existentialist Ethics, Kristana Arp also takes up the question of disclosure in the context of Beauvoir's existentialist ethics.25

She aptly unpacks Beauvoir's ethics showing how they differ from Sartre's ethics. As Arp

I will address violence further in Section II, Chapter 2 and in the Conclusion. 23 The tactile as given in the visible will be further explored in Section IV, Chapter 2 and 3. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, ed. Claude Lefort, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 134. 24 Kristana Arp, The Bonds of Freedom: Simone de Beauvoir's Existentialist Ethics (Chicago: Open Court Press, 2001). 25 Ibid, 64-8. 12 points out, one of the key differences is Beauvoir's notion of moral freedom. Arp argues that asserting oneself as a freedom and desiring disclosure are one and the same movement—one is truly acting morally free since we cannot be free until everyone is free. Arp's reading of freedom is the reading that I subscribe to in Section II, Chapter 3, but it is also a reading that I outstrip in my understanding of disclosure.

In a recent reading of disclosure available in "Simone de Beauvoir and the Joys of

Existence",27 Arp argues that the second intentional moment is indeed important to understanding our human reality, but that "The existence of the world does not depend on his consciousness, but he plays some role in creating the form it takes on for him and others."28 Interestingly, this co-constitution speaks to the way in which I take up the ethical in the visible, such that it reinforces the co-constitutive creative element of disclosing being. Arp explains that the desire to disclose being, or to live in the first intentional moment of consciousness, is "the desire to see, to hear, to taste, to feel—to experience the world. Fulfilling this desire leads to joy." Although I agree with Arp's reading of the joy of disclosure and thank her for the sturdy ground upon which to build, the question remains: given this notion of disclosure and our role in creating our world, how or by what means do we formulate an ethics?

Finally, my project does not align with Sara Heinamaa's project as neatly as it does with Bergoffen's work and Arp's work, but I do employ Heinamaa's thinking on sexual difference as presented in Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl,

26 Moral freedom (the type of freedom that Beauvoir champions in The Ethics of Ambiguity) is a willing of the freedom of the self and others through one's active dealings with the world. This will be taken up thoroughly in Section II, Chapter 3. 27 Kristana Arp, "Simone de Beauvoir and the Joys of Existence" (38-49) in Simone de Beauvoir Studies: Beyond the Centenary, Vol. 25 (2008-2009). 28 Ibid, 40.

13 Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir. Heinamaa's thinking on Beauvoir's phenomenological anthropology assists me in framing my own thinking on the overall question of the situation of woman in Section III. Heinamaa argues that Beauvoir's work denaturalizes and yet affirms sexual difference as an integral part of the human reality while offering up a way in which to describe our lived ambiguities. Heinamaa explains that there are "two main variations of human embodiment, and every singular human existent is a variation of one of them or else combines elements from both." This is not to argue that there is anything essential about being woman or being man; rather Heinamaa is arguing that the human being relates to the world as masculine, feminine, or through a variation of the two.32

For both Heinamaa and Beauvoir, sexual difference is bound up in the economic socio-historical way in which we live with bodies. This is not to discredit the effect of bodily affectations on our interactions, but rather the intention is to avoid naturalizing the body. Our lived experience occurs in a world that is divided into two sexes. This division affects the possibilities by which one experiences herself. Thankfully, since these experiences are always open for renegotiation, embodied doing can and does modify these two ways of relating to the world. This existential-phenomenological understanding of sexual difference opens up the possibilities for transformation while simultaneously accounting for the weight of reification.

Sara Heinamaa, Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2003). 31 Ibid, 85. 32 This argument brings the question of transsexuality into focus. Phenomenology highlights disparate styles of being man or being woman that need not neatly align with the body that one understands as man or woman. As a phenomenologist, Heinamaa is concerned with the Sosein. This will be explained further in the section on Methodology. 14 Beauvoir's project is particularly challenging given her attempt to describe the

overarching patriarchal structure that shapes the human being as man or woman while

remaining faithful to the plurality of situations that inform this human reality. Heinamaa's

work successfully reinforces the importance of situation as it is perceived by and

responded to by different human beings or even the same human being at different times

in one's life. Heinamaa emphasizes how each situation is foregrounded by its own unique

sedimented history that privileges some interpretations at the expense of other

interpretations, thus solidifying my worry that the division of the sexes cannot simply be

undone, but rather must be negotiated. Heinamaa expertly fleshes out this rich

understanding of the possibilities for rethinking the ways in which we come to

understand, experience, and generally live with different bodies. Heinamaa's reading proves to be particularly helpful in my investigation.

15 Chapter Summary

Beauvoir read the works of many different philosophers and I bring her into conversation with the three main influences on her ontological thinking. In Section I, I flesh out Beauvoir's indebtedness to G.W.F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul

Sartre. Drawing on the ontology of these philosophers is important insofar as Beauvoir does not have a programmatic ontology of her own. This makes it particularly difficult to get a handle on the ways in which she uses some of the ontological language that appears in her philosophical thinking. Consequently, it is necessary to make explicit the ideas that she borrows and transforms from her predecessors both in her ethical thinking and in her thinking on woman's situation. Furthermore, this foundational section allows for a deeper exploration that will bring to light some of the ideas that Beauvoir takes for granted in her thinking. In Chapter 1,1 examine the influence of Hegel's works on Beauvoir's thinking.

Most notably, Beauvoir adopts and adapts Hegel's master-slave dialectic. I show that although Beauvoir's employment of the master-slave dialectic is in her work at times controversial, there are nonetheless interesting ethical implications that may be drawn from her employment of this Hegelian idea. In Chapter 2,1 explore how Beauvoir's appropriation of Heideggerian ontology and phenomenology also have a great ethical influence on Beauvoir's thinking. Beauvoir's reading of Heidegger's understanding of

Mitsein (being with others), situated existence, authenticity, corporeality, and disclosure all figure in Beauvoir's ethical thinking and bear directly on the ethical possibilities available to an embodied subject as a being-in-the-world. Although Heidegger did not write an ethics, his thinking provides seeds for Beauvoir's ethical work. In Chapter 3,1 show how the question of influence between Beauvoir and Sartre is more pronounced than that between Beauvoir and Hegel or Beauvoir and Heidegger. Similarto Sartre (and 16 Hegel), Beauvoir is interested in the question of the other. This influences the ways in which she works with and against Hegel and Heidegger. Despite the fact that they have similar ontological foundations, which I unpack not only in this Section, but throughout this thesis, their responses to the question of the other are quite different. Indeed, I argue that Beauvoir's phenomenological thinking nuances this question in a way that Sartre's thinking does not.

In Section II, I distinguish Beauvoir's notion of ontological (original and spontaneous) freedom from moral freedom (willing the freedom of all) and consider the implications that this agential distinction bears on woman's situation and the possibilities for intersubjectivity. This exploration is divided into four main chapters that chronologically follow Beauvoir's aforementioned philosophical ethical works.

Beauvoir's existentialist ethics gives us insight into woman's existential- phenomenological possibilities for embracing ambiguity without covering over the complexity of the human reality and the propensity for and the implications of choice. As my analysis shows, the problem of competing desires arises in Beauvoir's existentialist ethics and propels her thinking beyond Sartre's ethical thinking. What I find in Beauvoir's ethics is that the risk and uncertainty of compromising one's freedom for the freedom of the other is the very essence of human freedom. Most notably, her notion of disclosure opens up the potential for an ethical engagement that is not founded on conflict, but rather one that is founded on generosity. Unfortunately for Beauvoir, this realization seems almost banal in the face of contemporary Western woman's economic socio-historical struggle as we discover in Section III.

In Section III, I explore Beauvoir's notion of 'woman's situation' as it is played out in the biological, psychological, phenomenological, and socio-historical body. It is in this 17 section that I elaborate on the complexity of woman's situation and the nuances that shape her being. Beauvoir's reading of woman's situation shows how woman's opportunities are guided by economic socio-historical factors, but are not determined by them. In fact,

Beauvoir's argument for bad faith weaves together the disparate aspects of woman's situation and begs the question of determination. For Beauvoir bad faith is not an ontological certainty but rather it is an ethical attitude that can be undone to allow for reciprocity. However, the thickness of embodiment and the human predilection for bad faith leave Beauvoir with little hope for liberation. Despite Beauvoir's pessimism, I show that one must and can rescue her existentialist ethics from bad faith so that her ethical thinking may provide a way in which to think through the possibilities for mutual flourishing.

In the fourth and final section, I explore the possibilities for an ethical appeal keeping in mind the tenuous relationship between woman's situation as highly visible and the human inter-body-subjectivity as fundamentally ambiguous. As my analysis shows, I find that Beauvoir's existentialist ethics is tenable only if we take Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the visible seriously. This does not mean that the individual ought to simply reinvest oneself in one's body and how it appears to others. Instead, in order to achieve reciprocity she ought to be critical of the flattened optical image that objectifies and categorizes particular bodies and thereby remain truly visible to the other.

I conclude that the visible is important because it discloses oneself to the other as an ambiguously embodied being in the world. Disclosure as a presencing of the self to the

33 The human reality, as we will see in Section I, reveals to us that the human being is situated and yet also free. The problem, as we will discover, is that the human being hides this ontological truth from herself by living as if she were determined or as if she were absolutely free. As for the contemporary woman there is necessarily a degree of choice and restriction. 18 world and an uprooting of self in the world makes apparent the relationship between freedom and situation. We are before the other a situated freedom; therefore, the gazer and the gazed-upon necessarily enter into an ethical relationship that nurtures the corporeal dimension of being-in-the-world with others. As a result, disclosure appeals to the other for an embodied response whereby our corporeality is affected by what appears and reciprocally affects what is appearing. The embodied element of this visual exchange ensures that the overly simplistic subject-object model cannot take hold—this is key to realizing Beauvoir's existentialist ethics.

19 Methodology

Completing this inquiry required making a number of methodological decisions. First

and foremost, this thesis is written in a phenomenological style. Phenomenology is the

study of appearances or more specifically, it is the study of the manifestation of

appearance focusing on the act of appearance and not on what appears. It involves

attending to the world in a fashion that is free of metaphysical, scientific, and social

cultural assumptions. This way of thinking favours examining the fundamental features of

the lived human experience of being in the world and being of the world. It does not seek

to reduce the phenomenon into its most basic aspect, rather it understands its facticity as

the starting point for any and all meaningful investigations.34 According to Merleau-

Ponty,

Phenomenology is the study of essences; and according to it, all problems amount to finding definitions of essences: [...] But phenomenology is also a philosophy which puts essences back into existence, and does not expect to arrive at an understanding of man and the world from any starting point other than that of their 'facticity'. [...] but it is also a philosophy for which the world is always 'already there' before reflection begins—as an inalienable presence; and all its efforts are concentrated upon re- achieving a direct and primitive contact with the world, and endowing that contact with philosophical status.

Merleau-Ponty explains that phenomenology does not seek to uncover the Sein or the

ontic—what of being, but rather phenomenology seeks to describe the Sosein—the ways

in which the what of being are revealed. Consequently, essence cannot be understood in

its Platonic sense. Essence for Merleau-Ponty is the ipseity or the style by which a thing

or a being comes to be for a perceiver; it is the enigmatic 'je ne sais quoi' of being.

I will use facticity [facticite] like Beauvoir (and Sartre) do to signify the concrete Gestalt that shapes each freedom. Heidegger uses facticity a bit differently which will be discussed in Section I, Chapter 2. 35 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1962), vii. 20 Merleau-Ponty explains that phenomenology is practiced by creatively describing the

ways in which one relates to the world and relates to others. By describing these relations,

the phenomenological investigation creatively discloses the interconnectedness between

the subject and object. Phenomenology does not aim to extract the human being or her

experiences from her Gestalt?6 Phenomenology is founded upon the understanding that

one's descriptive investigation is necessarily situated in one's own human reality—one's

own situation. Phenomenology fosters an awareness of one's involvement in the setting of

the philosophical problem under investigation. This methodology also necessarily affects

the solutions at which one arrives. Although phenomenology does not employ a direct

argumentative structure or arrive at definitive answers, it preserves the complexity of the

question and the breadth of our commitments to the question which one sets out to

answer.

I decided upon this style of inquiry given the phenomenological nature of Beauvoir's problem setting. Although she employs the phenomenological method in her

autobiographies and in her ethics, it is in The Second Sex that Beauvoir most notably makes use of this method.37 She does so not only by describing woman's situation, but

also by employing basic phenomenological concepts such as the lived body and

ambiguity, or approaching concepts such as sexuality and authenticity from a phenomenological perspective. By using these concepts to think through woman's

situation, Beauvoir grants the human reality the experiential richness that it deserves.

Gestalt is the enframing or structuring of that which we perceive. 37 Sara Heinamaa has written extensively on Beauvoir's commitment to phenomenology. See "Simone de Beauvoir's Phenomenology of Sexual Difference," The Philosophy ofSimone de Beauvoir: Critical Essays, ed. Margaret A. Simons, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006) and Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir. 21 Consider Beauvoir's notion of woman. Beauvoir is not concerned with nor is she committed to giving an account of woman or analyzing woman's essence in its entirety.

Instead, Beauvoir provides a description of woman in her totality insofar as she aims to account for the existence of woman. Beauvoir aptly recognizes that the essence of a being is intimately connected to its existence and the conditions under which it exists which are ambiguous and therefore, indeterminate. Hence, it is only possible to recognize particular attributes of woman as essential to the way in which woman appears given the overall framework within which she is manifest. Therefore, Beauvoir's focus on woman's situation and not on woman's essence ensures her method is resistant to universalizing or essentializing woman.

In addition to the conceptual understandings that shape her inquiry, her relationship to

Merleau-Ponty's thinking is also telling of her connection to phenomenology. Beauvoir is interested in putting subjects and objects in relation to one another to show that which we perceive is inseparable from the way in which it is perceived. One is always involved with that which is under interrogation—at the heart of all perception there is a reflexive capacity that is marked by an intertwining of subject and object, which in turn problematizes this distinction. For instance, in "A Review of The Phenomenology of

Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty" Beauvoir argues,

One of the great merits of phenomenology is to have given back to man the right to an authentic existence, by eliminating the opposition of the subject and the object. It is impossible to define an object in cutting it off from the subject through which and for which it is object; and the subject reveals itself only through the objects in which it is engaged. Such an affirmation only makes the contents of naive experience explicit, but it is rich in consequences. Only in taking it as a basis will one succeed in building an ethics to which man can totally and sincerely adhere.3

38 This will be taken up further in Section III, Chapter 1. 39 Simone de Beauvoir, "A Review of The Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty", in Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophical Writings, ed. Margaret A. Simons with Marybeth Timmermann and 22 Phenomenology accounts for the stochastic nature of woman's situation while supporting an ethics that is situated in the heart of the human reality rather than abstracted from it.

Consequently, given the nature of Beauvoir's commitments and my desire to flesh out an ethics to which an embodied being can genuinely adhere, I also choose to employ the phenomenological method. I do this especially in Section IV wherein I bring the possibilities inherent in the visible to bear on Beauvoir's existentialist ethics,

With regards to the literature under scrutiny, one of the most important textual decisions was to use H.M. Parshley's translation of The Second Sex. I began this thesis using Parshley's translation primarily because Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-

Chevallier's translation of The Second Sex40 was not yet available. I was aware that there were numerous problems with this first translation given the editorial decision to cut almost fifteen percent of the original text and Parshley's academic background as a zoologist and not as a philosopher. For example, Margaret A. Simons points out that some philosophical terminology is misrepresented by Parshley such as the translation of

"human reality" or "the reality of humans" into the "real nature of man".41 The

Heideggerian notion oiDasein, translated by Henri Corbin as "la realite humaine", is lost altogether in Parshley's translation. Therefore, I found it critical to consult with

Beauvoir's original Le deuxieme sexe I et if1 and to keep in mind her ontological and

Mary Beth Mader, trans. Marybeth Timmermann (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 160. 40 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (London: Jonathan Cape, 2009). 41 Margaret A. Simons, "The Silencing of Simone de Beauvoir: Guess What's Missing from The Second Sex" Beauvoir and The Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism, ed. Margaret A. Simons (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999), 69. This article helped in signposting Parshley's translation of The Second Sex. 42 Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxieme sexe I: lesfaits et les mythes and Le Deuxieme sexe II: I'experience vecue (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1949). 23 phenomenological roots as my work progressed especially when the translation presented itself ambiguously. I was also able to look to the Beauvoir scholars who use their own translation of some of Beauvoir's key passages.

When the second translation of The Second Sex was released in the latter part of 2009

I had hoped that I would be able to replace Parshley's text with the new translation. The new translation had been in the works for almost a decade. Beauvoir scholars had been anticipating this translation for over twenty years, but the new translation leaves the reader wanting. In a very damaging book review of the new translation, Toril Moi takes the new translation to task for three fundamental problems: key terms, grammar, and syntax.43 Although the new translation is complete, unlike the old translation the problem with key philosophical terms remains.44 In addition, the new translation is lacking in

Parshley's animated style. For these reasons, I decided not to consult with the new translation.

Drawing on The Second Sex to write about woman's situation is a rather obvious literature choice; however, the other texts with which I worked are less obvious choices. I chose to examine Beauvoir's most extensive philosophical works insofar as I was undertaking a philosophical investigation of the intersection of the question of the other and woman's situation. Consequently, I chose to work primarily with Pyrrhus and Cineas,

The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Second Sex. Neither Pyrrhus and Cineas nor The Ethics of Ambiguity have a particularly problematic translation. However, at times it was

43 Toril Moi, "The Adulteress Wife," London Review of Books Vol. 32 No. 3 (February 11, 2010). 44 For example, Borde and Malovany-Chevallier misuse Beauvoir's term feminin. It is translated as the "feminine reality". This is problematic insofar as "la realite feminine" actually means "the reality of women" not a particular reality that is feminized as some may presume from this translation. This particular example is troubling given that Beauvoir critiques traditional notions of femininity as natural. 24 necessary to consult the original texts—Pyrrhus et Cineas and Pour une morale de

1'ambiguite46 Though I make reference to a number of Beauvoir's other works, both

fiction and non-fiction, I draw most heavily from the aforementioned texts as they

provide a rather clear trajectory of Beauvoir's ethical thinking. This allowed me to trace

the progression of her thought from the abstract ethical relationship to the concrete

situation of woman as an intersubjective being. As this thesis will show, this trajectory is

crucial in thinking through both the ontological beginnings and the concrete ethical

possibilities for woman.

I did not choose to work with Old Age, which is arguably another extensive

philosophical text, because I found the ideas presented within The Second Sex to be most

similar to those ideas concerning my thesis. The thesis of Old Age is that contemporary

Western elderly human beings are relegated to the position of Other. Beauvoir comes to

this conclusion after a existential phenomenological analysis of aging. I also could have

used She Came to Stay41 or Beauvoir's memoirs48 insofar as they are all deeply existential

phenomenological texts. However, I found that Beauvoir's existentialist ethics were more

clearly articulated in The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex. Furthermore, given

that this thesis is a philosophical analysis, I decided to work with primary philosophical

texts.

It is also necessary to explain why I chose to work with particular supporting ideas.

Though the explanation as to why I chose most of these foundational thinkers is discussed

45 Simone de Beauvoir, Pyrrhus et Cineas (Paris: Editions Gallimard,1944). 46 Simone de Beauvoir, Pour une morale de 1'ambiguite, (Paris: Editions Gallimard,1947). 47 Simone de Beauvoir, She Came to Stay, trans. Yvonne Moyse and Roger Senhouse (London: Seeker & Warburg and Lindsay Drummond, 1949). 48 Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, trans. James Kirkup (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1963); The Prime of Life, trans. Peter Green (Hardmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1965); Force of Circumstance, trans. Richard Howard (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1968); and All Said and Done, trans. Patrick O'Brian (New York: Penguin 1977). 25 in the introduction to Section I, I did not speak to the rationale behind choosing their specific texts. Quite simply, I decided to deal with the major ontological works of Hegel,

Heidegger, and Sartre because Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Heidegger's Being and

Time, and Sartre's Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology provide the most clear picture of the ontological ideas with which Beauvoir was working especially those ideas which are embedded in The Second Sex.

In addition, to the texts that are analyzed in Section I and beyond, I decided to work with Merleau-Ponty. I worked with Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception,

"Cezanne's Doubt," 2 "Eye and Mind"5 , and The Visible and the Invisible because it is in these texts that he deals with the phenomenology of the visible most extensively. In

Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty's major phenomenological contribution, he explains our interaction with the other in terms similar to Beauvoir, such that he argues that we are caught up in perceptually ambiguous relations. In "Cezanne's Doubt" and

"Eye and Mind", Merleau-Ponty focuses on the phenomenon of visibility. Finally, in The

Visible and the Invisible Merleau-Ponty focuses on the ontology of visibility. These four

G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). Citations will be in the format page number/section number. 50 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers Incorporated, 1962). Citations will be in the format page number/section number. 51 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1956). Sartre's The Transcendence of the Ego provides a different picture of our ontological foundations than.Be/ng and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, but the groundwork that was laid in this early text was abandoned when Sartre wrote his magnum opus. Thus, I decided to work with his later work insofar as it provides a more accurate picture of Sartre's ontological system. See The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness, trans. Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001b) for Sartre's earlier conceptualization of consciousness. 52 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Cezanne's Doubt" in Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Hubert Dreyfus and Patricia Dreyfus (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1992). 53 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Eye and Mind" in Phenomenology, Language and Sociology, ed. John O'Neill, trans. Carleton Dallery (London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1974). 26 sources provide a rich reading of the possibilities inherent in the visible which allows me to rethink the ways in which the visible fosters reciprocity in our ethical relationships.

27 Section I: Beauvoir's Ontological Beginnings

To clarify why Beauvoir reaches certain existential conclusions and faces particular ontological problems in thinking through ethical relationships and one's embodied situation, it is necessary to piece together her ontological ideas, given her rootedness in them. Beauvoir did not write an ontology of her own because she was explicitly uninterested in grand systematizations and perhaps also because she recognized the uncertainty of clearly understanding any ontology. Beauvoir explains in one of her memoirs, "the degree of my acceptance [of other's theories] was always modified by the lacunae and muddled logic I perceived in any proposition, and which I emphasized no less than its potential."1 In fact, working through these propositions would be counter­ intuitive to her understanding of the world. Beauvoir's disinterest in grad systematizations coupled with her unease renders the task of writing an ontology on Beauvoir's behalf rather difficult and perhaps, even problematic. Beauvoir, above all, recognized the phenomenological problems inherent in systematizations, making her a particularly complex thinker. Therefore, her major contribution to philosophical thinking is rooted in her own experience insofar as she performs a phenomenological existential investigation of the "being of woman", which importantly includes Beauvoir's being as both a woman and a philosopher. In these discussions there are ontological elements that need to be fleshed out. Accordingly, it is necessary to return to Beauvoir's beginnings and piece together the ontological ideas that she adopts and adapts in addition to returning to those ideas that she confronts.

'Beauvoir 1965, 221. 28 The Prime of Life gives insight into Beauvoir's philosophy, which serves her existential inquiries. As a very young woman, Beauvoir's optimism was called into question when she experienced the death of her best friend Zaza (Elizabeth Mabille) and bore witness to the beginning of World War II. These major events triggered her deliberate investigation of intersubjectivity. This period in Beauvoir's life also marks the beginning of her serious writing. It is in this second volume of her memoirs, The Prime of

Life, that she analyzes the relationship between the T and the 'we'. She also wrote about autonomy, being alone, and her bourgeoning relationship with Sartre as well as her philosophical relationship with Hegel and Heidegger.

In the 1930's, Beauvoir fleshed out her "cultural education". She first heard about

Hegel, or rather a Kojevian Hegelianism,3 through the novelist Raymond Queneau.

However, she did not actually read Hegel until 1940 in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Prior to reading Hegel she read Husserl in the early 1930's and enthusiastically took it upon herself to read others who had found inspiration in Husserl's ontology.5 In the mid-

1930's she read Husserl's student, Heidegger about whom she expressed grave doubts, doubts that were not shared by Sartre.6 Interestingly, it was not through Sartre that she gained an appreciation of Heidegger's thinking; it was through her 1940 reading of Hegel that Heidegger's project became clearer.

Beauvoir remained steadfast in her claim that she did not advocate any one ontological position.7 This claim from The Prime of Life will set the stage for my

2 Ibid, 51. 3 In the 1930's Alexandre Kojeve lectured on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit with special attention paid to Hegel's master-slave dialectic and thus greatly influenced the French reading of Hegel. 4 Beauvoir 1965, 469-70. 5 Ibid, 48. 6 Ibid, 79. 7 Ibid, 220-1. 29 investigation into the ideas that shaped Beauvoir's later thinking. The strength of

Beauvoir's analysis lies in her ability to take valuable ideas from these ontological systems and use them as tools to provide her with the explanatory power needed to rethink intersubjectivity and direct her thinking toward an existentialist ethics that is mindful of the situated individual. I will begin by laying out the key ontological ideas of

Hegel, Heidegger, and Sartre so that I may show how Beauvoir's thinking draws from and yet at the same time moves away from these influential thinkers.

30 Chapter 1: Hegel's Ontological Influence

Beauvoir's reading of Hegel is important to my investigation because Beauvoir draws heavily on his ontology in order to explain our ethical possibilities. Although Beauvoir's existentialist ethics outline her belief that the human being is fundamentally ambiguous with respect to the self and to others, she also aptly acknowledges the situation within which one is born and the structures of understanding that shape that situation. As we will explore below, this situation is shaped by the ways in which one has traditionally understood and taken up the self/other relationship. Hegel's notion of recognition undergirds Beauvoir's thesis throughout The Second Sex, playing an important role in the situation of woman. It is not that Beauvoir understands Hegel's account to be the last word on intersubjectivity, rather, she acknowledges its strength in speaking to the deep psychological structures that shape the relationships that she aims to overcome and/or transform in her ethics.

Most notably, Beauvoir borrows and transforms the Hegelian notion of recognition and the resulting master-slave dialectic. At some moments, we find her work adopting these Hegelian notions to describe the trouble with our contemporary Western intersubjective relations thereby founding her analysis on a fundamentally conflictual human reality. At other moments, Beauvoir works against the historical perspective proposed by Hegel in order that she may substantiate her existentialist ethics by founding human relationships on a fundamental ambiguity. Through an examination of Beauvoir's adoption of Hegel's ontological structure and his notion of the slave, it will become clear that Beauvoir does not adopt his notions wholesale. She is not overtly a philosopher of recognition. She bends and twists Hegel's ontology to suit her own project.

31 Hegel's notion of recognition sets the stage for Beauvoir's primary thesis in The

Second Sex. In the 'Introduction' Beauvoir explains, "Otherness is a fundamental

Q category of human thought." In other words, no group or self recognizes themselves or himself as a group or as an individual without establishing the Other over and against itself or himself. Like Hegel, Beauvoir argues that there appears to be a fundamental division and hostility between groups of people or between individuals. Beauvoir continues further, "following Hegel, we find in consciousness itself a fundamental hostility toward every other consciousness; the subject can be posed only in being opposed—he sets himself up as the essential. As opposed to the other, the inessential, the object."9 Of course, the other believes the same to be true for herself. In a telling example, Beauvoir describes how travelers occupying the same compartment will each understand the other travelers to be "vaguely hostile 'others'". Although Beauvoir argues for the possibility of moving beyond what appears to be a fundamental hostility toward every other consciousness, she nonetheless concedes at crucial moments to this

Hegelian formulation of recognition.11 Her concession makes it particularly difficult to determine where her ontological commitments lie.

In Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel argues that one becomes a subject through a process of differentiation and recognition, such that in order to become a subject, one needs an other human being with whom to differentiate herself as well as by whom to be

8 Beauvoir 1949, xxiii. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 For example, Beauvoir asks why women do not set themselves up over and against men. (Beauvoir 1989, xxv.) This questioning sets the stage for her investigation of woman's situation as a situation whereby the Hegelian dialectic already delineates the possibilities for woman. Women can be subjects or they can be others. 12 Hegel's systematic work seeks to wed Immanuel Kant's phenomenal and noumenal worlds with his notion of Geist (Spirit). Although Hegel appeals to the process of life for wedding these worlds, his thinking is arguably that of the Idealist tradition.

32 acknowledged. For Hegel this relationship is prefaced by a fundamental conflict between

subjects competing for recognition. Both are differentiated and both are recognized as

separate from the self, but only one can be recognized as a subject. This fundamental

conflict is not a given in Beauvoir's work. She is of two minds as to whether or not

recognition requires or presupposes a fundamental conflict. Nonetheless, this component

of Hegel's overall system is important to Beauvoir and drives her thinking on

intersubjectivity given that self-consciousness realizes itself as both a self and as an other

through its relationship with another self-consciousness. It is the moment of becoming a

self when an individual also becomes aware of the ways in which she exists for others.

This realization, which will be explored more thoroughly in Section II, serves to call into

question Beauvoir's commitment to existentialist ethics.

In Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel outlines his stages of becoming a self-

consciousness, that which is differentiated from others and recognized by others, as a

movement beyond consciousness and a return to consciousness. Consciousness can only

be grasped through the movement of knowing that is contained within it. This movement

constitutes the I as a consciousness of consciousness. Consciousness as immediate does

not know that it is conscious insofar as it is merely conscious of. It must move beyond

itself in order to be conscious of something, someone, or even conscious of itself.14 Hegel

explains that the experience of otherness involved in this movement overcomes the

"motionless tautology of: T am I'."15 For Sartre and for Beauvoir, this motionless tautology will be described as a pure in-itself and cannot possibly describe a psychically

13 Hegel, 104/166. 14 We will see that a similar argument is presented by Sartre in Chapter 3 when he describes the constitution of the ego. 15 Hegel, 105/167. 33 healthy human being. Knowledge is only possible through this return for both Hegel and

Sartre. This distancing of self-consciousness from consciousness in order to grasp one's own being is not as clear in Beauvoir's formulation in part because she recognizes the messiness of thinking through what role one has in constituting the self since the opacity of the body cannot be outstripped in such a theoretical departure from consciousness.

Self-consciousness, according to Hegel, can only exist if it is recognized as a self- consciousness. Through recognition "the unity of itself in its otherness" becomes explicit.16 In this moment of recognition, self-consciousness understands that it is other than itself. What becomes clear for a self-consciousness through recognition is that it is not just a for-itself for an other; it is also an in-itself for the other, such that the subject is an object to itself without canceling the essential otherness of self-consciousness. The I is realized as an object to the self-consciousness and the for-itself (conscious being) and the in-itself (material being) are unified in thought. This reflection brings self-consciousness forward as it is and thus it comes to be known as such. For it is in self-consciousness, explains Hegel, "that consciousness first finds its turning-point, where it leaves behind it the colourful show of the sensuous here-and-now and the nightlike void of the

1 7 supersensible beyond, and steps out into the spiritual daylight of the present." This movement from consciousness to self-consciousness allows for a new relationship with the world. Furthermore, "Self-consciousness is, to begin with, simple being-for-self, self- equal through the exclusion from itself of everything else. For it, its essence and absolute object is T ... it is an individual. What is 'other' for it is an unessential, negatively

Hegel, 110-11/177. Ibid, 110/177. 34 1 R characterized object." Interestingly, this otherness, the inessential, or the negatively characterized object will hold great ethical weight for Beauvoir as we will see in Section

II, Chapter 4.

Self-consciousness is said to be desire in general. Specifically, we can say that it is desire for the reconciliation of the in-itself and the for-itself, of consciousness with self- consciousness. After all self-consciousness does recognize itself as a negativity. When consciousness grasps an object, there are two aspects presented to it. First, consciousness is conscious of something. Second, consciousness realizes that this something is an object for consciousness. In other words, consciousness is either sensing the object or sensing itself outside the object. For Hegel, the real knowing comes with the correspondence between the concept and the object. The first attempt to unify the two aspects (to achieve self-certainty) is through the simple annihilation of the other. It sees the condition for its own self-certainty to be the negation of the other insofar as the very positioning of the I is a negating of the non-I. It is not possible for the for-itself to grasp the fullness of the in- itself though it continuously strives for this marriage and continuously fails in its goal.

This grasping is important to the thinking of not only Hegel and Heidegger, but this striving also plays a key role in Sartre and Beauvoir.

Self-consciousness strives because it desires to be filled by that which is external to itself because "for self-consciousness [it] has the character of a negative" and thus it seeks

"the true essence.'''19 It seeks to be fulfilled. As existentialists, Sartre and Beauvoir will not accept the notion of a "true essence", but they will both rely heavily on the notion of negativity as a point of desire for the subject. Negativity, or nothingness in Sartre, is self-

18 Ibid, 113/186. 19 Ibid, 105/167. 35 consciousness itself. It is because self-consciousness is a lack that it can desire at all, namely, self-consciousness longs to the sensuous object. For Hegel, negativity will be represented in Spirit as the slave mentality. As we will see below, Beauvoir will pick up on this reading and at times equate woman with the negative.

According to Hegel, self-consciousness must ultimately apprehend that the relationship between a self-consciousness and the other necessarily implies opposition.

This relationship plays out in Hegel's famous passage on mastery/mastership and slavery/servitude. The passage on mastership and servitude is demonstrative of the struggle between self-conscious agents attempting to establish individuality and independence from the other. Hegel writes, "Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged."20 Consciousness becoming self-consciousness meets the other in which it recognizes itself and consorts its efforts toward soliciting the recognition of its individuality and independence from the other. However, when the quasi-subject first meets another quasi-subject (or consciousness becoming self-conscious), it does not recognize it as such. When the two first meet "they have not as yet exposed themselves to each other in the form of pure being-for-self, or as self-consciousnesses. Each is indeed certain of its own self, but not of the other, and therefore its own self-certainty still has no truth."21 Each consciousness in the stage of becoming self-conscious has yet to be recognized since self-consciousness requires recognition by another self-consciousness.

Both consciousnesses, in becoming self-conscious, engage the other consciousness becoming a self-consciousness in the life-and-death struggle for recognition as the self-

m Ibid, 111/178. 21 Ibid, 113/186. 36 consciousness. For Hegel both consciousnesses cannot be recognized as a self- consciousness hence there is no reciprocity in this particular encounter. The lack of reciprocity at this stage in the Hegelian dialectic will prove to be particularly troubling for Beauvoir. Both consciousnesses, in aiming to become self-conscious, struggle to prove that it is the only being for-itself by seeking to reduce the other to a being in-itself.

If it recognizes the other as a for-itself it is defeated given that for Hegel a self- consciousness must also recognize that it is a being in-itself before the other. In Hegel's conception self-consciousness would rather forfeit its life than be reduced to a being in- itself before the other because, if it loses this struggle it shows itself as nothing more than animal life, nothing other than consciousness (in-itself). On the other hand, the being that champions in this struggle has knowingly and willingly risked its destruction for recognition and thereby it has been differentiated from mere animal life by the other, showing itself to be human (self-consciousness). Consequently, there is no self- affirmation without negating the life of an other (the other becomes the inessential object) and without risking one's own life (the champion becomes the essential subject). Life becomes, so to speak, the point of contention between the two possible for-itselves and the striving to impose the recognition of oneself on the other becomes a life-and-death struggle.

Beauvoir adopts this notion of hostility between groups, she asks why it is that woman (as a group) have never figured themselves as the One over and against the Other

(man). Beauvoir examines the situation of woman over time in order to locate the moment in history when woman has not been subordinate to man. For it is this historical moment, a moment when self-consciousnesses meet as consciousnesses, that shapes

37 Hegel's thought. She discovers that there is in fact no historical moment in which woman

disputed man's sovereignty. This surrender troubles Beauvoir greatly. She explains, "No

subject will readily volunteer to become the object, the inessential; it is not the Other

who, in defining himself as the Other, establishes the One. The Other is posed as such by

the One in defining himself as the One. But if the Other is not to regain the status of

being the One, he must be submissive enough to accept this alien point of view."23

Beauvoir proceeds to ask, "Whence comes this submission in the case of woman?"24

With this introduction to woman's situation in The Second Sex, Beauvoir proceeds to

describe in 'Book One' how it is that woman has always been the inessential Other to

man's essential One. This reading in no way solidifies her adherence to Hegel's

ontology, but rather it demonstrates that Beauvoir acknowledges that recognition and

hostility does exist and hence, must be overcome.

Although Beauvoir cannot pinpoint the moment wherein woman and man engaged in

a life-and-death struggle for recognition, she does not directly dispute Hegel's notion of

recognition. On the contrary, she adopts it to explain the situation of woman. She

borrows Hegel's ontological notion and continues to ask why woman subjugates herself

to the role of Other. This adoption is problematic as Allison Weir points out. Weir argues

that Beauvoir's ontological thinking ought not be accepted insofar as it reinforces a

dualist ontology.26 Beauvoir does not overtly consider that perhaps Hegel is mistaken

Beauvoir 1989, xxiv. 23 Ibid, xxiii. 24 Ibid, xxiv. 25 The question of submission will be addressed throughout Section III. 26 Weir argues, "the feminist critique of de Beauvoir has not been taken far enough. For de Beauvoir's fundamental assumption—that self-identity is necessarily based on a subject-object opposition, on a logic of negation of the other—tends not to be questioned but is too often simply accepted." (24) Allison Weir, Sacrificial Logics: Feminist Theory and the Critique of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1996). Weir looks 38 about this fundamental conflict of self-consciousnesses. In fact, Beauvoir seems to

confirm Hegel's assumption insofar as she assumes that the one/other model, a model

which is based on struggle, is definitive of the development of human subjectivity. She

writes,

These phenomena [aggression, conflict, struggle] would be incomprehensible if in fact human society were simply a Mitsein or fellowship based on solidarity and friendliness. Things become clear, on the contrary, if, following Hegel, we find in consciousness itself a fundamental hostility toward every other consciousness; the subject can be posed only in being opposed—he sets himself up as the essential, as opposed to the other, the inessential, the object.27

Instead of rejecting the Hegelian model, Beauvoir looks to the relationship between self-

consciousness and freedom for our ontological tendencies toward opposition. This is not

to say that Beauvoir missteps here, but rather, she focuses in on the existential

explanations and not the ontological explanations for this problematic relationship between woman and man. She is, after all, not interested in doing ontology, but rather

in working through the problem that the other appears to present.

Beauvoir's most extensive use of Hegel's ontology is in Chapter IX "Dreams, Fears,

Idols" of The Second Sex wherein she argues that woman and man never engaged in a

life-and-death struggle. This lack of struggle calls into question the plausibility of using

Hegel's ontology to think through our contemporary Western story. This seems to be a

departure from her usage of Hegel's ontology in the "Introduction". Beauvoir claims that the relationship between man and woman does not correspond to the Hegelian notion of

to Hegel's notion of Spirit to move beyond such thinking by locating Beauvoir's ontology in Hegel's unhappy consciousness. 27 Beauvoir 1989, xxiii. 28 Although she makes this claim in The Prime of Life (220-1), her notion of freedom suggests that indeed she is doing ontology. 39 recognition. Instead, woman ends up as a placeholder for all that is not man. Beauvoir concludes Chapter IX solemnly,

She is All, that is, on the plane of the inessential; she is all the Other. And, as the other, she is other than herself, other than what is expected of her. Being all, she is never quite this which she should be; she is everlasting deception, the very deception of that existence which is never successfully attained nor fully reconciled with the totality of existents.

She is not the Hegelian slave, for even the slave reconciles with himself (gains subjectivity) through his work. Furthermore, the slave has struggled and lost. On the other hand, woman never quite reconciles with herself. Her return to herself, the possibility for recognizing herself as a subject, is never completed. However, as we will see below, woman may be in an existential bind wherein she cannot gain subjectivity through her work or challenge man's sovereignty.

Beauvoir's claim ought to be unpacked further. Woman

opposes [man] with neither the hostile silence of nature nor the hard requirement of a reciprocal relation; through a unique privilege she is a conscious being and yet it seems possible to possess her in the flesh. Thanks to her, there is a means for escaping the implacable dialectic of master and slave which has its source in the reciprocity that exists between free beings.30

Beauvoir stresses that woman's appeal to man is not as an embodied consciousness. She does not ask for recognition, but interestingly she is able to recognize man. He accepts her not as a reciprocal being, but as a fleshy body. There is no struggle between man and woman; instead both collude in this game of One/Other refusing to enter into struggle with one another in order to avoid the uncompromising dialectic. Man remains subject - the One and "Woman thus seems to be the inessential who never goes back to being the

Ibid, 197-8. Ibid, 140-1. 40 •} 1 essential, to be the absolute Other, without reciprocity." Consequently, if we believe

Hegel, the recognition and identity gained by man through this process is superficial given woman's positioning as the inessential.

Since there is no struggle, both man and woman are guaranteed life. Death would certainly prove that each self-consciousness risked her life for freedom, but the catch is that if one dies, there is no longer opposition or otherness by which to differentiate oneself or by which to be recognized. The other must live since the establishment of independence through the death of the other is self-defeating. Self-consciousness cannot be recognized by a mere object (a dead body), but interestingly, it can be recognized for

Beauvoir by the other, the inessential, or the negative. This incongruity will be explained momentarily. Ultimately, independence without relation to an other is meaningless in

Hegel's system likewise for Beauvoir given her adherence to recognition. For Beauvoir, one needs the other not only for one's own ontological certainty, but one also needs the other for all of one's socio-psychological negotiations. This interdependence will come to fruition in Beauvoir's ethical thinking in Section III.

If both parties survive the life-and-death struggle, one being is reduced to subservience in the Hegelian model. Thus the two self-consciousnesses embody two different attitudes toward life: the master attitude and the slave attitude. The master attitude is one of independence and freedom over mere life, where "to have this consciousness 'for-itself is essential, to be alive is not—given a choice between freedom

31 Ibid, 141. 32 Though A.V. Miller's translation of Hegel's Herrschaft und Knechtschaft is 'mastership' and 'bondage' I will use 'master' and 'slave' as it is more commonly used and it is how Beauvoir's translators phrase this dialectic. This substitution will apply to A.V. Miller's translated text as well. 41 and life it will choose freedom." The attitude of dependence is just the opposite, the slave is forced to relinquish self-hood for thing-hood. It is not that the for-itself is actually destroyed (although this could happen in a psychic breakdown) because the for-itself is necessary to the slave's labor. It is not possible to fully relinquish or destroy either one's being for-itself or one's being in-itself because the human being is necessarily both.

Although Hegel does not discuss the existential circumstances of this game, the roots of bad faith and inauthenticity lie in this life-and-death struggle. Hegel explains, the master and the slave "exist as two opposed shapes of consciousness; one is the independent consciousness whose essential nature is to be for itself, the other is the dependent consciousness whose essential nature is simply to live or to be for another."35

The slave essentially gives up on recognition and settles for survival and by so doing he plays at being dependent, this is what is meant when one refers to the enemy as defeated or rather, having her spirit broken. In the eyes of the master, one is reduced to the level of the 'thing' to be used to temporarily satiate the master's appetite.

The slave overcomes otherness in the act of fashioning things and leaving her mark on the world. This universal formative activity is the solution to the slave's positioning.

Through work the slave becomes aware that she truly is a positive self-consciousness.

Her independence is not stationed in her relationship to the master, because it is not

'stationed' at all: "Independence is not a state, it is a movement; and only the slave can move, because [s]he engages in an activity which transforms." On the other hand, the master has condemned herself to simply taking what is given. The master merely negates

33 Quentin Lauer, Hegel's Idea of Philosophy, (New York: Fordham University Press, 1983), 129. 34 Bad faith and inauthenticity are fleshed out below in the examination of the ontologies of Heidegger and Sartre. 35 Hegel 1977, 114/189. 36 Lauer, 132. 42 by destroying through consumption whereas the slave negates significantly by

transforming through creation. Therefore, it is the master who is left behind in history

through his repetitiveness; it is the slave who forwards history acting as the truly avant-

garde.

Beauvoir scholars agree that woman does not enter into the life-and-death struggle with man.37 However, they have disparate views on whether or not Beauvoir's woman is truly akin to the slave. Their disparate readings will help clarify the degree to which

Beauvoir subscribes to Hegel's notion of differentiation and recognition. Eva Lundgren-

Gothlin and Gail Weiss argue that Beauvoir's woman is only figuratively similar to the Hegelian slave. On the other hand, Shannon M. Mussett40 and Nancy Bauer41 argue that Beauvoir's woman can be compared to the slave. More specifically, Mussett argues that Beauvoir recasts the slave as woman since the Hegelian slave is actually not an inessential other to the master to the same extent that woman is the inessential Other to man, given that the slave does achieve a level of subjecthood through his labour as we will discover below. Other Beauvoir scholars have weighed in on this debate, but I will focus on the arguments of Gothlin in Sex & Existence: Simone de Beauvoir's 'The

Second Sex' and Mussett in "Conditions of Servitude: Woman's Peculiar Role in the

Master-Slave Dialectic in Beauvoir's The Second Sex". Gothlin's and Mussett's disparate thinking further highlights Beauvoir's ambiguous use of Hegel's ontology. Their

"Beauvoir 1989, 64. 38 Eva Lundgren-Gothlin, Sex & Existence: Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex', trans. Linda Schenck (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1996). 39 Gail Weiss, Body Images: Embodiment as Inter corporeality, (New York: Routledge, 1999), 149. 40 Shannon M. Mussett, "Conditions of Servitude: Woman's Peculiar Role in the Mater-Slave Dialectic in Beauvoir's The Second Sex" in The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Critical Essays, ed. Margaret A. Simons (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). 41 Nancy Bauer, Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophy and Feminism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

43 disagreement leads to two different but entirely possible pathways to woman's liberation.

These pathways will be taken up in Section IV.

Given these disparate viewpoints on Beauvoir's usage of Hegelian ontology there are different solutions to remedy woman's situation as the Other. If Beauvoir is read as only figuratively using the Hegelian dialectic to explain woman's situation, it could be concluded that there is a possibility for an ethics based on reciprocal recognition since it is not necessarily the case that all human relations are fundamentally based on conflict as described by Hegel and later by Sartre. This is a very appealing thesis indeed. In this case, there is a possibility of working toward a relationship between man and woman that is not based on a fundamental conflict, but rather is the site of a possibility for reciprocal flourishing. This reading will be challenged though inevitably championed in my work.

On the other hand, if we read Beauvoir's woman as the embodiment of the Hegelian slave taken to its most far reaching limit, as Mussett does, it must be accepted that the viability of the notion that all ethical relations are based on hostility and the only way for woman to change her situation given Beauvoir's description is through social-political work. Recall that the slave can rebel and challenge the master if she wishes to do so. This challenge stands to uphold the Hegelian dialectic whereas Gothlin's view breaks it down.

Interestingly, in The Second Sex Beauvoir argues that liberation can come both through reciprocity and through transcendence (work).42 Consequently, both Gothlin's

Recall from the Introduction that Debra B. Bergoffen argues that The Second Sex is written with two distinct voices. Bergoffen explains, "Its dominant and best-known voice seems to support the logic of the one. Its muted and less heard voice finds this logic problematic." (Bergoffen 2003, 253) We will explore this idea more closely in Section II, Chapter 4, given that these voices will create a tension in Beauvoir's thinking on woman's path to liberation. 44 interpretation and Mussett's interpretation can be supported by Beauvoir's work

depending upon where one looks in The Second Sex. 3

Gothlin argues that Beauvoir enters Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit through

Alexandre Kojeve.44 Kojeve's lectures focus on the master-slave dialectic and the

importance of desire in Hegel. Kojeve argues that according to Hegel, self-consciousness

is desire for all that appears to be independent from the desiring subject. This reading

accounts for the human struggle as continuously transcending that which is other. Of

course, satisfying one's desires through consumption is merely a transient and highly

problematic in the long-run, given that the desiring consciousness eventually defeats

itself when it engages in conflictual relations. For it is only through another self-

consciousness that self-consciousness can assuage this desire to consume. Hegel explains,

"Self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness.'''' The

trouble faced by the master is that the other self-consciousness is reduced to slavery at

which point she can no longer properly recognize the master. The master's desire is

merely placated by the slave's offerings. It is the process of recognition of the other as a

self-consciousness that is the key for Hegel. The conflict acts as the vehicle for

recognition and is perhaps taken for granted in Hegel's thinking.46

Gothlin pays close attention to Beauvoir's Kojevean-Hegelianism. She rightly argues

that woman's oppression as described by Beauvoir in The Second Sex is unique, and thus

Moving forward, I will take up Gothlin's view in order to further my thesis. 44 Beauvoir attended some of Kojeve's lectures. See Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on The Phenomenology of Spirit, as. Raymond Queneau, ed. Allan Bloom, trans. James H. Nichols, Jr. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980). 45 Hegel, 110/175. 46 This reading will be fleshed out more thoroughly in Section II, Chapter 3, in the discussion of the desiring consciousness. 45 its link to Hegelianism is tenuous at best. Beauvoir explains woman's relation to the slave attitude:

To regard woman simply as a slave is a mistake; there were women among the slaves, to be sure, but there have always been free women—that is, women of religious and social dignity. They accepted man's sovereignty and he did not feel menaced by a revolt that could make of him in turn the object. Woman thus seems to be the inessential who never goes back to being the essential, to be the absolute Other, without reciprocity.47

In this passage, woman does not bear the burden that Hegel describes. Recall that for

Beauvoir, woman can only enter into the dialectical relationship with man if she is first recognized as a freedom. Man and woman are in a non-dialectical relationship. Woman is not merely the Other to man, rather woman is the absolute Other and man is the absolute One. This particular othering is troubling for both man and woman but interestingly, woman and man's mutual estrangement allows Beauvoir to argue that there are real possibilities for reciprocity. Beauvoir argues that both woman and man ought to work toward reciprocal recognition insofar as they are both alienated.49 Their relationship is heavily influenced by the sheer weight of this shared historical burden wherein woman is not recognized as a free being. Furthermore, and most importantly, their relation is not one of conflict as envisioned by the master-slave mentality of Hegel and later the conflict which is envisioned by Sartre. Conversely, their relationship is one of bad faith, an equally troubling and perhaps more acute ontological trap, as will be discovered below.

Recall that Hegel argues that when self-consciousness encounters another self- consciousness it enters into a life-and-death struggle for recognition. The two self- consciousnesses engage in this struggle to be recognized as a subject by the other self-

47 Beauvoir 1989, 141. 48 Ibid, 140. 49 Lundgren-Gothlin 1996, 72. This will be fleshed out in our discussion of bad faith in Section III, Chapter 2. 46 consciousness. This account of subjectivity entails accepting that violence is necessary for identity formation—it is a life-and-death struggle,5 such that identity is achieved by aggression. Gothlin argues that Beauvoir moves away from the certainty of violence inherent in Hegel's philosophy of recognition. Gothlin rightly calls attention to

Beauvoir's muted argument for a fundamental reciprocity. This call will become apparent in an investigation of Beauvoir's ethical works in Section II. However, separating fundamental mutuality from fundamental conflict in Beauvoir's work will be tricky insofar as Beauvoir is not wholly committed to either beginning. Beauvoir explains, "It is possible to rise above this conflict if each individual freely recognizes the other, each regarding himself and the other simultaneously as object and as subject in a reciprocal manner."51 Unfortunately, the threat of conflict is still primary to Beauvoir's account of our intersubjectivity, but thankfully conflict is not necessary. Subjectivity, for Beauvoir, can be achieved through mutual recognition. It is possible to achieve subjectivity if one engages the other not only as a self-consciousness to be overcome, but as both an in-itself

(object) and a for-itself (subject). Namely, subjectivity can be achieved for both self- consciousnesses through ambiguous interaction. This need not be founded on a primary conflict. This is indeed an interesting reading of Beauvoir's use of the Hegelian master- slave dialectic insofar as it shows that Beauvoir borrows from Hegel here to forward a thesis of recognition based on reciprocity. However, it is difficult to separate out

Beauvoir's usage of conflict as a socio-historical certainty and not an ontological

50 Bergoffen 1997, 176. As we will discuss below the problem of bad faith stands to undo this possibility for reciprocity. 51 Beauvoir 1989, 140. 52 Ambiguity is acknowledging oneself as both a subject and object, an in-itself and a for-itself, active and passive, and an immanence and a transcendence. It is also the acknowledgement that one's situation is never fixed and never complete. Ambiguity is a central theme in Beauvoir that we will continue to unpack throughout this investigation. 47 certainty of the human reality as a reality that is self-conscious. This original presupposition, highlighted aptly by Weir,54 will cause problems for Beauvoir's existentialist ethics.

On the other hand, in "Conditions of Servitude: Woman's Peculiar Role in the

Master-Slave Dialectic in Beauvoir's The Second Sex, " Mussett argues that Beauvoir's woman represents a type of Hegelian slave. This ontological predicament gestures toward the need for woman to work in order to overcome her slave status in the same fashion as the slave works to overturn the Hegelian dialectic as we will see below. Mussett's reading is as important to Beauvoir's ontological beginnings as Gothlin's reading insofar as it emphasizes Beauvoir's call for woman to transcend her immanence through taking up projects of her own. In this reading, woman is a being for another self-consciousness much like the slave is a being for the master.

Mussett argues two interconnected theses. First, she argues that, like the slave, woman is an instrument of mediation for man (the master). Recall that in Hegel, realizing self-consciousness involves moving outside of the self, grasping the self through the other (I am as the other sees me) and returning to the self. Following Hegel, Beauvoir writes, man "attains himself only through that reality which he is not, which is something other than himself."55 This process of identity through differentiation is the moment of pure negativity for the I. What becomes clear to the self-consciousness in this process is that self-consciousness is not just a for-itself for an other; it is also an in-itself for an other (I am as the other sees me; I am an object for the other). This movement of the self-

53 This line of questioning will continue to surface throughout this work especially when Beauvoir's existentialism is unpacked in Section II. The notion that the human reality is based on the fundamental conflict of self-consciousnesses is difficult to position within the existential thesis. 54 See page 37 «26 for a brief discussion of Weir's reading. "Beauvoir 1989, 139. 48 consciousness reinforces the need for recognition insofar as it is a sort of completing of the self for the self. Mussett argues that woman provides man with the possibility of knowing himself as an in-itself (as does the slave for the master), woman also comes to

signify all that is not man.56 Mussett argues that in Beauvoir's work, woman is negativity par excellence. Consequently, man masters his mediation through woman and in so doing

en relates to both nature and to himself through woman.

Beauvoir argues, as will be explored more explicitly in Section III, Chapter 4, that woman comes to signify all of nature for man. She explains that at first man finds nature overwhelming—an "alien force" that needs to be subjugated so that human beings can manage its power. Beauvoir links the struggle between man and woman to this struggle between man and nature.58 In her account of human history, Beauvoir explains, man encounters Nature; he has some hold upon her, he endeavors to mold her to his desire. But she cannot fill his needs. Either she appears simply as a purely impersonal opposition, she is an obstacle and remains a stranger; or she submits passively to man's will and permits assimilation, so that he takes possession of her only through consuming her—that is, through destroying her. In both cases he remains alone.59

Man's desire to control and consume nature subjugates nature to his will. Woman is also subjugated in her role as the signifier for all that is not man. Woman is not wholly destroyed in man's consumption; she is after all a self-consciousness too. Instead Mussett explains, "man's desire is partially fulfilled and indefinitely prolonged. Perhaps woman mediates even better than Hegel's slave, who simply works on nature, because woman comes to embody it." Hence, "This makes the appropriation of nature by man much easier

56 Ibid, 71. 57 Mussett, 279. 58 This thesis is the basis for the ecofeminist argument that the oppression by man and subordination of woman to man parallels the oppression by man and subordination of Nature to man. For a good introduction to ecofeminism see Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism, (New York: Palgrave, 1993). 59 Beauvoir 1989, 139. 49 and more satisfying. It remains to be seen how woman, as object, serves the same role for

man that the object-being of the slave serves for the master."60 Man objectifies woman so

that he may find his limits and define himself as a subject. Man, as we saw earlier, sets

himself up as the One and relegates to Other all that he is not and calls this otherness

woman. Interestingly, as in the case of the master, man's freedom to objectify woman

(and nature) is actually a fleeing from and not an exercise in freedom. He evades his

freedom through her.61 By so doing he does not have to fully recognize his negativity or

in other words he does not have to recognize that he, as a for-itself, is nothingness.

Mussett's argument works insofar as woman mediates or fills the role of object-being for

man's identity. Not only does woman mediate all otherness for man, she, as a self-

consciousness, gives him the recognition he needs for selfhood.

Before delving into Mussett's second thesis, it is necessary to understand how the

master-slave dialectic is exhausted. The fact is that the master is dependent upon the

slave. Arguably the master needs the slave more than the slave needs the master. First, the slave provides a continuous supply of sensuous items for the master to consume so that he may gratify his ceaseless desires. Second, the slave recognizes the master as a

self-consciousness for a time. The master is freed of his objectivity through the slave's recognition. It would seem that the master has the upper hand in this primal relationship.

The slave toils in producing the objects of the master's desire while the master reaps the enjoyment from the slave's labour.63 What lies hidden in this relationship or at least hidden to the master, is that the master is utterly dependent upon the slave for the

60Mussett, 281. 61 This will be thoroughly unpacked in the discussion of bad faith in Section III, Chapter 2. 62 This idea will be fleshed out in Chapter 3 in a discussion of Sartre's reading of consciousness. 63 Hegel, 115/190. 50 procurement of things; the master is entirely relegated to the negating activity of his

desire. The master is dependent on his dependence, for if the slave were to be granted

independence, the master would go hungry, such that his desire would rage. In addition,

the recognition that the master desires is untenable given that recognition must always be

a mutual affair between two self-conscious agents. In this model, it is only in the moment

of struggle that recognition is tenable. It is a good thing that Hegel was not interested in

formulating an ethics given that recognition is founded in struggle. Given the slave's

social positioning, what he can provide falls short of the recognition needed.

Consequently, Hegel explains that the slave enjoys a much more genuine life. The slave

comes to recognize that one can be a for-itself insofar as one creates/labours.

Furthermore, the slave lives more authentically given his fear of his master and a life of

servitude/work. On the other hand, the master does not recognize his in-itself aspect because he does not have to confront his fear or servitude. However, this aspect of

accountability to the other is integral to self-consciousness. The master is discovered to be merely a spectator, and not a participant in the real business of life. Furthermore, the master does not even truly realize his for-itself aspect insofar as he does not engage in

creative projects. Projects, as Beauvoir explains, reveal and shape this aspect of our multi-dimensionality and in a sense typify what it means to be more than mere animal life.64

Through fear of the master and more importantly, through fear of the absolute

(death), the slave realizes the universal fluidity of the world and gives up the stubborn attitude of fixedness (the necessity of being recognized by the other). She thereby takes

A discussion of our multi-dimensionality will commence in Section II, Chapter 2. 51 up the task of creativity through her work. Through the slave's encounter with the perils of the life-and-death struggle, she gains access to a conception of the dynamic nature inherent in the world. Consequently, she no longer takes the world as given. She is able to move beyond the static solution—consumption, with which the master contents himself and gains insight into the ability not only for creativity, but also for self- creativity. Hegel describes the experience:

[one's] whole being has been seized with dread. In that experience it has been quite un-manned, has trembled in every fiber of its being, and everything solid and stable has been shaken to its foundations. But this pure universal movement, the absolute melting away of everything stable, is the simple, essential nature of self- consciousness, absolute negativity, pure being-for-self.

The fear of death relieves the slave of any fear of change and thus, she becomes a dynamic creative force outstripping the stagnancy of the master placeholder.

Mussett's second thesis asserts that although woman evades the life-and-death struggle, she learns the same lesson as the slave. Woman learns of negativity and emancipation through labour.66 Through woman's oppression she learns the same thing as the slave learns through his encounter with death, namely, that the essence of self- consciousness is pure negation. However, over and above this lesson, woman learns that she is a lack whose desire will never be fulfilled if she remains as the inessential or in her object-being.67 It is the subject whose desires are met. This realization comes not through a life-and-death struggle for woman, but rather this lesson is learned through the ways in which woman and man have socio-historically appropriated their freedom and the human reality that has resulted from this appropriation.

65 Ibid, 117/194. 66 Mussett, 276. 67 We will explore another reading of the notion of a fundamental lack in Section IV, Chapter 3. 68 In Section III, Chapter 2,1 provide an analysis of how woman gets taken up by man's desire. 52 Mussett's argument entails that, like the slave, woman must work to overcome her status as the other. Unfortunately, it is more difficult for woman than it is for the slave because their situations are so different. Woman is trapped in a way in which the slave is not. The master and the slave originally meet as equals whereas woman's very being as a self-consciousness is, in this interpretation, structured by her oppression. Unlike the slave, woman does not struggle nor has she ever struggled for recognition. Instead, she internalizes her otherness making her the perfect slave. Beauvoir concedes, "The great difference [between the woman and the slave] is that with woman dependency is interiorized: she is a slave even when she behaves with apparent freedom". However, this does not mean that Beauvoir accepts the sort of slavery described by Hegel. For

Hegel the slave is not dependent upon the master. The slave is interiorly free.

Furthermore, the illusion of behaving freely calls into question woman's ability to ever transcend her positioning as Other. The slave does transcend his positioning through labour. This is a problem that will be tackled in depth in Section III.

In summary, regardless of whether one reads Beauvoir's descriptions as a flirtation with or an acceptance of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic, two things are clear and thankfully, can be mutually inclusive. Woman and man must work to allow the other human being to flourish as a self-consciousness which entails opening a space of reciprocity between two so that both man and woman can be recognized as subjects. This recognition will surely be more difficult if human relations are based on conflict rather than on mutuality. Secondly, woman must labour outside of her relationship with man.

Regardless of whether or not the goal is to transcend one's immanence or to promote

69 Beauvoir 1989, 481. 70 In Section II, Chapter 2 we will understand better what it means to be interiorly free when we explore Beauvoir's distinction between interiority and exteriority. 53 ambiguity, transcendence is an aspect of living ambiguously with others. Woman must transcend her situation as man's Other/slave so that she may also transform the world through her own creative projects.

In conclusion, Hegel's notion of recognition and the slave mentality underlies

Beauvoir's thesis throughout The Second Sex. It is not that Beauvoir relies on Hegel's ontology to unpack the situation of woman as Other, but rather she recognizes its explanatory power even if there are moments in her work wherein she works against

Hegel's account. One thing is certain, Beauvoir's usage of Hegel makes explicit the need for woman to be recognized as a freedom. Hence, it is important to understand Hegel's historical perspective in order that we may understand how his ontology informs her existentialist ethics.

54 Chapter 2: Heidegger's Ontological Influence

Heidegger's Being and Time questions the possibility and desirability of making our

everyday understanding totally explicit given that our being-in-the-world is somewhat

clouded, experientially dense, and inconclusive. Beauvoir's similar understanding of the

world provides her with the rationale as to why she is not interested in writing an

71

ontology. For Beauvoir, experience is far too messy to theorize. Looking at Heidegger's

influence on Beauvoir's ontology will be of a different sort than the exploration of

Hegel's influence on Beauvoir. Heidegger's thinking provides Beauvoir with an amply transferable set of conceptual tools for thinking through our human reality so that she

does not have to engage explicitly with ontology. Exploring these conceptual tools is important if we are to successfully rescue Beauvoir's existentialist ethics without forgoing the complexity of the human reality which is opaquely, but aptly described by Heidegger.

Heidegger's fundamental ontology influenced Beauvoir's ontological assumptions in a few key ways. First, Dasein (being there) bears a strong resemblance to Beauvoir's notion of the human situation as both factical and yet free. Second, Heidegger's notion of corporeality, although not fully elaborated in Being and Time, avails itself to Beauvoir's notion of embodiment.72 Third, Heidegger's notion of disclosedness [Erschlossenheit] appears in Beauvoir's existentialist ethics and provides the basis for reciprocity. Fourth,

Heidegger's Mitsein can be read as informing Beauvoir's discussion of the relationship between man and woman which lays a foundation for Beauvoir's existential ethics. Fifth

71 Beauvoir 1965, 221. 72 Beauvoir's thinking on embodiment is also notably aided by Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. In Beauvoir's favourable review of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception she congratulates him on his ability to give us a body that "lives in the world; it is our general way of having a world. It expresses our existence, which signifies not that it is an exterior accompaniment of our existence, but that our existence realizes itself in it." (161) This notion of corporeality animates the body so that it does not merely express existence, but rather it is existence. 55 and finally, Heidegger's notion of authenticity is used by Beauvoir to describe the optimum human reality. Beauvoir does not use these five ideas (and arguably many more) wholesale, but they do influence her thinking in much the same fashion that

Hegel's thinking and Sartre's thinking influence Beauvoir. Beauvoir pieces together the ideas of these thinkers with her own original ideas so that she may nurture her own project on freedom, embodiment, and the question of the other as will be shown in this chapter.

The most accessible route into Heidegger's fundamental ontology is through the concept of Dasein. Dasein plays an important role in the existential movement, such that it highlights the importance of our situation by providing the basis for all understanding.

According to Heidegger, Dasein's essence, which literally translates as 'being-there', is in its existence: "The 'essence' [Wesen] of this entity lies in its 'to be' [Zu-sein]."13 Being- there is a way of existing that is unique to the human reality because the human being as a being-there is situated in a way that an object is not situated. Heidegger explains that,

"This term [existence], does not and cannot have the ontological signification of the traditional term ' existentia' which traditionally means 'being-present-at-hand'

[Vorhanden]."14 Existentia entails indifference to the world and indifference to how it exists in the world. However, Dasein is not spatially organized and located in relation to other objects such as traditionally asserted in theories of spatial comportment. That which is being-present-at-hand (such as a hammer) does not question how it exists in the world.

On the other hand, Dasein's being-in-the-world is always an issue for Dasein, calling situatedness to the fore of Dasein's questioning. It is Dasein that "each of us is himself

Heidegger, 67/42. Ibid, 67/42. 56 and which includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its Being". Consequently,

Dasein is caught up in the existential questioning that Heidegger undertakes in Being and

Time. This is especially apt given that Dasein is concerned with the question of its own total immersion in the world and the possibilities therein.

What Dasein effectively communicates is that there is no objective view-point of the world, but rather each individual is bound up in a situation that offers certain possibilities.

This tension between one's becoming through the possible and one's facticity is an important tension for Beauvoir. Although Heidegger remains rather impersonal in his account of Dasein, Beauvoir explains that one is born with a specific body that has specific relations to others, things, histories, and so forth, a body which opens upon certain possibilities and closes upon others. This entails two important things for

Beauvoir. First, the human being is not absolutely free to be or to do whatever she chooses. She is limited by her being-in-the-world with others. Take, for example, the situation of woman. Her possibilities are limited given her social positioning as the inessential Other. Beauvoir explains, "in the human species individual 'possibilities' depend upon the economic and social situation"77 of the individual. For instance, woman's access to education and healthcare is delimited by her socio-economic positioning. The second thing that is entailed is that the human being is not defined by her situation. For Beauvoir, the human being has no essence or fate rather she is free to choose how to live her situation. Consequently, the human "species is forever in a state of change, forever becoming."78 This of course, reflects the existential mantra 'existence

Ibid, 27/7. Beauvoir 1989, 34. Ibid, 35.

57 before essence', such that one is first born and then one begins the project of making oneself.

Consider Beauvoir's most famous and perhaps most misinterpreted passage from

Book II of The Second Sex: "On ne nait pas femme : on le devient." Quite literally, one is not born woman; one becomes woman. It can also mean that you are not born woman; you become woman. In the first possible reading, the 'one' is plural or universal and in second possible reading the 'you' is singular and anonymous. Hence there is an ambiguity regarding who exactly becomes woman. Both individual girls and girls collectively become woman. This powerful statement exemplifies how important this tension between the factical and the possible is for Beauvoir's thinking. She argues that woman is not an essence or a biological thing rather woman is a situation—a circumstantiality. Beauvoir explains, "Woman is not a completed reality, but rather a becoming, and it is in her becoming that she should be compared with man; that is to say, her possibilities should be defined [...] for the fact is that capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized."80 The possible does not outstrip the real, but possibilities exist only insofar as they can be realized by a situated being. This possibility sounds rather

Heideggerian insofar as he claims that "Dasein is in every case what it can be, and in the way in which it is its possibility."81 The human reality as being-in-the-world is an engagement in this interpretation of possibilities and the disclosure of different ways of being human.82 However, Beauvoir moves beyond this formulation of being-in-the-world

y Beauvoir 1949b, 13. 0 Beauvoir 1989, 34. 'Heidegger, 183/143. 2 Ibid, 42/21. 58 by linking our bodies to our facticity and thereby linking our bodies to our possibilities for becoming.

Heidegger uses the expression 'being-in-the-world' to convey the idea that the human being is thrown into a world that is always already underway. Dasein is very literally a being-there. It is cast into a world that delimits its very possibilities for existence, such that Dasein exists under particular conditions at a particular moment in history. These conditions such as ethnicity, class, race, location, and so forth situate each being as a particular facticity. Facticity [Faktizitdi] is the particularity (brute facts and existential disposition) that informs each individual's existence as particular to that individual.

Heidegger explains, "The concept of'facticity' implies that an entity 'within-the-world' has Being-in-the-world in such a way that it can understand itself as bound up in its

'destiny' with the Being of those entities which it encounters within its own world."

This is not to say that Heidegger believes Dasein to be determined (by brute facts of being-in-the-world), rather Heidegger aims to show that Dasein always exists under certain circumstances. The idea that each human being is rooted in a particular situation

(Gestalt) that is not of her making will have a great influence on Beauvoir's thinking as will be shown especially in Section III.

This is not to say that one's Gestalt determines one's being. Heidegger explains, "The

Being of any such entity is in each case mine." Dasein is its ownmost being or rather it is its own facticity and as explored above, Dasein is always involved in questioning and furthermore, choosing how to live the world it has inherited. Dasein's choice results in a specific way of taking up (comporting itself), owning up, or disowning its being-in-the-

83 Heidegger, 82/56. 84 Ibid, 67/41. i 59 world. Consequently, Heidegger writes, "Dasein is its disclosedness [Erschlossenheit]."

This means that being-there cannot be understood apart from not only its facticity, but also its revealing aspect.

Beauvoir moves far beyond Heidegger's formulation of corporeality as a factical being-there. Heidegger's focus on fundamental ontology entails that he is less concerned with the actual experiential element of corporeality and more interested in what being-in- the- world entails with respect to our understanding of Being. For Heidegger, our corporeality makes the co-constitution of the world possible. Beauvoir takes this thinking on corporeality a step further, describing how one's bodily differences both disclose and interpret the world in a way that is particular to one's disparate embodied situation. This more robust formulation, a formulation which takes particular bodies into consideration, underscores the importance of the body with respect to the possibilities of the subject.

Furthermore, Beauvoir explains, "the body is not a thing, it is a situation, as viewed in the perspective I am adopting—that of Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty; it is the instrument of our grasp upon the world, a limiting factor for our projects."86 Beauvoir does more than adopt the perspective of Heidegger. She pays special attention to the affectation and effects of one's particular body on one's projects and on the projects of others. In "Reading Simone de Beauvoir with Martin Heidegger," Gothlin explains,

"Disclosure has to do with signification; signification of bodily differences has to be taken into account."87 It is not enough for Beauvoir to claim in line with Heidegger,

85 Ibid, 171/133 (original italics). 86 Beauvoir 1989,34. 87 Eva Gothlin, "Reading Simone de Beauvoir with Martin Heidegger" in The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Claudia Card (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 56. 60 "Dasein is its disclosedness." The point is that this Heideggerian claim misses out on

the temporal-corporeal nuances which shape Dasein''s very revealing. Although Beauvoir

hits it with embodiment (as we will see below) her attention to woman's situation both

opens up and covers over the insight that disclosure bears.

Beauvoir's usage of disclosure links up nicely to the Heideggerian notion of

disclosedness. Beauvoir explains, "There is an original type of attachment to being which

on

is not the relationship 'wanting to be' but rather 'wanting to disclose being.'" It is not the

second intentional moment, but the first intentional moment that is critical for being.

Both Heidegger and Beauvoir privilege the ambiguous moment as an opening of

possibilities that allows Dasein to be understood in its being, but for Heidegger this

moment has always already happened. Consequently, for Heidegger the event of

disclosure remains rather immediate. This is where Beauvoir leaves Heidegger. Recall

that for Hegel self-consciousness is a being for-itself—an intentional being (pure negation) and consciousness is a being in-itself—a material being (fullness of being).

Beauvoir picks up on this ontological language of Hegel and Heidegger that is arguably

fleshed out by Sartre and argues that the subject is both a being for-itself and a being in- itself.90 The human being projects herself toward an open and indefinite future through being for-itself while maintaining her objective being in-itself. Disclosure happens when the individual reveals herself as a clearing of possibilities for other beings. Thus disclosure is an ongoing future-oriented project rooted in one's situation. Being as disclosure is a way of quieting the desires of the striving for-itself insofar as one must

Heidegger, 171/132 (original italics). Beauvoir 1976, 12.

61 reconcile with the ontological fact that one is a lack of being. It is a sort of pulling away

09 from existence so that one can simply be. Beauvoir explains disclosure: By uprooting himself from the world, man makes himself present to the world and makes the world present to him. 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 cannot appropriate the snowfield where I slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat.93

This characteristic of consciousness, which Beauvoir terms a joy, presences the world, others, and objects so that self-consciousness may disclose being by receding into the background. Self-consciousness can never completely take its leave because the individual, although a Being-with also remains at a distance, and can never be one with the sky, the water, or the snowfield. Disclosure for Beauvoir is a positive movement. It is the fundamental type of being qua human being. The question arises: what is the nature of the relationship between disclosure and the other if human being is fundamentally a

Being-with?

Dasein's horizons (possibilities for disclosing being) link up with the horizons of other Daseins. I exist in the world with other Daseins as both unique from (insofar as my facticity differs from that of others) and similar to (we are beings-in-the-world) other

91 Arp2001,64. 92 The following chapter will discuss the desire to be a disclosing being and escape the nothingness of the in-itself. Sartre's ontology better captures why it is that Beauvoir conceptualizes the individual as first and foremost a being who discloses being. 93 Beauvoir 1976, 12. For more on the notion of disclosure as joy seeKristana Arp, "The Joys of Disclosure: Simone de Beauvoir and the Phenomenological Tradition, Logos of Phenomenology and Phenomenology of the Logos. Book One, Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 88, Sec IV (2005). It must be noted that Beauvoir's example of the sliding hill could be in reference to Sartre's example of skiing (See Sartre 1956, 743-4). Sartre explains that the Alpine snowfield fascinates the skier insofar as the skier wants to possess it. However, the skier and the snowfield remain separate. The skier cannot appropriate the absolute being of the in-itself (snowfield). For Sartre, it is in instances such as this that one is haunted by her nothingness. Beauvoir flatly disagrees.

62 Daseins. Thus, Dasein's ownness is not to be misread as solipsistic, but rather it ought to be interpreted as opening upon a world peopled with other Daseins since Dasein's choice of how to live its ownness is bound up with the choices of others. This follows if we recall that individuality is disclosed to other Daseins through Dasein's particular structure of existing. It is through our corporeality that we come to grasp the human reality as a shared reality.95 Although Heidegger only briefly addresses the question of corporeality in his early work, the body remains a latent possibility throughout his discussion of Dasein (given his emphasis on facticity), being-in-the-world, and

Mitsein?1

Our shared reality—Mitsein or Being-with, is not to be mistaken for a purely ethical concept. Heidegger uses Mitsein as an ontological concept that delineates a shared world and not a primordial coupling. Mitsein is an ontological fact of Dasein's very being.

Dasein's situation is factically bound up with the situation of others. In fact, Being-with restricts and opens possibilities fox Dasein's existence. Recall that Dasein is thrown into a world that is already underway, such that Dasein exists in a particular time and place with particular others under particular historical circumstances which are not of Dasein's making. However, Dasein is not alone in this world. Dasein is a being-in-the-world with other beings in the world. Despite Heidegger's dismissal of the ethical implications of his existential phenomenology, there are undeniable ethical undertones in Being and Time especially when we consider Mitsein.

94 Heidegger, 264/221. 95 There is a question of influence here insofar as Beauvoir did read Edmund Husserl in 1934 (See Beauvoir 1965, 48) and responded enthusiastically to his notion of a shared world. For more on the connection between Husserl and Beauvoir see Heinamaa, 2006. 96 One's facticity shapes and is shaped by one's corporeality. 97 In Section IV, Chapter 3, the relationship between disclosure and being-in-the-world with others will be more thoroughly explored. 63 Beauvoir's usage of Mitsein has been explored by a number of Beauvoir scholars.

The most philosophically interesting reading of her usage comes from Bergoffen in The

Philosophy ofSimone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities.

However, in order to unpack Bergoffen's argument it is necessary to return to the

Hegelian dialectic for a moment. Bergoffen argues, along with Gothlin that Beauvoir's woman does not fit neatly into the role of the Hegelian slave. However, the two

Beauvoirians differ when it comes to thinking through the Hegelian dialectic and its relation to Mitsein.100 According to Bergoffen, woman and man have never confronted one another as two authoritarian subjects.101 Woman is excluded from the very dialectic of recognition insofar as she embodies generosity thus challenging the necessary conflict

109 between self-consciousnesses that otherwise occurs in Hegelian ontology. Instead woman recognizes man as a subject without struggling for recognition herself.

According to Bergoffen, Beauvoir does not explain how woman comes to embody the value of generosity, but Beauvoir's "account of the pervasiveness of patriarchy and of the difference between woman and the exploited groups depends on accepting that woman does embody this value."103 Perhaps the primordial Mitsein is not crucial to one's ontological beginnings either. Bergoffen asks if it is possible that "woman's generosity might reflect the success of the myth of femininity rather than the presence of a

98 See Bauer 2006, Bergoffen 1997, Lundgren-Gothlin 1996, Moser 2008, and Mussett 2006. 99 Bergoffen 1997, 166-8. 100 As I will show below Bergoffen argues that there is a conflict between accepting the Hegelian dialectic and the Heideggerian Mitsein. See Bergoffen 1997. Gothlin on the other hand, argues that Beauvoir's usage of two ontologies are separate. See Gothlin's Chapter 15 "Authenticity and Reciprocal Recognition" (1996). 101 Bergoffen 1997, 170. 102 Ibid, 166-7. Also note that generosity will be taken up in Section II, Chapter 2. 103 Ibid, 167. 64 fundamental way of being".104 If this is the case, Bergoffen explains that woman's behavior and her acceptance of the myth of femininity is indeed the source of her exploitation. It is not that struggle and the resulting exploitation is inherent in our ontology rather in patriarchy Mitsein reinforces the myth of the eternal feminine;105 woman's self-consciousness is shaped by her oppressed situation. Mitsein used in this sense reinforces the idea that woman is not a for-itself; she is for man. On the other hand, it could be the case that woman's behavior and acceptance of the myth of femininity is the enactment of certain phenomenological, existential, and ethical truths.106 This would entail that woman and man disclose their being very differently from one another. In this second reading, Mitsein reinforces the difference between and perhaps the need to bind two distinct beings together—man as the One and woman as the Other.

Not only is this possibility of myth versus existential-phenomenological truth not clear, it is not overtly evident in Beauvoir's work whether Mitsein refers to a biological certainty or to an ontological certainty. Bergoffen explains that if Mitsein is biological then Being-with carries no argumentative force in Beauvoir's phenomenological analysis.107 One is unable to trace woman's otherness to a procreative couple thus rendering this reading unlikely and furthermore, questionable given that Beauvoir argues for an ambiguous nature.108 On the other hand, if Mitsein refers to an ontological certainty it contests Beauvoir's subjective point of departure.109 Mitsein both hides and

104 Ibid. 105 Ibid, 174. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid, 168. 108 Beauvoir's argument for an ambiguous nature will be presented in Section II, Chapter 3. 109 Bergoffen 1997, 168. reveals our ambiguity. What is evident is that one cannot get clear on the origins of this

primordial coupling.110 Beauvoir argues,

The bond that unites her to her oppressors is not comparable to any other. The division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history. Male and female stand opposed within a primordial Mitsein, and woman has not broken it. The couple is a fundamental unity with its two halves riveted together, and the cleavage of society along the line of sex is impossible. u

Beauvoir's conceptualization serves to explain the uniqueness of the bond between man

and woman. It is a bond that cannot be traced back to its origin because it is a bond that

shapes our understanding of this division of sexes. However, despite all these uncertainties the usage of and insistence on the Heideggerian Mitsein tells us that the human reality is a reality based on solidarity and friendship—a bond that challenges both

Cartesian solipsism and the Hegelian life-and-death struggle. As Nancy Bauer rightly

explains, Beauvoir's Heideggerian understanding of the human reality is a reality which is "primordially and socially [a] Being-with."112 This Being-with is fundamental for

Beauvoir as it is for Heidegger, but it can problematically encourage one to lose oneself in their Being-with others. In this sense it is possible for Dasein to cover over its endemic potentiality for authenticity insofar as Dasein loses itself in the Being-with others. This will prove to be a barrier in thinking through woman's situation in Section II, Chapter 4.

It is not Mitsein that is troublesome; it is the forgetting of the Mitsein that leads to inauthenticity.

Problematically, Mitsein fosters an attitude that is at times inauthentic allowing

Dasein to lose itself in the 'they' [Das Man] (or, to use a Nietzschean phrase, herd

110 This distinction between the biological and the ontological will become more apparent in our later discussion of woman's situation in Section III, Chapter 1. 111 Beauvoir 1989, xxv. 112 Bauer 2006, 84. 66 mentality) thereby forgetting that Dasein is disclosedness. In falling alongside Das Man,

Dasein inauthentically understands itself as given instead of as hermeneutically

malleable. That is Dasein "can be characterized by inauthenticity—when busy, when

excited, when interested, when ready for enjoyment."113 This mode of being—being as

falling alongside others, is inauthentic insofar as it covers over Dasein's ownness.

Although deeply situated, Dasein is also a creative being who has a hand in its own

constitution. There are interesting implications on the question of freedom given that

Dasein creates itself and yet, is also factical. This negotiation will play itself out

exhaustively in Beauvoir's work on situated freedom and in her appropriation of

Heidegger which will be explored below.

Unlike Heidegger, Beauvoir does not explicitly spell out what she means by

authenticity; however, by taking cues from The Second Sex we can establish a working

definition. In considering the female characters in the works of Stendhal, Beauvoir states,

"What he likes in them is what today we call their authenticity: that is the common trait

in all the women he loved or lovingly invented; all are free and true beings."114 For

Beauvoir, Stendhal created women that were authentic. His characters willed themselves

toward their own freely chosen projects.115 Stendhal's women did not take the projects of

others to be their own rather they penned their own existence through actively engaging

in/with the world. It would be a mistake to assume that there is something essential about

authenticity insofar as every individual chooses her own projects and thus by so doing

she shapes her human (Being-with) and worldly (being-in-the-world) relations.

Beauvoir's championing of authenticity entails that she believes that each human being

113 Heidegger, 68/43. 114 Beauvoir 1989, 240-1. 115 In Section II, we will explore this possibility via Beauvoir's existential argument for freedom. 67 has an optimum way of being-in-the-world. Of course, this being is never settled and never complete given its ambiguity. Problematically, this renders authenticity a particularly slippery ideal. In addition, Beauvoir's rendering of authenticity in The Second

Sex is troublingly predicated on transcendence and not on ambiguity.

In conclusion, Heidegger's fundamental ontology influences Beauvoir's thinking in a few essential ways. Beauvoir adopts a Heideggerian understanding of facticity and corporeality insofar as she understands the human being as both a thrown being (situated in a world that is not of one's making) and creative being (actively involved in one's own constitution). Although Beauvoir takes corporeality further than Heidegger, there are seeds of Heidegger in Beauvoir's negotiation of the body, which will become clearer in

Section III. In addition to these key Heideggerian ideas one locates disclosure, authenticity, and a primordial sociality in Beauvoir. In fact, these five ontological formulations provide the phenomenological basis for Beauvoir's analysis of woman's situation and more generally of our ethical relations. These formulations pave the way for an exploration of Beauvoir's thinking in Section II and Section III. Finally, Beauvoir does not use these Heideggerian notions indiscriminately, rather she pieces together the ideas of Heidegger, Hegel, and—as will be shown below, Sartre, so that her own thinking on freedom, embodiment, and the question of the other may flourish. Consequently, not only does Heidegger influence Beauvoir, he also provides her with some of the conceptual tools she needs to undertake her phenomenological, existential, and ethical analysis.

116 In Section II, Chapter 4, Beauvoir's hesitation between transcendence and ambiguity as the key to authenticity will be explored. 68 Chapter 3: Sartre's Ontological Influence

There is an ongoing debate surrounding the question of influence between Sartre and

Beauvoir. The one thing that is clear is that Beauvoir is not merely an acolyte of Sartre.117

Sartre plays a crucial role in Beauvoir's thinking and thus, he plays a crucial role in my overall investigation. Therefore, it is not enough to simply unpack Sartre's key ontological ideas as was done above with Hegel and Heidegger. Sartre and Beauvoir's intellectual relationship is far more nuanced insofar as their ideas merge and diverge in ways that call on scholars to pose the question of influence.118

Sartre's explicit ontology and Beauvoir's implicit ontology overlap in a few key ways. First, Sartre and Beauvoir both pick up on Hegel's usage of the for-itself and the in- itself and draw out the distinction between the two. However, Beauvoir does not allow the tension between the two modes of being to flourish in her thinking. Instead Beauvoir emphasizes the importance of ambiguity such that the two distinct modes of being necessarily require the other. Second, similarly to Heidegger, both Beauvoir and Sartre acknowledge the importance of facticity as an explanatory tool. Facticity affords the individual different possibilities in Beauvoir's work than it does in Sartre's work. Sartre subscribes to an open situation wherein the individual is absolutely free. Absolute freedom entails that the individual is absolutely responsible for her choices. On the other hand, Beauvoir subscribes to the notion of facticity so that Beauvoir may locate the individual in a particular situation that is both of her making and contingent on the projects of others. This positioning calls into question the degree of responsibility for which an individual can be held accountable. Third, Sartre's notion of the body and

117 For a complete picture of the question of influence see Christine Daigle and Jacob Golomb, Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of Influence (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). 118 This question will not be fully pursued here. 69 Beauvoir's notion of the body are quite different given their aforementioned divergent formulations of consciousness, facticity, and situation. Sartre's notion of situation and freedom will be discussed below which will assist in discussing Sartre's and Beauvoir's similar yet distinct ethical pictures.

Perhaps the most obvious place to begin in trying to flesh out this relationship between Sartre's explicit phenomenological ontology and Beauvoir's implicit ontology is with Sartre's topology of consciousness given that it will elucidate some of the trickier terms and concepts that are fundamental to Beauvoir's thinking. Sartre's topology of consciousness is a rethinking of the Freudian picture of the id, ego, and superego. What is particularly significant for Sartre is the first two levels of consciousness because they inform his notion of Being. The first level is the pre-reflective mode which is merely intentional consciousness. This is the immediate relationship between objects and consciousness. The pre-reflective mode of consciousness will be important in thinking through the possibility for bad faith primarily in Section III, Chapter 2. Second, there is the reflective consciousness. It is the reflective consciousness that thinks. Finally, there is the self-reflective consciousness. It is the consciousness that is conscious of itself as a reflective consciousness. Interestingly, this topology entails that consciousness gives meaning both to objects in the world and to the T that appears through self-reflection or self-reflective consciousness. In other words, both T and the world are objects for consciousness. Thus consciousness is the core of one's being which creates an ego for itself.119 The notion that consciousness interprets one's being-in-the-world is forefront in

Sartre 2001, 104. 70 Sartre's ontology and later in his ethics. The creative abilities of consciousness will be

important in a later discussion of freedom and situation. Finally, it warrants explaining

that there is no unconscious in Sartre's model because the unconscious would contradict

his notion that consciousness creates the T. A being for-itself is necessarily conscious,

thus leaving no room for anything like an unconscious. For Sartre, to be is to be

conscious.

Consciousness can be conscious of itself, but only as being for-itself, such that it is

conscious as a concerted grasping of the world. This will take on depth during the

discussion of transcendence below. Consciousness cannot reach being in-itself since

being in-itself lies outside of consciousness. Being in-itself is a fullness of being which

cannot be unpacked through analysis insofar as it exists transphenomenally or beyond our

consciousness of the realm of being in-itself. Sartre explains, "Being is. Being is in-itself.

Being is what it is."121 However, this does not mean that one cannot understand one's

relationship to being in-itself. To be conscious one must be conscious of something. One

can be conscious of consciousness or one can be conscious of something in the world—

that which is supported by being in-itself. In this fashion the world appears as a plentitude

of being.122 Beauvoir also relies heavily on being in-itself as a starting point for being for-

itself, such that being in-itself gives content to being for-itself insofar as it informs being

for-itself of its own possibilities for being.

I use the term 'ethics' loosely insofar as Sartre's ethical thinking is never fleshed out and not due to a lack of trying. Sartre abandoned his ethical treatise Notebook for an Ethics, trans. David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 121 Sartre 1956, 29. 122 Plentitude is the notion that the world as an in-itself or rather as a thickness of being exists in a way that cannot be fully unpacked. In Section IV, Beauvoir's notion of disclosure will fully rescue us from Sartre's somewhat Kantian viewpoint of the thing in-itself. Disclosure will show us that grasping the thing in-itself is a phenomenological possibility. 71 Being in-itself is thought to be ontologically prior to being for-itself. However,

phenomenology tells a different story insofar as it is the very lack of being by which

being in-itself comes to be. Recall that consciousness as always conscious of something

is empty. It is merely an intending toward. Sartre makes this clear as he reiterates

throughout Being and Nothingness that the human being as intentionality "is what it is

not and is not what it is." The human being is that by which negation comes into the

world. This sounds similar to Hegel's formulation of negativity. Since being in-itself is a

fullness of being it is not possible that it contains or even allows for the possibility of

nothingness. It is rather consciousness as a being for-itself that births this negation. In

Sartre's famous example of Pierre, Sartre describes how one only experiences a lack of

being if one goes into the cafe intent on seeing Pierre and does not see him.123 This

unfulfilled intention introduces a lack into one's being-in-the-world that would not be

possible without a being for-itself—a being who is intending (to see Pierre, but does not).

Therefore, the world is not in-itself; it is the product of the encounter between intending

consciousness and being in-itself—a being that it cannot possibly reach.

Sartre and Beauvoir conceive of the individual as both an in-itself and a for-itself.

These modes of consciousness are not distinct in a psychically healthy individual.

However, the ways in which Sartre and Beauvoir conceive of the linkage between the two modes is distinct. Unlike Sartre, Beauvoir does not see this relationship as necessarily tenuous. Sartre argues in Being and Nothingness that the individual is primarily a being for-itself. It is being as for-itself that separates human beings from objects in the world. This gives human beings a unique existence that allows them to consider the future or intend toward (amongst other things) and thereby take up projects.

123 Sartre 1956, 41-3. 72 Therefore, the human being is a being that strives beyond his mere in-itselfness to make

himself more than an object in the world of an other being. Beauvoir does not agree with

Sartre's emphasis on the human being as a for-itself that aims to negate its in-itself

aspect. Instead Beauvoir argues that moving beyond the in-itself is impossible given that

the in-itself allows for the surpassings of the for-itself. In Pyrrhus and Cineas Beauvoir

explains, "We are free to transcend all transcendence. We can always escape toward an

'elsewhere,' but this elsewhere is still somewhere, in the heart of our human

condition."124 Transcendence, moving beyond the mere in-itself and arguably the for-

itself, retains a Sartrean ontological framework as that which may surpass even itself.

However, Beauvoir is careful to acknowledge the worldly component of our surpassings

(transcendence), such that one's facticity supports one's surpassings. It is one's facticity

that anchors the human being in the world colouring the possibilities of the striving for-

itself.

Beauvoir's formulation of the in-itself as the springboard for the for-itself is given

even more explanatory weight in Beauvoir's discussion of disclosure as the original

moment of being. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir explains, "There is an original

type of attachment to being which is not the relationship 'wanting to be' but rather

'wanting to disclose being.'"125 Returning to Heidegger for a moment, we can understand

that unlike Sartre, Beauvoir finds the fundamental mode of being of the human being to be a disclosing being. It is this desire to open oneself to the world and others that is the

first moment of existence. This moment is a letting be by the transcendent aspect of the for-itself. It is a stepping back (transcending) so that the world/others may unveil

Beauvoir 2004a, 141. Beauvoir 1976, 12. 73 itself/themselves. Disclosure, as briefly mentioned above, will play a key role in

Beauvoir's ethics as will be explored more thoroughly below.

It is worth noting that even though Beauvoir did not explicitly formulate an ontology

of her own the threads that she picks up on and weaves together nourish her ethics. This

is very much the case in her discussion of freedom. Freedom, for Sartre, is unencumbered

by one's situation as embodied whereas Beauvoir reels against this disregard for the

weight of one's embodied situation on one's possibilities. Beauvoir figures situation as an

important limiting factor to one's freedom. Beauvoir begins The Ethics of Ambiguity by

writing, "He asserts himself as a pure internality against which no external power can

take hold, and he also experiences himself as a thing crushed by the dark weight of other

things."126 What Beauvoir importantly acknowledges is that even though the subject is a

transcendent being, a being for-itself, he is also a being in the world with other

transcendent beings who necessarily limit one another's freedom. Therefore, the

relationship between transcendent beings may be a relationship of hostility or a

relationship of reciprocity. Beauvoir argues that reciprocity is possible if the individual

lives his human reality as the ambiguity that he embodies. If he accepts that he is both a

for-itself and an in-itself, he can negotiate his being with others in a way that does not

necessitate struggle, but rather fosters mutuality as will be investigated in Section II.

However, when struggle does arise, the fundamental problem lies in the failure of the

individual to recognize that his freedom depends on the freedom of others. Consequently, this formulation entails that one's situation—especially in the case where an individual is

socially situated with beings who assume their freedom at every cost, can severely limit one's freedom. This limitation can lead to the ontological assumption that all human

126 Ibid, 7. 74 relations are first and foremost conflictual in nature, but this is merely an experiential claim that is rooted in our disparate situations.

What is important to notice is that Beauvoir does not believe that all human relations are based on struggle, thus conflict is not an ontological certainty. Beauvoir's existentialism, as will be made clear in Section II, Chapter 1, shows us that there is no fundamental nature of human beings. Unlike Hegel's formulation, struggle cannot provide the foundation for all human relationships. However, it ought to be noted that

Beauvoir's occasional equivocation on the question of an original struggle will present problems in Section III.

Regardless of whether or not there is an original struggle between self- consciousnesses, if one accepts the notion that human beings are ambiguous, Sartre's emphasis (and at times, Beauvoir's emphasis) on transcendence becomes problematic.

More importantly, freedom looks very different under the rubric of ambiguity. In fact, the failure to recognize one's ambiguity stands in the way of freedom as Beauvoir explains in

The Ethics of Ambiguity. It is in the five characters we meet in The Ethics of Ambiguity that this failure to assume one's ambiguity is made most clear. The failure to recognize one's ambiguity is played out in the attitude of the sub-man, the serious man, the nihilist, the adventurer, and the passionate man. It is only Beauvoir's free man that assumes his ambiguity and thereby assumes responsibility for his being-in-the-world as both situated and free and thus, as a for-itself and as an in-itself. As will be cashed out in Section II, this man is the truly free man (human being).

Beauvoir introduces us to five characters in The Ethics of Ambiguity each of which embodies a different relationship to freedom. First, Beauvoir's sub-man understands

75 himself as pure facticity. Even though he is ontologically more than this he seeks to lose

"himself in the object in order to annihilate his subjectivity."127 Quite simply, he does not

believe that he is free because he understands himself to be an object in the world of

others. Second, Beauvoir's serious man understands that he is free, but denies his freedom

ceaselessly. He hides from himself the fact that the world is not given, but is rather a

product of a collective striving.128 For example, In A Doll's House "the childlike naivete

of the heroine leads her to rebel against the lie of the serious."129 Nora, the heroine, lives

as the serious man until she recognizes that she can no longer live as if the world is

ready-made. She can transcend this refusal by choosing to leave her family. However,

choice is not in the vocabulary of the serious man. This explains why it is that Nora is

able to leave the realm of the serious when she decides to walk out on her family.130 As a

serious man one cannot do anything except refuse one's own freedom and thus, any

action taken moves the serious man to the position of the nihilist. Third, Beauvoir's

nihilist wants desperately to be nothing even though he knows that at his core he is

something. This implies a fantastical tension. Beauvoir explains, "for if it is true that man

is not, it is also true that he exists, and in order to realize his negativity positively he will

have to contradict constantly the movement of existence." Interestingly, the nihilist

experiences ambiguity at the heart of his existence. Therefore, the nihilistic attitude

challenges the value of freedom without fully realizing it. Fourth, Beauvoir's

adventurer "does not propose to be; he deliberately makes himself a lack of being; he

127 Beauvoir 1976, 45. 128 Beauvoir argues that Sartre's Being and Nothingness is for the most part about the serious man. See Beauvoir 1976,46. 129 Beauvoir 1976,48. 130 It will be shown below that woman's situation, like the situation of Nora, is the situation of the serious man. 131 Beauvoir 1976, 54. 132 Ibid, 57-8. 76 aims expressly at existence; though engaged in his undertaking, he is at the same time

detached from the goal." The attitude of delight to which the adventurer holds on is

based on a forgetting of his situation and thereby he takes his freedom to be total.

Therefore, the adventurer's goals can never be genuinely fulfilled because they are not

rooted in his particular situation. Beauvoir uses the example of Don Juan insofar as he

remains indifferent to the projects that his conquests have set for themselves. Don Juan

cares nothing of their transcendence only caring for his own. Fifth and finally, Beauvoir's

passionate man "makes himself a lack of being not that there might be being, but in order

to be. And he remains at a distance; he is never fulfilled."13 Nothing exists outside of the

passionate man's project and because of this his project ossifies divorcing itself from the

world. Thus, he too is lost by way of this frozen project. All of these five attitudes are

equally inauthentic because they do not embrace ambiguity. Consequently, these attitudes

bear resemblance to one another in their tendency toward bad faith.

On the other hand, Beauvoir's free man is authentic in his attitude insofar as he both

wills the freedom of the self and the freedom of others. He does this because he

recognizes that in order to flourish as an individual he needs others. Beauvoir explains,

"It is not necessary for the subject to seek to be, but it must desire that there be being. To

will oneself free and to will that there be being are one and the same choice, the choice that man makes of himself as a presence in the world. We can neither say that the free man wants freedom in order to desire being, nor that he wants the disclosure of being by

133 Ibid, 59. 134 Ibid, 65. 135 Bad faith is a covering over of one's ontological structure as an ambiguous being. Bad faith will be fleshed out further in Section II with respect to our intersubjectivity and in Section III with respect to woman's situation. 77 freedom." The free man recognizes his bond with all other human beings. This intersubjective aspect of disclosure moves beyond Sartre's formulation of freedom insofar as Beauvoir connects freedom to the freedom of others by emphasizing the importance of situation.1 7

In Sartre, consciousness is free to project itself toward or intend toward the projects of her choosing. It is this distancing that is introduced by intending toward something/one that allows the human being, characterized as being for-itself, to create projects for herself. This ontological gap between intending toward and being in-itself entails a material forgetting of the body as it exists as a being in-itself. If one considers the body in

Sartre's formulation of consciousness one arrives at the notion that the body is a mute facticity of which one is conscious as an in-itself, but which does not affect the possibilities for projecting oneself toward a future of one's making. This is done at the level of the for-itself. Let us pause for a moment to consider the role of the body in Sartre further.

Sartre's thinking on the body happens amidst his analysis of the structure of perception. This is rather telling of his position on the relevance of the body in his overall picture of his phenomenological ontology. For Sartre, experiencing objects in the world entails recognizing oneself as the point of origin for the ways in which these objects appear to consciousness as 'thises'.138 This viewpoint is instrumental given that the human being is the center of perception whether he is perceiving objects in the world or

136 Beauvoir 1976,70. 137 This will become clearer in Section II during the exploration of Beauvoir's existentialist ethics. 138 Sartre uses the term "les cecis" which has been translated as "thises" in Being and Nothingness to refer to objects that consciousness encounters. 78 other beings in the world. Everything is organized around the body. For example, Sartre writes,

For me, this glass is to the left of the decanter and a little behind it; for Pierre, it is to the right and a little in front. It is not even conceivable that a consciousness could survey the world in such a way that the glass should be simultaneously given to it at the right and at the left of the decanter, in front of it and behind it. This is by no means the consequence of a strict application of the principle of identity but because this fusion of right and left, of before and behind, would result in the total disappearance of "thises " at the heart of a primary indiscretion. Similarly if the table leg hides the designs in the rug from my sight, this is not the result of some finitude and some imperfection in my visual organs, but it is because a rug which would not be hidden by the table, a rug which would not be either under it or above it or to one side of it, would not have any relation of any kind with the table and would no longer 1 ^Q

belong to the 'world' in which there is the table.

According to Sartre, the subject (perceiver) positions himself at the center marginalizing other possible perceivers. Although the subject recognizes others as possible perceivers or as consciousnesses (Pierre also sees the glass and decanter), the subject remains as the center of all reference for all for-itselves. For Sartre, perceiving is only possible insofar as one is situated in a body in the world. In fact, one can understand his situation due to the possibilities that are opened and closed by perception and thereby one's positioning as a factical being in the world. For Sartre, facticity delineates one's possibilities for intending toward or projecting oneself in the world without placing a limit on those possibilities.

Therefore, the body as an in-itself is merely a starting point for consciousness as the for- itself. The body is necessary because it provides a concrete situation from which to perceive, but it does not affect the possibilities of the for-itself.

For Sartre and Beauvoir human beings are both situated and free although, as will be explored below, the equation of situation and freedom is weighted differently for

Beauvoir than it is for Sartre. One is both in-itself as a body and for-itself as a

Sartre 1956,405. 79 consciousness. Like other phenomenologists Sartre moves away from Cartesian dualism

by asserting that the human being is corporeal or rather both body and consciousness. It

follows that one's starting point, the origin of all of one's perceptions, is one's embodied

being-in-the-world. However, Sartre's notion of being-in-the-world is nuanced in a way

that Beauvoir struggles against. Sartre argues that the subject can break from her socio-

historical situation by projecting herself in the world. In fact, "there is freedom only in a

situation, and there is a situation only through freedom."140 In other words, through

transcendence, the human being is a being who can outstrip her being in-itself (her

factical body) and thereby outstrip her situation. Transcendence is the movement of the

for-itself, namely a projection of oneself toward an open and indefinite future. In Being

and Nothingness, transcendence signals a freedom that is unencumbered by one's

situation as embodied. In fact, transcendence constitutes the for-itself despite its material

facticity or its being-in-the-world.

For Sartre, the human being is absolutely free and thus she is absolutely responsible.

This coincides with Sartre's staunch atheism. Responsibility is shifted from a determining

God to the individual. Not only did Sartre rob God of all accountability, no explanatory

work can be accomplished by one's situation. Sartre explains that it is an ontological fact

of the matter that the human being is first and foremost a freedom. In this picture of the

for-itself as self-creating through free actions, one begins to understand the degree of responsibility that a subject must bear for her own life. In Sartre's lecture, "Existentialism

is a Humanism", Sartre claims, "Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself."141

The for-itself drives the subject toward an open and indefinite future of her making. Since

140 Ibid, 629. 141 Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism is a Humanism" in Existentialism: Basic Writings, ed. Charles Guignon and Derk Pereboom (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995), 15. 80 neither God nor one's situation is determining it is up to each individual as a transcendence to continuously create oneself—one must continuously choose. The existential commitment that this implies will be taken up in Section II, Chapter 1.

Acknowledging that one is absolutely free to create oneself causes anguish in the subject. For example, one can make oneself a coward by acting cowardly. Conversely, one can make oneself a heroine by acting heroically. Understanding the for-itself as merely an intentionality or a toward which entails that one only needs to act in order to be. This is indeed a moment of existential anguish for the subject—to think that one is of one's own making! Realizing one's freedom to make oneself is part of what it means to live authentically. Similarly to Beauvoir's works, it is difficult to gather from Sartre's philosophical works how one can truly live authentically. However, the reason is a bit different in this case. For Sartre, authenticity is the acceptance that one's being for-itself is absolutely free. This realization also bears the heavy weight of responsibility. So inevitably living authentically requires assuming not only one's freedom, but also one's consummate responsibility. Given this degree of responsibility, one's projects are truly one's own. This sounds similar to Heidegger's notion of authenticity insofar as

Heidegger argues that authenticity is realizing one's ownmost possibilities. This existential realization comes at the cost of anguish or anxiety. However, there is an ontological solution to anguish—bad faith.

One escapes having to face one's freedom through bad faith, a self-deceptive ontological mode of being wherein one conceals from oneself one's freedom and

142 In "Jean-Paul Sartre", Beauvoir argues that Sartre is able to live his philosophy authentically, but Sartre's way of being in the world does not affirm his ambiguity. See Beauvoir's essay "Jean-Paul Sartre" in Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophical Writings, eds. Margaret A. Simons with Marybeth Timmermann and Mary Beth Mader, trans. Mary Beth Timmermann (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 2004c), 229-235. 81 responsibility for one's own actions. Peter Caws elaborates, "Bad faith is not a lie, if that means refusing a known truth about the in-itself. If I lie, I lie to others, trying to convince them that I hold beliefs I do not in fact hold, but I cannot do this to myself. I cannot not know what I know, or that I know it."143 In fact, Sartre explains, one knows the truth exactly in order to conceal it so well.14 There are two ways in which one can conceal the truth from oneself. First, one lives in bad faith by dividing one's consciousness from one's body. The mind as consciousness and for-itself distances itself or effectively ignores one's own body. The for-itself tries to become all consciousness and conceals its human reality as rooted in the world by a body. On the other hand, it is possible to become all body or in-itself and so the for-itself, which fades into the background (one cannot totally do away with it), overlooks its freedom and being as a consciousness who can reach out into the world and make itself thereby rooting itself firmly in its facticity. There are of course other versions of bad faith, but they are rooted in these two ontological lies about our human reality.

Sartre's example of the romantic rendezvous demonstrates the way in which the for- itself effectively (or so it appears) splits from its body. At that moment, for bad faith is metastable,145 the for-itself distances itself from the in-itself so that it does not have to deal with its factical being. In the case of the romantic rendezvous, the woman becomes all consciousness insofar as she forgets her bodily being as the site upon which her date makes his advances. Her body as for-him becomes a mere thing for her under the weight of his hand. It is assumed that at this moment she is all intellect. Sartre explains,

143 Peter Caws, Sartre (London: Routledge, 1979), 76. 144 Sartre 1956, 89. In Section III, Chapter 2, the linkage between the pre-reflective consciousness and bad faith will be explored. 145 Ibid, 90. 82 suppose he takes her hand. This act of her companion risks changing the situation by calling for an immediate decision. To leave the hand there is to consent in herself to flirt, to engage herself. To withdraw it is to break the troubled and unstable harmony which gives the hour its charm. The aim is to postpone the moment of decision as long as possible. We know what happens next; the young woman leaves her hand there, but she does not notice that she is leaving it. She does not notice because it happens by chance that she is at this moment all intellect. She draws her companion up to the most lofty of regions of sentimental speculation; she speaks of Life, of her life, she shows herself in her essential aspect—a personality, a consciousness. And during this time the divorce of the body from the soul is accomplished; the hand rests inert between the warm hands of her companion—neither consenting nor resisting—a

Interestingly, Sartre argues that the divorce between the in-itself and the for-itself—the body and consciousness, is possible. The woman in Sartre's romantic encounter makes herself all consciousness. However, this will show itself to be particularly problematic for woman in Beauvoir's reading of bad faith insofar as she argues that woman escapes her existential anguish by being an in-itself for man. However, Beauvoir's reading of this situation allows for far less transparency, such that it is plausible that woman often does not know what she hides from herself whereas Sartre reads bad faith as a mode of being that can be overcome if one simply owns up to one's human reality.

There is a slippage that occurs in Sartre's discussion of bad faith. Sartre writes, "We are always ready to take refuge in a belief in determinism if this freedom weighs upon us or if we need an excuse. Thus we flee from anguish by attempting to apprehend ourselves from without as an Other or as a thing."147 Sartre's discussion of bad faith moves from the ontological realm to the ethical realm. He begins by explaining bad faith as an ontological phenomenon of the for-itself and then moves to offer an ethically charged discussion of how one ought to handle the temptation of bad faith. It seems at first that bad faith is an inescapable mode of being in the same vein that inauthenticity is

Ibid, 97. Ibid, 82. 83 inescapable for Heidegger. This is a sort of existential fleeing from one's situation that

seems to be an inevitable aspect of human Being. Heidegger goes no further in his

discussion given that he avoids any prescriptive claims about inauthenticity and

authenticity. Conversely for Sartre, this ontological concept, which bears the weight of an

inevitability, slips from being an unavoidable mode of the for-itself to a prescriptive on

how the for-itself ought to comport itself. Namely, the for-itself ought to avoid bad faith

(assume his freedom and responsibility by acknowledging one's body as one's own) and

strive for authenticity. This becomes incredibly tricky if bad faith is ontologically

inevitable. Moreover, it flies in the face of Kant's famous ought implies can problem.

How can one have an ethics that rests on the said prescription if authenticity is merely a

maxim and not a practical possibility?

Sartre's discussion of intersubjectivity comes rather late in Being and Nothingness

and bumps up against his discussion of the body which was touched upon briefly above.

This makes it rather difficult to talk about our relationship with the other without also

talking about bodies. Sartre tells us that the other is revealed to us as an embodied

consciousness through sight. The other sees us as a body and thus, it is as a body that we meet the other. One appears to the other as an object in her field of perception. As will be

discovered below, there is an irreconcilable gap between one's consciousness and that of the other in Sartre's account of the look. This appearing to and for the other will play a major role in intersubjective relations which will be unpacked fully in Section IV.

Sartre identifies the look of the Other as something completely alienating insofar as it awakens me to a possibility for being which is not accessible to me given that I can never exist for myself as an object, such that the body-subject is a body-object for the Other. It

84 is the look of the Other and the feeling of shame before the gaze of the Other that

dissolves any question of solipsism. By being objectified by the gaze of the other, one

becomes an instrument for a subject, passive to the other's transcendence. In "The Body

in Being and Nothingness", Xavier O. Monasterio explains that for Sartre a "body-object

is at the other's mercy, passive to the other's initiative. The situation is not his anymore,

it is the other's situation, for the other is now in control. The other is the center of

instrumentality, and among his instruments is to be counted that which I am." In fact,

Sartre thinks that the body has one of three ontological possibilities. First, it can be an

object for an other. Second, it can be an instrument through which the world comes to be

for a subject as in the case of Sartre's perceiver. Third, it can be a body as it exists for oneself as an object for the other. The body cannot be both an object for an other and a

subject for the self.150 The body as it exists for oneself disappears when we consider

ourselves as an object for the other. Sartre writes,

Only the reflective consciousness has the self directly for an object. The unreflective consciousness does not apprehend the person directly or as its object; the person is presented to consciousness in so far as the person is an object for the Other. This means that all of a sudden I am conscious of myself as escaping myself, not in that I am the foundation of my own nothingness but in that I have my foundation outside myself. I am for myself only as I am a pure reference to the Other.151

For Sartre, this dimension of the body as body-object for the other is the defeat of our consciousness by the other. We are in a sense no longer a subject, but rather our for-itself

Merleau-Ponty makes a similar argument against solipsism in Phenomenology of Perception. He explains, "when my gaze meets another gaze, I re-enact the alien existence in a sort of reflection." (1962, 352) Merleau-Ponty is not arguing that we constitute the other or reflect the other in a dance of self- sameness rather he argues that gazing at the other signifies our inherence in the world with others. Therefore, it is not by analogy that we know there are others. One recognizes the other's depth of being through one's own opacity of being. 149 Xavier O. Monasterio, "The Body in Being and Nothingness" in Jean-Paul Sartre: Contemporary Approaches to His Philosophy, eds. Hugh J. Silverman and Frederick A. Elliston (Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press), 51. 150 Sartre 1956,402. 151 Ibid, 349. 85 is involved in trying to imagine our in-itself as an object. This of course, is realized as a failure since we can never know how we are for another self-consciousness. This results in a fundamental frustration.

Sartre argues that our being-for-others is something over which we have no control.

This loss of control affects our very possibilities for Being. Consequently, conflict with the other is a certainty: "one must either transcend the Other or allow oneself to be transcended by him. The essence of the relations between consciousnesses is not the

Mitsein; it is conflict."152 Although it is arguable as to whether or not Heidegger would agree to Sartre's implicit (ethical) understanding of Mitsein, Beauvoir is in disagreement with Sartre's reading. Beauvoir argues for the possibility of a bond between the individual as situated in relation to the gaze of the Other. However, the road to such a possibility remains to be paved as will be discovered in Section IV. Realizing this possibility for which Beauvoir advocates will require some phenomenological assistance.

Let us look more closely at Sartre's third ontological possibility. Existing as a body- object for the other is especially enticing for the for-itself because it entails that there is a secret way of existing that one can never experience. We can never really understand how it is that we are for others. Consequently, there is a draw to being both an in-itself

(as I am for others) and a for-itself (as I am for myself), namely a for-itself-in-itself.

Sartre argues that this ontological longing is sought through love and other attitudes such as hatred, sadism, and masochism. For example, Sartre argues that the self-consciousness believes that if it lures the other into a love relationship it can potentially fuse with the other and understand itself from the outside—see oneself as seen by the other. For Sartre, this would entail seeing (intellectually) oneself as an object. Sartre tells us that one

152 Ibid, 555. 86 entices the other by making oneself an object for the other's subjectivity. Unfortunately, this approach to the body is doomed to failure given that we can never see ourselves as we are for the other. The unbridgeable distance between two consciousnesses remains intact for Sartre. Therefore, one can never reach the consciousness of the other since one's gaze necessarily stops at the body of the other. This hurdle will prove problematic to

Sartre's ethics as will be shown in Section II.

Although Beauvoir thinks through consciousness in a similar fashion to Sartre her notion of embodiment is significantly different, such that embodiment plays a much more important role in the structuring of one's consciousness. Given that Beauvoir links consciousness with embodiment, one's overall being is necessarily bound up in one's bodily situation. It is not possible to reflect directly on our own body as it exists for the other. The body is interwoven with one's projects and furthermore, serves as the general

1 S3 background for all existence including consciousness. The body as it exists for the other is a blind spot in perception; it cannot be taken as an object of thought.

Consequently, Beauvoir's understanding of the individual as embodied, which will be revisited below, is much deeper and far more nuanced than Sartre's understanding of the individual and thus, intersubjectivity.

In summary, although Sartre and Beauvoir share a number of ideas on modes of being and situation such as the topology of consciousness, it is Beauvoir's notion of embodiment that is particularly unique. As evidenced in her 1927 diary,15 Beauvoir's ideas with respect to embodiment were already present before she met and worked with

Sartre. Therefore, it is questionable as to whether or not Beauvoir actually borrows from

153 TorilMoi, What Is a Woman? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 197. 154 Beauvoir 1963. 87 Sartre's understanding of the body at all. The possibilities she outlines for consciousness vary greatly from those possibilities proposed by Sartre given the central role of embodiment. For Beauvoir it is impossible to overlook the extent to which one's embodied situation as both free and factical stand to discredit the three ontological aspects of embodiment in ways that in turn shape the very possibilities for consciousness.

88 Conclusion to Beauvoir's Ontology

Although Beauvoir did not write an ontology of her own we cannot say that her thinking is without an ontological foothold. She studied the ontologies of Hegel,

Heidegger, Sartre, and others aptly borrowing and transforming some of their key ideas in order to forward her own thinking on questions such as the question of the other which will be explored in the following section. Chapter 1 examined how Beauvoir famously borrows and transforms the master-slave dialectic which rests on Hegel's notion that subjectivity is a negotiation of differentiation and recognition. Even though the interpretation of Beauvoir's usage of the dialectic is contestable, there are interesting ethical implications that may be drawn from this ontological inheritance. On one hand, if woman is positioned as the slave in the dialectic she must engage in socio-political work to achieve subjecthood. On the other hand, if woman's position is disparate from that of the slave there is the possibility for mutuality and reciprocal recognition. The dichotomy between One and Other or master and slave is not necessary. These two views are not discrete, but rather support one another throughout The Second Sex as will be demonstrated in Section III. Consequently, in Section II it is possible to argue that regardless of woman's positioning in or apart from the Hegelian dialectic the work that must be done to improve the situation of woman is of the ethical sort for in either reading woman must work to be recognized as a freedom.155

Chapter 2 outlined the influence of Heidegger's ontology on Beauvoir's ethical work.

In particular, Beauvoir's reading of Heidegger's Mitsein helps her call into question the

Hegelian notion of recognition and the inevitability of struggle. Furthermore, this chapter

Man is also responsible for this historically conflictual relationship as we will unpack in Section III, Chapter 3. 89 showed how Beauvoir takes up and shapes Heidegger's notions of situated existence, corporeality, and authenticity. These ontological concepts help further Beauvoir's ethical thinking in Section II. Finally and most importantly to this investigation, Heidegger's notion of disclosedness plays a crucial role in Beauvoir's ethics. Beauvoir argues that disclosure is the fundamental moment of being insofar as it is most at home in the world

(ownness)when self-consciousness exposes being by receding into the background and presencing the world. For Heidegger disclosedness acts as an existential revealing, such that it is an unveiling of what is. The visible aspect of disclosure will uncover possibilities for being in the world with others as will be shown in Section IV.

Finally, Chapter 3 explored Beauvoir's affinity with Sartre's systematic ontology.

Beauvoir, like Sartre, is interested in the question of consciousness, situation, and embodiment; however, her thinking diverges from Sartre's insofar as the question of the other remains open in Beauvoir's work. Conversely, Sartre's ontological beginnings—the ways in which he takes up consciousness, situation, and embodiment, prove to be a barrier in developing and cultivating an existentialist ethics. Beauvoir works with Sartre's ontology transforming the fundamental mode of consciousness to disclosure, realizing the situational aspect inherent in responsibility, embodiment, and freedom. Lastly, Beauvoir asserts an ontologically ambiguous human reality, a reality that is changeable, ongoing, and open. These ontological nuances separate Beauvoir from Sartre and allow us to ask two questions. Given Beauvoir's ontological foundations, what is the nature of intersubjectivity? What can embodiment teach us about intersubjectivity?

90 Section II: Beauvoir's Existentialist Ethics

Beauvoir's existentialist ethics assume much of the ontological ground covered in

Section I. Her ethical thinking paints a unique picture of the existential phenomenological

possibilities for living in a world with others—a picture that does not water down the

complexity of our human reality rendering an investigation rather tricky. This is a feat

indeed. However, before exploring Beauvoir's ethical works in detail, it is necessary to

have a clear picture of existentialism. Although aspects of existentialism were unpacked

in Section I it may be helpful to further flesh it out so that Beauvoir's ethical works can

be placed within the broader context of existentialism.

In this section, the development of Beauvoir's key ethical concepts will be traced.

Simultaneously, her existential framework will be built so as to clarify the connection between intersubjectivity and woman's embodiment. Unpacking Beauvoir's existential

ethics, will outline how her thinking evolves over the course of her philosophical texts,

such that her ethical abstractions become fleshed out possibilities. The question of the

other is a central theme to which Beauvoir tirelessly returns throughout her intellectual

career. Her preoccupation provides the necessary tools for thinking through the possibilities for and problems with the situated and yet, often tragically free individual.1

This analysis of Beauvoir's ethical works will enable a reaching beyond so that we may push her thinking on embodiment and freedom farther while remaining true to her overall project.

1 Consider for instance Meursault in Camus' The Outsider. Meursault recognizes the absurdity of the human reality. He is situated in a world that is structured by fundamental values with which he cannot bring himself to play along. He is after all free in his heart. These fundamental values have very little meaning for Meursault, but at the same moment he is bound by them. When he commits murder he shows us that although he is socially limited by these values (he is sentenced to jail), he remains surprisingly free. See Albert Camus, The Outsider, trans. Joseph Laredo (London: Penguin Classics, 2000). 91 This section begins with a chapter on existentialism which will serve to contextualize

Beauvoir's work insofar as it grounds her thinking on one's relationship to the other. This general chapter will flesh out existentialism's main tenets and will continue to explore the similarities and differences between Beauvoir's work and Sartre's work. In Chapter 2,1 will begin the textual analysis of Beauvoir with Pyrrhus and Cineas. This essay was an often overlooked, but important text. In this 1944 work, Beauvoir introduces us to her notion of original freedom, the will, and generosity. These ideas are instrumental in founding her unique ethical position. In the following chapter, Chapter 3, Beauvoir's

1947 text The Ethics of Ambiguity will be explored. This ethical text explicitly deals with situated freedom, the will, and disclosure. Finally, Chapter 4 will explore Beauvoir's implicit ethics via The Second Sex. This 1949 existential-phenomenological investigation of woman's situation as the Other, presents Beauvoir's earlier notions of freedom, the will, generosity, and disclosure in a socio-historical context of transcendence and immanence. Transcendence and immanence figure as typologies of activity which

Beauvoir claims are traditionally sexed and hence, carry ethical import. Finally, this chapter will touch on "Must We Burn Sade?" so that we may exemplify Beauvoir's notion of ambiguity—a notion that is arguably present throughout her entire body of work.

Engaging with Beauvoir's ethical progression is necessary given that her thinking appears to change throughout the corpus of her work. Her preoccupation with the question of the other is at times covered over by her obsession with one's embodied situation, but we will discover that even this obsession is intimately intertwined with the

2 Simone de Beauvoir, "Must We Burn Sade?"in The Marquis de Sade: An Essay by Simone de Beauvoir. Paul Dinnage (trans.), London: John Calder, 1962, 11-82. 92 question of the other as an embodied consciousness. It is not that Beauvoir's thinking has significantly changed over time rather her thinking matures adding a complexity to what at first seems to be an easy fix for the problem of the other. This layer of complexity or

Beauvoir's clarifying of situation calls into question the viability of her early ethical plan.

As we will see later in this thesis, Beauvoir finds her ethics to be too abstract and lacking in practicability after her intensive investigation of woman's history and situation. I will argue that Beauvoir unfairly dismisses her ethics by failing to take her phenomenological investigation—her thinking on affectivity, far enough. Before we can jump this hurdle, it is necessary to engage with Beauvoir's existentialism and her ethics.

93 Chapter 1: Beauvoir's Existentialism

As an existentialist Beauvoir concerns herself with the examination of human existence. This involves thinking through the question of valuation, the extent of one's freedom and one's facticity, the ethical difficulty of responsibility, and finally, it involves thinking through how these questions and the resulting analyses bear on the human reality. In this chapter these basic tenets of Beauvoir's existentialism will be explored.

This exploration of the nature of the human being will contextualize her ethical work which will in turn allow us to consider woman's possibilities for liberation.

Human beings exist as intentional beings—they are purposeful beings. Heidegger explained above that human beings are unlike tools insofar as the human being's purpose does not precede her existence. Since existence is constituted through our acts of intending, the human being is not fully realized until death. Beauvoir explains this existential notion: "For a man is something else besides what he is at the moment."4 The human being makes herself through her accumulation of projects and intentions which cannot possibly coincide in a moment. Thus, in order to understand the meaning of life it is necessary to examine the totality of that life.

The human being creates herself. Since the human being does not have a premeditated purpose, it is up to her to choose her projects and it is in choosing that she becomes who she is. This will be clarified in Chapter 3, which fleshes out how her projects are embodied and thereby shape her very being. In a sense, the individual is her projects. Conceiving of existence as a becoming through choosing entails that the human being is necessarily engaged in the project of making herself. Being is an active endeavor

3 See Section I, Chapter 2. 4 Beauvoir 1976, 120. 94 as will become clear in our investigation ofPyrrhus and Cineas. Even when she refuses

to choose or rather masquerades her ability to choose she is nonetheless creating herself.

If this is the case, it is not possible that her situation determines her being. This is very much in line with Heidegger. Recall from Heidegger that we are born into a factical

situation that is always already underway. We cannot choose when, to whom, or under

what circumstances we are born. We are, according to Heidegger, thrown into the world.

However, this thrownness does not determine our being. Our situation as a factical being merely provides a set of directives that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. There is

always a degree of choice involved in becoming an individual.

Our choices, the projects that we adopt, delineate what is valuable to human beings.

For example, economics operates via supply and demand; it can inform us as to what is valuable to a society at any given time. Economists can even predict what will be valuable in the future given past demands, but it is really the individual who determines value. The human being determines what is valuable through the projects in which she decides to invest herself. Consequently, what is valuable to an individual will be a result of the projects with which she is engaged. These engagements will in turn constitute who one is becoming.

Interestingly, for the existentialist, there are no objective values and thus, there are no values with which to align our projects. For example, each time we engage ourselves in a certain project we renew our identity as someone who values project x. This renewal is important to existentialists because it reinforces the notion that we are always in the process of making ourselves. Every moment a new decision is made even if it is merely to carry on with project x. Given this perpetual renewal, two things are evident that need

95 to be further explored. First, if existentialism rests on individual choice, it must be the

case that we enjoy a level of freedom since choice requires a degree of freedom. Second,

individual choices must somehow link up to the choices of others. In choosing certain

projects over other projects we must choose not only for ourselves but also for all other

human beings. This linkage is necessary if Beauvoir wants to seriously address the

question of ethical subjectivism—a question which is often posed to the existentialist.

Furthermore, the notion that values can be shared is necessary if Beauvoir is going to

give the weight she does to an ethical program.

Beauvoir argues throughout her work that human beings are fundamentally free. She

does distinguish between degrees of freedom, but for our current purposes it is fair at this

stage to argue that human beings are free beings. This means that human beings are free

in choosing to pursue whatever project they desire. In choosing project x over project y

we affirm that project x is valuable or at least more valuable than project y after all we

choose a certain project that furnishes us with a particular identity. Our choice and

thereby our identity are reconfirmed every time project x is chosen. Now how does this

choice translate beyond individual choice? According to Sartre, by choosing a particular

project we make it "valid for all and for the entire epoch in which we find ourselves. Our

responsibility is thus much greater than we had supposed, for it concerns mankind as a

whole. I am creating a certain image of man, as I would have him to be. In fashioning myself, I fashion man".5 Every project that is taken up aids in creating a certain image of humanity. Given that each individual has chosen a particular image for herself each

individual also implicitly chooses that image for all other human beings.

5 Jean-Paul Sartre, Basic Writings, ed. Stephen Priest (New York: Routledge, 2001a), 40. 96 Choices are not merely personal, but they are also political because what we do affects not only what others can do, but also what actions are deemed to be socially valuable. Therefore, Beauvoir explains that her existentialist ethics, "refuses to deny a priori that separate existants can, at the same time, be bound to each other, that their individual freedoms can forge laws valid for all."6 We are responsible over and beyond our responsibility to ourselves which effectively answers the question of ethical subjectivism. Each human being is essentially responsible to all of humanity because their collective freedoms create laws. This can be an overwhelming burden. However, we must keep in mind that certain possibilities and projects are made available and restricted given the society within which we live. Of course, those who chose before affect the possibilities for choice today.

Although the responsibility for all of humanity may be tremendous, our affectivity can assist in making choices that are socio-culturally appropriate; after all, we do not choose in a vacuum. Therefore, the weight of the responsibility of choice can be held in check by a socio-cultural negotiation. This negotiation will be discussed further in

Section IV, Chapter 3. Sartre believes that appealing to situation assists in lessening the burden of choice. He even argues that what one chooses as good for the self will in most cases be good for all. However, this choice is not as obvious in Beauvoir's work. She argues that for situated consciousnesses who have different socio-cultural positionings, choice is not always as clear nor is it as objective as Sartre would like. Embodied consciousness does not allow for the objectivity for which Sartre argues. However, to be fair to Sartre's existentialism, embodiment does not truly come onto the scene until The

6 Beauvoir 1976, 18. 97 Second Sex. Leading up to her exploration of woman's situation, Beauvoir argues for a freedom that looks very similar to Sartre's notion of freedom.

Since this burden of choice is implicit in every project that is taken up or reconfirmed and that even though the strongest rationality—an aspect of our affectivity, cannot always choose what is best for all of humanity (this possibility is in turn questionable), there is a degree of existential stress that the human being experiences. According to Sartre, we experience this freedom to choose for all of humanity as anguish. There are two main senses of anguish for Sartre both of which are temporal. There is anguish in the face of the past and anguish in the face of the future. Anguish in the face of the past is born from the fact that decisions made in the past must be reconfirmed at every moment. For example, the alcoholic cannot choose at one moment to stop drinking. He must affirm his choice not to drink at every moment. Anguish in the face of the future is born from the fact that at every moment for the entirety of our lives we must choose ourselves.

Importantly, there is no human nature to which one must correspond. We must create ourselves with each choice we make. Beauvoir explains, "There is no instant in a life where all instants are reconciled."7 There is no moment wherein we coincide with ourselves because each moment we must take up our projects anew or choose to begin new projects. We are always ahead of ourselves. Furthermore, the necessity of choosing ourselves at every moment means that there is nothing stopping each individual from abandoning the self she has constructed and replacing it with a new self through taking on new projects. There are no guarantees that the identity chosen today will be the same as that which we will choose tomorrow. This is anguishing because during an existential crisis, which typically happens in the teen years, one realizes that no one else can choose

7 Beauvoir 2004a, 120. 98 one's life rather the choice is always up to the individual. Even though the past situates each individual as she faces the future, she must choose how to take that past up in each project she chooses. This is painful because individuals become attached to their identities or more accurately, they become attached to the projects that constitute their identities. There are no guarantees about who they will be in the future. Think of the implications on long-term commitments! For Sartre, and arguably also for Beauvoir, awareness of this freedom and the need to choose is fundamental to our humanness.

Not only is each individual faced with temporal anguish, but individuals can experience ethical anguish as well. Ethical anguish is bound up with temporal anguish.

Recall that we are completely free to decide what is valuable since there are no objective value or scale of values. What is valuable for the individual is valuable because the individual chooses it. This lack of objective values calls into question the possibility of justifying ourselves and our choices. According to Sartre, "nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies me in adopting this or that particular value, this or that particular scale of values,

[and ...] as a being by whom values exist, I am unjustifiable."8 Thus ethical anguish occurs when we realize that we are a creator of values who is thrown into the world without a premeditated purpose and further, whose chosen purpose will change over time

(through individual choices). We are, for Sartre, essentially groundless for only our choices provide a foundation and those choices, given their need for continual confirmation, are tenuous at best.

This is not directly in line with Beauvoir's comprehensive understanding of our being in the world as freedoms. Beauvoir argues against the possibility for radically free choice.

She does not write directly about anguish, but her writing on bad faith reveals that we do

8 Sartre 1956,76. 99 indeed skirt our responsibility to choose due to its overwhelming burden. Furthermore, she argues that not every choice is available to everyone at all times. We cannot make ourselves into whatever or whomever we wish. There are factical limitations on our possibilities for our constitution. Consequently, there are also limitations on our choices.

Human beings are not situated similarly. Though our ontological beginnings are shared, our facticity opens upon certain choices and closes upon others. This nuance reveals to

Beauvoir that the human reality is far too complex to systematize, both ethically and as explored in the previous section, ontologically. The way in which human beings are in the world is fundamentally ambiguous. Arguing precisely this point is one of Beauvoir's tasks in The Ethics of Ambiguity and arguably, it is her task throughout her work.

Beauvoir's argument that we are ambiguous beings engaged in ambiguous relations with others problematizes the notion of choice. She argues that human beings are both freedoms and facticities insofar as each individual is free to choose herself, but that her choices are necessarily situated in a socio-cultural historical world. We are both individuals and part of the human collectivity insofar as we must choose ourselves, but our choices are necessarily choices for all of humanity. Given these ambiguities of the human reality, how does an individual choose projects if these choices will have different meanings for different people? This makes it tricky to choose both for oneself and also to choose for all of humanity. An individual is not absolutely free to determine whatever is desired because what is chosen affects the choices of others and vice versa.

Consequently, we are not absolutely free.

How can we create ourselves given our situated freedom and the ambiguity of existence? Beauvoir argues that in order to create ourselves we need to assume our

100 fundamental ambiguity.9 We must create ourselves by engaging the world regardless of

the failures that our engagements involve. We fail because it is often not possible to

choose for all, but if we cannot possibly choose for all how is existentialist ethics

possible? Beauvoir suggests that even though individuals are genuinely separate from one

another, as she shows in Pyrrhus and Cineas, it is nonetheless possible to devise an

ethics. Beauvoir's ethics rests on the notion that although we cannot choose for all of

humanity we can will the freedom of all of humanity through our choices which in a

sense allow each individual to choose for herself. Beauvoir explains, "An ethics of

ambiguity will be one which will refuse to deny a priori that separate existants can, at the

same time, be bound to each other, that their individual freedoms can forge laws valid for

all."11

In defending her ethics, Beauvoir claims that human beings not only desire project x,

but human beings also desire the freedom to achieve the projects that they put before

themselves. It is not only our projects that are important, but the freedom necessary to

pursue those projects is also key. Therefore, our desire is not merely for the project to

come to fruition, but there also exists the desire to have the ability to pursue the chosen

project. Regardless of what we choose, it is the ability to choose that is crucial to our

freedom because self-creation necessitates the freedom to choose for ourselves. This does

not mean that the human being will not make mistakes or more precisely, this does not mean that each project will promote the freedom of all. Making mistakes is part of

choosing one's own life given that "to prohibit a man from error is to forbid him to fulfill

9 Beauvoir 1976, 9. Fundamental ambiguity will be fleshed out in Chapter 3 below. 10 Ibid, 13. 11 Ibid, 18. This will be clarified below in Chapter 3 through our exploration of moral freedom. 101 his own existence, it is to deprive him of life." If we deprive human beings of choice, whether it is a good choice or a bad choice, we deprive human beings of making their own lives. Consequently, Beauvoir is not setting up an abstract moral system she is merely holding up the thin value of freedom as the most valuable moral imperative.

Freedom, for Beauvoir, is a thin value because it does not assert any normative content.

This programmatic lack renders it a valuable moral imperative insofar as it emphasizes individual choice. Beauvoir's ethical works show how this non-programmatic intersubjective negotiation between freedoms is possible, but is this realistic?

There is of course a major problem with Beauvoir's moral imperative to promote the freedom of all. For instance, what happens when freedoms conflict. Even Beauvoir cannot answer this question. She too asks, "when it is a question of choosing among freedoms, how shall we decide?"13 What if our freedom infringes on an other's freedom?

How are we to decide and who shall decide whose freedom should prevail? Does this conflict not fly in the face of an ethical program wherein every freedom ought to be nurtured? Unfortunately, given that the human reality is groundless and each human being is an ambiguously embodied consciousness, no one freedom can be more valuable than any other. Beauvoir answers this dilemma in what initially appears to be an unhelpful way. She states very simply that "one finds himself back at the anguish of free decision."14 This seeming circular response interestingly points the reader back to

12 Ibid, 138. 13 Ibid, 145. 14 Ibid, 148. 102 affectivity by reminding the free individual that her decision—though made freely, is

very much situated in a world peopled by others.15

This seemingly moral impasse leads to a host of problems. Most importantly, it would

seem that freedoms would necessarily be in conflict if each individual ought to have the

freedom to pursue her own goals. Although Beauvoir promotes ambiguity, her loyalties

to Hegel's philosophy of recognition crops up throughout her work. Nowhere is this truer

than in Beauvoir's description of the relationship between man and woman. As will be

unpacked in Chapter 4, in The Second Sex Beauvoir goes to great lengths to describe how

each and every freedom is essentially always in conflict with every other freedom.

Beauvoir shows how woman's freedom has been historically compromised for man's

freedom. The historical weight of man's choices has simultaneously done two things.

They have narrowed woman's choices for the sake of their own and while doing so, man

has asserted his choices as valuable for all of humanity. Not only has woman been

historically oppressed insofar as her situation as woman has curbed her possible projects,

she has also come to value the projects that man has traditionally taken up. Those projects

contribute to the perpetuation of contemporary Western culture as patriarchal while

curbing the freedom of woman. What remains to be seen in this narrowing of woman's

choices is woman's role in this relationship. Woman's role will be called into question in

Section III and IV. For now, the question of woman's collusion will have to wait given

the background work that needs to be done in Section II. After Beauvoir's ethics have been fleshed out it will be possible to truly explore the possibilities for an existentialist

15 We will return to the question of individual choice throughout this Section, but it will be in Section IV where we will discover a way in which to contextualize choice that need not cause anguish. 103 ethics based on reciprocity which accounts for woman's role in this contemporary

Western dilemma.

104 Chapter 2: Beauvoir's Ethical Beginnings

Pyrrhus and Cineas marks the beginning of Beauvoir's explicitly moral period.16 The text opens with a dialogue between Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus and Cineas his advisor.

Cineas, the cynic, argues that human beings can never be satisfied and consequently, ought not act at all. On the other hand, Pyrrhus (the voice of Beauvoir) argues that to be human is to act. In general, the text provides an analysis of human reality and aims to justify human action. In this chapter, I will show that Beauvoir's interpretation accounts both for one's subjectivity as an intentional being (the desire to act) and it also accounts for one's social embeddedness—the repercussions of and restrictions on one's actions by others. As we will soon see, Beauvoir's famous notion of ambiguity is already at work in this early figuration of and commitment to freedom. This Chapter also introduces us to key ethical ideas in Beauvoir's thinking such as disclosure, generosity, and ambiguity.

These concepts will help contextualize Beauvoir's figuration of freedom and provide the foundation for Beauvoir's mature thought which will be discussed in Section IV.

Pyrrhus and Cineas provides a starting point for thinking through subjectivity and ambiguity in Beauvoir's work. There are two aspects of subjectivity in this early work.

This apparent dualism between interiority and exteriority leads to a somewhat dualistic reading of subjectivity that is not fully reconciled until Beauvoir's later works. In this early text Beauvoir writes that the subject is both an interiority and an exteriority. This conceptual separation allows Beauvoir to unpack the nuances that shape one's relations with others. For instance, Beauvoir argues, "as freedom, the other is radically separated from me, no connection can be created from me to this pure interiority upon which even

16 Before 1944 Beauvoir authored two novels, which are arguably implicitly moral in tone, but they are not explicitly written as ethical works. See She Came to Stay and The Blood of Others, trans. Y. Moyse and R. Senhouse (London: Seeker & Warburg and Lindsay Drummond, 1948). 105 1 7

God would have no hold". Such a freedom (one which would even escape God) suggests that freedom is implicit in one's very being. This interiority is conceptualized as 1 8 the very core of one's life. Furthermore, one's interiority is unaffected by one's being-in- the-world with others. It is this interiority that allows for radical freedom by presumably bracketing socio-cultural limitations on our desires, our preferences, or our rejections.19

There is an ethical problem if we consider the other as a pure interiority (or a pure exteriority). How is one to reach the other if she is an interiority who is radically separate? According to Beauvoir, humanity "is a discontinuous succession of free men who are irretrievably isolated by their subjectivity." This aspect of subjectivity, this radical separation or irretrievable isolation, leads back to Heidegger's Dasein. Recall that

Dasein is it's ownmost possibility. It is not that Beauvoir is returning wholesale to

Dasein rather she is calling attention to our fundamental ontological structure. The human being is simultaneously isolated as an interior while being absolutely exterior.

One is absolutely projected toward the other as Heidegger shows with his notion of disclosedness. Our interiority and our exteriority situate us ambiguously in the world.

Exteriority—that which is the facticity of our being indicates our interiority to the other, an interiority that needs to be recognized as such. Beauvoir confirms, "We never reach anything but the facticity of others. But precisely in choosing to act on that facticity, we give up taking the other for a freedom, and we restrict, accordingly, the

17 Beauvoir 2004a, 126. 18 Ibid, 128. 191 will argue below that this pure interiority is present in The Ethics of Ambiguity as one's original freedom. However, this is not to argue that Beauvoir falls prey to the same naivete that troubled Sartre's ethics. As we will discover below Beauvoir's pairing of interiority with exteriority nuances her notion of freedom, paving the way for her discussion of the serious implications of our embodied situation on our possibilities for freedom. 20 Beauvoir 2004a, 109. 106 9 1 possibility of expanding our being." Understanding the other to simply be a facticity stands in the way of our own freedom. Recognizing the other as a freedom is the key to realizing our own freedom as we will explore below. This can be done if one understand the other to be a disclosure of being that through facticity or exteriority, his inner-aspect as freedom is revealed.

In Beauvoir's early work, one's exteriority stands to mask one's freedom. This exterior will become more important in Beauvoir's later work. In her later work our exterior or what I will take to be our embodied situation and its particular way of being- in-the-world is necessarily bound up with our freedom and thus our exterior is necessarily bound up with our interior. However, at this point in Beauvoir's thinking the role of the body is still rather opaque primarily because the body is not yet Beauvoir's focus.

However, she does write about our facticity as a decisive factor in our freedom, but this is still a long way from her thinking on embodiment as will be explored in Chapter 4 and more extensively in Section III.

Beauvoir paints a picture of the human being as first and foremost a free being. She writes, "A man can never abdicate his freedom; his claims to renounce it are only a 99 masquerade that he freely performs." This notion that one masquerades one's freedom will be especially important in Beauvoir's later work when she writes about bad faith as a facade of one's freedom. The human being is a being who is not only necessarily free, but also a material body amongst other material bodies. Beauvoir explains, "I must simultaneously grasp myself as object and as freedom and recognize my situation as

21 Ibid, 138. 22 Ibid, 118. 107 founded by the other, while asserting my being beyond the situation." In order to fulfill

our projects we must understand the other as integral to, but not delimiting of our own

freedom. Furthermore, we must recognize that the other can also understand us to be no

more than an object in her own situation. Therefore, it is necessary that we recognize the

other as ambiguous so as to forward our own ambiguity.

Let us consider what would be entailed by (violently) acting upon the other as if she

were merely an object in our situation. Beauvoir writes, "Violence can act only upon the

facticity of man, upon his exterior. Even when it stops him in his elan toward his goal,

violence does not reach him in his heart because he was still free in the face of the goal

that he proposed to himself." First of all violence needs to be distinguished from power.

Beauvoir is not arguing that we are free to do whatever we like rather she is arguing that

our power is always limited by the projects of others. Beauvoir explains, "power is finite,

and one can increase it or restrict it from the outside." Power is a force that acts merely

on our exteriority and it may take the shape of violence. However, power and violence

cannot reach our heart—our interior. Freedom remains infinite in all cases of power and violence. It is because we can never do anythingybr an other or against an other that this holds true in Beauvoir's argument. Given that "as freedom, the other is radically

separated from me",26 we cannot enslave the other's freedom by limiting her power. The question of violence brings human relations into focus.

In this early work we have yet to get the full sense of the extent to which the other affects our own embodied freedom; however, the possibility that we are taken to be

23 Ibid, 123. 24 Ibid, 141. 25 Ibid, 124. 26 Ibid, 126. 108 merely an object for the other does cause suffering. Recall that recognition from the other

pulls us out of our interiority, we are not only a subject for ourselves, but we are also

subjected to the projects of others. It is through disclosure, the moving outside of pure

interiority to reach the other, that we understand ourselves as having an exterior. Recall

from Sartre that in order to become a subject it is necessary to be subjected to the

objectifying gaze of the other; one is not merely a freedom—one is also an object for

others. Beauvoir argues, "A man finds his place on earth only by becoming a given object

for other men, and every given is destined to be transcended. One transcends it by using it

97

or combating it." This encounter with the other opens up our horizon(s) of choice as

transcendent beings in the world.

In this early text, Beauvoir characterizes transcendence very loosely as simply a 98

fundamental feature of human beings. She writes, "man is transcendence" insofar as every human being is involved in projecting himself beyond his facticity to "reach 9Q beyond ourselves for something other than ourselves." Notice that transcendence links the subject with others. It is through this reaching beyond the self-same, that which

Hegel's second movement toward subjectivity describes, that the subject constructs a particular identity or pursues particular ends. After all, "Every thought, every look, every tendency is transcendence."30 Therefore, Cineas' position, that one ought not act, cannot even get off the ground. Human beings fashion themselves as subjects through action.

27 Ibid, 107-8. 28 Ibid, 121. 29 Debra Bergoffen, "Introduction to Pyrrhus and Cineas" in Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophical Writings, eds. Margaret A. Simons with Marybeth Timmermann and Mary Beth Mader, trans. Mary Beth Timmermann (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 85. 30 Beauvoir 2004a, 98. 109 Human beings are insofar as they transcend and they do so by engaging in a world peopled with others.

Transcendence implies that our facticity, a pre-existing purpose, or human nature, does not force the human being into any particular sort of identity. However, our possibilities are not exactly without limit. Beauvoir explains, "We are free to transcend all transcendence. We can always escape toward an 'elsewhere,' but this elsewhere is still somewhere, in the heart of our human condition. We never escape from the human condition, and we have no way to envision it from the outside in order to judge it."31

Interestingly, one's interiority as a freedom cannot be negated, but neither can our freedom outstrip the human condition as factical. Although transcendence, in Beauvoir's early work, is connected to the actions of the intentional consciousness and surpasses even itself in its ability to "transcend all transcendence", it is still situated. An unrestricted reading of transcendence sounds unsurprisingly Sartrean given their similar philosophical roots. Despite these roots, there is a notable departure from the Sartrean sense of transcendence in Beauvoir's work insofar as she acknowledges the worldly component of our surpassings. This element is arguably missing from Sartre's work.

For Sartre, transcendence is the intentionality of consciousness. Recall that transcendence is the movement of the for-itself, namely it is a projection of oneself toward an open and indefinite future. In other words, the human being is a being who can outstrip its facticity through transcendence. On the other hand, Beauvoir's transcendence finds itself rooted in a social material world that can be eclipsed, but never outstripped.

31 Ibid, 141. 32 Ibid. 110 Beauvoir argues, man "never transcends himself except in the heart of immanence."

The implications of this interconnectedness of freedom or interiority as both a mechanism of projection and embodied in the material world have yet to be clearly formulated in

Beauvoir's early ethical work. At this point, it is still not clear as to what are the implications of this human condition of which Beauvoir writes and to be fair, it is not yet

Beauvoir's concern.

The human condition for Beauvoir is not merely the desire for transcendence, but as explained briefly above, it is in its very being an appeal to the other. She calls us out of our interiority insofar as we need the other to recognize our objectivity and to also recognize our freedom. Beauvoir explains, the human being "is a perpetual surpassing of itself; an appeal in need of a response constantly emanates from it; a void in need of fulfillment is constantly being hollowed out in it".34 This lack in being is the emptiness that is consciousness as intentionality. This ontological formulation of lack, which was unpacked in Section I, Chapter 3, highlights the importance of our relationship with others. It is by becoming an object for the other that we locate ourselves in the world. It is not that the other is wholly responsible for our subjectivity, rather the human reality, as a reality peopled by differing transcendences, calls attention to each individual's responsibility to choose. The void is filled in that moment of choice. Beauvoir explains,

"Man is only by choosing himself; if he refuses to choose, he annihilates himself." For example, I choose through my projects and by so doing I affirm my own existence and the existence of the other because the other is necessarily bound up in my projects.

Ibid, 104. Ibid, 106. Ibid, 113. Ill Let us consider, as does Beauvoir, the interesting case of devotion. At first

devotion—taking an end defined by the other to be one's own end, appears to be a refusal

to choose. However, our being is strangely justified (albeit in bad faith as will be

explored below) through this desire to be for the other. According to Beauvoir, my "being

is justified since I am for a being whose existence is justified. I am released from both the

risk and the anguish [of choosing myself]. By positing an absolute end before me, I have

abdicated my freedom; questions are no longer posed; I no longer want to be anything but

a response to that appeal which requires me." What is particularly interesting in the case

of devotion is that at each moment, in a truly existential fashion, one must choose

devotion over the risk and anguish of choosing one's own projects. In choosing the

other's end as determinate of our own we essentially refuse to acknowledge ourselves as

freedoms. Consequently, the existential fact of our human reality, such that "Nothing is

decided before me",37 can be disavowed through devotion.

Beauvoir does not tell her reader whether or not devotion is transcendent behaviour. It

does indeed meet the minimum requirement for transcendence in her early work.

Devotion is not passivity, after all one must decide to take the other's end as one's own

end. Devotion does involve reaching beyond ourselves toward an other self. Furthermore,

the decision to do so must be confirmed at each moment. However, if this is the case what can be said about passivity? It would appear that any and all choice would fall into the category of transcendence and thus every choice we make (even the choice not to

choose) meets the minimum requirement for transcendence as cursorily laid out in

Ibid, 117. Ibid, 93. 112 Pyrrhus and Cineas. This will certainly not be the case in Beauvoir's later work wherein

transcendence will be more practically described as a typology of activity.

In Pyrrhus and Cineas Beauvoir's notion of transcendence is championed in

transcendence as project. Pyrrhus forwards this notion as an ethical prescriptive and by so

doing moves transcendence away from the ontological realm and into the realm of the

ethical. However, transcendence still oscillates between an ontological concept and a

typology of activity. Beauvoir's usage of immanence and transcendence in Pyrrhus and

Cineas is rather ambiguous. Andrea Veltman is only partially right when she argues, "As

early as 'Pyrrhus et Cineas', transcendence refers less to the moments of an intentional

conscious subjectivity and more to constructive activities that situate and engage the

individual with other human freedoms." In Beauvoir's later work she moves away from

the Sartrean understanding of transcendence as the abstract intentional consciousness in

favour of a typology of activity, but the Sartrean reading is still discernable in her work.

It is necessary to keep in mind that for Beauvoir, activity is a product of one's will and

this willfulness stems from one's being as a freedom. Thus one ought not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Thinking about transcendence as activity entails thinking

about it also as an ontological feature of consciousness. Thinking about transcendence as more than just an emanation from one's free being as willful—a fundamental elan, allows

for the nuances with which Beauvoir is working. Her ethical reading of transcendence brings to light the idea that transcendence has many variations and consequently, many ethical possibilities. Take for instance Beauvoir's notion of transcendence as generosity.

According to Rosalyn Diprose, generosity "is not only an individual virtue that

38 Andrea Veltman, "Transcendence and Immanence in Beauvoir's Ethics" in The Philosophy ofSimone de Beauvoir: Critical Essays, ed. Margaret A. Simons (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 115. 113 contributes to human well-being, but it is an openness to others that is fundamental to human existence, sociality, and social formation." Diprose describes generosity as an incalculable necessary aspect of intersubjectivity that nurtures an openness between subjects on both a corporeal and a social level. Diprose's reading of generosity is in line with Beauvoir's reading of generosity especially in Beauvoir's later works when she thinks through the erotic encounter. ° This reading is also available in Pyrrhus and

Cineas.

In Beauvoir's early work generosity is described as a type of transcendence that is arguably crucial to the sort of intersubjectivity she has in mind throughout her work—an intersubjectivity founded on mutual freedom. However, at this early stage Beauvoir is preoccupied with the existential flavour of generosity and not the phenomenological reading that will enrich her later texts. Generosity is described in Pyrrhus and Cineas as an act of finitude. It is an act which is an end in itself. Thus, it is easily confused with transcendence as project which is described to be an act of universality—an affirmation of values or an act which relates the subject to others. In this reading, Beauvoir is in agreement with Sartre's notion of transcendence. Generosity is a bit different. According to Beauvoir, generosity wants only to be received as a free act. Beauvoir explains,

"Generosity wants and knows itself to be free and asks for nothing but to be recognized as such."41 This is a rather muddy explanation given that generosity can be mistaken as purely factical, self-interested, or worse it can be used to perpetuate the status quo.

Interestingly, this muddiness can help us get clear on the meaning of generosity.

39 Rosalyn Diprose, Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 2. 40 We will discuss the erotic encounter in Chapter 4 of this Section. 41 Beauvoir 2004a, 124. 114 In the first case, the free action (generosity) is confused with passivity and meaninglessness and not an affirmation of freedom. For example, caring for an other being can be regarded as particular to an individual's social,historical, and cultural becoming. An individual ought to care for her elderly parents because it is her daughterly duty. This call to duty entails that she is not caring for her parents out of her own volition.

In this likely reading, care-giving is simply part of an individual's situation and not a freely chosen project in which the individual invests herself. It is no wonder that transcendence as generosity is not socially valued since generous actions are thought to be deontological, such that they are rooted in responsibility and not performed freely. In the second case, the free action is confused with egocentricism. Beauvoir uses the example of tipping someone when he acts in a generous fashion.42 She argues that the tip is an insult given that tipping denies the freedom of the generous man. Tipping assumes that the generous man is in fact merely self-interested. He is simply being helpful to be paid (extra). However, assuming this would be a mistake insofar as generosity would cease to be if it is merely self-interested.

What is particularly important to note about generosity in both cases of mistaken identity, is that it cannot be for the other given that in Pyrrhus and Cineas we cannot do anything/br another. This does not mean that it is for the self rather in a way it is for all of humanity. Lucid generosity reveals that one cannot do anything^br others.43 This means that in acting generously (and arguably acting in any fashion toward the other) we can only reach the exterior of the other since we can never reach the interiority of an other being. We can understand that there is an interior to each and every other as it is

Ibid, 124.

115 revealed through their exterior, but only the other can did for himself. Instead what the generous act does is open a space wherein an exchange can happen that is neither merely for the self nor merely for the other. Beauvoir remains true to this possibility, even though in the later Beauvoir the weight of situation renders this socio-culturally problematic. It is only possible to reach the other through his exterior. It is not possible to effect his fundamental freedom nor can we effect his interior.

Mistaken identity is not generosity's biggest problem. Although mistaking generosity as factical or egoistic is problematic, there is another angle that needs to be examined in the generosity debate. Jacques Derrida reminds us that if the gift of generosity is recognized as a refusal of egoism and as obligation, such that one owes the gift-giver, then generosity becomes a sheer impossibility.44 Therefore, the only way generosity can function is if it is a gift given and forgotten by both parties so as to negate the problem of owing or being owed. Yet generosity binds the individual to others in ways that are very real and this element of forgetting makes this bond even more real. Although generosity asks to be forgotten, the act of giving ties the generous to the benefactor in a relationship that is not easily undone. In this fashion generosity may in fact nurture the status quo insofar as forgetting is an integral part of the domination of one group or one individual over another group or over another individual.

Generosity in practice is shot through with a very selective forgetting. Diprose explains, "It is in the systematic, asymmetrical forgetting of the gift, where only the generosity of the privileged is memorialized, that social inequalities and injustice is

4 Jacques Derrida Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 30. 116 based." We can open a space of possibilities for others through our generous acts as

Beauvoir suggests, but this space is always precarious. Social privilege, a factor to which

Beauvoir is keenly attuned in The Second Sex, determines (and is determined by) the extent to which generosity is acknowledged and forgotten. For instance, the generosity of woman as children's primary caregiver is historically negated by the economic generosity of man. Her gifts are forgotten or mistaken as factical or egoistical and his are memorialized. Consequently, generosity in practice faces the task of overcoming this critique if it is to stand as an ethical possibility that nurtures the corporeal dimension of our relations with others. Beauvoir locates the key to generosity in the joy of giving. She explains, "generosity seems to us to be better grounded and therefore more valid the less distinction there is between the other and ourself and the more we fulfil ourself in taking the other as an end." Beauvoir is suggesting that it is through generosity that we are able to not only nurture the freedom of the other, but also to bestow value in the freedom for all by taking the other as an end in herself which necessarily includes taking our own freedom seriously.

In order to disclose being we must will that there be disclosure. In Pyrrhus and

Cineas and beyond the subject is constituted by an accumulation and expression of his wilful actions. Recall that we make ourselves through the collection of projects we take up throughout our lifetime and further, that the meaning of that life can only be understood in death. The individual is always in a state of becoming. This resonates with

Beauvoir's understanding of the will insofar as it reflects or enables this becoming.

Diprose, 8. Beauvoir 1976, 144. 117 Beauvoir explains, "A man's will does not remain the same during an entire life." For

Beauvoir, the will is the existential dynamic that changes at each instant of a human being's life depending upon the projects he takes up and the desires that shape and are shaped by those projects. The will both affects and is affected by our being-in-the-world as a transcendence.

Although we are always in a state of dynamical becoming, there is something that remains changeless throughout our lifetime. This appears counter to Beauvoir's existentialism, but in fact it roots our human condition by permitting us an identity over time. This identity is located in our metaphorical heart. In Pyrrhus and Cineas, Beauvoir refers to the heart of the human condition as freedom48 and further, she argues that one can only transcend in the heart of immanence.49 There is something specific (one's ownness) and yet something shared by each human being. This echoes a later reflection in one of Beauvoir's autobiographies where she writes, one possesses "an inner heart, a centre of interiorization, a me which asserts that it is always the same throughout the whole course."50 We are not nothingness. I am calling this centre of interiorization the situated heart.51 It is a willful ontologically free facticity. The situated heart is static and dynamic in the truest of existential senses. As a transcendence one is always ahead of oneself insofar as one's being is always beyond one's situation. However, one's situation necessarily roots the human being in a world that is of her own making. It allows for transcendence so that she may continue the project of making a life. The situated heart gives us an astonishingly complex and dynamic notion of subjectivity that moves beyond

47 Beauvoir 2004a, 120. 48 Ibid, 141. 49 Ibid, 104. 50 Beauvoir 1977, 10. 51 This idea was suggested to me in conversation with Dr. Rebekah Johnston, June 2010. 118 a dualistic notion of interior and exterior. We are both situated in the present with respect to the past and yet, we are more than this. We are also futuristic through our engagements with/in the world. In this fashion, the human being is both rooted and forward reaching.

Thus, one is truly ambiguous. This sophisticated view is what is needed if we want to take seriously Beauvoir's notion of becoming woman as both stylistically unique and yet, stylistically similar to others.

In conclusion, to make ourselves it is necessary that we act. One cannot, as Cineas suggests, just sit idle. Human becoming is tied up with the other, but not the other who fashions me or I who look to the other for fashioning. Beauvoir explains, "If I seek myself in the eyes of others before I have fashioned myself, I am nothing. I take on a shape and an existence only if I first throw myself into the world by loving, by doing."

Perhaps devotion is not transcendent activity. It is the case that we can resign ourselves to taking the world as ready-made, but this is a false objectivity. The world is only ready- made (and as part of the world we are also ready-made) insofar as we have decided that we can exist with others in such a way. It is up to the human being to understand the world as a set of circumstances that we have inherited and furthermore, that we cannot change. Even this refusal to understand the world as made through and by one's participation is a choice. Beauvoir explains, "Our very passivity is willed; in order to not choose, we still must choose not to choose. It is impossible to escape."53 Accordingly, we must throw ourselves into the world that we have inherited.

Since the world does not exist without the human being and even our passivity is willed, we can choose to do one of two things. We can create ourselves through forging

Beauvoir 2004a, 130. Ibid, 126. 119 relationships with others by transcending our facticity or we can resign ourselves to the will of others wherein we are "duped by an illusion; [of] ready-made values".54 The choice that each human being makes sets up the work that will come later. Beauvoir will argue in The Second Sex that for the most part human beings choose to live in bad faith, but she calls on each being to resign herself to never being entirely saved.55 It is not just the fault of she who resigns for "Only the other can create a need for what we give him; every appeal and every demand comes from his freedom." Therefore, we must choose the first option. It is necessary to nurture the freedom of the other so that the other may make herself. We must encourage the other to choose since it is through our own actions that we create points of departure for the other just as she, through her actions, appeals for the same gesture. Unfortunately, as will be explored below, it is too often the case that one refuses to assume the risk and uncertainty for which the appeal calls. It is far too easy to fall into bad faith and in so doing mask our freedom and therein the freedom of the other.57 Thought-provokingly, Beauvoir tells the reader that it is precisely this risk and uncertainty that is the essence of freedom and hence, the heart of ethical relations.58 She explores this risk further in The Second Sex as will be explored in Chapter 4. However, it is in The Ethics of Ambiguity that Beauvoir's thinking on freedom truly flourishes.

54 Ibid, 126-7. Ibid, 130. Bad faith saves us from existential angst. 56Ibid,129. 57 We will see this more clearly in Beauvoir's explicit examination of bad faith in Chapter 4. 58 Beauvoir 2004a, 139. 120 Chapter 3: Beauvoir's Explicit Ethics of Ambiguity

Beauvoir wrote The Ethics of Ambiguity in response to criticisms of existentialist ethics. In order to respond to the critics, she unpacks the main principles of existentialism such as freedom and facticity and formulates an ethics that allows for the complexities that guide those principles. After writing The Ethics of Ambiguity Beauvoir later dismisses it as too abstract.59 However, her existentialist ethics needs to be unpacked in order to highlight the relevant ideas which allow us to rescue her existentialist ethics from the weight of woman's concrete situation. In The Ethics of Ambiguity Beauvoir provides a viable way of fostering reciprocal relationships with others while remaining mindful of the complexities that shape the human reality. Furthermore, Beauvoir's explicit ethics of ambiguity is a particularly important piece for understanding the thickness of the lived body as it negotiates a world peopled with others. In order to garner an understanding of the thickness of the lived body and its ethical possibilities it is necessary to first unpack her brilliant ethics.

In this short ethical treatise, Beauvoir's aim is two-fold. She aims to show that existentialist ethics is not subjectivist and that although existentialist ethics is non- programmatic and rather concrete in its application it does provide general directives for action. In order to argue against these criticisms she takes on Kant, Hegel, and Marx. She concludes that their moral systems do not adequately account for the human reality as a situated reality—something with which the existentialist is particularly concerned. The existentialist recognizes the need to understand the human reality as the complex negotiation of disparate desires through which it presents itself. Basing an ethical theory

59 In Beauvoir's Force of Circumstance her account of the Algerian war brought her to the realization that her thinking in The Ethics of Ambiguity was far too abstract. 60 Contemporary woman's concrete situation will be explored at length in Section III. 121 on the abstracted individual would be counterintuitive to the existential starting point of

being-in-the-world. Beauvoir does not believe that ethical abstractions are cognizant of

the fundamental ontological phenomenological nature of the human reality. Instead these

abstract ethical theories privilege a fundamentally rational being. Working with a

fundamentally rational being not only ignores the temporal aspect of the subject, but it

also ignores the subject's fundamental relationality which is bound up in the ontological

phenomenological structure of being. Beauvoir argues for an existentialist ethics by

forwarding an ethical theory that meshes with the human reality or as will be shown

momentarily, with Dasein's ontological foundation. In large part, Beauvoir strives to

highlight the importance of lived time in our ethical relationships which is all but

obscured in other ethical theories.

Beauvoir's notion of the human being has its roots in Dasein. Recall that Dasein is

intentional and thus, it is always intending toward something. This implicitly brings the

temporal nature of human being into focus as a crucial aspect of our being-in-the-world.

Beauvoir aims to formulate an ethical theory that takes this fundamental nature of Dasein

as temporal into account while moving beyond Heidegger's thinking. Dasein is not a

relational being insofar as Heidegger leaves Dasein at a particular stage of socio-

ontological development. Dasein is being-there which has always already been disclosed

and thus, Dasein does not develop beyond a sort of abstraction of human reality.

Interestingly, Heidegger works forward in conceptualizing Dasein in a truly temporal

nature instead of abstracting Dasein from its situation—one that is always and already underway. Interestingly, Dasein cannot be morally engaged because it remains somewhat

abstracted from its very being-in-the-world. In fact, if Heidegger's Dasein is misread it

122 falls prey to the charges of solipsism due to this relational abstraction. It is important to

note that creating an ethics was not Heidegger's intention. Instead, what Heidegger's

Dasein gives Beauvoir is a fundamental starting point for thinking through an

existentialist ethics.

In The Ethics of Ambiguity Beauvoir's notion of freedom moves beyond Dasein's

original freedom. Ontological freedom (the notion that one is originally free) is the result

of one's fundamental ontological being. Recall that Dasein is its ownmost possibility.

Dasein is thrown into the world, but Heidegger shows us that Dasein is more than this

thrownness. Dasein is an intentional being. Thus the human being is fundamentally

future-oriented. Problematically, ontological freedom perpetuates the separation of

humanity through action that is temporally shallow. Conversely, moral freedom bridges

the gap between human beings through action that is temporally open. Temporality is key

to Beauvoir's notion of freedom insofar as actions that relate the human being to others

reach out beyond one's momentary being. Since these projects are future-oriented they

have the unique ability of appealing to the projects of others insofar as they have yet to be

completed. They call (appeal to the other) for a response.

Let us look more closely at ontological freedom so that we may garner a sense for the

ways in which human beings move beyond it. Beauvoir explains,

Every man is originally free, in the sense that he spontaneously casts himself into the world. But if we consider this spontaneity in its facticity, it appears to us only as a pure contingency, an upsurging as stupid as the clinamen of the Epicurean atom which turned up at any moment whatsoever from any direction whatsoever.

Jiirgen Habermas and Ludwig Binswanger both critique Dasein as essentially monadic. See Roger Frie, Subjectivity and Inter subjectivity in Modern Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: A Study of Sartre, Binswanger, Lacan, and Habermas (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1997). 62 Beauvoir 1976,25. 123 Ontological freedom—the pure spontaneity of being, does not appear to be different from

the unpredictable swerve of the atom from the days of Leucippus and Democritus, the

Greek Atomists. Beauvoir is arguing that human beings are more than just a spontaneous

upsurge, a pure contingency—a thing shoved to and fro by the world. The world does

push against one's exteriority by opening up and closing off possibilities, but it does not

determine those possibilities nor does it determine the choices one will make in the face

of those possibilities. Understanding the complexity of freedom and facticity and the

choices that are thereby made available allows for an understanding of the human being

as more than the absurd clinamen.

Ontological freedom is a very basic freedom. It does not require nurturing as it is

implicit in the very ontological structure of our being. Beauvoir explains that it involves

living at our most basic palpitation -"In laziness, heedlessness, capriciousness,

cowardice, [and] impatience". It both affirms and denies choice. It affirms choice

insofar as human beings are always choosing even if they are choosing not to choose.

Conversely, it denies choice insofar as it paints the human being as rooted only in the

moment. It is a contestation of all that is possible for our life insofar as there is no future

in our basic ontological freedom. Ontological freedom does not "justify the

transcendence which discloses it"64 insofar as it ignores our temporality as a transcendent being who makes our lives through projecting ourselves toward the world and toward

others. Therefore, it is a very basic freedom. Thankfully, it provides the possibility for a more robust freedom.

63 Ibid.

124 Moral freedom (the type of freedom that Beauvoir champions in The Ethics of

Ambiguity) is a willing of the freedom of the self and others through one's active dealings

with the world. It must be noted that moral freedom is not a different kind of freedom

than ontological freedom; it is an extension of ontological freedom. It involves moving beyond mere ontological freedom and results in justifying one's being-in-the-world

through intentional action. Beauvoir explains, "To will oneself free is to effect the

transition from nature to morality by establishing a genuine freedom on the original upsurge of our existence."65 This transition from nature to morality is achieved by

reaching beyond our facticity and willing ourselves into the world.

For Beauvoir, the will (one's ability to project oneself into the world) is not rationally motivated, nor is it mere consciousness; rather, the will is driven by one's being-in-the- world.66 Beauvoir's notion of the will is both the for-itself of consciousness and the in- itself of our body insofar as the will is an embodied consciousness that is also a reflection of our world. Recall from Chapter 1 that for the existentialist human choice shapes the human reality. Beauvoir explains, "It is the world willed by man, insofar as his will expresses his genuine reality."67 As will be demonstrated below, this expressed reality is the human being as an ambiguous being—both a freedom and a facticity. Consequently, the will is much more than mere rationality. It plays an important role in our ethical relationships that move beyond the intellect and hinge on our affectivity as embodied consciousnesses.

Let us return to a basic existential tenet to get clear on moral freedom. Existentialism asserts that values are made collectively through individual wills and sharing in projects.

65 Ibid. 66 Ibid, 33. 67 Ibid, 17. 125 Something is valuable because one chooses to value it rather than the other way around.

For instance, my values will result from my choice of a fundamental project in which I am engaged and which in turn has a hand in constituting my identity. I am a self-creating being. There are no objective values upon which to base the (continuously renewed) decision to be who I am. Herein, I create myself and affirm the importance of the projects that I have freely chosen.

As absolutely free, one makes one's life valuable via willful action. In choosing a particular life over another we choose not only for ourselves, but we also chooses for all human beings; the personal will is a political will. Thus Beauvoir is not saying that all human beings should choose freedom, but that all human beings should be free to choose whatever they will. Opening a space for others to do so through asserting moral freedom allows for this personal choice which is necessary for self-creation. Beauvoir explains,

"every man needs the freedom of other men, [...] Only the freedom of others keeps each one of us from hardening in the absurdity of facticity." We alway desire the freedom of others to recognize the meanings that we create which in turn result from our free actions.

Consequently for Beauvoir, it is not enough to act freely; one must will freedom above all else. We must actively will not only our own freedom, but also the freedom of all others since "freedom is the source from which all significations and all values spring. It is the original condition of all justification of existence. The man who seeks to justify his life must want freedom itself absolutely and above everything else."69 Beauvoir argues that affirming freedom is the most basic value because it provides the foundation for all other values. It affords each human being the capacity to instill value in other projects.

68 Ibid, 71. 69 Ibid, 24. It's not about choosing freedom, it's about willing freedom through our choices. 126 Beauvoir's notion of freedom hinges on our relationships with others. We are not absolutely free because we are always in communication and communion with the world and with other ontologically free agents. This intersubjective reality colours our possibilities for freedom. Beauvoir's view rightly calls attention to our situatedness in an intersubjective world whereby we are born into a certain culture, religion, ethnicity, race, gender, class, and so forth. This means that our ability to act freely and call into question those actions is tacitly bound by our situation. Consequently, that which one holds to be valuable is not fully born out of ontological freedom, but it is born from the freedom that one's situation permits. We must ask ourselves: what am I going to do with my freedom— what is valuable to me as a situated being? For as we can attest, our situation rarely allows for radically free action given the complex ways in which we are situated with respect to other freedoms. We are always firmly rooted in our facticity. This undoubtedly shapes our avenues for appealing to others. One thing that is certain is that whatever else people might want in affirming their existence they will also want freedom.

For we not only have goals, but we also have the desire to pursue those goals. Regardless, we want to be self-determining. However, this is only possible if we possess the freedom to pursue our life for ourselves. This freedom depends on the disclosedness of the other.

Recall Heidegger's discussion oiDasein as its disclosedness. Dasein is itself an opening onto the world that grants it the possibility of making itself present to others.

This disclosedness is indicative of a general style of being-in-the-world as a human existant. Be that as it may, Beauvoir takes Heidegger's thinking further insofar as he did not discuss how one ought to comport oneself in the world with/to other sentient beings.

Heidegger, 171/133. 127 Thus Heidegger does not reveal how one's disclosedness links up to intersubjectivity.71 It

is not enough to say that Dasein is its disclosedness given that Beauvoir is interested in

the ethical being and not merely our ontological possibilities. Beauvoir picks up on the

ways in which we comport ourselves toward/in the world and how it effects our concrete

relations with others. Beauvoir explains, "What is called vitality, sensitivity, and

intelligence are not ready-made qualities, but a way of casting oneself into the world and

of disclosing being."72 Beauvoir continues on to explain that there is "vitality only by

means of free generosity."73 This type of moral flourishing is possible when we disclose

ourselves to the world as a generosity. This is the moment when our own freedom is no

longer an issue because we let go of the need to be a transcendence through this

existential affirmation. It is the moment in which we unveil the world pausing before the

other meeting her in the particularity of the situation. Interestingly, "in this movement

even the most outcast sometimes feel the joy of existing."7

Willing to disclose the world, as the original type of being (it is the fundamental

nature of human being),75 entails accepting our very lack of being. It entails accepting

that consciousness itself is nothing and that it discloses the world and does not singly

create it. It is an intentional movement wherein consciousness turns its gaze toward being, thus unveiling it, making it be for a consciousness. In so doing, consciousness

discloses the human reality. This is particularly challenging for Heidegger and Sartre as it

shores up our mortality as a material being. The fact that consciousness does not

71 Although Heidegger writes about authenticity he does not take this ontological possibility to be ethically prescriptive. Authenticity would still be possible in a solipsistic framework. 72 Beauvoir 1976,41. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid, 12. 128 constitute the in-itself means that, as a material thing in the world, the human being can

be "a thing crushed by the dark weight of other things." Although this sounds glum,

Beauvoir is optimistic about such an acceptance.77 It is because the human being is

ambiguously and inseparably an embodied consciousness that she is able to hold the

world at a distance so that the world may be present to her and evoke pleasure, happiness,

and vitality through disclosure. It is this weight of the world that makes the pleasure of

existing in the world possible. Let us revisit Beauvoir's beautiful explanation,

By uprooting himself from the world, man makes himself present to the world and makes the world present to him. 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. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat.78

Beauvoir understands existentialism and its tenets as presenting possibilities for pleasure.

Existentialism is not a philosophy of anguish or anxiety rather it is a philosophy of joy.

This joy is a direct result of our ambiguity—both uprooting oneself from the world and

yet making the world present in all its affectivity. Beauvoir explains, "disclosure is the

transition from being to existence" or a being in-itself that becomes a world thanks to

the for-itself. In the case of the human being as a social being, it is the willful transition

from being a being for-oneself to a being with-others.

Being with-others is more than being a factical thing in the other's world. It is another

dimension of being which displaces conflict. Sartre's ontology of the body does not allow

76 Ibid, 7. 77 Ibid, 12. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid, 30. 129 for this ethical dimension because he fails to situate the individual in the world with other ambiguous beings. Recall that for Sartre, there is always conflict because there is always the denial of one's lack of being. On the other hand, for Beauvoir, it is when one truly accepts one's own existence as a very lack of being, that moral freedom can be achieved.

Thus, there is an ethical fullness to this original moment of being. One opens oneself to the other (as I do to the sky and to the water) so that she will in turn open herself and will that I am more than a brute being (a material thing in her world). Bergoffen explains, "As a pure willing of relationship, this will expresses itself as an attentiveness to otherness— as the simple desire of revelation. Beyond that it has no aim. Hence its delight."81 This collective disclosure—the willing that there is existence, or other willful beings in the world, enables mutual recognition and a commitment to moral freedom. One recognizes and commits oneself to understanding that the other is similar. She is also ambiguous.

Thus there can be mutuality and joy in disclosure. Beauvoir explains,

to will man free is to will there to be being, it is to will the disclosure (devoiler) of being in the joy of existence; in order for the idea of liberation to have a concrete meaning, the joy of existence must be asserted in each one, at every instant; the movement toward freedom assumes its real, flesh and blood figure in the world by thickening into pleasure, into happiness.

To will ourselves free means to will that there is a world awaiting our revelation and that this world gives itself over so that we may appropriate it (perceive it) in a myriad of ways. The pleasure of this being present in/to the world carries an imperative (a shared phenomenological ethic) for Beauvoir. It affirms that other embodied beings are involved in a similar world. Thus, in order that we may delight in this unveiling we must open a space for others so that they too may will freedom. This moral imperative requires that

80Begoffenl997,92. 81 Ibid. 82 Beauvoir 1976, 135. 130 one genuinely accept one's existence as a lack of being so that there may be a world and not just for-itselves and hence, one's own projects. This space must be opened because one's freedom depends on the freedom of others. This bond between agents endows our free actions with an implicit moral component—the willing of the other's freedom. For

"to will oneself free is also to will others free."83

Unfortunately, this is rather idealistic. The degree to which one is recognized will always vary and recognition from some will be more valuable than that from others. This cannot be helped given our embodied situation. There is no law of exchange in interpersonal relations by which to gauge reciprocity. Moreover, much of what is exchanged is done so unknowingly; therefore, it falls outside of a quantifiable realm of currency. We cannot always liberate ourselves from our situation nor can we always garner recognition. And so, in disclosing ourselves to the other and therein promoting our own freedom we can be consigned to oblivion, overlooked, or neglected. Furthermore,

"when one gives all, one never receives enough in return." Some agents open this space at the cost of their own moral freedom—a situation with which woman is particularly familiar given her historical positioning and socio-historical constitution as the inessential

Other. Those in a socially privileged situation are able to transcend as a project for themselves without risking their freedom and without promoting the freedom of all. Such is the case when a free being chooses to will her own end and in doing so closes off the possibilities for others. In this case she does not disclose the world, but she does transcend as a being for-herself insofar as she casts herself toward an open and indefinite future through her projects. Bergoffen explains "it may not be possible to reconcile the

Ibid, 73. Beauvoir 1989, 606. 131 ethic of the project with the ethical demands of freedom constituted as spontaneity/disclosing activity." This problematic will become painfully obvious when

Beauvoir moves away from her abstract discussions of freedom and begins to consider more seriously woman's situation which will be introduced in Chapter 4 and critically examined in Section III.

Bergoffenl997,91. 132 Chapter 4: Beauvoir's Situated Existentialist Ethics

In The Second Sex, Beauvoir's abstract ethics of ambiguity, those that were unpacked in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, are brought to bear on woman's situation. Although this work is not explicitly ethical, Beauvoir's existentialist ethics do guide Beauvoir's thinking on woman's situation by prescribing an optimal way of being-in-the-world. This prescription stands in contrast to the lived situation of woman which will be unpacked in Section III.

This chapter will conclude the investigation of Beauvoir's ethical thinking by unpacking her notion of immanence and transcendence and woman's positioning within this existential-phenomenological framework. Furthermore, it will incite us to ask whether

Beauvoir's ethics can provide a ground for reciprocity in the face of this human reality.

Although this question will be raised and partially answered in this chapter, it is not until

Section IV, Chapter 3, that we will locate a ground for reciprocity.

In The Second Sex, the notion of transcendence becomes Beauvoir's main vehicle for thinking about freedom. Andrea Veltman's apt comment on the nature of transcendence as descriptive and normative rather than as metaphysical is particularly helpful. Recall that Veltman argues,

The concepts of transcendence and immanence in The Second Sex are multifaceted and simultaneously descriptive and normative, but the metaphysical meanings of transcendence largely drop out in The Second Sex, and transcendence and immanence become delineated primarily in terms of a typology of activities or active and passive modes of existence.86

While there is evidence of this thinking in her earlier works, it is in The Second Sex that

Beauvoir's explicit existentialist ethics takes a decisively phenomenological turn.

Although she retains her existentialist outlook and continues to question the nature of the ethical relationship, her work becomes much more phenomenological. It focuses in on

86 Veltman 2006, 119. 133 describing the ways in which one becomes and exists as woman. She examines the lived

experience of woman (both historically and experientially) and in so doing her ethical

thinking is brought to bear on working through the situation of woman. There are hints of

this descriptive thinking in The Ethics of Ambiguity, but it is not until Beauvoir begins to

work on the question of woman that her phenomenological colours are revealed. As we

will see below, it is also in this work that the linkage between embodiment and

intersubjectivity is most pronounced.

In The Second Sex Beauvoir describes the situation of woman from a biological,

psychological, historical, mythical, situational, and personal point of view. Beauvoir's

personal point of view is heavily influenced by both her experience of being a woman87

and her experience of being an intellectual.88 The philosophies of Hegel, Heidegger, and

Sartre (amongst others such as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Marx) inform her original

description of lived experience. She read and thought about her predecessors' and

contemporary's ideas in conjunction with her own. However, Sartre's thinking played

perhaps the most significant role in Beauvoir's thought. She engages with his thinking

particularly in The Second Sex, while she unpacks the situated embodied experience of

woman.

Examining Sartre's explicit notion of transcendence and immanence fosters a better

understanding of Beauvoir's work on these concepts. Sartre argues that in order to

transcend one must negate one's being-in-itself, such that transcendence requires

87 Beauvoir 1989, xix. 'Woman' will be explained in Section III, Chapter 1. 88 For an insightful account of Beauvoir's intellectual life see Toril Moi, Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994). 89 Some argue that Beauvoir borrowed from Sartre, but many argue that it was his ideas that she pushed against and in so doing formulated her own particular philosophy. Most notably, see Kate Fullbrook and Edward Fullbrook, Sex and Philosophy: Rethinking de Beauvoir and Sartre, (London: Continuum, 2008) and Daigle and Golomb (eds.). 134 negating the body. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre explains that the body is "as the

surpassed; it exists only in so far as I escape it by nihilating myself. The body is what I

nihilate."90 This fundamental negation constitutes a necessary position from which

consciousness emerges as transcending. Transcendence is the surpassing negation that

reveals the existence of the in-itself (that which is negated) at the same moment as it

determines the being of the for-itself. This negation allows for intentional consciousness

to unfold as transcendence. The body as the being-in-itself is the necessary origin for

transcendence. It allows for willful action and provides the possibility for meeting the

for-itself.

Speaking of the body, Sartre argues that the body, like the world, constitutes an

original affectivity and thus, provides the Gestalt for consciousness. The body and the

world are crucial for transcendence given their original affectivity. However, they are

only crucial as a springboard for the transcending consciousness. The body is the brute being that is necessarily transcended. As we will discover momentarily, this is not the

case for a mature Beauvoir. Nevertheless, Sartre's reading seems to be in line with

Beauvoir's early thinking on transcendence in Pyrrhus and Cineas. It is in this early work

that Beauvoir acknowledges the importance of the body as it stands in a factical relationship to consciousness. She explains, "Freedom is the only reality that I cannot transcend."92 The body and the world are both transcended in the intentional moment.

Perhaps Sartre's influence on Beauvoir's thinking explains why the body is largely

90 Sartre 1956,409. 91 Recall the woman at Sartre's romantic rendezvous. She successfully dissociates herself from her body. The man she is out with takes her hand and she does not notice that she is letting him hold her hand because at the moment that he holds it she is "all intellect." (Sartre 1956, 97) She is able to separate her intellect from her bodily affectivity. Sartre conceives that the split between transcendent consciousness and the immanent body is possible. The woman's hand placed in the hand of the other becomes merely a thing—an object for the transcendent consciousness. 92 Beauvoir 2004a, 131. 135 missing from her earlier work. This may also help explain why the body is so important

in her later work. In The Second Sex, Beauvoir realizes the inescapability of the body and

its role in our possibilities for transcendence—freedom is very much embodied in the

mature Beauvoir.

Thankfully, Beauvoir is much more careful than Sartre; she locates transcendence in

the body in order to account for the weight of situation. One cannot merely make her

body into a instrument for the transcending consciousness because the body provides the

foundation (not merely the perceptual foundation) for any and all transcendence.

Therefore, transcendence cannot negate the body as Sartre suggests. If consciousness

aims to make the body into a mute facticity it is only because consciousness enters into a

relationship of alienation and bad faith. The body and its affectations are always present

for Beauvoir even in transcendence. This is why the body cannot simply be wedded to

immanence (transcendence's contrary).

Immanence is first introduced in Beauvoir's work in the "Introduction" to The Second

Sex. She contrasts immanence with transcendence by describing transcendence as

constructive activity, progression, and freedom from facticity.94 Conversely, she

describes immanence as life-sustaining activity, passivity, and submission to facticity.95

She uses transcendence and immanence to begin to flesh out a practical ethical

prescriptive rooted in the human reality. Beauvoir explains,

Every subject plays his part as such specifically through exploits or projects that serve as a mode of transcendence; he achieves liberty only through a continual reaching out toward other liberties. There is no justification for present existence other than its

93 This will be discussed in Section III, Chapter 2. 94 Beauvoir 1989,680. 95 For Beauvoir, a perfect example of immanence is maternity. Beauvoir writes, "giving birth and suckling are not activities, they are natural functions; no project is involved [...] maternity imprisoned her in repetition and immanence". (1989, 63) 136 expansion into an indefinitely open future. Every time a transcendence falls back [retombe] into immanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence into the "en-soi"—the brutish life of subjection to given conditions—and of liberty into constraint and contingence. This downfall represents a moral fault if the subject consents to it; if it is inflicted upon him, it spells frustration and oppression. In both cases it is an absolute evil. Every individual concerned to justify his existence feels that his existence involves an undefined need to transcend himself, to engage in freely chosen projects.96

Beauvoir tells us that we create ourselves by projecting ourselves in the world as

freedoms. In fact, the picture that Beauvoir crafts renders the subject a transcendent

being. It is only in conflict or in consent that we fall into immanence. It is not that

immanence is ontologically prior to transcendence rather immanence supports our

freedom by locating us in the world. Furthermore, it must be the case that consciousness

presides over the upsurge of transcendence and the passivity of immanence insofar as

both can be willed in Beauvoir's account. There is intention even in immanence.

Regardless, immanence is ethically prohibitive insofar as fashioning an ethics requires

freedom. As Beauvoir explains above, immanence is the constraint of our freedom.

Beauvoir argues above that we achieve freedom by reaching out toward other

freedoms. This reading of transcendence is in line with her thinking in The Ethics of

Ambiguity. Recall that original freedom is rooted in one's facticity insofar as human

beings are originally free. This rootedness is necessary if the human being wants to truly

achieve moral freedom by reaching beyond her mere facticity and original freedom

toward other free beings.98 This continuous reaching beyond and toward others solidifies

the value of willing one's own freedom and the freedom of the other.99 However, it is also possible to reach beyond one's facticity without taking other liberties into consideration.

96 Ibid, xxxiv-xxxv. 97 Ibid. 98 Beauvoir 1976, 25. 99 See Section II, Chapter 3 for an account of moral freedom and Beauvoir 1976,73. 137 Recall from Chapter 3 that this is loosely referred to as transcending as project. This sort of egoistical striving can close off the projects of and possibilities for others.

Interestingly, transcending as project also obstructs one's own possibilities; to be truly free (assert moral freedom) one must appeal to (include the projects of) the other.

Situation calls into question the possibilities for moral freedom insofar as our liberty can be constrained by and is contingent upon the liberty (projects) of others.100 In fact, in

The Second Sex Beauvoir finds herself reeling under the weight of situation—a weight that was not definitively apparent in The Ethics of Ambiguity. In Beauvoir's earlier work it appears that one's facticity can curb, but not disable an individual's possibilities for freedom.102 However, this belief is retooled when Beauvoir's thinking on transcendence as a descriptive and ethical concept supplants her thinking on transcendence as a Sartrean-like ontological concept, such that it is possible to outstrip one's facticity.103 In The Second Sex freedom is a structure of existence that is limited by our socio-historical situation, thus we cannot simply outstrip our facticity by acting as we choose. Our freedom can be hindered by an other's freedom insofar as we can be trapped in immanence.104 This is possible because our power is finite and it is possible for an other to restrict it from the outside.105 Though we may remain free in our heart this does not mean that we have the power to transcend as project or otherwise. This extraneous

100 Beauvoir 1989, xxxiv-xxxv. 101 The Ethics of Ambiguity distinguishes original freedom from moral freedom, but this distinction disappears when Beauvoir's thinking moves from the abstract to the concrete. Her attention to freedom and disclosure gets taken up in immanence, transcendence, and ambiguity. These concepts are rooted in experience unlike their more abstract predecessors. It is not that Beauvoir abandons these early ideas rather they evolve into concepts that are phenomenologically informed. The tools that Beauvoir develops in her earlier works are used throughout her thinking and are crucial for unpacking the possibilities for woman. However, one must keep in mind that these earlier concepts do not map neatly onto her later work. 102 Beauvoir 2004a, 141. 103 Transcendence can also be thought of as a typology of activity, but this understanding, as we will see below, only superficially addresses the problem of woman's situation. 104 Beauvoir 1989, xxxiv-xxxv. 105 Beauvoir 1976, 124. Recall our distinction between power and violence in Section II, Chapter 1. 138 restriction is an absolute evil. Although, the question of power is important, collusion is a

much more troubling and slippery matter for Beauvoir. We will discover that woman's

habituation to living as Other can be detrimental to her freedom, desires, and therefore,

also to her situated heart.

In order to contextualize situation and thereby the barriers to transcendence, Beauvoir

tirelessly unpacks woman's embodiment in The Second Sex. Socio-historical

constructions of embodiment shape the kind of activity within which one typically

participates and consequently, by participating in these activities one shapes the kinds of

activities that are available. Through activity one continuously renews the kind of being

one is becoming. Although, the existentialist tenet is based on a fundamental liberty, the

projects which one takes up are not necessarily freely chosen if they are already sketched

out in the realm of the possible.

As we will discover in Section III, Chapter 2, transcendence and immanence are

typified in Western society's gender roles. Men learn to be transcendent subjects by

engaging in creative productive activities (values) —most notably through labour and

women learn to be immanent Others through repetitive and life-affirming reproductive

activities (values)—most notably through housework and care-giving.109 It is not that

Beauvoir privileges man's activities or believes that creative and productive activities are

For example, let us consider the inauthentic housewife who has decided to stay home and yet longs to be at work. Her ability to feel resentment toward the home and her situation entails that she understands the weight of her choice and can both act and yet not act. She is both free and not free. 107 This will be taken up in depth in Section III when we explore Beauvoir's notion of woman's situation. 108 The human being determines what is valuable through the activities in which he decides to invest himself. Consequently, what is valuable to an individual will be a result of the activities with which he is invested. 109 Beauvoir 1989, 63. 139 performed by men alone,110 but rather she privileges the value that is attached to those learned characteristics.111 Beauvoir is not advocating a male model of subjectivity.112

Beauvoir is calling attention to typical contemporary Western male activities and how these activities figure in relation to typical contemporary Western female activities.

Beauvoir emphasizes freedom from facticity, which emphasizes production and creation

in over repetition and reproduction.

Let us tease out this issue by considering the situation of woman as defined under patriarchy. In "Gender-Specific Values",114 Charlene Seigfried examines Beauvoir's claim that woman has not set up her own set of values.115 The values that Beauvoir envisions for all human beings, such as vitality, sensitivity, and intelligence are values that promote ambiguity and freedom for all of humanity. Nevertheless, in The Second Sex we are faced with what appears to be a dualistic picture of masculine-specific values and

Luce Irigaray takes Beauvoir to task for using a masculine model of subjectivity. Irigaray critiques Beauvoir for assuming the Platonic division of the one and many rendering Beauvoir's Other as an Other of the Same. Irigaray argues, "To get out from under this all powerful model of the one and the many, we must move on to the model of the two, a two which is not a replication of the same, nor one large and the other small, but made up of two which are truly different. The paradigm of the two lies in sexual difference. Why there? Because it is there that two subjects exist who should not be placed in a hierarchical relationship, and because these two subjects share the common goal of preserving the human species and developing its culture, while granting respect to their differences." See Luce Irigaray, "The Question of the Other," (7-19) in Yale French Studies 87, Noah Guynn (trans.), 1995, 11-2. Although I believe that Irigaray's argument is valid, i.e., The Second Sex reads as an ethics of the project, I will only address the claims of Charlene Haddock Seigfried given that Irigaray's critique would take us too far afield. 111 Beauvoir unabashedly writes, "Maternity is usually a strange mixture of narcissism, altruism, idle daydreaming, sincerity, bad faith, devotion, and cynicism." (1989, 513) The problem with maternity for Beauvoir is that it is often not freely chosen and furthermore, maternity challenges identity—the body quite literally becomes other. 112 In Section III, Chapter 2,1 will show that man does not fit neatly into an authentic model of subjectivity either. 113 It could be argued that like the slave woman must create and produce in order to transcend her facticity. See the earlier arguments presented by Mussett and Bauer in Section I, Chapter 1. 114 Charlene Haddock Seigfried, "Gender-Specific Values" (425-442) in The Philosophic Forum, Vol. XV, No. 4 (Summer 1984). 115 Beauvoir 1989, 142-3. 140 feminine-specific values as well as a dualistic picture of man and woman. This is

evident when we consider the social weight of feminine-specific values and masculine-

specific values. However, Seigfried argues that these values are not created by women

(nor are they inherent in woman's being as will be explored in Section III, Chapter 1)

rather the values that one typically associates with woman have been created in bad faith

and imposed on woman by man in order to oppress her.117 Domesticity including

childcare and submission to man's will are two of these gender-specific characteristics

upon which feminine values are thought to found their meaning. Thus, the projects that

woman takes up often reinforce these values insofar as woman's projects are defined in

reference to these feminine-specific values. Seigfried argues that defining oneself "as

immersed in the species, as submissive,"118 would only be possible if one were to define

one's values inauthentically because no one would will themselves to be immersed in the

species or as submissive. Recall that for the Existentialist, values are made through

one's choices.

It is true that woman's characteristics and consequently, what each woman will find valuable will differ from woman to woman. However, arriving at a coherent set of values

for all women is not Beauvoir's challenge. The challenge is to rethink woman's lived

experience and arrive at a coalition of values that reflect woman's unique embodied desires and ultimately rest on woman's freedom from facticity and authentic

116 Beauvoir confines her investigation to the feminine and the masculine and for this she cannot be faulted. Of course, contemporary discourse on gender moves well beyond this dichotomy though it could be argued that Beauvoir's notion of ambiguity cuts through this dichotomy. 117 Seigfried, 428. 118 Ibid, 429. 119 Recall that Beauvoir argues that no individual would readily volunteer to be submissive. (Beauvoir 1989, xxiv) 141 communication and communion with others. These are not gender-specific values, but rather they are values for all human beings. Seigfried explains,

Women differ from one another, and from men, in their facticity, just as men differ from one another and from women in their facticity and not in their humanity. The factical includes any aspect of a situation that is simply given prior to and apart from the free assertion which brings about the human person. But to cling to any particular way of being in the world as necessarily given and not contingent is to be in bad faith, so only inauthentic women would set up female characteristics as values.120

Seigfried argues that it is not only problematic to cling to values which emphasizes facticity over freedom, but it is also dogmatic to assume that the human reality is based on an immutable way of life. Recognizing the existential tenet that existence precedes essence allows for a myriad of possible ways of living out the human reality. There are many ways to promote freedom over facticity. However, this is a rather ambitious task to put to woman because when woman tries to establish values based on her own lived experience and affectations she must negotiate those values that have already been habituated into her style of being.121 Furthermore, there is the difficulty of working against established structures of understanding.

According to Beauvoir, woman is "defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other."122 She is defined and made meaningful in her opposition to him and not in her own right. This identification through differentiation is not new. Recall that Beauvoir writes that "no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over and against itself."

However, the situation of man and woman is unique. It is not merely another variation on

120 Ibid, 428. 121 We will see in Section III, Chapter 3, how children learn to appropriate gender-specific styles of being. 122 Beauvoir 1989, xxii. 123 Ibid, xxiii. 142 a theme insofar as historically woman has not struggled for power. Man and woman did not wage wars, hold festivals, or sign treaties. There was never an acknowledgement of the relationship that holds between man and woman. Another troubling aspect of differentiation is that woman is not in the minority. How is it possible that a smaller group can define a larger group as not only the Other (for even this is commonplace), but as the inessential Other?

Interestingly, if there has been no war or no agreement on woman's status as the

Other, why has woman not fought or negotiated her identity on her own terms? Beauvoir asks:

Why is it that women do not dispute male sovereignty? No subject will readily volunteer to become the object, the inessential; it is not the Other, who in defining himself as the Other, establishes the One. The Other is posed as such by the One in defining himself as the One. But if the Other is not to regain the status of being the One, he must be submissive enough to accept this alien point of view.

This question brings out the nuances of the relationship between man and woman and provides a starting point for thinking through woman's possibilities for creating values given that she is both a victim of patriarchy—the domination of woman by man, and also an accomplice to patriarchy. Consequently, the conditions under which one exists as a socio-historical being—as the Other or as the One, inform one's possibilities for existence. Recall that we can project ourselves in the world, but the world always pushes back. The world's push back depends on our socio-historical situation. This tricky dynamic, our disparate situations and habituations, makes it necessary to affirm ambiguity—an openness to and willing of other freedoms.

Beauvoir advocates for this uncanny embodied ambiguity—a passageway between immanence and transcendence wherein one aspect of one's being never completely

124 Ibid, xxiv 143 eclipses the other. Ambiguity is overtly typified for Beauvoir in the intermingling of

body and consciousness in the consensual erotic encounter. In "Must We Burn Sade?",

Beauvoir argues that the erotic space is marked by an openness to the other or a willing

of the other's freedom. Beauvoir writes, "The state of emotional intoxication allows one

to grasp existence in oneself and in the other, as both subjectivity and passivity. The two

partners merge in this ambiguous unity; each one is freed of his own presence and

achieves immediate communication with the other." In this erotic space, the for-itself

is overcome by the reciprocity involved in opening oneself to the other as both a fleshy

object and possessing the other as a desiring consciousness. It is through ambiguously

being with an other that one can be more than for-oneself as transcendent project or for-

others as immanent body. In the ambiguous encounter the human being is a being-with-

others. Beauvoir explains further that,

Genuine love ought to be founded on the mutual recognition of two liberties; the lovers would then experience themselves both as self and as other: neither would give up transcendence, neither would be mutilated; together they would manifest values and aims in the world. For the one and the other, love would be revelation of self by the gift of self and enrichment of the world.

One is able to transcend in the genuine bond of self and other. In gifting ourselves to the

other as flesh and receiving the other self the line between immanence and transcendence blurs necessarily. In giving this gift of self there is no rate of exchange. This gift does not tie woman or man to her body or his body as a strictly immanent or transcendent being

1 5 Beauvoir explains, "The fact is that every human existence involves transcendence and immanence at the same time; to go forward, each existence must be maintained, for it to expand toward the future it must integrate the past, and while intercommunicating with others it should find self-confirmation." (Ibid, 430) 126 Although consciousness is embodied, it can obscure its own bodily being. 127 Beauvoir 1962, 32-3. 128 Beauvoir 1989, 667. 144 rather this erotic coupling is a celebration of this ambiguous bond permitted by way of a mutual vulnerability—becoming object for the other.

Opportunity requires risk. As Bergoffen points out, "To live our ambiguity we must risk becoming vulnerable".1291 agree with Bergoffen, but the gift of self is risky because the gift of woman to a desiring subject is not always recognized as such. Recall that it can be received as mere passivity, egocentrism, or it can be memorialized and forgotten in ways that limit moral freedom. The gift woman makes of herself is often not received as a gift given to all of humanity. Woman is merely a gift to man. In this case, this intimate disclosedness can rob woman of her freedom. Even if both partners willingly submit to the other there is still much at stake as the encounter unfolds. Indeed, there are no guarantees that ambiguity will flourish beyond the first touch.

In conclusion, The Second Sex fleshes out Beauvoir's ethical thinking by grounding her abstract existentialist ethics within the contemporary Western existential- phenomenological framework. We find that her notion of ambiguity, as outlined in

Chapter 3, is far more easily prescribed than actualized especially given the social positioning of man and woman within the transcendence and immanence framework.

Although Beauvoir's investigation reveals that neither man nor woman is naturally more immanent or naturally more transcendent than the other, the way in which these disparate experiences are generalized and categorized makes realizing one's ambiguity especially tricky. Therefore, we must ask if Beauvoir's existentialist ethics can still provide a ground for ambiguity and by so doing provide a ground for reciprocity?

Bergoffen 2003, 259. We will see in Section IV how gifting oneself as a body-objectivity is especially dubious. 145 Conclusion to Beauvoir's Existentialist Ethics

Throughout this section, I have worked to unpack, explain, and call into question

Beauvoir's existentialist ethics. Although this section investigated the possibilities for reciprocity by way of mutual disclosure and generosity, Beauvoir is still faced with the major problem of competing freedoms. Perhaps this problem looms so largely because in

Beauvoir's explicit existentialist ethics the notion of affectivity and its bearing on choice is not yet clear. However, it will become clear in Section IV when I suggest that rescuing

Beauvoir's ethics of ambiguity via the visible realm is possible and worthwhile.

More specifically, Section II gave us insight into the existential-phenomenological possibilities of living with others in a way that does not water down the complexity of the human reality. At the forefront of this complexity is the notion of choice. Existentialism explains that the human being is choosing at every moment and by choosing she is bestowing value in the projects that reflect her choices. Therefore, one's choices are not just personal, but they are also political. In choosing ourselves, we choose for all of humanity. As explained above, this existential notion of choice raises the question of the tension between agents' competing freedoms. Throughout Beauvoir's work, she remains steadfast in her conviction that the human being is always free to choose, but if everyone is always choosing, the question arises: whose projects get taken up and consequently, whose projects are cast aside? Furthermore, if our projects are limited by the projects of others, are we genuinely always free to choose? The connection between one's individual freedoms and choice becomes clouded when Beauvoir's attention shifts from the abstract in her early works to the concrete in her later works. This problem of valuation boils to the surface in The Second Sex.

146 In The Second Sex, Beauvoir describes how woman's freedom has been historically compromised in favour of man's freedom. As we will explore in Section III, Chapter 2, this is possible through alienation and bad faith. The socio-historical import of man's choices has narrowed woman's possibilities for choice while simultaneously championing man's choices as those that are valuable for all of humanity. This has resulted not only in physical oppression, but also in psychological oppression. Beauvoir argues that woman values man's choices above and in place of her own or rather in place of what could be her own values. As we will explore in Section III, woman has yet, as a critical mass, to choose what she finds valuable. The question of woman's role in this oppression has yet to be settled. Existentialist ethics suggests that woman's choices or lack thereof collude in this oppression. However, Beauvoir's attention to woman's lived situation nuances this existential phenomenological reading. The antagonism between freedoms, particularly the tension between the freedom of man and the freedom of woman, is especially problematic. This tension will guide the investigation of woman's situation in Section III as well as gesture at the possibilities for reciprocity to come in

Section IV.

147 Section III: Woman's Situation

In Section II, I showed that Beauvoir's existentialist ethics argue that the fundamental

dimension of being is being as disclosure. Recall that disclosure occurs when the being

for-itself becomes a being-with-others. Disclosure is both an engagement in and a

withdrawal from the world. Disclosure is the worldliness of all being or rather in order

that there is a world there must be disclosing beings. In this model, intersubjective relations are not based on conflict as Hegel and Sartre suggest, but rather relations are based on reciprocity and the willing of individual freedoms. One opens oneself to being

so that others may be. Beauvoir arrives at this ethic in The Ethics of Ambiguity with the help of her notion of generosity from Pyrrhus and Cineas. She does not leave these ideas behind in her move to address the historical situation of woman in The Second Sex.

In The Second Sex, Beauvoir investigates the human reality by engaging with it historically and phenomenologically. What is particularly interesting about The Second

Sex's historical phenomenological analysis of individual relationships and of the individual herself, is that Beauvoir's investigation focuses on the situated individual. In her early works she focuses on an abstract notion of the subject; the individual has yet to be truly embodied in these early accounts of subjectivity. Once the reader has an understanding of Beauvoir's notion of situation it is possible to more thoroughly investigate the question of the other.

In Beauvoir's ethics of ambiguity she conceives of a rather abstract notion of freedom of the will. It is an ontological certainty, such that there is always the possibility for freely willing oneself. Conversely, in The Second Sex it is less clear as to whether or not the will as an embodied will (what has been earlier referred to as the situated heart) is free given

148 that the weight of one's situation renders the answer to this question rather opaque.

Margaret A. Simons aptly explains this problem. She writes, "The moral problems arising within [these] relationship^] lend themselves neither to individual solutions nor to absolute answers. They reflect a changing economic, political, legal, cultural, and technological reality that limits human freedom and shapes the experience of embodiment, the world, and other people."1 The human reality is indeed ambiguous.

However, woman's three-fold experience of her body, the world, and others sheds important light on woman's human reality and the possibilities for willing herself free and forwarding an existentialist ethics. In order to uncover this reality and its possibilities it is necessary to understand the phenomenological experience of woman as biologically, psychologically, phenomenologically, and comportmentally situated in and constituted by contemporary Western culture. Following which it is possible to gesture at why woman's embodiment is, on one hand, a limiting factor for appealing to the other and on the other hand, houses the possibilities for a body that can will itself as a freedom in the world.

In writing The Second Sex, Beauvoir was not only inspired to write about her situation as a woman—her own existential phenomenological experience, but she was also trying to make sense of what she had read preceding her investigation of woman's situation. Indeed it would not be indulgent to claim that the ideas with which Beauvoir engaged became part of her life. In Prime of Life, she writes, "If a theory convinced me, it did not remain an external alien phenomenon; it altered my relationship with the world, and colored all my experience."2 Beauvoir brings into dialogue these different voices from her philosophical training, which were explored in Section I, giving the reader an

1 Margaret A. Simons, Beauvoir and The Second Sex (Lanham (MD): Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000), 102. 2 Beauvoir 1965,221. 149 uncanny amalgam of the continental tradition, her own phenomenological experience,

and her historical research on woman. All of these factors amalgamate to forward her

ethical project.

In thinking through the body as situation, Beauvoir acknowledges her influences. She

writes, "as viewed in the perspective I am adopting—that of Heidegger, Sartre, and

Merleau-Ponty; [the body] is the instrument of our grasp upon the world, a limiting factor

for our projects."3 Since these thinkers all emphasize different aspects of our ontological

beginnings and conceptions of the body, the end result of Beauvoir's thinking on

embodiment is a rather original synthesis of their ideas. She works with and moves

beyond their ontological, existential, and phenomenological perspectives. Unfortunately,

Beauvoir's originality is non-systematic, making it rather tricky to neatly unpack.

However, it is possible to tease out the salient points in order to arrive at a picture of

woman's embodied situation which is both highly problematic to theorizing insofar as it

limits woman's possibilities for appealing to others as subjects and quite possibly the site

for woman's liberation via the visual appeal to others. The body is truly ambiguous in the

thinking of Beauvoir. Ambiguity is indeed Beauvoir's greatest philosophical contribution.

In order to grasp the importance of Beauvoir's thinking on the body as an embodied

situation and not just a thing in the world or a tool that one possesses, it is necessary to

untangle the ways in which Beauvoir understands embodiment. According to Gatens, in

The Second Sex Beauvoir distinguishes among the female human being, femininity, and

woman.4 The female human being is a being who biologically demonstrates female traits.

3 Beauvoir 1989,34. 4 My reading of Beauvoir's notion of the female human being, woman, and femininity is borrowed and adapted from Gatens' reading. See Moira Gatens, "Beauvoir and Biology: A Second Look" in The 150 She is a being who is at risk for pregnancy and consequently, the human female is a being

who is delineated by the temporal nature of her physiology. Beauvoir explains that the

menopausal woman in contrast to the female human being "is no longer the prey of

overwhelming forces; she is herself, she and her body are one. It is sometimes said that

women of a certain age constitute 'a third sex'; and, in truth, while they are not male,

they are no longer females."5 As will be discovered below, the female human being is

socially denoted by her biological body and the ways in which this biology is figured by

and for man insofar as her reproductive capacities delineate her social status. Second,

femininity describes the class of a phenomenologically, psychologically, and

comportmentally disposed group of human beings. Femininity is not limited to female human beings; any body that identifies with a particular style of being in the world

(phenomenologically, psychologically, and/or comportmentally) is considered feminine.

Finally, woman is a situated human being who is either/both feminine and/or a human

female being or identifies herself as a woman. For example, a woman can be unfeminine

and post-menopausal. In "Essence, Identity, and the Concept of Woman," Natalie Stoljar calls woman a cluster concept.6 A cluster concept delineates a nexus of human meanings that, according to Beauvoir, condemn this human being called woman to Otherness.

Woman is, for Beauvoir, the name of a situation that a particular and yet general human being occupies. As we saw above this human being is not necessarily a female human being or feminine. It is uncertain whether or not there would be such a creature called woman if one were to strip away woman's current socio-cultural and historical import.

Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Claudia Card (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), Table I, 279. 5 Beauvoir 1989, 31. 6Natalie Stoljar, "Essence, Identity, and the Concept of Woman," (261-94) in Philosophical Topics, 23, 2 (Fall 1995). 151 Beauvoir does not find conceptualism or nominalism adequate to explain the existence of

woman. However, she is certain that this human being does in fact exist. Woman is a being who is rooted in the fundamental category of human thought, such that the

separation of self and other, namely woman, becomes through this particular relationship

she has with mail. Recall that Beauvoir explains, "For him she is sex—absolute sex, no

less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he

is the Absolute—she is the Other."9 Beauvoir is particularly interested in unveiling the

naiveties that compound to create this Other that we call woman. However, before unpacking the question of woman, it is necessary to begin by exploring the female human being as a biological and physiological being and the feminine being as a psychological

and stylized being.

7 Conceptualism asserts that woman is merely an abstract category of human being which exists in thought alone. On the other hand, nominalism asserts that woman only exists as individual instances of women in the world. Beauvoir 1989, xx. 8 Ibid, xxi. 9 Ibid, xxii. 152 Chapter 1: Exploring the Biological Situation of Woman

The female human being is first and foremost a particular biological being. Her biology defines her as other than the male human being. According to Beauvoir, the division of man and woman into Subject and Other is based on a weak, but generally

apparent, biological division.10 Woman has always been the Other to man's the One.

Therefore, it is not by accident that The Second Sex begins with a chapter on the givens of biology. l It is perhaps Beauvoir's most important and yet most misinterpreted chapter in

The Second Sex. It is in this chapter that Beauvoir begins to pull apart the nai've notion that woman's otherness (her overall situation) rests on a natural body—the female human body. It is this naivety that assists in forwarding the notion that there is a natural difference between man and woman which calls into question their ability to forge a reciprocal ethical relationship since their bodies call for a particular way of relating to one another.

Beauvoir begins the chapter titled 'The Data of Biology' by asking, "Woman?" to which she answers that woman is a being with a womb and ovaries. Beauvoir plays with the reader when she explains that this reply suffices to describe woman.12 However, the division is far more nuanced than science permits. Beauvoir explains, "Males and females are two types of individuals which are differentiated within a species for the function of reproduction; they can be defined only correlatively. But first it must be noted that even

10 One of the difficulties that emerges from The Second Sex is Beauvoir's disinterest in fleshing out the sex/gender distinction even though it permeates this text. In "The Data of Biology" Beauvoir's usage of man and woman and not male and female renders her reading even more complex. Although I try to iron out this distinction in the introduction to this section the difficulty remains. Furthermore, it risks painting Beauvoir as an essentialist which I will show below is far from the case. 11 'The Data of Biology' is a mistranslation of 'Les donnees de la biologie'. It ought to read 'The Given's of Biology'. Beauvoir is interested in the woman's body as given and thereby as it corresponds to concrete data on the female human being. 12Beauvoir 1989, 3. 153 the division of a species into two sexes is not always clear-cut." Beauvoir condemns

this simplistic scientific explanation by calling into question the notion that biological

data regarding the human female's materiality, as a being with a womb and ovaries, could

somehow begin to explain what it means to be a woman and thereby justify woman's

social devaluation.14 As was described above in Beauvoir's explanation, the ambiguity of

the species suggests that the human reality is not neatly divided into two.15 Beauvoir

shows how biological explanations of woman serve only to demonstrate how scientific

configurations of the female human being, as reducible to her sexual reproductive organs,

define her as a woman. This naturalistic reading clearly assumes there is a fact of the matter with respect to her human being in the world. Problematically this naturalistic reading overlooks the profound environmental effects of woman's overall situation.

This does not mean that woman's being is not affected by her biology; it simply means that her biology has no meaning outside of her overall situation as woman. It is not biology that determines woman's identity, rather it is what she does with her biology that is important to her identity. More aptly, woman's being is informed by her biology or more specifically, her potential reproductive abilities. Nevertheless, she is not just a being who can bear children (such as the definitive female human being suggests), but through bodily experiences such as menstruation, breast development, sexual relations, fear of

13 Ibid, 4. We know this from Anne Fausto Sterling's reading of the five sexes. See Anne Fausto-Sterling, "The Five Sexes," (20-5) in The Sciences (March/April 1993). 14Moi 1999,19. 15 Beauvoir explains further, "The production of two types of gametes, the sperm and the egg, does not necessarily imply the existence of two distinct sexes; as a matter of fact, egg and sperm—two highly differentiated types of reproductive cells—may both be produced by the same individual." (Beauvoir 1989, 5) Beauvoir explains that these two types of reproductive cells are found in the hermaphroditic species and consequently, it is possible that reproductive capabilities originated in an individual organism. 16 Beauvoir 1989, 15. 154 rape, childbearing, and so forth society defines woman. This social categorization is a far

cry from the notion that one's materiality has any implicit value.

Recall that for the existentialist, all valuation is a product of human choice and

thereby of human creation. Menstruation, breasts, reproduction, and rape are (in)valuable

with respect to their economic socio-cultural import.17 This import is informed by and

informs the phenomenological experience associated with the aforementioned

experiences. Consequently, in the end, the real currency is not only decided upon by one's

bodily experience. Value is created from within a greater nexus of meanings that may or

may not match up with our private phenomenological experiences even though our

experiences may be shaped and perhaps, even partially determined by said meanings.

Existentialism asserts that every choice made by each and every individual affects all of

humanity. Nonetheless, these unique female human experiences (men do not generally

menstruate, bear children, fear rape, etcetera) inscribe the body with meanings that are

often beyond woman's control and in turn, shape her embodied experiences. Woman

often feels the push and pull of her own experiences given that they may confirm and/or

deny the economic, historical, and socio-culturally determined meanings which define

her experiences.

Even though Beauvoir argues that biology constitutes an important part of woman's phenomenological experience, at the same moment she denies that biology constitutes a

fixed destiny.18 A female human being need not fall prey to the meanings of certain

17 For example, on September 11, 2010 a 16-year-old Canadian girl was gang raped by seven men in Pitt Meadows, B.C.. The men posted pictures and videos of the assault on Facebook and on YouTube where the images went viral. See The Canadian Press, "Photos of Gang Rape Go Viral on Facebook" in The Globe and Mail, http://www. theglobeandmail. com/news/national/british-columbia/photos-of-gang-rape-go-viral- on-facebook/articlel710072/ (September 17, 2010). 18 Beauvoir 1989, 34-5. 155 biological or physiological events that aim to control her bodily experience through social determination. Alternatively, it is what she does with those socially determined and yet changeable, meanings that is decisive of her bodily experience. In order to explain this co-constitution Beauvoir quotes Merleau-Ponty, "Existence," he says, "has no casual, fortuitous qualities, no content that does not contribute to the formation of its aspect; it does not admit the notion of sheer fact, for it is only through existence that the facts are manifested."19 In line with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological viewpoint, Beauvoir explains that a female human being is free within her situation to decide how she will interpret her very real biological body. As discussed in Section II, freedom looks different for each individual. This ambiguous view can and has been misread as an assertion of haphazard gender appropriation insofar as woman comes to exist in a "field of interpretive possibilities" wherein it is possible for her to choose and willfully appropriate her gender.

In "Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex ", Judith Butler interprets

Beauvoir's most often quoted passage, "One is not born a woman, rather one becomes a woman"21 to mean that the body is a "field of interpretive possibilities" which can be appropriated as one wishes, but this is not what Beauvoir is claiming. Of course, one's wish is to appropriate these possibilities in ways that are socio-culturally acceptable. It does not pay to go against the grain of society. Doing so can entail social, economical, and intrasubjective risks resulting in a possible loss of needed intimacy, refusal of a

20 Judith Butler, "Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex" in Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Reader, ed. Elizabeth Fallaize (New York: Routledge, 1998), 30. 21 Beauvoir 1989, 267. 156 decent livelihood, shame, and guilt. However, it may not be possible to refuse a submissive position. Thus it is questionable as to whether or not woman really comes to be in a field of interpretive possibilities. Butler's incorrect reading of Beauvoir may not even be plausible. Furthermore, if it is possible to interpret possibilities as one wishes can woman choose how her appropriations are socially interpreted? It is not enough for woman to understand her experiences in a certain fashion if others do not also understand them as such. In the Subject-Other framework outlined by Hegel above, the Subject decides on the meanings of the Other and the decisions by a subject in turn shape the very real experiences of the Other.

Woman becomes a particular individual given her unique economic socio-cultural framework. Interestingly, this framework always constitutes woman as the Other.

Woman's otherness spans all cultures and times, according to Beauvoir. There are no cultural variations of her otherness given Beauvoir's adoption of the Hegelian claim that no group sets itself up as the One without setting up another group as the Other.24

Biological considerations are important to such an investigation insofar as they ground socio-cultural understandings. The body is the material that is shaped by its situation, but woman's biology "fail[s] to explain why woman is the Other; they do not condemn her to remain in this subordinate role forever."25 So why is woman locked up in her Otherness

Sandra Lee Bartky, "Shame and Guilt" in Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (New York: Routledge, 1990). 23 For example, woman can choose to partake in heterosexual intercourse, but she cannot choose the meanings that heterosexual intercourse provides. Beauvoir explains, "though the female plays a fundamentally active role in procreation, she submits to the coition, which invades her individuality and introduces an alien element through penetration and internal fertilization." (Beauvoir 1989, 22) This explanation pins the responsibility on women for choosing or "submitting" to coition which has negative effects on her becoming. She does not play an active role. 24 Beauvoir 1989, xxiv. Again it ought to be noted that this dichotomous reading can be problematic for thinking through change. 25 Ibid, 33. 157 even after she ceases to be a female human being? For Beauvoir, being female

emphasizes one's biological being rather than one's humanness. The biological

'explanation' for her situation as Other persists even after she is no longer a female

human being. Would she not be liberated from this role with the advent of menopause or

birth control if biology determines her being as Other? It is woman that is Other, not

woman qua female human being or woman qua feminine that is Other.

The ramifications of woman's situation are more serious than simply the reduction of

woman to a mere cultural variant—a locus of cultural interpretive possibilities. The

overall claim made by Butler is that since the body is merely a locus of possibilities for

Beauvoir, we do not become our bodies; rather, we become our genders.26 Gender, for

Butler, is inscribed through reiterative performance. It discursively produces what is

understood as the sexed body. Butler renders Beauvoir's concept of the body thusly: it is

"a mute facticity, anticipating some meaning that can be attributed only by a transcendent

consciousness, understood in Cartesian terms as radically immaterial."27 However, this

passive body awaiting prescription is a reading from which Beauvoir aims to steer clear.

If the body were mute then it would be the case that anyone could become woman; this just is not the case for Beauvoir as will be shown below. Beauvoir is interested in the

possibilities and limitations of wilful action that are brought to the fore (and enacted!) by

a situated affective body. Recall that the will to transcend is embodied for Beauvoir. It

links up with one's projects, making a life, and an incorporation of one's body into the

world and the world into one's body. Furthermore, Beauvoir is interested in how these

""Butler 1998, 32. 27 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 129. 158 phenomenological beginnings come to bear on and organically originate in our human

reality as situated beings. Therefore, in no way does she advocate a passive body.

Butler's reading of Beauvoir is especially dangerous because it renders the body as

powerless and thereby it disempowers one's phenomenological capabilities. This reading

will be seen as problematic in Section IV when the body is presented as the site for

liberation. In Butler's understanding of Beauvoir, one chooses not how to live one's body,

but rather how to live one's gender. What about the phenomenological experience of the body? Does the experiential not affect one's style of being in the world as gendered beings? One can safely guess that Beauvoir would be suspicious of naturalism and social

constructionist theories about bodies—she is an existentialist and phenomenologist after

all. She argues that one's phenomenological experiences are key to one's identity. Surely,

one is more than the product of economic socio-cultural forces.

Given this line of thinking, what can be said about the sex/gender distinction, a

distinction that seems to be blurred in Beauvoir's exploration of biology? Stella Sandford rightly argues that The Second Sex destabilizes the sex/gender distinction by arguing that woman is the ambiguous intermingling of both biological body and the cultural

significances inscribed on/in that body.28 Sandford writes, "the notion of 'woman' in The

Second Sex is not simply translatable into the category of 'gender', indeed... it cuts across or problematizes the traditional sex/gender distinction." The sex/gender distinction still holds up a dualistic framework that cannot hope to capture the complexity of woman's ambiguous being. The notion of woman instead serves as a cluster concept

28 Moi makes a similar argument. She argues that Beauvoir's concepts provide a more nuanced account of sex and gender than Butler's account. (Moi 1999, 78) 29 Stella Sandford, "Contingent Ontologies: Sex, Gender and 'Woman' in Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler" in Radical Philosophy, 97, (Sep./Oct. 1999), 21. 159 for Beauvoir that describes an overall situation that is cognizant of the biological or

physiological and also of the phenomenological, psychological, and comportmental

aspects of this human being.

In the end, Beauvoir is not a voluntarist about gender,30 rather she argues that biology

is important to our human being. Our socio-cultural material reality makes demands on

our differently sexed bodies—demands that one cannot ignore. It is not possible to cast

aside menstruation, pregnancy, the fear of rape, and other experiences that are particular

to the female human being. Beauvoir does not think that one can completely reject these

demands and wilfully appropriate whatever one chooses. It is true that the body can be

played with under the watchful gaze of patriarchy, but there is something far more

insidious which ushers one into womanhood. The female human being opens upon

possibilities that are negotiable and some that are nonnegotiable. Consequently, one's

biological body also closes off a set of possibilities that cannot plausibly be bridged.

There are aspects of male human biology that the female human being can never

experience and likewise, there are aspects of female human biology that the male human

being can never experience. The female human body is always situated in a cultural web

of significance that delineates its possibilities at any given moment and place in history.

Is this essentialist?

It is possible for women to interpret their similar experiences differently, especially

across cultures and time (in this sense womanhood is culturally and temporally variable).

Bergoffen explains that insofar as "our diversely sexed bodies invite us to experience our

subjectivity differently and distinguishes the natural invitations of the body from the

30 One way to unpack gender formation is through the notion of voluntarism which asserts that one willingly becomes or volunteers to become a gendered being. 160 categorical demands of patriarchy."31 This diverse experience of bodies refers to a whole nexus of possibilities that are available to any one woman which both enable and inscribe woman's bodies across cultures, classes, religions, and so forth. A woman's body, as the body of a female human being, does have unique physical sensations, but these sensations are always contextual. Parts of the body can become eroticized through cultural and experiential particularities. However, this is not the whole story. In

"Beauvoir and Biology: A Second Look", Moira Gatens maintains that "a certain relationship between the female body and womanhood will always remain." That is to say, the female body is a unique way of being in the world. Women have experiences that are specific to their bodies alone. Woman's biology is marked by a particular eroticism and sexual horizon. Beauvoir explains,

there will always be certain differences between man and woman; her eroticism, and therefore her sexual world, have a special form of their own and therefore cannot fail to engender a sensuality, a sensitivity, of a special nature. This means that her relations to her own body, to that of the male, to the child, will never be identical with those the male bears to his own body, to that of the female, and to the child.

For example, the mother and child relationship is distinct from the father and child relationship in a deeply embodied way. The capacities available to the female human being for sensation guide the body through intentional action and therefore, imbue one's life as a particularly embodied being. The biology of the body affects one's being in the world. However, this is not to say that Beauvoir thought there to be something essential about the female human body. There are phenomenal capacities that are particular to the female human being regardless of culture, class, religion, and so forth.

31 Bergoffen 1997, 148. 32 Gatens 2003, 273. "Beauvoir 1989, 731. 161 In her essay '"Essentially Speaking': Luce Irigaray's Language of Essence," Diana J.

Fuss writes, "there are such ways to elaborate and to work with a notion of essence that is not, in essence, ahistorical, apolitical, empiricist, or simply reductive." Beauvoir achieves this understanding of woman. She acknowledges the phenomenal body as the foundation for any and all experience. From this understanding Beauvoir writes that the body, or more specifically, woman's body is historical, political, nebulous and most importantly, there is nothing factical about every woman's embodied experience.

However, at the same time, one cannot, like Butler, overlook the biologically informed sinuous embodied possibilities of a particular physiology. Woman's capacities for sensation may be generalized insofar as she has a particular body regardless of its social meanings. Fuss rhetorically, though importantly asks, "Is it possible to generate a theory of feminine specificity that is not essentialist?" Beauvoir provides just this specificity with her notion of ambiguity.

Finally and most importantly, thinking of the body as an arbitrary locus of appropriation does not account for the severity of material economic realities. One's biology inevitably takes on enormous social significance. For example, most healthy female human beings can have babies. This contemporary nuclear reality undoubtedly has grave material and economic effects on the possibilities for the female human being, and until recently there was not much choice otherwise. For Beauvoir, this biological fact has served as a tool of oppression insofar as the human female is historically economically dependent on the male during the final stages of pregnancy and for the

Diana J. Fuss's '"Essentially Speaking': Luce Irigaray's Language of Essence," (94-112) in Hypatia, vol. 3, no. 3 (Winter 1989), 94-5. 35 Ibid, 107. 162 years following childbirth. She cannot work if she has to take care of a child. The female human being then becomes defined by her sexual (biological) capacities because of her historic economic conditions. Thus the female human body enters into a feedback loop with woman's overall economic reality. She needs economic support because she is pregnant or engaged in care-giving and thus she is dependent. Consequently, the female human being's body comes to represent a dependent body. This interactive looping of economic effects and the female human body assists in making the oppression of women possible. Unsurprisingly, this reading of the body as a dependent body applies to post­ menopausal women and even to contemporary Western women who are able to financially survive as a single mother. However, not all is lost. The severity of this feedback loop is the driving force for Beauvoir's insistence on economic and political change insofar as "in the human species individual 'possibilities' depend upon the economic and social situation."37 One can then ask, how is contemporary Western woman (if she is fortunate enough to be economically independent) to deal with this historical weight?

Beauvoir flirts with the idea of socialism in The Second Sex. She wonders if it is possible to change the social positioning of woman as Other if the contemporary Western socio-economic reality changed. Beauvoir takes up Friedrich Engels' claim that in a socialist society both the proletariat and woman "would escape together from oppression."38 Accordingly, they would find equality with the bourgeois and with man through equal pay. Beauvoir argues that all forms of socialism have favoured woman's

Beauvoir 1989, 117. Ibid, 35. Ibid, 113. 163 liberation, but to what extent is still contestable. For the existentialist, socialism would

entail a rethinking of the significance of the female human body and woman's link with

the family which is rather appealing.40 Recall that one creates oneself through one's

projects. Given that our situation shapes our identity, woman's financial equality under

socialism would have a hand in shaping her identity into that of an independent being.

According to Beauvoir, if classes were abolished, the notion of the female human body as

a dependent body would necessarily have to be rethought. Beauvoir calls for these socio­

economic changes and thereby gestures toward new possibilities for the female human

being. However, Beauvoir's hope in socialism, does not rival that of Engels. Recall that

in The Second Sex, otherness is a fundamental category of human thought for Beauvoir,

such that it is an ontological certainty. Therefore, unlike Engels, Beauvoir argues that

there will still be otherness in a socialist society. Even though "socialist ideologies, which

assert the equality of all human beings, refuse now and for the future to permit any

human category to be object or idol: in the authentically democratic society proclaimed by Marx there is no place for the Other"41, there is still the problem of the Other.

If otherness is a fundamental category of human thought it would seem as though we

could not do away with this fundamental division. Thus bodies under socialism are not

economically better off than those who live in democratic societies. Furthermore, in a late

interview with Alice Schwarzer, Beauvoir explains that she really only finished The

Second Sex, "with vague confidence in the future, the revolution and socialism."42

Beauvoir's roots in Hegelian ontology cannot be undone by Engels' wishful thinking. This

39 Ibid, 112. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid, 142. 42 Simone de Beauvoir, Simone de Beauvoir Today: Conversations 1972-1982, inter. Alice Schwarzer, trans. Marianne Howarth (London: Chatto & Windus: The Hogarth Press, 1984), 42. 164 flirtation with and rejection of socialism reinforces Beauvoir's adherence to the notion of

the fundamental human struggle between consciousnesses. Furthermore, this shows us

that The Second Sex does not take existentialism as seriously as Beauvoir's explicit

ethical works. For the existentialist there is nothing essential about the human reality

including struggle. Can there be recognition without struggle? This ontological wavering

will be both problematic and beneficial in Section IV.

Fifty years after the publication of The Second Sex, woman's economic position has

drastically improved insofar as the Western woman has greater control over her body and

even over her financial possibilities,43 but as Beauvoir foresees woman is still deemed the

Other. Economic improvements to the situation of woman have not garnered her

subjectivity. Given that Beauvoir argues that the category of the Other is "primordial to

consciousness itself, it is impossible to imagine a world in which it is not the case that

woman is defined in reference to man. Problematically, Beauvoir's adherence to this

Hegelian model of recognition entails that it is necessarily the case that there will always be a Subject and an Other. However, there is more to it than this. This differentiation, or rather Beauvoir's adherence to the notion that this Hegelian model is fundamental to

consciousness itself, is challenged from within Beauvoir's own work as will be explored more thoroughly in Section IV. There is a tension between the Hegelian model of recognition and that of mutuality and reciprocity. Moreover, it is questionable whether the Hegelian model can hold any water if disclosure is the first intentional moment of

43 However, gender equality is still an issue in 2010. In the top ranked country in the world (Iceland) women only earn 84.96 percent of a man's earnings. In Canada in 2010 for every dollar that a man earned a woman earned 0.7372 dollars. See World Economic Forum, "The Global Gender Gap Report", http://www.weforum.org/en/Communities/Women%20Leaders%20and%20Gender%20Parity/GenderGap Network/index.htm (published October 12, 2010). 44 Beauvoir 1989, xxii. 165 consciousness. Perhaps the Hegelian model is more descriptive than normative, but this is still unclear in Beauvoir's work.

Could it be irrelevant that woman has come this far socially, politically, and economically if she is still the inessential Other? The answer to this question is not to be found in biology insofar as the female human being's reality as a biological body can and has been mitigated by social configurations of womanhood. Science has devised ways in which to alter the female human body's functioning, but the female human body is still understood as a dependent body regardless of the scientific advances that have allowed woman's situation to drastically improve. She has greater control over her body and this gives her more economic control over her human reality. So what is woman if she is not naturally determined by her biology?

The truth is we can know very little about the female human being because she is made meaningful as part of woman's overall being. It is impossible to isolate her as a body divested of socio-historical meanings. One can, as Beauvoir does, describe her as a being who is at the mercy of her body. However, describing her as anything more is questionable as her biology is heavily endowed with situated meaning. Just as the boy's penis inspires envy because it already has social value, the female human body already carries great economic socio-cultural and historical import because it is a situated body.45

It is a body that is situated with respect to man. Thus, "the body is not enough to define her as woman; there is no true living reality except as manifested by the conscious individual through activities and in the bosom of society." 6 Recall that one never

45 Beauvoir does not think that a girl could be jealous of the material penis. The penis is socially valuable which is the reason why it potentially inspires jealousy. (Beauvoir 1989, 278) We will unpack this in Chapter 2. 46 Beauvoir 1989, 37. 166 encounters the biological body in-itself. What can one make of menstruation, breast development, child bearing, rape, and so forth without these economic socio-cultural and historical meanings? Surely, if it were possible to strip away these meanings there would still be the affectations that gesture at the contemporary Western understanding of these woman-specific experiences.47 Surely there is an overlap between how one understands something to feel and what it actually feels like as is the case with one's phenomenal embodied experience.

Narratives allow us to gain some clarity on the affectations of others. Gail Weiss suggests that there is "a tacit organization to our narratives that is due not to cognition or emotion but to the body itself as the ultimate ground of all narrative construction." The body confirms, denies, or expands on the meanings already bestowed in certain experiences, but the question of appropriation rises again. Though these cultural meanings mark woman's body already (given the connections between social valuation and a woman's body are assumed), woman must still work to confirm or deny these meanings. Her phenomenological experiences and the manner in which she conveys these bodily experiences is important. Although the body and its experiences limit one's projects, it also enables other projects. One is able to create oneself through the choices one makes as an existentially free being. Consequently, it is possible to shape one's unique experiences of being woman given that one is not biologically or physiologically determined by one's biology. Gatens explains, "Human freedom is inescapable, and one's biology can offer no certain indication of what one should choose or which projects one

471 understand that men may develop breasts and may be raped, but the sensation would be different for the male human being and furthermore, these happenings gesture at different social understandings. 48 Gail Weiss, "The Body as a Narrative Horizon," Thinking the Limits of the Body, eds. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Gail Weiss (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003), 32. 167 should adopt." It is in woman's assertion of values, namely in her choices, that she makes herself and thereby makes the female human being. Beauvoir echoes this insight:

"It is not nature that defines woman; it is she who defines herself by dealing with nature on her own account in her emotional life."5

Gatens 2003, 270. Beauvoir 1989, 38. 168 Chapter 2: Exploring the Psychological Situation of Woman

As explained in my Introduction to Woman's Situation, femininity is a particular way

of being-in-the-world. It is comprised of practices which psychologically,

comportmentally, and phenomenologically stylize the body. This stylization is most often

carried out through the female human body; however, it is possible to appropriate these

ways of being with any human body regardless of its physiology or biology. One need

not be a human female being in order to be feminine. However, stylizing the body as

feminine seemingly brings together the notion of the female human being and woman's historical being to create the overall situation of woman as the absolute Other. These mutually reinforcing aspects of being often make it difficult to understand that what

appears to be necessary to the female human being is merely contingent to the female human body. Thus it is important to investigate the trappings of femininity to understand how they support woman's otherness. The key to this stylization lies in alienation and the ontological tendency toward bad faith. This chapter will unpack these psychological themes so that we can analyze their affect on woman's total situation and the ethical possibilities therein.

One of the key ideas Beauvoir borrows from Karl Marx is the notion of alienation; however, she considers alienation not with respect to a separation of the human being from her labor, but as a psychological break between the human being and her freedom.

This most notably happens in the projection of the self onto an object in the world or onto an other being. Beauvoir explains that every human being has a tendency toward alienation as a result of the angst one feels when faced with one's own freedom. Beauvoir writes,

169 The anxiety that his liberty induces in the subject leads him to search for himself in things, which is a kind of flight from himself. This tendency is so fundamental that immediately after weaning when he is separated from the Whole, the infant is compelled to lay hold upon his alienated existence in mirrors and in the gaze of his parents. Primitive people are alienated in mana, in the totem; civilized people in their individual souls, in their egos, their names, their property, their work. Here is to be found the primary temptation to inauthenticity, a failure to be genuinely oneself.51

Recall from Section II, that facing one's freedom to choose entails realizing that one is

responsible for one's actions and that these actions introduce value into the world. If one

recognizes the gravity of choice and the freedom involved and responsibility it entails,

one must also recognize that one's actions are valuable insofar as they promote or

prohibit the choices of others. This realization can be daunting. So, as a flight from this

freedom and the anxiety it causes,52 alienation limits our ethical possibilities because the

individual has already failed to genuinely be herself in her flight. One becomes

estranged from her fundamental being as a freedom. Beauvoir explains, "The anxiety that

his liberty induces in the subject leads him to search for himself in things, which is a kind

of flight from himself."54 As one will discover below, the recognition of one's freedom

leads to alienation through a variety of human creations.

Anxiety for Beauvoir is an existential certainty because even the most vigilant

individual will flee from his freedom. Fleeing is triggered by the realization that each

individual must create himself. Since the human being does not have a premeditated purpose, it is up to each individual to choose his projects for it is in choosing that he becomes who he is. This existential realization causes a feeling of dread. In order to

escape this realization and the resulting dread one establishes oneself in others and in

51 Ibid, 47. 52 Ibid, "ibid. 54 Ibid. 170 material possessions. Private property, which we will return to momentarily, serves more

than an economic benefit indeed! Private property proves to be ontologically beneficial

because it allows us to veil our freedom far into adulthood through amassing goods.55 We

disguise our finitude in the material and if the material breaks we invest anew. Therefore,

life as a result of one's own choices, of one's own productive activity, becomes alien

insofar as one does not recognize one's determining role.

Beauvoir begins her discussion of alienation, a beginning that is highly problematic,

by discussing the Freudian theory of separation. She finds Freud at fault for forwarding a

theory that is deterministic, adheres to genital logic, and focuses on male sexuality.

However, Beauvoir does not have any difficulty using his notion of separation as a

precursor to her discussion of alienation. The biggest problem with making this leap is

that Beauvoir uses Freud's discussion of childhood, a theory which is deterministic,

adheres to genital logic, and focuses on masculine sexuality to explain how it is that

woman comes to submit herself to man in a flight from her own freedom. Beauvoir

arrives at a phenomenological description of man as alienated and woman as submissive.

Both woman and man are alienated from themselves. This has only a very loose

connection to Freud's theory of childhood. The ties are just not strong enough to endow this connection with the explanatory power needed to suggest that alienation and

submission are a psychological necessity. However, we could, from Beauvoir's reading,

argue that alienation and submission are a contemporary Western social tendency.

Lundgren-Gothlin explains the tendency toward acquiring private property. She writes, "when the human being begins to individualize, he or she wants to see his/her own existence incarnated in something that is owned—land, for example, or tools—and this property, in turn, is important to the individuals, since they have objectified themselves in it." (1996, 192) 171 According to Beauvoir, the contemporary Western cultural phenomenon of alienation

and submission begins in early childhood when the female human being notices that she

does not have a penis. The penis is important insofar as it already has meaning (as the

phallus it is the key to genital logic in psychoanalytic theory) before the girl even notices

her lack. However, the very notion that she views herself as lacking seems experientially

implausible. The only way that she could view herself as such is if there was already an

economic and socio-cultural meaning endowed in the penis that she does indeed lack

given that there is no similar value attributed to her vagina. In other words, the problem is

not psychological, it is socio-historical and then it takes on a psychological weight. She

has learned, as has he, that the penis is valuable. It serves as a status symbol—the status

symbol par excellence.

This formulation is a bit different for the male human being. Upon separation from

the mother (or caregiver) the young boy recognizes the value of his penis and prides himself on his fullness of being. He is not lack insofar as he possesses this signifier par

excellence. However, this does not entail that he is existentially complete—a for-itself-in-

itself. The separation from the mother signifies a great loss for both the male child and

the female child. Separation is the realization that one is an individual freedom in the

world. Self-consciousness is realized through this process. So even the boy feels this

existential lack, but as we will see in a moment, it is realized differently due to his different economic socio-historical bodily significances. Therefore, both children realize in separation that they are in fact a lack of being. Their consciousness as 'conscious of is

172 existentially nothing. The realization that one is nothing is far too much for the male human being to bear. Thus, he locates his being in the material world. Beauvoir asserts that for the male human being the penis is considered to be the smaller representation of the male himself. It is both active subject (directs the projects of the individual) in its erect state and passive object (piece of skin and muscle) in its flaccid state. In this sense, it oscillates between transcendence and immanence or for-itself and in-itself. The alter ego remains embodied for the male through his penis. He represents himself to himself in his own flesh. He remains whole in some respect. Beauvoir explains, "The penis is singularly adapted for playing this role of 'double' for the little boy—it is for him at once a foreign object and himself; it is a plaything, a doll, and yet his own flesh".57 He is human insofar as he identifies with himself (his penis) as both an active being and as a passive being. Perhaps this is ambiguity covertly at work. However, it is not this simple insofar as the flaccid penis is not valuable in contemporary Western society.

Contemporary Western society does not privilege passivity. Therefore, the male comes to identify himself only with his erect penis.

On the other hand, according to Beauvoir, the little girl's only recourse to an alter ego is in an object that is external to her being such as her doll. The girl, who identifies with the doll, is merely defined as other than human; she does not coincide with herself as her investment is disembodied. She does not even, from early childhood, authentically assume her being human as an embodied consciousness who is both passive and active,

We will explore this further in a moment. However, it is important to note that this reading of the anxiety of separation will cause problems for Beauvoir when she oscillates between thinking freedom as absolute (as does Sartre) and freedom as deeply embodied and thereby opaquely situated. "Beauvoir 1989,47. 173 rather she identifies with a passive objectified body—the body of the doll. According to

Beauvoir, the male child identifies with transcendence (an active erect penis);59 the female child identifies with immanence (a passive doll). Bergoffen explains, "He identifies this erection with a transcendence that is already his. In identifying with the doll, the girl identifies with an objectified, passive body. If it represents transcendence at all, it can only be the transcendence of a promise." If the girl is to have any access to transcendence it will be through a subject (particularly the gaze of man) so long as she continues to identify with an objective passive body. This notion will come to fruition in

Section IV.

This early form of alienation and its implication for our adult life is the root of our inclination toward inauthenticity. Both woman and man fail to identify with her being or his being as ambiguously embodied and instead identify as active or passive, transcendent or immanent. Woman represents herself as the passive doll even into adulthood; man represents himself as the active penis even into adulthood. Beauvoir argues that this Freudian reading explains "the primary temptation to inauthenticity, the failure to be genuinely oneself."61 Importantly, given this psychoanalytic explanation, woman's dilemma is "hesitating between the role of object, Other which is offered her, and the assertion of her liberty."62 She feels the tug between her object-like status (early identification with an object) and her desire to move beyond this static identification in order to assume her situation authentically. Surely, she must be more than a doll! This is

Beauvoir explains, "the doll represents the whole body, and, on the other [hand], it is a passive object." (1989,278) 59 Ibid. 60 Bergoffen 1997, 149. 61 Beauvoir 1989,47. 62 Ibid, 52. 174 a tricky space for the human female being, as she learns that in becoming woman, she is to be other (passive object) than what she is—an ambiguous embodied being. She is rather, a live doll.63 She is both her body as object and other than her body.

Alienation plays out differently for each individual. In general, alienation allows both man and woman to escape the nothingness of consciousness, the certainty of freedom,

and the early trauma of separation. Separation from one's primary caregiver is a result of realizing that one is a subject (qua consciousness) and consequently, one is really nothing. This separation is a lengthy process that continues on well into childhood and is broken by the "crisis of adolescence" wherein the individual must "assume his

subjectivity."64 The problem with this reading is that it figures that one never really lives his or her body ambiguously. Is it possible to be a nothingness if consciousness is always

situated? Sartre would say yes, but surely Beauvoir would disagree. Separation begins with an identification of oneself as consciousness—the for-itself or nothing. The notion of an embodied consciousness is never realized. What is the ontological status of a baby?

If one does not recognize oneself as one's ownmost possibility (a being for-itself) until after separation then one fails to make a very important connection, namely that there is no recognition of the self as ambiguous. The male human being is either in his infancy as a being in-itself or post-separation as a being for-itself. Even his identification with the penis as flaccid and erect does not hold. However, it is slightly different for woman insofar as she does not leave her post-separation being or rather, she consciously flees the possibility of being a for-itself through alienation. Beauvoir compares woman to a child.

She writes,

Ibid, 280. Ibid, 39. 175 It is then that we discover the difference which distinguishes them [woman] from an actual child: the child's situation is imposed upon him, whereas the woman (I mean the Western woman of today) chooses it or at least consents to it. [...Furthermore,] once there appears a possibility of liberation, it is resignation of freedom not to exploit the possibility, a resignation which implies dishonesty and which is a positive fault."65

Woman resigns herself to existing in a childlike state wherein she takes the world as ready-made and by so doing she commits what Beauvoir refers to as a moral fault. She

colludes in her arrested development. The question still remains: how can Beauvoir call

for ambiguity if she argues that post-separation one flees his disembodied state of nothingness—either through alienation or mystification? Both flights (alienation and mystification which will be further discussed below) veil over one's ambiguity. Though the fear of freedom is real, that freedom is always relational and thus, it is arguable as to whether or not one feels the absolute anxiety upon which this theory depends.

In general, both man and woman flee his or her existential angst by investing himself or herself in the other being. Man flees from his freedom by alienating himself in woman; woman flees from her freedom by abandoning herself in man. Recall that for Hegel in order to become a for-itself one must be recognized by another for-itself. One freedom must recognize another freedom. In the Hegelian model of recognition there is a life and death struggle whereby one freedom is reduced to servitude while the other freedom remains free and takes his place as the master. Given that the boy matures into manhood still identifying with his erect penis, he is not likely to give up his transcendence for servitude. Perhaps it would be like accepting oneself as impotent. Thus man comes to fear his immanent aspect as a fleshy existence in the world. He gets a sense for this aspect when he asserts himself in the world as a transcendence and is pushed back by the world

65 Ibid, 38. The square brackets are my addition. 66 This is reiterated in The Second Sex, xxxiv-xxxv. 176 through other human projects insofar as he is also ontologically immanent in nature.

Accordingly, he flees his fleshy aspect through the oppression of woman. Woman recognizes man as transcendent for-itself without the life and death struggle, namely she does not demand the same from him for she does not imagine herself to genuinely be a freedom. Woman recognizes man as a freedom so that he does not have to face another freedom (another man) for recognition. Problematically, she is not really a freedom in this context. Her recognition is not hard won. This is similar to the recognition by the slave without the struggle. This sort of recognition post-struggle is no longer valuable to the master. It does not completely satiate his need for recognition. Consequently, man alienates himself not only in woman (for this recognition is not substantial), but also in private property, in work, and in his children. Since this alienation must be renewed at each and every instant it is no wonder that our collective consciousness is so attenuated.

In contrast to man, woman abandons herself in man. Woman (mis)recognizes man as a free being, thus allowing his perpetual state of transcendence to be maintained without demanding recognition from him. Given this formulation, woman covers over the anxiety of recognizing herself as a freedom and takes the world as ready-made by man.

Superficially, this works out fantastically for man as he does not have to face another transcendence since woman recognizes him. Lundgren-Gothlin explains, "Man has nurtured the hope that he may be recognized as freedom through woman, without having to subject himself to the demands of another freedom, and may bring his desire of being to realization through possession of woman's body".67 However, the recognition from woman does not fulfill his need for subjectivity. Woman is not fully a subject insofar as she resigns herself to existing in a childlike state. Thus she cannot truly recognize man.

67Ludgren-Gothlin 1996, 193. 177 Woman's status is perpetuated (she is still somewhat of a doll) as objective and

passive insofar as she recognizes man as a freedom and yet does not demand the same

from him. No one recognizes her as a freedom. Namely, in recognizing man she does not

ask that he do the same for her. She colludes in her role because it affords her the same

existential relief as it does for man. Woman projects her freedom (that which is possible

via transcendence) onto man so that she may escape the trappings of existence, i.e., her

freedom as a conscious being who is responsible for making herself. By projecting her

freedom onto man she does not have to face her existential anxiety head on. If she is not

free she cannot be held accountable. Man in turn projects his freedom onto woman so that

he may escape the trappings of being—his freedom as an embodied being with other

freedoms. He does not have to face another freedom and thus, he does not have to risk

being reduced to an in-itself or to an immanent being.

How does this flight from freedom and therefore, from our existential responsibility

mature into its adult form? Man, Beauvoir contends, "succeeds in finding himself only in

estrangement, in alienation; he seeks through the world to find himself in some shape,

other than himself, which he makes his own."68 He escapes his freedom by projecting his

being as in-itself (objective material status) onto woman. On the other hand, woman

holds onto the notion that she is passive. She is reflected in her favourite doll, the

objectifying mirror, and as will be explained in Section IV—the gaze of the other.

According to Beauvoir, woman dreams of submission so that she does not have to take responsibility for her existence. Thus, woman escapes her freedom by projecting her being as for-itself (consciousness) onto man.

Beauvoir 1989, 57. 178 The most troubling result of this bad faith is woman's intrasubjective relationship.

She lives this relationship paradoxically. She traps herself between her being-for-others

as a being-in-itself or a body-object and her shrouded desire to be a being for-herself.

Beauvoir writes, "woman is opaque in her very being: she stands before man not as a

subject but as an object paradoxically endued with subjectivity; she takes herself

simultaneously as selfand as other, a contradiction that entails baffling consequences."69

Woman is man's greatest resource and her own greatest antagonist. She gives herself to

man not only as an object that he may use, but as an object who has the ability to

recognize his subjectivity. Of course, this burden is equally heavy for man as he must

make the world for her so that she may also escape responsibility. However, we must still

ask, why will woman not risk this bond that "entails baffling consequences" to be

recognized as a subject?

Monica Langer rightly reminds us that woman's bad faith is entangled in her

situation. Langer writes, "Self-deceptive attitudes are paradoxically ambiguous, because

we simultaneously know and do not know what we hide from ourselves." It is easy to

see how woman cultivates a paradoxical relationship with/to herself. On one hand, she

complies with the dictates of femininity. Woman learns to enclose herself within her

visible body as object for another. This cultivates an attitude of incapacitation,

frustration, and self-consciousness.71 On the other hand, she craves recognition in order

that she may be a subject in her own right. However, mystification makes it difficult for

6y Ibid, 718. 70 Monica Langer, "Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty on Ambiguity" (87-106) in The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Claudia Card (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 98. 71 Iris Marion Young, "Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality" in On Female Body Experience: "Throwing Like A Girl" and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005b), 34. 179 her to gain subjectivity through inter subjective relations given that superficially both woman and man benefit from this bond made in bad faith.

The way in which woman appropriates bad faith curbs woman's ability to authentically realize her embodiment as ambiguous because she is not socialized to assume her situation as an ambiguous being—both immanent and transcendent. Instead she learns to be complicit and take the world as ready-made ignoring her other aspect of being. Beauvoir calls this affect mystification. Mystification is first introduced in The

Ethics of Ambiguity and is fleshed out in The Second Sex. Beauvoir explains mystification as such:

The less economic and social circumstances allow an individual to act upon the world, the more this world appears to him as given. This is the case of women who inherit a long tradition of submission [...] There is often laziness and timidity in their resignation; their honesty is not quite complete; but to the extent that it exists, their freedom remains available, it is not denied. They can, in their situation of ignorant and powerless individuals, know the truth of existence and raise themselves to a 79

properly moral life.

Mystification is a form of bad faith that covers over, but does not completely obscure, the possibility for freedom. As Langer points out, woman self-deceives refusing to accept her freedom as an embodied individual. Beauvoir writes that laziness and timidity perpetuate woman's self-deception which in turn allows woman to take the world as determined.

Although woman suffers economically and socio-culturally, she is both morally responsible for herself and for others. In order to achieve this moral life woman must assume her situation as a being who can fashion herself. She must work against bad faith, complicity, and collusion.

Beauvoir 1989, 48. 180 Bad faith is an ontological concept that quickly slips into an ethical concept in

Sartre's work. He writes that our original intention is a project of bad faith.73 This is in line with Beauvoir's reading of childhood separation. One's ontological status quickly moves into a project of bad faith. However, Sartre wavers on this ontological claim, by thinking through bad faith as a style of being. Beauvoir picks up on bad faith as an ethical claim even though this reading is more uncertain in her later works. Although

Beauvoir departs from Sartre's notion of bad faith she is nonetheless cautious in her departure. In Being and Nothingness Sartre's notion of transcendence as project, the movement of surpassing one's facticity is absolutely opposed to the fleshy immanence of the body regardless of Sartre's claims to the contrary. Consciousness, as for-itself or absolute freedom, is not bound by the thickness of the situated body. It can cover over this aspect of its being so that it may transcend its facticity as embodied. However, this surpassing of one's embodiment is a form of insincerity insofar as the human reality is both in-itself and for-itself. Thus, for Sartre, absolute freedom is a possibility at the expense of one's facticity. For Sartre, the in-itself and the for-itself are always in tension with one another. In fact, consciousness as transcendence is constantly trying to outstrip the body. On the other hand, Beauvoir locates transcendence in immanence as explored in Section II, Chapter 3, and weds the two and in so doing she is able to situate freedom.

Consequently, the tension between the for-itself and the in-itself in Beauvoir is much more allusive insofar as it allows for a greater opacity between the two. The thickness of

15 Sartre 1956, 89. 74 We can garner this reading from Sartre's example of the homosexual whose bad faith shapes his very style of being in the world. Sartre explains, "A homosexual frequently has an intolerable feeling of guilt, and his whole existence is determined in relation to this feeling." (1956, 107) 181 the lived body affects transparency. So how does bad faith come into these two similar

yet distinct accounts?

Sartre argues that our original intention (the original project of consciousness as

intentionality) is the project of bad faith. This is not an ethical claim it is merely the

ontological trajectory of the subject. One is in a sense born into bad faith. This project

eclipses one's being in-itself. This original intention is exemplified most famously in

Sartre's notion of the sexual encounter. In the sexual encounter the body is instrumental

for the intentional consciousness—the for-itself. Intentional consciousness aims to entice the other. It entices the other by objectifying itself before the other, such that it becomes a pure in-itself so that it may apprehend, not the other's body, but the other's subjectivity.

This seems odd. However, intentional consciousness is not interested in the body of the other. The body is merely the access point through which intentional consciousness reaches the consciousness of the other. For Sartre, intentional consciousness can only desire the consciousness of the other insofar as it is able to recognize intentional consciousness. The body of the other allows for access to the intentional consciousness. It needs this access if it is going to capture the consciousness of the other. In the sexual encounter the intentional consciousness appeals to the other's consciousness. However, given the fleshiness of the sexual encounter there is fear on the part of the intentional consciousness of losing itself in the material or losing itself in the immanent. Sartre argues that it is not merely the flesh of the other that inspires dread in the intentional consciousness, rather all flesh—all immanence, inspires this dread. The human being's original intention, the project of bad faith is acted out in such moments as the sexual

182 encounter. These moments existentially solidify the distinction between transcendence

and facticity75—a distinction that Sartre, unlike Beauvoir, does not aim to resolve.

For Sartre, the key feature of bad faith is not to preserve the identity of transcendence

and facticity, but more specifically to veil the truth of one's ontological being. What is

interesting about bad faith, given the translucency of consciousness for Sartre and his

adherence to Descartes, is that "I must know in my capacity as deceiver the truth which is

hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived." Bad faith is the epitome of the

insincerity of human reality. The human being is in a meta-stable state of denial about his

ontological structure. For the existentialist, accepting one's ontological structure as

immanent and transcendent entails coming face to face with one's being as freedom

(consciousness) and facticity in the world with other freedoms (situated). Given Sartre's

tenacious hold on transcendence and his notion of others, it is possible to understand how

it is that he arrived at such an understanding.

Beauvoir's usage of bad faith is a bit different. Since she conceives of freedom as

embodied, she faces a different set of problems than the problems faced by Sartre. Since

consciousness is translucent for Sartre, he is able to assert confidently that the truth of

one's ontological being is never fully hidden. Sartre clarifies, "That which affects itself with bad faith must be conscious (of) its bad faith since the being of consciousness is consciousness of being."77 Facticity is the heavy weight that consciousness seeks to evade, all the while being knowingly bonded to it and thus, unable to ever fully conceal it. For Sartre bad faith requires vigilance. In a truly existential sense, bad faith must be chosen at each moment. On the other hand, since consciousness is thoroughly embodied

75 Sartre 1956, 98. 76 Ibid, 89. "Ibid. 183 for Beauvoir, one's motivation for fleeing is not nearly as clear. Does one know what it is that is hidden if consciousness is so thickly embodied? Beauvoir writes that one does indeed know what it is that one hides from oneself, but it is not quite so simple as we will explore below.

In the case of woman, "it is impossible to he for oneselfactually an other and to recognize oneself consciously as an object." Therefore, woman must know that she is a freedom. However, Beauvoir sees a difference in the types of bad faith that woman and man perpetuate. Both woman and man flee, but woman flees from her transcendence and man flees from his immanence. Since the individual is ambiguously immanent and transcendent, in-itself and for-itself, passive and active, one can conclude that both woman and man act in bad faith. Neither live their bodies ambiguously. Thus, Sartre was partially right insofar as he conceives of bad faith as the preservation of a distinction between facticity and transcendence. However, it is important for Beauvoir that different economic psychoanalytic socio-cultural circumstances dictate how bad faith is experienced, but it is always employed as a way in which to skirt existential anxiety. For man, the project of bad faith covers over his immanent aspect. After separation the boy identifies not with a mute doll, but rather with the erect penis. He is a transcendence who aims to preserve this aspect of his being. Man fears his fleshy immanence insofar as material beings are at the mercy of other freedoms (a risk he does not have to take in seeking recognition from woman). Therefore, he projects his immanence onto woman so that he can remain a transcendence. She is his immanent other, his objective being.

Beauvoir 1989, 630. Sartre 1956,98. 184 Bad faith plays out a bit differently for woman even though it compliments man's

masquerade. As object to man's subject, woman can remain in her childlike state wherein

the world is ready-made. She does not have to own up to her existential freedom and the

responsibility that it entails. She maintains this status as immanent by recognizing man as

a freedom or rather she projects her own freedom onto man. Therefore, neither man nor

woman lives authentically as an ambiguity of immanence and transcendence, in-itself and

for-itself, and facticity and freedom. Man flees his ambiguity through the oppression of

woman and woman flees her ambiguity through idolizing man. This idolization reminds

us that woman does not create her own values, but rather values the projects created by

man. Beauvoir explains,

Even today in Western countries, among women who have not had in their work an apprenticeship of freedom, there are still many who take shelter in the shadow of men; they adopt without discussion the opinions and values recognized by their husband or their lover, and that allows them to develop childish qualities which are forbidden to adults because they are based on a feeling of irresponsibility.80

In conclusion, the situation of man and woman in adulthood is far more ontologically

and ethically complex than Freud's theory allows. Both woman and man mask their

ambiguity through alienating themselves in the other. Woman covers over her freedom by idolizing man—he is free, and man covers over his facticity by objectifying woman—

she is flesh. Although Beauvoir uses Freud's theory as a springboard for her own thinking

on the inauthentic attitudes of man and woman, she nonetheless proves that Freudian psychology is lacking. Beauvoir aptly takes psychoanalysis to task for over-simplifying

an extraordinarily complex becoming. As will be discussed in Chapter 4, she ties this psychological becoming in with becoming feminine or rather feminine comportmentality.

Beauvoir 1976, 37. 185 Beauvoir suggests that feminine comportmentality like woman's psychology as mystified covers over the human reality as ambiguous.

186 Chapter 3: Exploring the Comportmentality of Woman

Beauvoir begins her major work with the simple question: "Woman?" to which she

replies in protest that woman is not reducible to her biology nor is she reducible to her psychological shaping. Beauvoir argues biological and psychological explanations of woman merely serve to demonstrate how science (or pseudoscience) imprisons woman in her physicality and psyche. Beauvoir clearly states that the body is not merely biologically or psychologically determined, but rather it is bound up in woman's overall

situation. An important aspect of woman's situation is evidenced and reiterated by woman's comportment—the ways in which she moves in and appropriates her

environment. Beauvoir finds that woman's comportment, as a learned style of being in the world, reiterates woman's status as Other thus fashioning her ethical possibilities.

According to Beauvoir, "Woman, like man, is her body; but [in contradistinction to man] her body is something other than herself." This interesting conceptual duality guides Beauvoir's thinking on woman's comportment and aptly sketches out the difficulty that will be explained below. Iris Marion Young gives an example of this conceptual duality in "Breasted Experience: The Look and the Feeling" wherein she takes up the problem of body manipulation. Young argues that women's breasts are more like objects than a part of a women's subjective being. Paradoxically, surgery and arguably other forms of beautification "can be understood as a self-punishment necessary to bring her body into line."83 Woman treats her body as an object from which she distances herself.

81 Ibid, 29. 82 Iris Marion Young, "Breasted Experience: The Look and the Feeling," in On Female Body Experience: "Throwing Like A Girl" and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005a). 83 Ibid, 93. 187 In this manner, a woman's body becomes a "limiting factor for [her] projects." It is true that the human being is limited by her body, but a woman's body limits her projects in ways in which a man's body aids in his projects due to the different cultural meanings that are attributed to and play out in one's disparate physiological bodies. This will be discussed in the historical aspect of woman's situation in Chapter 4.

Young reports that some experiments conducted in 1966 by Straus involving young children serve to reinforce Beauvoir's findings.85 It has been shown that women and men typically throw objects differently. The female child rarely uses her lateral space; instead, the motion is concentrated in the arm, rather than using the whole body. The male child, by contrast, uses his whole body when throwing, including extension and the use of lateral space. According to Young, there is seemingly little explanation for the difference.

Girls throw differently because they are female human beings. Could it be the case that girls do not use space in the same fashion given their disparate physical bodies? Young attributes the difference in throwing to the situation of girls in the 1970s.87 Girls are

QQ rooted in immanence and her bodily movement reflects her situation. Although there is active transcendence in the body part (her arm) that is doing the action, the rest of the QQ girl's body stays motionless, and hence remains like a thing, rooted in its immanence.

84 Young 2005b, 34. 85 Erwin W. Straus, "The Upright Posture," Phenomenological Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 1966). 86 Young 2005b, 33. 87 Maureen Connolly argues that this is only part of the picture. In "Iris Young, Throwing like a girl and other essays in feminist philosophy and social theory: Response and commentary", Connolly points out that men and women have different biomechanical proportions and thus they tend to have different experiences with throwing, different strength levels, and that these factors shape their different motilities. (468) Furthermore, Connolly writes, "Perhaps we appear self-conscious and contradictory because we sense, at some deeper level, the non-connection with our body resources in some inauthentic attempt to 'throw like a man.' Just throw!" (468-9) See Maureen Connolly, "Iris Young. Throwing like a girl and other essays in feminist philosophy and social theory: Response and commentary" in Human Studies 17 (1995). 88 Young 2005b, 32. 89 Ibid, 38. 188 Young writes that subordination is embodied through "feminine bodily comportment,

motility, and spatiality [which] exhibits this same tension between transcendence and

immanence, between subjectivity and being a mere object." Young uses existential

phenomenological language in the spirit of Beauvoir to gesture at the importance of

exploring how one feminizes her body and the results of these feminizations. The girl

only moves the one necessary body part for throwing, instead of using her whole body.

One must keep in mind that for woman, the body is considered to be for the most part an

object. How is one to coax an object like the body into action? Furthermore, culture

instills in girls the idea that they ought not to make use of the space around them, and

instead, they ought to concentrate on inner space; therefore, when presented with

activities that require making use of one's body, the girl will hesitate in immanence. She

will remain in herself so as not to transcend.91 If women use their bodies efficiently and

unthinkingly they often risk opening themselves to objectification such as that described

by Bartky below.

Regardless of whether or not contemporary Western girls in 2011 throw balls like

girls in 1966, the point is that girl's motility and spatiality still exhibit the same

tendencies, namely the feminized body hesitates between immanence and

transcendence.92 It may not be the case that girls learn to use their bodies in a similar

fashion today as they did in the mid-sixties, but the expectation that girls and women

inhibit their comportmentahty remains. Bartky's story of unthinkingly swinging her arms,

allowing her breasts to bounce as she walks down the street only to be objectified and

90 Ibid, 32. 91 Ibid, 45. 92 Young writes, "Female spatiality is contradictory insofar as feminine bodily existence is both spatially constituted and a constituting spatial subject." (2005b, 41) 189 called a "nice piece of ass", is one instance of this sort of reminder that woman ought to

be mindful of their movements.93 Therefore, objectification (or sometimes even the

possibility of objectification) keeps woman's bodily comportment as a hesitation between

the immanent and the transcendent (feminine) in check.

From early childhood girls are encouraged to understand their bodies in their for-

others dimension as opposed to in their for-itself dimension. For Beauvoir, becoming a

woman under the shackles of patriarchal culture rests on developing (intentionally or

unintentionally) an awareness of one's permanent visibility and objectification and

modeling one's embodied consciousness accordingly. Woman is to be, according to

Beauvoir, a "live doll." She writes, woman "knows that when she is looked at she is not

considered apart from her appearance: she is judged, respected, desired, by and through

her toilette."94 The importance of visibility on woman's overall situation will be taken up

fully in Section IV.

Sara Heinamaa's phenomenological perspective on embodiment understands women

to be constituted in a similar fashion to Young. Being a woman involves adopting a

particular style of relating to the world.95 What does it mean to comport oneself

stylistically? An individual's style of being is not something that is easily conceptualized;

however, we can gesture at the familiarity that is our style and the style of others. Let us

take the case in point: in "The Synthesis of One's Own Body,"96 Merleau-Ponty explains

that we often do not recognize isolated aspects of ourselves in a photo, video, or recorder,

primarily because we doe not know ourselves as partes extra partes. We can look at our

93 Sandra Lee Bartky, "On Psychological Oppression" in Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (New York: Routledge, 1990), 27. 94 Beauvoir 1989,683. 95SeeHeiniimaa2003. 96 See Merleau-Ponty 1962. 190 own hands or knees in a photo and not necessarily recognize them as part of our own

body. In the same way, upon hearing our voice on a machine, it is possible to feel

somewhat disconnected from the intonation and expressions. The voice does not seem to

belong to anyone in particular. This is because we does not experience ourselves in or as

parts: hands, knees, or voice. On the other hand, we do recognize "the visual

representation of what is invisible to us in our own body." For instance, I am able to

immediately identify my gait on a video, even though I have never really seen myself

walking down the street. Merleau-Ponty explains, we recognize ourselves because "each

of us sees himself as it were through an inner eye which from a few yards away is

looking at us from the head to the knees." This is the case because every healthy

individual experiences himself as a unity. According to John F. Barman, one's body

image consists of "an undivided possession of the parts of [...one's] body, for this image

envelopes them."99 The parts of the body are already there, unified and important,

ambiguously enveloped by a holistic corporeal schema—one's style of being. Therefore,

the body cannot be perceived as merely an object (despite the best attempts at fleeing

from freedom) or a cogitated sum of parts because it is a complex whole, a double

horizon that opens on one's past, one's present (as phenomenal), and one's future. Our

ongoing relationship with the phenomenal field distinguishes the human being from

objects, and yet dismisses any absolute claims to pure subjectivity or to pure objectivity.

Recall that the human being is ambiguous. M. C. Dillon thus correctly comments, "the body is neither purely subject (in which case it would be invisible to him) nor purely

97 Ibid, 149. 98 Ibid. 99 John F. Barman, The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1967), 69. 191 object (in which case it could not serve his primitive intentions); it is rather the ground of a style of interacting with the environment."100 Our bodies are our means for this continual worldly interaction, and this interaction inscribes itself on the physical body as a style of being.

Each human being has a unique style, which is an expression of our interaction with/in the world. It is a "distinctive kind of coherence"1 l that is grounded in the relationship between the body and the world—a world which includes others. The intertwining of perceiver and perceived, the coition of the body with things, has a certain inarticulate attitude or style with respect to its tasks. This manner of approaching the world is "an adverbial unity; it is manifest in the melodic 'how' of appearance and behaviour. [...] I have difficulty articulating [t]his style in a determinate way because there is no specific invariant..."102 This melodic "how" of appearing "functions as a ground of identification" or an "ethological fingerprint," both for ourselves and for others.103 Merleau-Ponty writes that one is always in a process of willing oneself to adopt certain roles and hence, approaching the world intentionally. 04 These volitions can be found in the way in which we approach and appropriate certain tasks. Our bodies takes on the contours and shades of past experiences and future expectations. These expectations

"give direction, significance and [a] future to my life". 5 The expectation of the female human being is to become woman. Thus, the girl comports her body toward this end.

100 M.C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty's Ontology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988),122. 101 Alphonso Lingis, The Imperative, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 35. 102 Dillon 1988, 79. 103 Ibid. 104 Merleau-Ponty 1962,436. 105 Ibid, 447. 192 The style of being a woman involves curbing our intentional movements—hesitating

before the possibility of transcending. This hesitation can be positive if it involves

opening ourselves up to our affections and the affectations of the other through disclosing

being as will be explored in Section IV. 6 However, even disclosing oneself requires a

degree of transcendence. The moment of hesitation before the other or before the task at

hand must in fact be carried out because we do act before the other. Recall from Section

II, Chapter 3, that it is in acting/intending that one provides a ground of opportunity for

the other and by so doing wills the other free. Stylizing oneself as a hesitant being, in the

fashion described by Young—the girl pauses before she throws and so forth, reveals

something else about the girl's style of being. Merleau-Ponty helps us understand this

stylization. If, "my body appears to me as an attitude directed towards a certain existing

or possible task"107 then in moments of hesitation, the body reconfirms one's status as hesitant.108 These hesitations, if considered in the existential spirit, mark the body as a hesitant body—as a submissive body. It is not that the girl fails to throw the ball, but rather she throws the ball reluctantly. Albeit Young is not just writing about throwing balls; she is arguing that a girl's style of being is rooted in immanence and this immanence is visible in her body comportment. It is not just that she hesitates when she

Alia Al-Saji argues that hesitating before the other allows for the critical-ethical moment. This hesitation allows the other to emerge as more than a body-object or even a body-subject. Al-Saji explains, "Hesitation may constitute the attention needed for vision to become self-critical—for it to turn towards the invisibles that it takes for granted and to remember the habituality and historicity upon which it relies. Hesitation is, then, a response to and an effort of openness towards, an affective field that is unrecognizable to the objectifying gaze. In this sense, hesitation would be a remedy for the blinders and the arrogance." (382) See "A Phenomenology of Critical-Ethical Vision: Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, and the Question of Seeing Differently," in Chiasmi International: Publication trilingue autour de lapensee de Merleau-Ponty, Vol. 11 (Paris: Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2009), 375-399. 107 Merleau-Ponty 1962, 100. 108Beauvoir 1989, xxxiv-v.

193 throws the ball. This reluctance/rootedness reiterated by girls informs and in fact, comes to signify the feminized body.

Why is the girl unsure of her ability to throw the ball back? As explored above, in childhood the girl understands her body in its for-others dimension. Recall that the girl displaces her subjectivity in the body of the doll. She understands herself thusly learning to view herself not as a body-subject, but as a body-object. The body that can is covered over by the body that cannot insofar as it is lived in its for-others dimension. As the girl matures, her bodily objectivity is reified in the gaze of the other. Beauvoir explains, "this body which the girl has identified with herself she now apprehends as flesh. It becomes an object that others see and pay attention to."110 The girl develops an awareness of her permanent visibility. She is cognizant of how her body appears to others. This affects her bodily comportment and her overall style of being. A woman's style perpetuates and reiterates her status as the Other insofar as stylizing one's bodily comportment according to its visible character entails disciplining one's actions in order that they coincide with what is desired from her by the One who sees her and pays attention to her. If one follows Beauvoir's thinking on woman's psychology, which implicitly reinforces the Hegelian notion of recognition, it is easy to see that what is desired from her by the One is objectivity or immanence. In this manner, woman's appearance (the way in which she comports her body in the world before the other) is not understood as "expressions of a soul or spirit, but [rather women's bodies are treated] as resources."111 Woman is constrained by how she appropriates the desires of the other. If woman's style of being as Other is partially a product of her own bodily reiteration of

109 Ibid, 278. 110 Ibid, 307. 111 Ibid, 126. 194 otherness there ought to be a way in which woman can change what it means to appear as feminine or to do away with femininity as described above.

In conclusion, woman does not realize her embodiment as ambiguous because she is not socialized to assume her situation as a transcendent being; rather she learns to be complicit and take the world as ready-made. If she copes with the world as if it were ready-made her intentions are curbed. Thus, in order for woman to live her body authentically she must transcend her complicity in this deficient physical and psychological bodily shaping. How can we develop a healthy notion of woman's bodies in the face of such situational constraints and ethical booby-traps? Even though Beauvoir gestures toward an ambiguous being in the conclusion of The Second Sex, her lengthy historical account of feminine embodiment does not give us a way in which to think through woman's situatedness toward an ambiguous being as we will see in Chapter 4.

195 Chapter 4: Exploring the Historical Situation of Woman

After an investigation of the female human being's biology, psychology, and comportmentality, Beauvoir plunges into a painstakingly detailed historical account of woman's economic socio-historical situation. She begins with the nomads and concludes with the period following the French Revolution. Although these aspects of her research may be less crucial for this inquiry, there are still a few important points to consider insofar as her historical description exemplifies and solidifies our earlier discussion concerning woman's embodiment. Beauvoir's thorough investigation marks out the passage of woman through time and by so doing she demonstrates the economic and historical importance of the way in which contemporary Western woman is conceived.

Woman's history gives direction, meaning, and a future to woman's ethical possibilities.

According to Beauvoir, the nomadic female human being was often at a distinct disadvantage during pregnancy and menses because she was prevented from working.

She also burdened the tribe insofar as she had to be sheltered and fed by others. Beauvoir explains, "the bondage of reproduction was a terrible handicap in the struggle against a hostile world. Pregnancy, childbirth, and menstruation reduced their capacity for work and made them at times wholly dependent upon the men for protection and food."1 n Due in part to the lack of natural birth control (such as seasonal fertility, which relieves other female non-human animals), female human beings were at a constant risk for pregnancy.

Pregnancy could happen at almost any time because at this moment in history there was no way for a female human being to truly prevent it. The nomadic woman was subservient to her biological fate and her social fate—perhaps it was the case that she

112 Ibid, 62. 196 could not refuse sex. The social element renders woman's disadvantaged situation as ambiguously caused, such that biology and sociology came together to seal her fate.

Regardless, the female nomad was restricted to a life of repetition and immanence insofar as she was confined to carrying a fetus and caring for her children.114

Caring for oneself during pregnancy and/or caring for a child(ren) is not understood as transcendence in Beauvoir's historical account of woman's situation. Recall that the measure for transcendence has been raised since Pyrrhus and Cineas. It could be the case that caring for one's fetus and/or caring for one's child(ren) is not understood as transcendence because more often than not reproductive labour is not chosen work. On the other hand, one could argue that productive labour is also not chosen. However, there is another aspect to productive labour that is lacking from reproductive labour. As will be discussed momentarily, reproductive labour does not meet the Hegelian benchmark for subjectivity. In reproductive labour there is no life and death struggle with another self- consciousness. A nomadic female human being struggles during pregnancy and childbirth, but the struggle is not with another self-consciousness. Nevertheless, this reading of nomadic life is questionable. Without doubt there are female human beings who choose to have children or rather there are female human beings who assert themselves in the world through the activity of creating and sustaining life. Beauvoir does not spend much time entertaining this possibility, but the fact that she champions choice above all else renders this activity as transcendent if it is freely chosen. Not every activity that is linked to one's biology is necessarily of the realm of immanence. For instance,

1131 must point out that the female human beings could not get pregnant on their own. They are impregnated by man. I argue that it is safe to assume that the nomadic female human being is not always a willing sexual partner. 114 Beauvoir 1989, 63. 197 Beauvoir shows us the possibilities for transcendence in the erotic encounter. As will be

shown in Section IV, the erotic encounter is based on one's affectivity, but is the mother-

child relationship not based on the same sensuality? Both encounters are ambiguous in

nature. Perhaps one needs to question how important the Hegelian dialectic is to Beauvoir

in one's ability to be subject—a transcendent being? 5

Contrary to the nomadic female human being, the nomadic male human being,

"assures the repetition of Life while transcending Life through Existence; by this

transcendence he creates values that deprive pure repetition of all value."116 He risks his

life for the freedom of the tribe and consequently, the tribe can continue to instill the

world with value through their projects. By risking his life man projects himself towards

a future. He embodies transcendence by ensuring the freedom of others so that they too

may continue to make themselves. Recall that Beauvoir's ethics of ambiguity rests on

willing the freedom of the other (or others). This is precisely what nomadic man does by

risking his life. Thus, as Sara Heinamaa explains, for Beauvoir it is not the question of

death, but rather risking one's life for the life of the tribe.117 The nomadic female human

being merely perpetuates the life of the tribe through domestic labour. It is not in "giving

life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has

been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills."118

Evidently, for Beauvoir, the Hegelian aspect of recognition is paramount to this moment

in history. The female human nomad as the life-giver and the caretaker is considered to

115 The question of natality is an interesting one, but it is outside of the purview of this dissertation. What is important to note is that there are inconsistencies in Beauvoir's reading of our history and it may be worthwhile to explore the role of her retroactive reading. However, we ought not overlook the general disadvantaged situation of the nomadic woman. 116 Beauvoir 1989, 64. The capitalized words are from Parshley. 117 Heinamaa 2003, 107. 118 Beauvoir 1989, 64. 198 be no more than a non-human animal. However, it seems that the nomadic male's role is

similar in nature. It is true that the female human being does not have the same

opportunities to escape her biological constraints as man and as such, she becomes solely

defined by her body as both herself (her body) and something other (an incubator).

Although Beauvoir reads this nomadic relationality as a relationship between an

immanent female and a transcendent male, it is possible, as has been shown, to read this historical moment otherwise. However, the alternate reading does not sufficiently weaken

Beauvoir's overall argument that woman is Other especially if one were to examine

contemporary Western history through a Hegelian lens.

There was a brief shift in Beauvoir's reading of woman's situation after the nomads.

The female human being was no longer just a life-bearing immanent Other to man's life- risking transcendent Subject. The early tillers of the soil represent a moment in history when woman had considerable power unlike the nomadic woman. Property and name were handed down from the woman's side.119 However, "when woman's role enlarges,

she comes to represent almost in its entirety the region of the Other." Even given the emphasis on her lineage she does not ascend to the status of Subject. Instead of being merely the Other in a dichotomous relationship with man, her otherness spreads vertically and she comes to represent all otherness.

According to Beauvoir, with woman's economic responsibility to carry on her family name and family property came a proliferation of myths surrounding femininity. Since property was passed down from woman to woman, "in a mystical sense the earth

119 Ibid, 167. 120 Ibid, 69. 121 Ibid. 199 belonged to the women". Woman is then mystically linked to the earth—all things that

are not man-made. Woman as man's Other is no longer just his procreative Other, but with her increased economic power she unintentionally comes to represent otherness in its totality. Why was this the case? Beauvoir explains,

The mistake has come from a confusion of two forms of alterity or otherness, which are mutually exclusive in point of fact. To the precise degree in which woman is regarded as the absolute Other -that is to say, whatever her magic powers, as the inessential—it is to that degree impossible to consider her as another subject. Women, therefore, have never composed a separate group set up on its own account over and against the male grouping. They have never entered into a direct and autonomous ITT

relation with the men.

Woman came to represent not an independent body of like-identifying individuals

(womankind) who stand in contrast to the physicality of man, but rather woman represents all that is not man. Beauvoir explains, at the time woman's otherness was

strengthened through man's harnessing of nature. As "man remains woman's master as he is the master of the fertile earth; she is fated to be subjected, owned, exploited like the

Nature whose magical fertility she embodies."124 The myths linking woman and nature provided yet another stronghold for man. The perpetuation of such associations made it easier to remove women from positions of power such as landholding. These myths, as prevalent as they still are today, reinforce the tie of woman to the earth.

This original linkage between woman and Nature occurred due to a lack of scientific explanations for natural events. Mythos had yet to be replaced by logos. If something was not within human control it was thought to have mythical powers. This power carried its own burden. Superficially these myths allowed woman to be marginally honored, but only out of fear (as that which has the power to destroy man through disaster and 122 Ibid, 67. 123 Ibid, 71. 124 Ibid, 73. 200 disease). Beauvoir explains, "Woman was venerated only to the degree that man made himself the slave of his own fears, a party to his own powerlessness: it was in terror and not in love that he worshipped her." Thus she was not honored as man's equal.

Masculine fear soon turned into resentment and thus began the active effort to rid woman of her supposed mystical powers. Strangely enough, it was man who chose the position of woman as mystic and then sought to dethrone her—"He could achieve his destiny only as he began by dethroning her."126

Problematically, these myths influence woman's pre-reflective consciousness and thereby her possibilities for flourishing. Gothlin explains "The view of woman mediated by society is thus very important to her concrete potential to act, as well as to her self- image."127 Although women are freedoms in the world, there are psychological limitations placed on their possibilities by their historical baggage as life-giver, healer,

Nature, and so forth. The situation of woman is still psychically maintained by the myths that have survived since the early tillers of the soil. For example, woman is mythologized as the guardian of the earth or as Mother Nature. Furthermore, she is subjugated through man's creational myths insofar as these myths affect her self-consciousness and our collective consciousness. According to Beauvoir, the myth of Mother Nature was developed to rationalize the unpredictability of Nature. It is fitting that since woman is the creator of human life, she came to represent the creator of all life. There is also the apt connection between man as the master of Nature and man as the master of woman to consider. Beauvoir writes, "man remains woman's master as he is the master of the fertile earth; she is fated to be subjected, owned, exploited like the Nature whose magical

125 Ibid, 76. 126 Ibid. 127 Gothlin 1996, 175. 201 fertility she embodies." The ontological relationship of master and slave haunts this mythical connection of woman and Nature. A second example of woman's mythological ties is woman's role in man's creational myths. Take for instance, woman's role in

Genesis wherein Eve is created from Adam's rib.129 She is not an independent being

1 ^0 rather she is Adam's immanent other. She is made from his body, to represent the body of man, but she is not man. In this myth, woman is made for man's enjoyment.

One could rightly argue that these are just myths and thus, have little bearing on actual relationships. The problem is that these myths are more than just fiction; they provide the foundation for the contemporary Western narrative. Beauvoir explains,

"Women do not set themselves up as Subject and hence have erected no virile myth in which their projects are reflected; they have no religion or poetry of their own: they still dream through the dreams of men. Gods made by males are the gods they worship."

Myths are a crucial element in understanding who and what one may become. The implication of relying on man's myths entails that woman has no myth (god) by which to model her own life. The myths that surround woman depict her as the absolute Other and it is with these myths in mind that she considers her possibilities for becoming. If we take this argument seriously, we see that woman has no foundation by which to fashion herself as a subject—for to what can she aspire? Consequently, how is woman to achieve authentic embodiment if she has no model by which to fashion herself? Instead, she plays derivative roles in man's myths. This is perpetuated by perhaps the most pervasive myth i2S Beauvoir 1989,73. 129 Although there is a more egalitarian view of the Creation myth which states that Adam and Eve were created simultaneously, the hierarchical myth is still one with which most contemporary people are familiar. 130 Beauvoir 1989, 141. 131 Ibid, 143. 202 in Western civilization, namely, the separation of body and soul. Woman is linked to the body whereas man is associated with the soul (or secularly he is linked with the mind).

As such, woman is automatically considered to be a lesser being because of her connection to the material—a body that bleeds, excretes, ingests, and desires. On the other hand, man is the rational being. He is the mind that transcends the in-itself or the fleshy material.

The question as to why women have never set themselves up on their own account begins to emerge from Beauvoir's analysis of mythology. Beauvoir argues that three things are happening in this unhappy collusion. She explains, "When man makes of woman the Other, he may, then, expect her to manifest deep-seated tendencies toward complicity. Thus, woman may fail to lay claim to the status of subject because she lacks definite resources, because she feels the necessary bond that ties her to man regardless of reciprocity, and because she is often very well pleased with her role as the Other."

First, Beauvoir argues that woman does not have the economic means for questioning her status. As explored above in the early tillers of the soil, this is not always the case given that women were property owners and yet, they did not question their second-class status.

Second, as discussed in Section I, Beauvoir argues that woman and man are locked into a primordial Mitsein. She explains,

The bond that unites her to her oppressors is not comparable to any other. The division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history. Male and female stand opposed within a primordial Mitsein, and woman has not broken it. The couple is a fundamental unity with its two halves riveted together, and the cleavage of society along the line of sex is impossible. Here is to be found the basic trait of woman: she is the Other in a totality of which the two components are necessary to i ii one another.

Ibid, xxvii. Ibid, xxv-vi. 203 In setting himself up as the sovereign subject (as the One), man sets himself over and above all otherness. Due to her ambivalence, bad faith, and/or perhaps her desire for the bond, woman subjugates herself and is subjugated by man to the role of Other.134

However, recall from Beauvoir's Hegelianism in Section I, Chapter 1, that this explanation is troublesome. If this bond is biological it does not hold any phenomenological weight in Beauvoir's analysis. On the other hand, if this bond is ontological it contests Beauvoir's subjective point of departure in The Second Sex.135 If this bond is ontological, it cannot hold sway over woman's situation to the extent that

Beauvoir relies on it to do so. Therefore, the Mitsein does not adequately explain this collusion. The third and final reason Beauvoir gives is that woman is happy as the Other.

This possibility has not yet been dispelled even though it seems questionable that someone would willingly submit to being an Other. Beauvoir helps by explaining the role of woman in her own exploitation. She writes, "Being venerated and feared because of her fecundity, being other than man and sharing the disturbing character of the other, woman in a way held man in dependence upon her, while being at the same time dependent upon him; the reciprocity of the master-slave relation was what she actually enjoyed, and through that fact she escaped slavery." Woman embodies otherness so that she does not have to embody slavery. Little do many women realize that they are metaphorically less than the slave because they have never challenged man's positioning as the One.137 However, woman's story does not end with this evasion.

Ibid, 80. Bergoffen 1997, 168. Beauvoir 1989, 78.

204 According to Beauvoir, woman's role as the Other was strengthened with the

proliferation of private property. Woman was no longer the property-holder and her

status as Other had become deeply solidified through myths. Likewise man's solidified

status as the One afforded him the luxury of avoiding falling into otherness when woman

did inherit property from her mother. Man became the property-holder and woman, in her

role as Other, became part of that property.138 Beauvoir writes,

when woman is given over to man as his property, he demands that she represent the flesh purely for its own sake. Her body is not perceived as the radiation of a subjective personality, but as a thing sunk deeply in its own immanence; it is not for such a body to have reference to the rest of the world, it must not be the promise of things other than itself: it must end the desire it arouses.13

This linkage is easily explained by the Hegelian master-slave relation insofar as woman

occupies the place of the slave and man the place of the master. This moment in history most clearly exemplifies the Hegelian relation. Woman or the slave is literally part of man's or the master's property. The situation of woman did not advance beyond this relationship until the advent of the Industrial Revolution when machinery erased the need

for raw brute strength and woman was permitted to assume an economic role.140

Woman's economic role advanced because she entered the workforce and was able to

gain economic independence from man. In addition, the advent of birth control allowed woman even greater economic opportunities given that she had more control over her pregnancies and thus, she had more control over her childcare duties. Beauvoir explains,

"During the nineteenth century woman in her turn emancipated herself from nature; she gained mastery of her own body. Now protected in large part from the slavery of

138 For a more in depth look at the notion of woman as man's property see Luce Irigaray, "Women on the Market" in The Sex Which is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). 139 Beauvoir 1989, 157.

205 reproduction, she is in a position to assume the economic role that is offered her and will

assure her of complete independence."1 Beauvoir asserts that woman gained some

control over her situation because she was no longer subjected to this reproductive aspect

of her biology; but as discussed earlier, woman's situation is not merely rooted in her biology. Therefore, control over her body did not equal control over her facticity. She

was still the primary caregiver. Her wages were (are) still merely a fraction of her male

counterpart's wages. She simply could not adequately provide for herself. Unfortunately,

when her economic independence increased there were enough safeguards in place to

sustain the relationship between man and woman. For example, there was the notion that

the "'true woman' would remain at home and not lose her charm in voting, since she

[already] governs men without need of the ballot."142 Furthermore, neither money nor

control over her biology could buy woman transcendence, or more importantly, it could

not buy her the sort of ambiguity that Beauvoir forwards.143

Although at times problematic, Beauvoir's historical reading of woman's situation

successfully exemplifies Beauvoir's thesis that woman is Other. Moira Gatens champions this thesis by arguing for the importance of woman's historical situation in shaping her into the Other or rather shaping her into the contemporary Western woman.144 Although thinkers such as Kate Millet have contended that the body and psyche are post-natal

141 Ibid, 121. 142 Ibid, 123. 143 In Section IV, we will explore the notion that woman already embodies ambiguity insofar as "Woman, like man, is her body; but her body is something other than herself." (Beauvoir 1989, 29) Perhaps there is a distinction that needs to be drawn between bad ambiguity and good ambiguity. It is becoming clear that woman lives her body ambiguously as a body-subject (for she cannot escape her ownness) who renders herself body-object before the other, but this does not seem to be the sort of ambiguity that Beauvoir champions. Instead, Beauvoir is interested in promoting the notion that the human reality is both an embodied reality and a conscious reality. This is a reality wherein both aspects of our being are lived as integral to being human. 144 Moira Gatens, "A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction" in Imaginary Bodies: Ethics and Corporeality (New York: Routledge, 1996). 206 tabulae rasae, Gatens maintains otherwise. Gatens argues that such a view is naive and

ahistoric. She writes that if the body and the psyche are a blank slate it would be possible

to unlearn this oppressive framework that imbues one's actions with significance.

Reeducation, argues Gatens, will not undo or reshape the ways in which one understands

bodies—the female human being and the male human being. Moreover, the substantive

view that gender merely ascribes inequalities onto the body and psyche through

socialization ignores the importance of history's affect on the material. Gatens argues,

Each gesture, attitude, perception that enters human consciousness does so charged with significances that relate to all that has gone before. That the male body and the female body have quite different social value and significance cannot help but have a marked effect on male and female consciousness. [...] To claim this does not imply any commitment to a fixity or essence of the social significance of bodily functions, events or experience. The importance of signification, and its constitutive role in the construction of subjectivity, is curiously absent from the writings of the proponents of degendering.I46

History not only shapes our possibilities for action, but it shapes our very embodiment.

Embodiment is intimately intertwined with history which is particularly apt given that

one's being-in-the-world is much more organic and enigmatic than one could possible

hope to unpack. Each human being's opaque and disparate historical horizon allows for

different renderings or "singings" of the world both shaping and communicating one's

embodiment.147 However, these different singings are not so distinct that they cannot be understood by others. Understanding across bodies is possible because histories fold into

one another. They do not occur in solitude and in fact, they are all part of a larger world

history. One can understand these stylistic differences because the manifestation of history on the body overlaps with the bodies of others. Bodies are shaped similarly by

Kate Millet, Sexual Politics (London: Abacus, 1971), 30. Gatens 1996, 9. Merleau-Ponty 1962, 187. 207 shared experiences (even those that are geographically disparate). They are also shaped through one's proximity to the other. Sara Ahmed explains, "Bodies are hence shaped by contact with objects and with others, with 'what' is near enough to be reached. Bodies may even take shape through such contact, or take the shape of that contact."148 Friends, family, and colleagues express similar gestures and mannerisms because bodies adjust and overlap other bodies.149 It is possible to know that the other body exists, has a history, has projects, and is situated. All of this information is explicitly enacted by the body of the other and is communicable given one's own similar style of intending and living (gesturing, expressing, and intonating). In the fitting words of Moi, experience

"tends to leave its trace on the meaning of our words and actions."150 Thus there is an intimate connection between sociality and affectivity. Social practices and behaviors are not located in the body, in the psyche, or in the social rather they are "embedded in the subject".151 Heinamaa agrees with this reading. She writes that identities (as man and as woman) "are experienced and formed already on the level of perception and motility."152

Historically and thus perceptually the subject is always already a sexed being.

What does this rendering of our perceptuality entail for Gatens' historical account?

She explains that, "The very same behaviors (whether they be masculine or feminine) have quite different personal and social significances when acted out by the male subject on the one hand and the female subject on the other. Identical social 'training', attitudes or, if you will, conditioning acquire different significances when applying to male or

148 Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 54. 149 Merleau-Ponty 1962, 185. 150 Moi 1999, 112. 151 Gatens 1996, 8-9. 152 Heinamaa 2003, 68. 208 female subjects."153 Thus there is a historical depth and horizon to one's actions insofar as one's gestures and attitudes call to witness all of history. The body is shaped by and shapes one's historical positioning. There will always be qualitative differences in gestures and attitudes when performed by a man or when performed by a woman because they have different bodies (perceptually) and different histories and consequently, their experiences and their bodily intendings will have disparate meanings based on these lived differences.

However, one must be careful with such a claim. This reading does not entail that one's body and the actions it performs cannot take on new significances. Gatens further argues, "The body can and does intervene to confirm or to deny various social significances in a way that lends an air of inevitability to patriarchal social relations."154

Gatens seems to be on the same page as Beauvoir. Namely, they both argue that the human being is both historically and culturally situated in a society that is organized and divided by biological/physiological sex, but bodies are able to shape these organizations through their projects. This organization gives the appearance of necessity as is shown in the case of procreation, but if one wants to think about resistance and liberation for woman, one must recognize that this system of meaning is merely a contingency.

Furthermore, it is possible that in the future one can be situated differently. This is the brilliance of existentialism. It is only possible to proceed on this supposition. If we were to assume that our situation is fixed there would be no sense in trying to liberate woman from her oppressive situation as Other. Gatens conceives of these possibilities for liberation with her notion of the imaginary body.

Gatens 1996, 9. Ibid, 10. 209 The imaginary body is the site of one's historical and cultural specificity. Very

simply, it is the meaningful image of oneself that one carries and brings to bear on all of

one's actions. Gatens argues that the imaginary body enables (or potentially restricts)

intentionality by providing a foundation for all action. She uses the example of the phantom limb to show that the imaginary body is a phenomenological possibility that is lived as a material reality. She believes that a purely materialistic view of the body is far too shallow a reading. The imaginary body is "developed, learnt, connected to the body image of others, and is not static." Consequently, Gatens' imaginary body is a model of the body that is intimately intertwined in relations of power and yet, it is not determined by or determining of those relations. Gatens concludes that the body is always open for renegotiation and reappropriation much in the spirit of existentialism. Therefore, woman's historical moments come to bear on each woman's current situation as was explained above and thus, it is not enough to simply assert that one ought to change one's way of being in the world. The meanings of sexed bodies are simply not that transparent.

One must always keep in mind that history marks the body and by so doing it shapes each individual's current possibilities. This is why Beauvoir claims that one is not merely a freedom, but rather one is a situated freedom.

In conclusion, Beauvoir traces woman's history on how woman's body came to be (or perhaps always was) figured as Other to man's One. In this sense, "the whole of feminine history has been man-made."156 From the early tillers of the soil to contemporary Western society, Beauvoir describes this surprisingly static figuration of woman. Beauvoir's reading of the historical significance of woman renders woman's situation as

Ibid, 12. Beauvoir 1989, 128. 210 problematically ambiguous given that she is trapped and traps herself in her otherness.

Woman is both determined by what history makes of her (as maternal, mystical, and

mythical) and not determined by what history makes of her. One must not forget that it is

up to woman to solidify this creation through her appropriations which may or may not perpetuate her status as Other. Correspondingly, there is hope for her emancipation

through her relations with others and the ways in which she negotiates and appropriates

these relationships namely, it is through her being-in-the-world with others that we truly

get a sense for what is achievable without losing sight of woman's socio-historical

embodied situation. This realization sets the stage for the ethical potentialities that are set to unfold in Section IV.

211 Conclusion to Woman's Situation

Section III unpacked Beauvoir's notion of contemporary Western woman as she is considered in her biological, psychological, physical, and historical being. These different aspects of contemporary Western woman coalesce into an overall situation that allows us to consider being woman without the problem of the individual experiences of contemporary Western women unfurling this cluster concept. Being woman is an overall situation within which each individual contemporary Western woman participates. The magnitude of this concept calls on the reader to question whether or not individual women have the ability to think themselves differently, take up their situation differently, and effectively reshape the contemporary Western concept of woman.

Although The Second Sex renders woman as destined for Otherness, her ethical voice implicitly reminds the reader that woman can choose otherwise. It is how woman chooses to embody these meanings that shapes this restrictive understanding of woman and the biological, psychological, sociological, economical, and historical intersectionality between man and woman. Recall that we are told by Beauvoir, "It is not nature that defines woman; it is she who defines herself by dealing with nature on her own account in her emotional life."157 Beauvoir's existential moments are quick to point out that despite these tensions, woman is not determined by these external forces—the crushing density of contemporary Western structures of understanding such as patriarchy, but she is certainly situated with respect to them. So although the individual is existentially free to choose how to appropriate these meanings, she is not entirely free. Her conscious life is not completely of her making. Even if we are giving these structures of understanding

157 Beauvoir 1989, 38. 212 too much credit, Beauvoir does not deny the effect of the situation within which woman finds herself on each individual woman's psyche and on her body.

Beauvoir's reading of woman's situation shows how woman's possibilities are guided, but not determined. In fact, Beauvoir's argument for bad faith weaves together the disparate aspects of woman's situation and begs the question of collusion. It is because we can choose that our social positioning as the Other or as the One is so difficult to bear.158 Thus bad faith is not an ontological certainty, but rather it is an ethical attitude.

Therefore, shifting one's ethical attitude would assist in providing a pathway to liberation.

If one were to accept her ambiguity the existential anxiety of being a freedom in the world with others would dissolve. Recall from Section II that existential anxiety breaks down if one wills both the freedom of the self and the freedom of the other. Reciprocity would allow the question of valuation to be settled insofar as both individuals would have to metaphorically turn the key—our projects would be collective projects. The life and death struggle could be rethought as a negotiation.

Looking ahead, we are left with the difficulty of thinking through the opacity of embodiment insofar as one's situation clouds one's affectivity and one's possibility for freedom and yet at the same moment opens a space for reciprocity—a space that is not marked by struggle, but by negotiation. This task will be particularly tricky given woman's distancing from her affectivity through her becoming woman. Recall that by becoming woman the girl's relationship with her body-subjectivity, and moreover, her ambiguity, is covered over by her identification with her being as body-object. This bad faith (identifying with one's objectivity) masks woman's ability to choose her own

158 Man also dwells in bad faith as we saw in Chapter 2. As the One, man is estranged from his ambiguous nature. 213 projects and commitments. However, I will argue that it is possible to assert oneself as an ambiguity in the world without founding this negotiation on struggle or having to enter into struggle in order to arrive at ambiguity. Philosophies of recognition already presume too much about the human reality. Therefore, in Section IV, I will explore the possibility for an ethical relationship keeping in mind what it means to be situated and how our situation is shaped by, but not determined by one's particular being-in-the-world with others.

214 Section IV: Beauvoir's Existentialist Ethics and the Role of the Visible

In Section II, I argued that Beauvoir's existentialist ethics reveal that the paramount

relationship between human beings is one whereby each human being wills the freedom

of the other. Recall that one does not merely value the projects with which one engages,

but also values the freedom required to engage in those projects. However, the

possibilities for willing the freedom of the other was found to be problematic; in Section

III we discovered that the situation of woman limits her very possibilities for willing the

freedom of the other—the sort of freedom that Beauvoir forwards with her existentialist

ethics. As I have previously argued, Beauvoir's apt attention to the weight of woman's

situation in The Second Sex seemingly closes off the possibility for her ambiguous

ethics.1 In addition, woman's situatedness in the stronghold of patriarchy wherein man is

the One and woman is the Other seems to suggest that for Beauvoir the structures by

which one lives pose a threat to the possibility for Beauvoir's existentialist ethics.2 These

structures do so by normalizing embodied experiences rendering it extremely difficult to

clarify one's embodied commitments and forge new ethically productive relationships. In

fact, it could be argued that Beauvoir's understanding of patriarchy subscribes to the

notion that woman's situation is inevitable, such that moral freedom and ambiguity

appears to be merely ideal and rather unlikely. Therefore, how can and why would one

1 Even though Beauvoir reintroduces her ethic in the final pages of The Second Sex, her formulation of the erotic encounter as paradigmatic of her existentialist ethics still leaves one wondering if reciprocity is practically realizable given the weight of woman's situation. 2 Beauvoir acknowledges the influence of structuralism on her work as evidenced by her occasional reference to Claude Levis-Strauss, an early structuralist whose thesis she had read. Although Beauvoir is not a structuralist she does acknowledge the human capacity to live according to structures of understanding—patriarchy. See Beauvoir 1989, xxiii, 71, 74, and 149. For example, Beauvoir relies on structuralism to explain the fundamental hostility between consciousnesses. See Beauvoir 1989, xxii. It ought to further be noted that H.M. Parshley thanks Levis-Strauss for providing him with proofs of his work throughout Book II of The Second Sex (xxiii, n4).

215 substantiate an ethics of ambiguity in the face of patriarchy—a structure of understanding

that by all accounts operates because of this domination of woman by man?

In this Section, I argue that Beauvoir's ethics of ambiguity are worth rescuing from

woman's situation. Although Beauvoir's attention to situation complicates her

existentialist ethics, it is precisely this attention that offers up a complex and authentic

ethics. Beauvoir's steadfast attention to the capriciousness of the human reality is truly

revolutionary. In order to deepen Beauvoir's ethics I propose a phenomenological

investigation of the visible realm. The visible realm not only accounts for the weight of

woman's situation as Other, but the visible also allows for genuine embodied

reciprocity—a reciprocity that a structuralist approach cannot hope to foster. The human

capacity to live according to structures would limit our possibilities for thinking through

intersubjective relationships. For instance, if the human reality is founded upon conflict,

the key to woman's liberation would lie in relegating man to the position of Other in

which case genuine embodied reciprocity between two would not be possible. Beauvoir's

existentialist ethics aims to undo this false dilemma. Instead, if the relationship between

self and other is viewed through a phenomenal lens—a commitment that Beauvoir did not take quite far enough, we can begin to see the possibilities for reciprocity which both

acknowledge patriarchy and yet at the same moment aim to move beyond it.

The visible realm calls attention to the temporal, relational, and affective aspects of disclosure and, if taken seriously, it can help us rethink this apparent fundamental hostility. In Chapter 1,1 will clarify the link between becoming woman and becoming visible. Woman's situation is uniquely marked by her particular visibility. It is not just that the gaze of the other renders woman both subject and object, but it is also the case

216 that the gaze to which woman is subjected cannot be understood apart from the power that shapes the gaze and positions contemporary Western woman as Other. Clarifying this connection in Beauvoir's work will involve a reading of the notion of shame and how it affects woman's style of being-in-the-world. This will lead to a discussion of the intersubjective importance of this charged visibility—the social significance of the ways in which one visually engages the other. In Chapter 2,1 will explore our visual engagements through Beauvoir's notion of the appeal. I will argue that the appeal, as it is figured under patriarchy, is a rather tenuous way according to which we can understand our communication and communion with others. The appeal affirms a feminine sexuality that is problematically ambiguous. Therefore, it is necessary to look for ways in which the body can affirm its authenticity without simply reiterating its second-class status through self-objectification. In Chapter 3,1 will show how Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the visible draws Beauvoir's thinking out from under the deadening weight of contemporary Western woman's socio-historical situation, a structure which reinforces woman's multi-dimensional Otherness, and allows Beauvoir's ethics of ambiguity to flourish phenomenologically. This flourishing will occur through an investigation of disclosure which will provide a fecund way in which to think through inter-body-subjectivity and the possibilities for reciprocity therein. This unraveling will yield to the intersubjectivity Beauvoir has in mind.

217 Chapter 1: Becoming Woman—Becoming Visible

In this Chapter the situation of woman as the gazed-upon will be unpacked. Although this exploration will follow Beauvoir's work, I will draw from other contributors on the notion of the gaze such as Sartre, Lisa Folkmarson Kail, and Michel Foucault. Attention will be paid to the operation of the gaze on the body of the female human being, the shame invoked by the gaze, and woman's role in this encounter. Finally, this chapter will hint at the intersubjective possibilities inherent in the gaze as both an asymmetrical structure that shapes woman's being and as that which allows one's ambiguous being to flourish.

I want to begin by highlighting what we already know about woman's situation as a visible being. According to Beauvoir, woman's apprenticeship as a being for-others begins in early childhood. She explains that the penis and the doll direct boys' and girls' respective experiences in an important way. Recall from Section III, Chapter 2, that during maternal separation the boy turns his attention to his penis and hence embodies his subjectivity. On the other hand, the girl identifies with an object (doll) external to her being because she lacks that visible object figured as transcendence. The girl's doll becomes a pseudo-consciousness for the girl. For example, according to the girl it is the doll that wants a goodnight kiss or a cup of tea. The girl distances herself from her desires

(for a kiss or for tea). It is the doll that desires these things. Of course, this does not line up symmetrically with the boy's relationship to his penis; however, the doll and the penis play a similar role in the separation of the child's body-subjectivity and body-objectivity.

3 Beauvoir 1989,278. 218 In this scenario of the girl and her doll, the girl's body partially becomes an object for herself and, as will be explored more thoroughly below, the girl's body becomes an object for others through practiced self-objectification. The girl identifies with the doll and although the girl has imbued the doll with her desires—with her subjectivity, the doll is still an object and the girl knows this fact. This transference of the girl as object (doll) situates her intrasubjectively and intersubjectively and begins the shaping of her being as woman. Likewise, the transference of the boy as subject (penis) situates him intrasubjectively and intersubjectively and begins the shaping of his being as man. The doll is important for Beauvoir's account of becoming woman because it emphasizes the significance of objectification—a necessary component in the process of maturation especially for the female human being.

What is entailed by becoming woman in the sense articulated above? Beauvoir writes, the girl "is taught that to please she must try to please, she must make herself object; she should therefore renounce her autonomy. She is treated like a live doll and is refused freedom. Thus a vicious circle is formed".4 Although the girl identifies with the doll (or herself as object—for the doll is an object), she cannot deny that she is an embodied subjectivity in the same fashion that she cannot deny that the doll is an object. Recall from Section I, Chapter 3, that one cannot be purely object nor can one be purely subject for oneself. Although our experiences can be figured as such, the human being is made of one metaphysical substance. The human being is a situated embodiment. Therefore, woman's becoming as object for the other (and object for the self) is rather implausible even for Beauvoir. The human being's phenomenal experience as a being-in-the-world

4 Ibid, 280. 219 shows us this fact.5 Nonetheless, woman experiences herself as caught between her being

as object and her being as subject. It is not that she consciously understands herself to be

an object and thus experiences this problematic ambiguity. The ways in which woman

has been historically figured come to bear on her pre-consciousness and are subsequently

reiterated by her body in ways that she is often not directly conscious, but nonetheless

shape her relations with the world. In a sense, one's pre-conscious understanding of

oneself as woman plays an important role in what one is able to achieve. One's

possibilities are restricted by this rather opaque understanding.

The matter becomes more complex given that woman not only experiences her body

as she believes it to be for-others, as it plays out from her pre-conscious understanding,

but her body is also the site of physiological happenings from which her consciousness is

divorced. Menstruation, gestation, and so forth compromise woman's identity. Recall

Beauvoir's assertion that "Woman, like man, is her body; but her body is something other

than herself."6 Woman struggles with her ambiguity in a way that man does not struggle.

Woman learns to experience her body as an otherness. Unfortunately, this intrasubjective

relation calls into question the desirability of ambiguity. Perhaps it is that this unique

functioning of the female human body is something that Beauvoir could not reconcile

with her own being.7 It is in moments of alienation that one recognizes the need to reinvest in the body given that it is one's grasp on the world. Unfortunately, as explored

5 Although I have argued otherwise in Section III, Beauvoir presumes that as a child the girl begins by embodying her ambiguity. The process of maturation is thus particularly challenging. Beauvoir writes, "a conflict breaks out between her original claim to be subject, active, free, and, on the other hand, her erotic urges and the social pressure to accept herself as a passive object. Her spontaneous tendency is to regard herself as the essential: how can she make up her mind to become the inessential?" (Beauvoir 1989, 33) 6 Ibid, 29. 7 The ambiguity that Beauvoir champions is of a different sort than that within which we find woman trapped. In fact, we tend to think about ambiguous situations as negative. Could there be good ambiguity and bad ambiguity? We will discuss this further below. 220 in Section III, Chapter 2, alienation often reinforces woman's socio-historical situation.

This does not mean that man assumes his embodied subjectivity; he too can remain

alienated, but man is not troubled by his socio-historical becoming to the same extent that

woman is troubled. Man assumes his being as transcendent subject and does not feel the

pull of his immanence to the same degree that woman experiences her immanence. His

identity is not compromised by his physiology to the same degree. This is due in part to

woman's physiology, but it is also due to the way in which our physiology has

historically been taken up as we explored in Section III, Chapter 1.

In The Second Sex Beauvoir offers two seemingly disparate, but actually intertwined

positions that superficially appear to either forward embracing the onto-biological

situation of man or embracing the onto-biological situation of woman. According to

Bergoffen's reading of The Second Sex, Beauvoir explicitly asserts that one ought to

strive to transcend, while she implicitly argues that one ought to assume one's being as

ambiguous, such that one ought to assume one's human reality as this strange

intertwining of subjectivity and objectivity. Recall from Section II, Chapter 4, that

transcendence is rooted in immanence. The rootedness of transcendence in immanence

allows Beauvoir to hold these two positions without contradiction. In fact, the unique

blending of immanence and transcendence occurs in being as disclosure. One runs into

problems with Beauvoir's two voices only when one confuses Beauvoir's notion of

transcendence with Sartre's notion of transcendence.10 For Sartre, transcendence is a

8 This has been taken up by Celine T. Leon in "Beauvoir's Woman: Eunuch or Male?" in Feminist Interpretations ofBeauvoir, ed. Margaret A. Simons (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996). Leon explores Beauvoir's own historical baggage which, according to Leon, comes through at times in The Second Sex and champions masculine values as universal. 9 Bergoffen 2003, 235. This is supported by Beauvoir in the "Conclusion" of The Second Sex. See pg. 728. 10 Leon is guilty of reading these two disparate voices as one. The voice of Sartre sneaks in. This reading results in Leon's argument that Beauvoir is forwarding a masculinist view of the human reality. (See Leon 221 tearing away from the body. In fact, in Sartre's model transcendence is only possible if

one negates one's own facticity.11 This is far from existing ambiguously.

Although it is Beauvoir's hope that the human being can exist ambiguously with

others or as embodied transcendences as we discovered in Section II, the ways in which

one appears to others can inhibit one's ability to do so. Section III provided a reminder

that Beauvoir must keep in mind the effect of patriarchy on the body (especially the body

of woman) because "the habits and capacities we have developed as well as those of the bodies with whom we dwell" affect our very possibilities for freedom.12 Consequently, the ways in which one is recognized affects the ways in which one recognizes oneself.

One cannot forget about Beauvoir's debt to the philosophy of recognition.13 In this model, the subject determines the meaning of the other. Remember that according to

Beauvoir, "For him [woman] is sex—absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential."14 Part of the problem with this reading is that as long as man continues to recognize himself as the absolute subject woman will continue to derive her meaning as that which is other than man. However, all is not lost. As Beauvoir points out, this intersubjective structure is not ontologically necessary. Even if our history is founded on this antagonistic relationality (as laid out by

Hegel), the claim that our relationships are based on this fundamental duality is not an inevitability. In other words, it is entirely possible to figure intersubjectivity otherwise. In

1996) For an in-depth reading of the difference between Sartre's notion of transcendence and Beauvoir's notion of transcendence see Andrea Veltman, "The Concept of Transcendence in Beauvoir and Sartre" in Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of Influence, eds. Christine Daigle and Jacob Golomb (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). 11 Sartre 1956,409. 12Diprose, 55. 13 Beauvoir 1989, xxii. 14 Ibid. 222 fact, Beauvoir's ethics of ambiguity cannot get off the ground unless reciprocity is

attainable. Although our contemporary Western history as interpreted by Beauvoir (and

as unpacked in Section III) makes a strong argument for Hegelian recognition, our

experience can teach us differently. In fact, Beauvoir's existential phenomenological investigation of intersubjectivity demonstrates the possibilities for reciprocity through disclosure.

In order to explore Beauvoir's existential phenomenological investigation of intersubjectivity, we can look to the visible. The experience of seeing and being seen by the other is telling of one's possibilities for ambiguity—the gaze is that which fundamentally subjugates and subjectifies. Recall from Section I, Chapter 1, that Hegel outlines these different aspects of being by describing the process by which a consciousness becomes self-conscious. Self-consciousness ascends from consciousness through the gaze of the other and reaches self-certainty. The self is brought into subjecthood by another's gaze. Kail explains that, "the gaze is equally that which makes the articulation and recognition of my freedom at all possible. The gaze shapes my being and bestows upon me recognizable features which mark me as an individual in relating to others and which provide me with a position from which to speak and act."15 According to Kail, the gaze acknowledges and defines one as a freedom insofar as it is the other's gaze that brings the gazed-upon into subjecthood. Through the gaze the other recognizes the gazed-upon as a for-itself. Conversely, a self-consciousness can rob the other of his subjectivity or rather refuse to bestow subjectivity on the other. Given the inherent struggle in Hegel's reading, how one chooses to appropriate the gaze of the other is

15 Lisa Folkmarson Kail, "Fashioned in Nakedness, Sculptured, and Caused to Be Born: Bodies in Light of the Sartrean Gaze" in Continental Philosophy Review 43 (2010): 64. 223 somewhat inevitable insofar as the stronger self-consciousness becomes the master and

the weaker self-consciousness becomes the slave. Sartre's argument from Section I,

Chapter 3, is similar to Hegel's argument: one becomes a subject through the subjection

to and yet, transcendence of another. Finally, although Beauvoir is in agreement on the

dual power of the gaze, she argues that the gaze of the other carries a powerful historical

element even though it is not historically determined.

For Sartre, the gaze of the other informs us of our material being and affects the ways

in which we come to understand ourselves. For Sartre, the gaze of the other reduces the

for-itself to an in-itself. It is in the instant when we feel the other looking that we come to

recognize our objective being for others. At this moment we are aware that there is no

way in which to reconcile ourselves with our body-objectivity before the other. We

appear to the other as an object in his field of perception. Our possibilities are therein

reduced to the possibilities of the other. This becoming or being reduced to our objective

being causes shame insofar as we recognize that we are "indeed that object which the

Other is looking at and judging."16 When we are reduced to an object in the other's world

we recognize the impossibility of ever experiencing ourselves from the outside. The

gazer has access to a way in which we are to which we do not and cannot have access.

For Sartre, the implications of this estrangement and alienation from the way in which

others see us—the way in which we are, causes a fundamental conflict between the gazer

and the gazed-upon because the other has immutable control over an aspect of our

existence. Our freedom can be limited or rather carved out of the possible by the gaze of the other.

16 Sartre 1956, 350. Sartre's notion of shame is very much bound up in his understanding of the body- object. Interestingly, he finds that through the look the other sees one as one is—I am an object. 224 In order to clarify these possibilities one must not overlook Beauvoir's reading of

woman's situation as it awakens us to the negative aspect of this exchange, such that the

gaze of the other can render the gazed-upon as a being in-itself. In the case of woman, it

is the ability of the gaze not only to render the gazed-upon as a being in-itself, but to

reinforce woman's status as the inessential Other. The gaze has the ability not only to

shape/curb her freedom insofar as her status as a body-object is reinforced with every

objectifying gaze, but it also affects the gazed-upon in a unique way. The gaze that

renders the gazed-upon as a body-object carries with it a particular affectation. The

gazed-upon is shamed by the brute fleshy absurdity of her body.

Shame is a feeling of inadequacy before the other. Beauvoir explains, "Men and

women all feel the shame of their flesh; in its pure, inactive presence, its unjustified

immanence, the flesh exists, under the gaze of others, in its absurd contingence."17

However, woman experiences the shame of her flesh to a greater extent than man given

her positioning as the absolute Other. Problematically, if the gaze historically renders the

other as body-object (such is the case with man's gaze on woman's body), the feeling of

shame can operate without the physical gaze. It is often enough to imagine what one may

look like before an other to experience shame. This experience of shame will both

frustrate woman's possibilities and yet open up her possibilities for a rethinking of the

ways in which she appears to the other. As Sartre explains, there is an interesting duality

of the look as both shaming and as necessary for existence. Sartre writes,

17Beauvoir 1989, 381. 18 In "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power", Bartky argues that women do not have to imagine what they look like because they possess within them a permanent sense of their visibility before the male gaze. Bartky explains, "In contemporary patriarchal culture, a panoptical male connoisseur resides within the consciousness of most women: They stand perpetually before his gaze and under his judgment. Woman lives her body as seen by another, by an anonymous patriarchal other." (72) 225 Shame is by nature recognition. I recognize that I am as the Other sees me. There is however no question of a comparison between what I am for myself and what I am for the Other as if I found in myself, in the mode of being of the For-Itself, an equivalent of what I am for the Other. [...] In addition the comparison is impossible; I am unable to bring about any relation between what I am in the intimacy of the For- Itself, without distance, without recoil, without perspective, and this unjustifiable being-in-itself which I am for the Other.19

Given Sartre's loose adherence to the Hegelian model of recognition, it is understandable

that he argues that it is through the gaze of the other that one is justified as a human

being.

Beauvoir's reading of shame is a bit different from Sartre's abstract reading, but she

still gives his notion too much credit. For Beauvoir shame is the realization that one is

separate from one's body insofar as the look of the other creates a distance between one's

consciousness and one's body calling the fleshy body of the shamed forward. For the

female human being shame begins in early childhood. However, it is in the

transformation from girl to woman that shame most notably occurs. Beauvoir explains,

this body which the girl has identified with herself she now apprehends as flesh. It becomes an object that others see and pay attention to. [...] The young girl feels that her body is getting away from her, it is no longer the straightforward expression of her individuality; it becomes foreign to her; and at the same time she becomes for others a thing: on the street men follow her with their eyes and comment on her anatomy. She would like to be invisible; it frightens her to become flesh and show her flesh.21

In becoming flesh for an other the girl realizes that she is an object in the other's perceptual field. After time, she is no longer for-herself a subject or rather her

subjectivity comes to be bound up in the way in which she is for an other.22 In this

19 Sartre 1956,302. 20 Beauvoir 1989, 307. 21 Ibid, 307-8. 22 Perhaps she was never a subject given Beauvoir's reading of becoming woman as we saw in Section III, Chapter 2. The ontological status of children is unclear in Beauvoir's works. However, in her chapter "Childhood" she does write about the distancing between the young girl's body for-herself and her body for others. Ibid, 306-9. 226 fashion her body image as that which is looked at and judged by others solidifies. Her body is for others.

As Beauvoir's reading describes, the girl is uncomfortable with this image. She desires to be above all else invisible to the gaze of the other. In the example above she wants to be invisible to escape her being as flesh—as body-object. However, it is questionable as to whether she does not also want to be invisible to escape her subjectivity given that in the gaze both identity and objectivity can be realized. For at the same moment that she is estranged by this gaze it also justifies her existence and renders her a freedom. It does so, not merely in the fashion described by Kail, but being objectified comes to be a way in which woman feels that she is most herself. It is possible that she feels as though she is most in control when she is being objectified because she has learned from childhood to recognize herself as an object.

Under the patriarchal gaze, the female human being habituates herself to existing as an object for the other. Julien S. Murphy explains, "one is not born woman, but becomes woman under the patriarchal gaze.'" Becoming woman is in a sense becoming object or flesh for the other and questionably, a body-object for the self. Becoming woman is marked by a way of being in the world as an in-itself or object for an other. Interestingly,

Bauer explains that one is not living in a world wherein one's "acts of self-expression or self-empowerment are distinguishable, even in theory, from acts of self-objectification."24

The girl is not merely playing at being a doll. Through self-objectification, her body quite literally becomes for the other (and arguably for herself) mere flesh. The gaze of the other

23 Julien S. Murphy, "The Look in Sartre and Rich" in The Thinking Muse: Feminism and Modern French Philosophy, eds. Jeffner Allen and Iris Marion Young (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 111. The italics are mine in order to call attention to Murphy's qualification of the gaze. 24 Nancy Bauer, "Lady Power" in The New York Times: Opinionator, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/lady-power/ (June 20, 2010).

227 can be used to solidify the primary relationship that the girl has to her doll. The gaze

reinforces her pre-conscious notion that she is no more than this fleshy being as seen by

the other. Thus the yearnings of childhood, especially the desire to be invisible, wanting

to be subject without having to also be subjected to, are replaced for many women by

mystification whereby woman learns to enjoy the benefits of objectification as was

discovered in Section III. In fact, in order to maintain this socio-cultural image of woman

as object, woman needs to work at perpetuating her own objectivity. In a sense, she must

collude in the functioning of the gaze and by so doing she strengthens the value of the

gaze as shaming. Surely the benefits must be worth the effort and the loss.

The gaze of man upon the body of woman is not a gaze that woman can easily return.

Murphy argues, "The look directed toward women within patriarchy distances women

from positions of power, focuses on women as objects of male sexual desire, and seeks

the destruction of women as free subjects."25 This oppressive seeing perpetuates and

reiterates woman's status as the Other because it affects woman's very possibilities for

appealing to the other as a subject of power, desire, or agency. Shame before the other

merely solidifies the relation of power between man (the gaze that shames) and woman

(the gazed-upon). Consequently, social inequalities, which result from the reiteration of

the masculine gaze, do not allow for such a simple reversal. It takes work to gaze back at

the other as Sonia Kruks claims. She argues, "To be subjected to a gaze that one cannot reciprocally return is, indeed, to experience objectification, or an alienation of one's

subjectivity. I experience a loss of my immediate, lived subjecthood as I become fixed or

immobilized in my own eyes as the object that I am (or believe myself to be) in the eyes

Murphy, 104. 228 of the one who looks at me." Unfortunately, this social inequality is reinforced in the

ways in which one appropriates the gaze, particularly the gaze of the socially privileged.

The alienation of one's subjectivity in the other, mystification as discussed in Section

III, Chapter 2, is an ethical escape for woman in particular. Woman alienates herself in

the gaze of man and hence, colludes in this functioning of the gaze. This is not to say that

the power-terrain between the gaze of man and the gaze of woman is equal, but that

woman's desire for mystification (which is delivered through obj edification) is a

contributing factor to this inequality. It perpetuates the operative power of the male gaze.

Bauer reminds us that alienation is key in understanding woman's and man's respective

situations.27 Recall that man alienates himself in his projects and woman reifies herself in the gaze of the other. Although woman desires her invisibility, the gaze affords woman

great existential relief. Alienation allows both man and woman to escape his and her existential responsibility, but at what cost?

This is more than an existential survival strategy wherein man and woman both skirt their existential angst through the gaze (or partial gaze) of the other. Shame, as a sense of unworthiness before the other, thus demarcates a "primary structure of a woman's lived experience [...] and it becomes integral to a generalized sense of inferiority of the feminine body-subject."28 Feeling ashamed is degrading and for the existentialist this affects the ways in which one understands the feminine body-subject. Kruks argues that the shame one feels as a result of the gaze of the other comes to signify woman's overall sense of self as inferior or degraded through the gaze.

26 Sonia Kruks, Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 62. 27 Bauer 2001, 210. 28 Kruks 2001, 65. 229 The weight of the gaze significantly colours woman's style of relating to the world.

This style of being as shameful is an important aspect of being woman. Of course, there

are all sorts of experiences that assist in marking woman's body as a shameful body, but

the gaze directs attention to the body in its fleshy aspect and thus highlights the importance of physiology. Kruks explains, woman's "being-for-others is profoundly

gendered. This is not a facticity that can be ignored, since it thoroughly permeates her being-for-herself. She cannot renounce her femininity, for it is constitutive of herself,

even as it undercuts her struggle for self-affirmation." Woman cannot transcend her

facticity to the same extent that man can transcend because her situation is one whereby her being for the other as a body-object is more real than her being for herself as a body-

subject. It is through the eyes of the other that she comes to recognize herself and reify herself as a body-object. According to Kruks, Beauvoir "suggests that oppression can permeate subjectivity to the point where consciousness itself becomes no more than a product of the oppressive situation." However, this does not mean that woman's situation as such prohibits her from transcending altogether. Kruks points out that the process by which one interiorizes the gaze of the other and the shame that it evokes is not entirely clear.

The notion of the body-subject can assist in a better understanding of how it is that woman internalizes shame. In Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others,

Sara Ahmed aptly explains, "what we 'do do' affects what we 'can do'."31 Furthermore,

"Bodies are hence shaped by contact with objects and with others, with 'what' is near

29 Ibid, 66. 30 Sonia Kruks, "Gender and Subjectivity: Simone de Beauvoir and Contemporary Feminism" in Signs, Vol 18, No. 1 (Autumn 1992), 100. 31 Ahmed, 59. 230 enough to be reached. Bodies may even take shape through such contact, or take the shape of that contact."32 Ahmed emphasizes that bodies are molded by the ways in which they habitually engage with others and how others habitually engage bodies. Earlier it was explained that in childhood and into adolescence the gaze of the male human being freezes the female human being into her being for others as a fleshy being—a mere aspect of her embodied consciousness. The male human being is taught to assume his subjectivity while the female human being is taught to assume her objectivity by taking the world as ready-made. This learning happens not only through the gaze, but more generally through socialization. Ahmed explains, "the repetition of the tending toward is what identity 'coheres' around. We do not, then, inherit our tendencies; instead, we acquire our tendencies from what we inherit." Feeling ashamed is what feminine body- subjects learn to do.

Foucault explains that contemporary subjectivity is constituted within the visible realm. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, he writes, "Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests in bodies in depth; [...] it is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies." In his account two things are certain. Firstly, one is always visible. It is as visible that one is theoretically scrutinized and thereby constituted as a contemporary Western subject. In "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power," Bartky argues that Foucault's notion of

32 Ibid, 54. 33 Ibid, 129. 34 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). 35 Ibid, 217. 231 disciplined bodies can be somewhat helpful in thinking through contemporary Western

feminine embodiment.36 Bartky writes that women have internalized the omnipresent

male viewer (in line with panopticism). Panopticism is a model that asserts that one is

always aware of one's visibility to others even if the presence of the other cannot be

verified.37 There is an implicit functioning of power (the unverifiable omnipresent gaze

of the other on the body of woman) that circulates or keeps woman vigilant through this

mechanism of control. Not even in the privacy of her own home is woman's body-

objectivity to be undone; woman is subject to critique if not by the man on the street then

by her own self-consciousness. Panopticism is internalized so that it functions

automatically. Thus one does not even need to be gazed at to feel ashamed of one's body

if the techniques of forces on bodies have done their job. Shame has become a

fundamental aspect of woman's being-in-the-world. One is cognizant of one's visibility

and this has shaped the ways in which one comports oneself toward others.

Secondly, Foucault's account of our society of surveillance acknowledges the

thickness of the lived body—even if only briefly. Foucault argues that control is not

about amputation, oppression, or altering society to make control possible rather he

recognizes the possibilities inherent via bodily habituation. It is possible to exercise

control over individuals by understanding that bodies must appropriate the habits

According to Bartky, Foucault does not provide us with a way in which to think about the particular disciplinary practices that produce feminine embodiment, she does find him helpful for thinking through the disciplines that produce docile bodies. Bartky creates her own continuation of Foucault's social practices which delineate femimne embodiment See Bartky's "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power," 66-71 37 Foucault's notion of panopticism stems from Jeremy Bentham's panopticon. The panopticon is an architectural achievement in pnson design wherein the guard tower is in the centre of the prison and the inmates cells form a loop around the tower. The cells are backlit and the tower windows are shaded by blmds. Therefore, at any moment the guards can watch the prisoners without being seen This would theoretically result in a constant fear of being watched by the guards The inmates would theoretically self- police given their status as permanently visible. According to Foucault, the panopticon is successful because the inmate is always visible and the guard's presence is always unverifiable (Foucault 1995, 200- 1). 232 necessary for control. It is not enough to tell subjects that they are being watched; they

must believe that they are being watched. They must internalize the gaze. It is only then

that their bodies may be controlled. Sonia Kruks agrees that there seems to be in

Foucault's subject a "degree of interiority and agency" insofar as there appears to be a

visceral functioning which appropriates and internalizes surveillance. One must

effectively believe that she is being watched. Embodied agency, although not taken up by

Foucault beyond his notion of critique, is helpful in recognizing that the body can be

taught otherwise. Instead of appropriating the omnipresent male viewer, it is possible to

engage the omnipresent male viewer.

According to Beauvoir, "What is desirable is that she [-woman,] should be taught, on

the contrary, to accept herself without being self-satisfied and without shame."40 Just as

woman is taught to internalize the male gaze she can also learn to engage with the gazer

and reject the aspects of it which aim to imprison her in her body-objectivity. This is

possible given that one can be viscerally attuned to the ways in which the gaze of the

other closes off and opens up one's possibilities for freedom. Woman need not reject the

gaze altogether because the gaze of the other is necessary for her subjectivity (it is two­

fold). Woman need not satisfy herself narcissistically by recognizing herself consciously

as an object.41

38 Kruks 2001, 17. 39 Foucault's historical ontology of ourselves as a limit-attitude, experimental in nature, and conscientious of our contingency promotes a critical ethos which is helpful for thinking through the cognitive aspects our contemporary commitments. However, this historico-critical attitude does not unpack the embodied possibilities for understanding our commitments. See Michel Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?" (43-57) in The Essential Foucault, ed. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (New York: The New Press, 2003). 40 Beauvoir 1989,327. 41 In Beauvoir's chapter on narcissism in The Second Sex, she argues that the narcissist takes herself to be that which she desires enacting a sort of in-itself-for-itself fantasy. Beauvoir explains, "the reflection is, like herself, a thing; and as she does covet female flesh, her flesh, she gives life through her admiration and desire to the imagined qualities she sees." (631) 233 In conclusion, shame is an integral link between becoming woman and becoming visible. Woman's situation, as described by Beauvoir, is marked by her particular visibility. This visibility cannot be understood simply as objectifying. Instead, the gaze to which woman is subjected must be accounted for in terms of the contemporary Western power-terrain that shapes both the gaze of man and the gaze of woman. After unpacking this particular shaping one can begin to see the problems of thinking through the gaze as described implicitly by Hegel and explicitly by Sartre—the one who does the looking matters. Without simply reiterating the status quo, it is necessary to seek out ways in which the body can affirm its ambiguity and not just as a body-subjectivity or as a body- objectivity. Part of this affirmation relies on understanding the ways in which the gaze is taken up in our contemporary Western culture and also the ways in which it reinforces the structures that shape our human reality. It is necessary to do this in order that the possibilities for seeing may be reconceived. In this tenuous exchange of gazes there exists the possibility for an ethical relation based on affectivity. In the following chapter the intersubjective importance of our visual engagements and how our contemporary

Western power-terrain plays out in the visual appeal will be clarified.

234 Chapter 2: Appearance and the Appeal

The way in which we communicate with the other is important insofar as it is through

communication that we reinforce or challenge the patriarchal power-terrain and our

possibilities for reciprocity therein. Beauvoir's notion of woman's appeal to man in The

Second Sex confirms a feminine sexuality that is problematic given that it reinforces

woman's status as a body-object. It is necessary to look for ways in which the body can

affirm its ambiguity without simply reiterating its second-class status through this self-

objectification. In order to gesture towards some of these possibilities for ambiguity we

must first unpack Beauvoir's notion of feminine sexuality and how this particular

sexuality factors into the appeal, so that we may arrive at possible pathways for an ethical

exchange between ambiguous beings.

Man and woman each live their ambiguity differently as has been discussed

throughout Section III. Their human reality is shaped according to their historicity, their brute materiality—which shapes their affectations, and their divergent embodied

economic and socio-cultural experiences. However, Beauvoir argues that there is no behavioral distinction between the boy's primary relationship to the mother and the girl's primary relationship to the mother. Beauvoir argues that both children demonstrate an

aggressive behavior insofar as they grab at and touch the skin of the mother.42 They quite literally grasp for the other so that they may sensually (touch, taste, and smell) experience the other. Recall that this aggressive behavior is intimately connected with the child's primary relationship to the mother's body which is an object of desire for both the male

Beauvoir 1989, 268.1 would argue that babies assert a primary aggression to all human beings, but Beauvoir's Freudian argument focuses on the experience of child and mother. 235 child and the female child. The male child is able to hold onto this relationship into adulthood insofar as the body of the mother is most often replaced by the body of woman—the "soft, smooth, resilient feminine".44 The male child's primary aggression is merely directed toward another body. It is a bit different for the female child insofar as she tends to learn to replace her primary aggression altogether. She does not merely redirect her aggression like the boy redirects his aggression. Instead she learns to replace her primary aggression with passive behaviour.

Recall that for Beauvoir the girl is usually encouraged to take the world as ready- made and resign herself to her objective status. It is not because there is any fact of the matter that the female human being learns to embody a passive sexuality. It is that her social education scaffolds this passive way of being woman. Beauvoir explains, "Far from consigning herself to man because she recognizes her inferiority, it is because she is thus consigned to him that, accepting the idea of her inferiority, she establishes its truth."45 Woman's path is already carved out for her. It is then up to her to follow the path and appropriate this passive sexuality which she is offered. According to Beauvoir, she learns that she is to appear "weak, futile, docile."46 Learning to appear as such aids in shaping her embodied consciousness to be as it appears. Recall from Ahmed that what we do shapes what we can do. Moreover, tending towards others in this fashion allows woman or perhaps even teaches woman to skirt her existential responsibility as we discovered in Section III, Chapter 2.

Ibid, 268. Although this is heterosexist, it does highlight the notion that the human being is socialized to replace the mother's body with the body of another. 45 Ibid, 335. 46 Ibid, 336 236 Beauvoir argues that even though this feminine behavior allows woman to placate her existential angst, this tending toward also creates a frustration in woman insofar as her being as a free subject is buried under the social prescriptive that she replace her active sexuality with a passive sexuality. Jo Ann Pilardi explains,

A woman still has an ability to be aggressive erotically, because she is never reduced finally and forever to the status of an object, yet her eroticism becomes, and can remain, a source of ontological confusion to her, due to her being-made-object and not being-made-subject. She is required to be passively, but must at the same time be actively, in an erotic experience.47

Learning to embody a passive sexuality does not mean that woman is satisfied in her sexual passivity much in the same way that learning to live her objectivity does not mean that she is satisfied as a body-object. Accordingly, she undergoes a struggle between her original aggressive sexuality and her learned passive sexuality. Beauvoir explains, "a conflict breaks out between her original claim to be subject, active, free, and, on the other hand, her erotic urges and the social pressure to accept herself as passive object."48 In the end it is what she makes of this socio-existential struggle that is telling of the ways in which she lives out her desire or rather whether or not she is taken up by man's desire which often remains an unchanged aggressiveness.

Often the way that woman's tension between active sexuality and passive sexuality is figured in contemporary Western society is through self-objectification—an erotic transcendence. Erotic transcendence is when woman actively reinforces her body- objectivity and yet at the same moment remains transcendent insofar as she must work in order to maintain her body-objectivity, such that she projects herself into the world as a

47 Jo-Ann Pilardi, "Female Eroticism in the Works of Simone de Beauvoir," The Thinking Muse: Feminism and Modern French Philosophy, eds. Jeffher Allen and Iris Marion Young (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 24. 48 Beauvoir 1989, 336. 237 passivity. Woman's erotic transcendence becomes the vehicle for expressing her lost aggressive sexuality. Ironically, woman's erotic transcendence reinforces woman's situation as sexually passive. Beauvoir explains that for the female human being "erotic transcendence consists in becoming prey in order to gain her ends. She becomes an object, and she sees herself as object; she discovers this new aspect of her being with surprise: it seems to her that she has been doubled; instead of coinciding exactly with herself, she now begins to exist outside."50 She baits the other so that she may experience herself not only as hunted, but more importantly by playing with her passivity she experiences herself as the hunter. She transcends her immanence in order to make herself object for the other. She is, in her eroticism, both subject and object. However, she does not embody both aspects of her being. There is an interesting aspect of exteriority to her self-objectification. It is as if she must exist outside of herself in order to experience herself as a subject. This split is unsurprisingly similar to the girl's relationship with the doll.

Beauvoir cautions us not to understand passive aggression as completely objectifying.

She explains, "To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different

In this chapter we can also ask whether or not there is a difference between good ambiguity and bad ambiguity. If it is the case that a distinction can be made it would seem that, for Beauvoir, erotic transcendence is a bad type of ambiguity. Although woman transcends in immanence—she is ambiguous, erotic transcendence is a doubling of the self. This is bad insofar as it reinforces a dualistic perspective of our human being. This doubling is made possible through bad faith. On the other hand, good ambiguity would look a bit different. According to Beauvoir's description of erotic transcendence below, it would seem that in contradistinction good ambiguity is the movement wherein the self (a transcendent being) coincides with the self (an immanent being). Good ambiguity finds its home in disclosure. This is not to be confused with the famous formulation of Sartre's being-in-itself-for-itself. Sartre's fantasy hinges on the fact that this sort of being (as a for-itself) would be cognizant of it's in-itselfness. Hence, it would reach a godlike status. In the case of good ambiguity, the for-itself lets go of its intentional functioning so that intentionality is calmed and there is an atrunement with one's environment and the affectations which arise therein. This is possible if we understand the human being to be a plentitude of being and not a lack of being as will be discussed below. 50 Beauvoir 1989, 337.

238 thing from being a passive object".51 This seems rather obvious given that even though

our body-objectivity may eclipse our body-subjectivity we can never be an object.

Therefore, woman's self-objectification does not in fact render her an object. The body is

only truly a body-object in death. However, erotic transcendence is problematic insofar as

it masks the realities of one's embodied consciousness by playing into the Sartrean story

of feminine desire as explained in the romantic rendezvous. It is somehow possible to be

completely mind. Surely Beauvoir cannot be dismissing the ways in which her reading of feminine sexuality as an erotic transcendence confirms Sartre's ontological explanation of woman's deceptive role in the erotic encounter. Moreover, this reading of feminine

sexuality overlooks the very real ways in which woman's body is made passive under the gaze (and touch) of the other.

Sartre argues that woman's body acts as a sort of trap for man. Recall that in the erotic encounter the for-itself uses the in-itself to seduce the other. It makes itself into an object in order that it may capture the other's subjectivity. The other's subjectivity is the true object of desire. Simultaneously, the for-itself fears losing itself in its own flesh or in the flesh of the other. The fear of losing the for-itself to an in-itself is clarified in Sartre's examination of slime and holes. Slime horrifies the for-itself. Sartre argues, "Slime is the revenge of the In-itself. A sickly-sweet feminine revenge [...] it symbolizes the sugary death of the For-itself (like that of the wasp which sinks into the jam and drowns in it)."52

The ontological risk that Sartre foresees is that consciousness will be the wasp that is smothered by the immanent—the in-itself that the sliminess represents. Think of the

51 Ibid, 379. 52 Sartre 1956, 777. 239 impossibility of moving forward (transcending) in a jar of jam. This fear of transcendent consciousness is also forwarded in Sartre's discussion of holes.

Holes fascinate the for-itself. One needs only to consider a small child. Sartre explains, "One can see at once, however, that the hole is originally presented as a nothingness 'to be filled' with my own flesh; the child can not restrain himself from putting his finger or his whole arm into the hole. It presents itself to me as the empty image of myself."53 Holes (emptiness) call on the for-itself to be filled. Sartre does not just mean this literally; he argues that since the for-itself is the only being who can experience lack, the for-itself must sacrifice itself so that there may be being. The for- itself sacrifices itself for the totality of our ontological being. What is interesting is how this ontological reading is brought to life (or made literal) in Sartre's exploration of the feminine sex as a hole.

Both slime and holes return Sartre to the erotic encounter, not of embodied consciousnesses, but of transcending consciousnesses. Sartre writes,

The obscenity of the feminine sex is that of everything which 'gapes open.' It is an appeal to being as all holes are. In herself, woman appeals to a strange flesh which is to transform her into a fullness of being by penetration and dissolution. Conversely woman senses her condition as an appeal precisely because she is 'in the form of a hole.' [...] Beyond any doubt her sex is a mouth and a voracious mouth which devours the penis—a fact which can easily lead to the idea of castration. The amorous act is the castration of the man; but this is above all because sex is a hole. [...] Nevertheless the experience with the hole, when the infant sees the reality, includes the ontological presentiment of sexual experience in general; it is with his flesh that the child stops up the hole and the hole, before all sexual specification, is an obscene expectation, an appeal to the flesh.54

Given that in this account the for-itself is not complete unless it is a for-itself-in-itself, consciousness uses its body to fill being and by so doing it merges with the in-itself. The

Ibid, 781. Ibid, 782. 240 problem for Sartre is that such a consciousness would cease to be a for-itself. As

transcendence, consciousness must avoid being part of the in-itself. Recall the terror of

the immanent manifested in the for-itself s relationship to slime. If the for-itself married

the fullness of being of the in-itself, consciousness would cease to be transcendence.

Consequently, if transcendence seeks immanence by filling the holes it encounters in an

attempt to achieve its fullness of being, transcendence would essentially destroy itself. Of

course, in the story that Sartre tells of our contemporary Western society, the male is the

for-itself who encounters the female in-itself, the gaping hole that quite literally secretes

slimy mucus. The male fears losing himself, his penis, in immanence through the erotic

encounter. It is of no surprise that Sartre fails to develop an ethical theory given this

intersubjective conflictual structure. Unfortunately, Beauvoir gives a strikingly similar

existential reading of the erotic encounter that helps substantiate Sartre's ontological

account.

At times Beauvoir's reading of the erotic encounter does not clearly differentiate

itself from Sartre's very troubling reading. Beauvoir's reading of the body as a mimetic

object prevents her from seriously returning to the body in order to unearth the embodied possibilities for reciprocity. Although Beauvoir teaches us about ambiguity, her

existential-phenomenological account of woman's situation leaves much unexplored. Soft throbbing mollusks aside,55 Beauvoir explains,

Make-up, false hair, girdles, and 'reinforced' brassieres are all lies. The very face itself becomes a mask: spontaneous expressions are artfully induced, a wondering passivity is mimicked; nothing is more astonishing than to discover suddenly a young girl's physiognomy, well known in its ordinary aspect, when it assumes immanence;

55 Beauvoir describes feminine sex desire as the "soft throbbing of a mollusc." (Beauvoir 1989, 386) This sounds strikingly similar to Sartre's description of the feminine sex desire as slimy, soft, docile, and sugary (1956, 775-7). This gives some evidence for Beauvoir's disgust for the female human body. 241 the eyes no longer penetrate, they reflect; the body is no longer alive, it waits; every gesture and smile becomes an appeal.56

We can appreciate that what Sartre finds to be ontological, Beauvoir finds to be social— woman mimics passivity, but where is the difference between mimicked passivity and passivity or rather, how is the difference lived? It seems from the explanation above and from Beauvoir's notion of erotic transcendence that woman does indeed learn to lie in waiting for the for-itself. She is playing with passivity in order to capture the transcendence of her prey. Beauvoir seems to confirm Sartre's (and Hegel's) ontology with respect to recognition. The Second Sex is, among other things, the story of this

(mis)recognition and as long as this voice is the stronger of the two voices it is necessary to work to rescue her earlier ethics of ambiguity.

Feminine desire is characterized as an appeal as was briefly discussed above, but let us return to Pyrrhus and Cineas for a moment wherein Beauvoir uses the notion of appeal not to think through feminine sexuality, but rather to advocate for freedom.

According to Beauvoir, the human condition is in its very being an appeal to the other.

The other calls one out of one's for-itself by recognizing it as an ambiguous being—as both freedom and facticity. This appeal from the other highlights the importance of our ongoing relations with others. Beauvoir explains, the human being "is a perpetual surpassing of itself; an appeal in need of a response constantly emanates from it; a void in need of fulfillment is constantly being hallowed out in it."57 Furthermore, in The Ethics of

Ambiguity Beauvoir writes, "we see that no existence can be validly fulfilled if it is

CO limited to itself. It appeals to the existence of others." Remember that it is by one's

Beauvoir 1989, 358. Beauvoir 2004a, 106. Beauvoir 1976, 67. 242 subjection to the other that one locates oneself as a being-in-the-world. This does not

mean that it is the other who bestows subjectivity rather as a reality peopled by differing

transcendences, the other calls on us to choose.

It is through the appeal that it is possible to affirm our own existence and the

existence of the other.59 Beauvoir writes, "for this rapport with the other to be

established, two conditions must be met. First, I must be allowed to appeal. I will

therefore struggle against those who want to stifle my voice, prevent me from expressing

myself, and prevent me from being. [...] Next, I must have before me men who are free for me, who can respond to my appeal." ° Beauvoir gestures toward the importance of

freedom between two. The appeal requires both the freedom to call on the other and the

freedom to respond to that call. It is not that the other must do anything^/br me given that

"as freedom, the other is radically separated from me" rather the other must be open to

my invocation and I in turn must be open to reciprocating his call. We must stand

ambiguously before the other.

Ambiguity is overtly typified for Beauvoir in the intermingling of body and

consciousness in the consensual erotic encounter. This encounter is based on reciprocity,

generosity, and openness. It demands that aggression and passivity be cast aside for the

expressiveness of my body and the body of the other. The body of the other is not an

object to be overcome nor is it a subject to be obeyed. Instead both partners form an

"ambiguous unity".62 Beauvoir explains that it is through ambiguously being with an

59 Furthermore, Beauvoir explains, "Man is only by choosing himself; if he refuses to choose, he annihilates himself (Beauvoir 2004a, 113). 60 Beauvoir 2004a, 136-7. 61 Ibid, 126. Recall from Section II, Chapter 2, that the other cannot do anything/or me given the distinction that Beauvoir makes between inferiority and exteriority. 62 Beauvoir 1962,32-3. 243 other that one can be more than for-oneself as a transcendent project or for-others as an

immanent body. It also calls into question the notion of male sexual aggression and

feminine sexual passivity refiguring the appeal as a reciprocal exchange.

As we explored briefly in the "Introduction", Bergoffen brilliantly explores the

possibilities for this erotic relationship in a way that need not be thought of as sexual, but

more generally as ethically affective. She writes, that "The erotic is the moment in which

I recognize myself in the other without reducing the other to my double or dissolving

myself in their otherness." In the erotic encounter there is an intoxication of ambiguous

being and reciprocity. Furthermore, it paints one's perceptive experience as ongoing and

unstable calling into question subjectivity as anything other than an intersubjectivity.

Bergoffen's reading of the erotic encounter in Beauvoir helpfully discredits the view

that desire is necessarily marked by conflict. Unfortunately, it is also somewhat counter

to Beauvoir's own description of the feminine appeal as that which lies in wait for the

male response. Although Beauvoir's description is socio-historically informed and thus

not the last word on woman's future possibilities, it does take into consideration

contemporary Western woman's situation. In thinking through the possibilities for

intersubjectivity it is necessary that we do not lose sight of woman's current situation. We

must pick up her story today and sketch out the possible trajectories without losing sight

of our history. Furthermore, Beauvoir's refusal to think through the erotic perceptual body in contexts other than those proposed by Sartre, Freud, and Sade is extremely troubling, such that her analysis of woman's eroticism remains ironically phallocentric.

Bergoffen 1997, 120. 244 Although Beauvoir sites examples of eroticism which confirm Bergoffen's reading,64 she

fails to examine what woman's erotic experiences actually look like over and beyond

those that confirm Sartre's reading.

For example, in "An Introduction to Patriarchal Existentialism"65 Jeffner Allen

suggests sinuosity as a way in which to understand women's experiences and projects. She

describes sinuosity as "a pattern of connectedness that constitutes women's experiences of

being in a world. Sinuosity is a dynamic structure that enables the emergence of a positive

women-identified sensibility and feminist experienced Sinuosity is a descriptive tool that

allows for an experiential-phenomenological account of embodiment centered around

positive and productive affectivity simply because it reconnects woman with herself.67 She

writes, "The sinuous undulates, ripples, in the breeze. It slithers silvery on moonlit nights.

The sinuous billows in the waving fields of corn, the flowing of a mane, the rolling in

laughter of joyous celebration."68 Allen beautifully illustrates a woman-centered narrative

that could provide an escape from our contemporary Western structures of understanding.

On the other hand, Beauvoir misses out on a wealth of possibilities for thinking

through woman's troubled embodiment insofar as she does not tell us how to move from

an erotic transcendence to an erotic ambiguity. This is cause for hesitation in thinking

through the erotic as a pathway into the ethical. Consider the body that appeals. So long

as the body that appeals is kept in close proximity to man—shamed through the look of the other, there cannot be reciprocity. Diprose explains,

64 For example, Beauvoir explains, that "she, like him, in the midst of the carnal fever, is a consenting, a voluntary gift, an activity; they live out in their several fashions the strange ambiguity of existence made body." (1989, 728) 55 Jeffner Allen, "An Introduction to Patriarchal Existentialism" (71- 84) in The Thinking Muse, eds. Jeffner Allen & Iris Marion Young, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). 66 Ibid, 81. Italics are original. 67 Ibid, 82. 68 Ibid. 245 at a distance, woman's difference is complementary and promises to affirm man's self-presence; in proximity, her 'sameness' heralds the death of the self. There is no exchange between man and his creditor, woman. Rather, woman's 'gift' to man is his (impossible) self-certainty; the 'return' for her investment is a contradictory corporeality-suspended between virtue and shame.

Diprose clarifies that for this penultimate gift of recognition, woman is thanked by a confirmation of her status as Other—the generous and shameful being who refuses to break the bond. As explored in Section III, Chapter 4, woman is mythologized and thus heralded as virtuous and yet at the same moment she is reduced to her objective shameful

status as a mere body-object—an in-itself. This socio-historical collapse of woman's

freedom into mere fleshy being makes it extremely difficult for woman to truly appeal to the other. If she is not understood to be a freedom her appeal to the other, which necessarily originates from a free being, cannot be understood as an authentic appeal and thus the two cannot enter into a reciprocal relation. Her appeal figured under patriarchy merely acts as that which is other than man or that which is other than the for-itself. Moi writes,

By seeing the sexed body as a background which the woman is obliged to foreground whenever she is asked to define herself, Beauvoir indicates that for a woman living under patriarchy, the body is a far more inescapable fact than it is for a man. [...] Whatever the woman says, she will have her body—her female sex—taken into account.7

Woman's body figured under patriarchy colours her possibilities for appeal. However, it is not possible to do away with the body as it is integral to our communication with others. Instead it is necessary to ensure that the meaning of the body remains open. I am not suggesting that a woman's actions will always be reduced to her body, but rather she cannot escape her bodily being as Other when she appeals to man under the current rubric

Diprose, 43-4. Moi 1999, 196. 246 of understanding wherein there cannot be freedom between two. In order to rethink this

static relationship it is necessary to turn to the body.

Recall from Section III, Chapter 3, that for Beauvoir the body carries the weight of its situation in its style of being. Femininity marks the body in a myriad of ways, but one thing is certain: the feminine human body is biologically, psychologically, comportmentally, and historically marked by objedification. Femininity stylizes the body in a way in which woman's situation as Other is evident and by so doing the female body as feminized confirms this second-class status. These meanings come to affect what the feminized body can in fact do. To return to Ahmed's point, bodies confirm and/or they deny these trappings of femininity through the ways in which they appropriate these stylizations.71 Similarly, vigilance is key for the existentialist. Therefore, both woman and man need to work to keep up this pretense of being body-subject or being body- object. In addition, the body-object is economically valuable insofar as its worth is confirmed through practices that limit the freedom of woman. The real irony is that the body-object is not nearly as valuable as the (free) body-subject.

Even the free body-subject involves a degree of trauma insofar as bodies must learn how to navigate their disparate environments, environments that are peopled by others.

Moreover, Beauvoir "notes the ways in which our diversely sexed bodies invite us to experience our subjectivity differently and distinguishes the natural invitations of the body from the categorical demands of patriarchy." Consequently, if woman reflects on this trauma and differentiation as outlined by Bergoffen, perhaps it would yield to treating one's own body as more than just an object to be sacrificed to the other through

71 Ahmed, 59. 72 Bergoffen 1997, 149. 247 the fleshy appeal. If one were to change the way in which she appealed to the other by rethinking her commitments, she could also hope to change the way in which the other engages her. The two could forge an ethics of ambiguity.

In conclusion, the appeal figured tenuously under patriarchy reinforces a duality between one's body-subjectivity and body-objectivity. This makes it particularly difficult to clarify what Beauvoir actually means by ambiguity or why she would assert that it is possible to base an ethics on it. Yet, Beauvoir's notion of reciprocity and mutuality, which we will explore further in Chapter 3, underlies her thinking on ambiguity. It is because the human reality is ambiguous that the human being finds herself faced with the choice to reify herself as a body-subject or to denigrate herself as a body-object. It is with this choice in mind that woman must rethink the different ways in which she appeals and appears to the other.

The visible is understood by both Sartre and Beauvoir to be a space wherein one's being is reified into that of body-subject and denigrated into that of a body-object, but I argue that this reading misses out on Beauvoir's reading of embodied affectivity. Thus it is necessary to turn our attention to the visible for ways in which to moderate this relationship so that socio-historical figurations of contemporary Western bodies can be reshaped. It is not that one ought to aim to undo the structure of the look as it importantly endows the human being with her ambiguous constitution rather the look need not forget its temporal, relational, and affective nature. In Chapter 3,1 will show how Merleau-

Ponty's phenomenology of the visible and Marks' haptic visuality allows for a refiguring of Beauvoir's existentialist ethics which pulls it out from under her reading of woman's

248 situation. This is possible by exploring the potential of the affective willful body as brought to the fore through the look.

249 Chapter 3: Visibility and the Ethical

The gaze provides each individual with the necessary condition for becoming a body-

subjectivity and yet at the same moment it also renders each individual a body-

objectivity; the gaze both subjectifies and objectifies the gazed-upon. Consequently, the

visible realm is of primary importance to our intersubjective reality. However, Sartre's

famous conception of the look serves to reiterate our social hierarchy by privileging the

objectifying power of the look—especially the look of man qua subject upon the body of

woman. For this reason, it is crucial to affirm the ambiguity of the gaze which means

accepting and working with the realization that the reciprocity inherent in ambiguity

cannot be sustained apart from the risks of congealed objectification and reified

subjectification.

Let us begin with Sartre's description of the gaze as objectifying. Sartre beautifully

writes, "the Other's look fashions my body in its nakedness, causes it to be born,

sculptures it, produces it as it is".1 This is a very limited view of vision or rather it is a

limited view of how the look of the other shapes our being. Sartre's explanation remains

somewhat in the realm of the ontological, producing the body "as it is". For Sartre, this production is that of an in-itself. Furthermore, Sartre's description leads us to gather that

our bodies are not a product of our own willful actions, such that the ways in which we appropriate the gaze and communicate with the other through the visible does not assist in shaping our being. The co-constitutive element is lacking from Sartre's account of the look. This of course, becomes a serious problem when appropriated by Beauvoir to help make sense of the situation of woman as Other and the affect of man's gaze on woman's

73 Sartre 1956,475. 250 body. If Beauvoir remains faithful to Sartre's notion of the look trying to think woman

out of this relationship of subject and object appears beyond the bounds of possibility.

Where is Beauvoir's willful subject in this fashioning?

Sartre's problematic notion of the relationship between gazer and gazed-upon asserts

a sort of mastery of the visible wherein one's being as visible is determined by the other

through our current structures of understanding that categorize woman (Other) as a body-

object or categorize man (One) as a body-subject. In this structure of the gaze there is no

room for ambiguity thus reinforcing Sartre's notion of intersubjectivity as fundamentally

conflictual. Furthermore, in this reading there is little room for affectivity beyond the

feeling of shame by the gazed-upon and mastery by the gazer. It also presupposes that the body-subject and the body-object are completely structured in the visible realm or more

accurately in Sartre's visible realm. This misses out on the richness of the intersection between the seeing and the seen which occurs in, but extends beyond the visible given that bodies extend beyond their visible aspect and further, do not exist in solitude, but rather exist in a world wherein self and other overlap.

Unfortunately, Beauvoir's reading of the look and the emphasis on shame is very much in line with the reading proposed by Sartre making it difficult to untangle the two.

Furthermore, it is even more difficult to untangle what is necessary to the look from what is merely historically contingent to the look in Beauvoir's reading; her existentialist ethics cannot flourish if Sartre's reading of the look is anything more than a historical contingency for Beauvoir. Her adherence to the Hegelian model of recognition calls this merely historical reading into question. Given this adherence it would be possible to think of ways in which to temper the encounter between two, but fundamentally the conflictual

251 nature of the look would find its confirmation in one's ontological beginnings. However, it is possible to move beyond such a restrictive and oppressive reading of one's visual encounter with the other by taking seriously the claim that human beings are not fundamentally conflictual beings. If we take Beauvoir's notion of ambiguity seriously, it is possible to begin with reciprocity rather than with struggle. With a little help from

Marks and Merleau-Ponty,74 Beauvoir's notion of ambiguity as the fundamental way of being-in-the-world opens up the ethical possibilities inherent in the visible allowing her existentialist ethics to flourish.

In contrast to the look, haptic visuality calls for a very different type of seeing—a seeing based on affectivity. This type of seeing fosters ethical possibilities that nurture the corporeal dimension of one's relationship with others. In The Skin of the Film:

Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses, Marks explains that haptic visibility is a "tactile epistemology involving thinking with your skin, or giving as much significance to the physical presence of an other as to the mental operations of symbolization."75 Haptic visuality combines the tactile, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive functioning of the visible and calls on one to fashion what is before them through one's affectivity rather than merely as an optical representation. In this sense the visible does

Merleau-Ponty points out that the Sartrean notion of self and other as held out in nothing, which is essentially the viewpoint one must take when considering his notion oi assujettissement, ensures that there is no intersection between the two worlds. Merleau-Ponty explains, "The other's visible is my invisible; my visible is the other's invisible; this formula (that of Sartre) is not to be retained. We have to say: Being is this strange encroachment by reason of which my visible, although it is not superposable on that of the other, nonetheless opens upon it, that both open upon the same sensible world". (1968, 216) For Sartre, the spread between self and other is not reconcilable. This does not mean that Merleau-Ponty takes the world of the other as transparent rather he argues that there is a transparency between two—an encroachment of self and other, that allows for a shared world. This will become clearer below. 75 Laura U. Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 190. 252 not appeal to be mastered, but rather it offers itself as a particular affectation that engages

one's embodied consciousness.

Let us consider an example of haptic visuality. When I walk through the forest I do

not stop to take count of all the trees, the fallen branches, or the shapes of the stones on

the path. When I am walking, I am interacting with my environment, not by actively

objectifying that which is around me, but by an intimate interchange of my body and my

surroundings. The experience of walking through the forest is one which engages me

sensually, cognitively, emotively, and comportmentally. I give myself over to the greens

of the trees, the grays of the stone path, and the blues of the sky much in the same way

that Beauvoir gives herself over to the snowfield where she slides.76 Marks explains that

in haptic visuality "a sensuous response may be elicited without abstraction, through the mimetic relationships between the perceiver and a sensuous object." My feet

effortlessly find their way over the uneven path. There is a harmony, a synergy, between my environment and myself. I do not become one with the forest—it necessarily remains

at a distance, but it incites joy in me because of our mimetic relationship. My

environment calls on or provides a space for my affections which in turn evoke imaginings and memories. I cannot walk in the forest without recalling past experiences

of walking through similar forests to bear witness. My body remembers my childhood spent navigating the boreal forest of Northern Ontario or running the trails of Southern

Ontario. These memories intermingle with my affectations and imaginings shaping my experience of this particular interaction. Merleau-Ponty goes so far as to say of the sky: "I abandon myself to it and plunge into this mystery, it 'thinks itself within me', I am the

Beauvoir 1976, 12. Marks, 164. 253 sky itself as it is drawn together and unified". Haptic visuality recognizes this overdetermination through one's inherence in the world. This type of experience calls into question the Sartrean formula, such that the human being is more than a lack of being that desires to only possess being in its fleshiness.

Although interacting with nature is not synonymous to interacting with others, there is something that can be taken from these interactions and brought to bear on our relations with others. The human aspect of this interaction is a little trickier even though

Merleau-Ponty writes in "Eye and Mind" that many painters have experienced a reversed gaze. He quotes Paul Klee as remarking, "In a forest, I have felt many times over that it was not I who looked at the forest. Some days I felt that the trees were looking at me, were speaking to me."79 One's engagement with sensuous objects and with others is not so distinct that one cannot draw on one's experience to think through the other.

Our interaction with sensuous objects can lend insight into our interactions with others. When we interact with objects we often bring to them our common understanding of what they are and the associated feelings that accompany their being. On the other hand, it is possible to get caught up in the way that objects affect me—present to me as only marginally dependent on what I bring to them. The world appeals to us to take up different levels which allow us to understand the world in different ways. In this sense, the object to which I direct my attention is active in its own appearance—it helps constitute the ways in which I come to know it. Granted, it is entirely possible to be unreceptive of these appeals and possible affectations—closed up within one's own thinking nature. We cannot force the other to enter into a negotiation. However, the

Merleau-Ponty 1962, 214. Merleau-Ponty 1974,288. 254 notion that one can close off the world in this fashion arguably gives too much credit to

one's cognitive aspect. Our bodies are very much caught up in a world of solicitations. If

one interacts with the object, if one allows one's embodied consciousness to be more than

that which ossifies the object in its brute being, it is possible to get taken up in the forest

or the projects of others. This is not just a one way interaction. The forest calls on our

bodies to experience it in a myriad of ways just as the other can call on us to experience

her in a myriad of ways. Both are active in this visual engagement.

Human beings engage one another in a co-constitutive exchange that fosters a myriad

of appropriations. One is affected by the other not merely because one has assimilated

her, constituted her, or transformed her into thought, but because one takes up aspects of

her through one's body, such that she thinks herself within the gazer. This type of

embodied and mimetic relationship with the other entails that the figure and ground co-

mingle—we cannot just see the other as a fleshy body, such that one's engagement with

the other is temporally and existentially nuanced. Through this engaged perceptuality,

that which has been described above, the fleshy body would be an aspect of one's

engagement with the other. It would not merely be an object to be mastered through the

cold hard gaze of the subject as Sartre envisioned earlier. Instead, by engaging the other

haptically, "I come to the surface of my self, losing myself in the intensified relation with

an other that cannot be possessed."80 The disparate aspects of our being-in-the-world

refuse to be reconciled into an objective thought because we are more than an object. She

is more than an object because I recognize myself in her.

The body of the other overlaps with one's own body closing the calculative distance between two if one, engages the other. This means that one must accept the risk associated

80 Ibid, 184. 255 with allowing the other to really see oneself as more than just a fleshy body. It is not that my body is taken up by the body of the other. This would undoubtedly result in a whole host of problems given woman's situation. It is that the gaze requires a spacing between two in order for it to function. Although the cold hard calculative distance may close, after all there is no coincidence, we are still separate. In this sense, it is not like the hand that reaches out and lays hold of the sensuous object. In order to perceive the other/object must be at a distance. This clearing between oneself and the other/object allows for questioning, ranging over, and dwelling on. Recall Hegel's active model of knowledge.

One must move outside of oneself in order to gain knowledge of the other, the world, or the self. Interestingly, in this figuration one's own being must also be kept at a distance.

This is how one has knowledge of oneself. One is both a fleshy being as seen by the other

(in ways that are unimaginable to oneself) and a consciousnesses in a fundamentally

Q 1 transparent and yet, thickly embodied way.

This intermingling of body and consciousness renders the human being as a depth of being which is not wholly accessible from the inside (one cannot know how one is for others) or from the outside (others cannot know how one is for oneself). The body of the other, like one's own body, is never fully apparent nor can it be completely unpacked.

However, the other is not entirely alien either. Merleau-Ponty argues, In order to think of him as a genuine /, I ought to think of myself as a mere object for him, which I am prevented from doing by the knowledge which I have of myself. But if another's body is not an object for me, nor mine an object for him, if both are manifestations of behaviour, the positing of the other does not reduce me to the status of an object in his field, nor does my perception of the other reduce him to the status of an object in mine.

11 will unpack this below in my discussion of saturated presence. 2 Merleau-Ponty 1962, 352. 256 For Merleau-Ponty, it is not that the other is symmetrical to oneself, but rather the other

inhabits the world alongside oneself. One's body overlaps with the body of the other

insofar as the other expresses existence through a unique elaboration of expressions that

we can never fully unpack, although our memories and imaginings contribute to her plentitude of being and in turn open upon our own. We recognize in her manifestations of behaviour, an interesting mix of the new with the familiar. Her body is not merely a mute

facticity, but it is a manifestation of a certain socio-historical situation that overlaps with my own body insofar as we share a world.84 She incites thoughts and new understandings

in us that are ambiguously taken up by our own bodily intendings. It is in this bodily

coping with the world through the projects of others whereby reciprocity is

consummated.85 She is both other and a part of ourselves insofar as she thinks herself in

us by allowing us to see with her. In haptic visuality there is both a respect for

difference—the other is not the same and the "concomitant loss of self, in the presence of the other."86 As discussed above this blurring of self and world/other is a key component

of disclosure and it is this blurring that renders an ethical generosity and thus, renders

authentic lived ambiguity possible.

Merleau-Ponty is taken to task by Ingaray for his solipsistic beginnings which she argues close down the possibilities for a true mutuality rendering Merleau-Ponty's intersubjectivity as a being-alongside and not a Being-with Ingaray argues, "The phenomenology of the flesh that Merleau-Ponty attempts is without question(s) It has no spacing or interval for the freedom of questioning between two. No other or Other to keep the world open. No genesis. No grace Having become a god, man works and plays with the world until it is worn out7 Very carefully But not without a certain ennui7 By himself" See Luce Ingaray, "The Invisible of the Flesh A Reading of Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, "The Intertwining—The Chiasm"" m An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans Carolyn Burke and Gillian C Gill (Ithaca. Cornell University Press, 1993), 183. It is true that the situation of the other can be senously curtailed by her facticity, but this does not mean that we do not have shared expenences or projects which intertwine with one another after all we are both situated freedoms 85 Merleau-Ponty 1962, 354 86 Marks, 192-3. 257 Recall from Section II, Chapter 2, that generosity is a fundamental openness to others

that nurtures the corporeal dimension of one's inter subjectivity. Diprose tells us that

generosity is an immeasurable aspect of intersubjectivity that cultivates an openness

between subjects as corporeal and social beings while disavowing bodily stability and

bodily cohesion. According to Diprose, "Corporeal generosity is writing passionately in

blood, writing in matter that defies the culturally informed habits of perception and judgement that would perpetuate injustice by shoring up body integrity, singular identity,

and their distinction between inside and outside, culture and nature, self and other."87

Corporeal generosity grounds an ethics that allows for affectivity insofar as it recognizes

the importance of perceptivity and the myriad of ways in which one's engagements can

be taken up by the body of the other. Moreover, corporeal generosity acknowledges the

ways in which one's body is not merely one's own body, but rather it accounts for the

ways in which bodies overlap, saturate, and destabilize the bodies of others. The ability to

feel, remember, and imagine (the temporal depth of our possibilities) affords a creative

freedom to the encounter. Similarly, the freedom of the other is also nurtured through the

generous exchange because one's authentic appeal to the other as a subject supports these

avenues for discovery.

Generosity,

not only precedes and establishes communal relations but constitutes the self as [necessarily] open to otherness. Primordially, generosity is not the expenditure of one's possessions but the disposition of oneself, the being given to others that undercuts any self-contained ego, that undercuts self-possession.88

Generosity disavows possession and requires that one avails oneself to the other without losing oneself in the other. Beauvoir explains, "generosity seems to us to be better

87 Diprose, 190. 88 Ibid, 4. 258 grounded and therefore more valid the less distinction there is between the other and

ourself and the more we fulfill ourself in taking the other as an end."89 Beauvoir suggests

that it is through generosity that one is able to not only nurture the freedom of the other, but also to bestow value in the freedom for all by taking the other as an end (that which necessitates one's own freedom).

Unfortunately, Beauvoir does not take her thinking on corporeal generosity far

enough given her tenuous adherence to the Sartrean model of intersubjectivity. This

shortcoming makes the linkage between corporeality and moral freedom difficult to

substantiate, thus rendering the situation of woman fixed in her oppression and her

existentialist ethics idealistic at best. However, all is not lost given that Beauvoir

implicitly urges one toward a mutual disclosure that is arguably rooted in generosity and is made possible by the visible. This ontological and yet affective intersubjectivity complement one another.

Recall from Section II, Chapter 3, that Beauvoir argues that one's original way of being-in-the-world is being as disclosure and not merely being as transcendent.

Disclosure is the moment when one is no longer concerned with merely asserting one's own freedom through transcendence and instead unveils the world opening up possibilities for others. This moment, one's fundamental nature,90 is marked quite simply by the joy of existing.91 This joy entails accepting that the moment of intentionality with which this thesis is concerned is the moment when one casts oneself into the world as a

"lack of more or less various, profound, and rich aspects of being." It is not that one is

89 Beauvoir 1976, 144. 90 Ibid, 12. 91 Ibid, 41. 92 Ibid. 259 an absolute lack looking to be filled with the in-itself as Sartre suggests rather in this moment one opens oneself to the world in order that the world unveils itself through this opening.

Casting oneself into the world as a disclosure of being is not to be mistaken for the intending for-itself. Disclosure shows that for Beauvoir consciousness is not emptiness.

Instead it is thick with experience because it is embodied. The human being is overdetermined because her experiences are a "saturated presence" and not an ontological lack. Steinbock explains, "In short, if we prefer, value, hesitate, love, lack, are disappointed, denounce, reject, judge, and so on, it is because our comportment to the world and to others is saturated." One's bodily being is permeated by affectations, such as love, disappointment, or rejection. 5 Each affectation saturates the human being via her intentions either by seeking more or by turning away. In turning away, she does not merely return to her lack of being, but rather she opens herself up to new affections.

Steinbock's reading of the human reality shows that the way of being is a way of plenitude and not of deficiency. Steinbock writes, "intentionality is characterized not by lack, but surplus, not by absence, but too much presence."96 Recall that for Sartre intentionality is one's original way of being in the world. According to Sartre, consciousness as intentionality is emptiness: it "is what it is not and is not what it is."

This understanding necessarily shores up a human being who is deficient. Surely this effects one's relations with others. Now consider Beauvoir's original way of being-in-the-

93 Steinbock, 54. 94 Ibid. 95 Heidegger suggests this as Dasein's attunement to its environment in Being and Time. Heidegger explains, "A mood makes manifest 'how one is, and how one is fairing'. In this 'how one is', having a mood brings Being to its 'there'." (173/134) Dasein's attunement to its environment colours its being-thereness. 96 Steinbock, 53-4. 260 world. It is not as intending toward and filling up one's lack of being, but rather the

original moment is being as disclosure—an opening onto the world. It is a receiving of

the world and not merely a taking possession of the world.

In disclosure the gaze questions, ranges over, and dwells on the other. It does not

separate itself from the being of the other by reifying either the self or the other. Marks

describes this moment of opulence aptly. She writes, "the act of viewing is one in which

both I and the object of my vision constitute each other. In this mutually constitutive

exchange I find the germ of an intersubjective eroticism." In haptic visuality, a way of

seeing that dovetails nicely with disclosure, there is a chiasm or an encroachment between viewers that figures as open and unstable rendering both self and other (or the

world) as vulnerable—each wills the freedom of the other.

The individual is vulnerable under the gaze of the other just as the other is vulnerable under her own gaze. This is the case since our freedom depends on the will of the other.

The individual is vulnerable because she has invested in a relationship that may or may

not work out. Recall that the other endows subjectivity. Thus, it is not in turning her back

on the other that she makes herself vulnerable rather vulnerability abounds in the visible.

She is vulnerable through her looking insofar as she acknowledges that it is in looking that she is also gazed-upon. It is not only she who questions the object or the other; the object or the other reveals itself or herself through this looking that is really a dialogue.

Merleau-Ponty explains,

The enigma is that my body simultaneously sees and is seen. That which looks at all things can also look at itself and recognize, in what it sees, the 'other side' of its

97 Marks, 183. 98 Merleau-Ponty uses the term chiasm to describe the perpetual pregnancy between subject and object, perceiver and perceived which allows for an effectual closure by which perception occurs. See "The Intertwining—The Chiasm" in Merleau-Ponty 1968, 130-54. 261 power of looking. It sees itself seeing; it touches itself touching; it is visible and sensitive for itself. It is not a self through transparency, like thought, which only thinks its object by assimilating it, by constituting it, by transforming it into thought. It is a self through confusion, narcissism, through inherence of the one who sees in that which he sees, and through inherence of sensing in the sensed—a self, therefore, that is caught up in things, that has a front and a back, a past and a future."

This ambiguity between seer and seen and touching and touched is rooted in the

ambiguous body as a body that can both see and be seen, touch and be touched, and so

forth because the body extends beyond the visible and tactile.100 It is both a body-subject

and a body-object and it is in the other that we recognize that we are for the other as the

other is for us. Consequently, we do not understand who we are through retreating into

our transparent for-itselfness; we understand who we are because we are also inextricably

out there with/in the other. In order to understand this human reality it is not enough to

acknowledge that we are both an in-itself and a for-itself because this does not capture the complexity of being-in-the-world, but instead we must understand ourselves to be

caught up in the other. This enigma of being-in-the-world is given over through our

affections which call on our memories and imaginings which are constituted through our being-in-the-world with a past and a future. Thus the self that Merleau-Ponty describes is much more ambiguous than the self Sartre describes earlier. It is not that we can simply

w Merleau-Ponty 1974, 283-4. 100 The question of blindness is particularly pressing in this last chapter. I approach the visible through Merleau-Ponty who explains that the "visible is cut out of the tangible, every tactile being in some manner promised to visibility, and that there is encroachment, infringement, not only between the touched and the touching, but also between the tangible and the visible, which is encrusted in it [...]. Since the same body sees and touches, visible and tangible belong to the same world." (1968, 134) Although Merleau-Ponty stresses that we inhabit a visible world, it is not necessary that one must be able to see in order to partake in the visible. Even someone who is blind is visible for others and encounters others who are in turn visible for others. This affects the ways in which the blind person expresses herself and appropriates the world around her. The visible is relevant to her becoming and in this sense she is very much caught up in the visible. Furthermore, even the blind have ways in which to see. Visibility overlaps with other senses and hence can migrate into other perceptual areas. This is the reason why the blind man is able to 'see' with his cane. His sense of vision is located in his fingertips and thus comes to be located in the tip of his cane. For more on touch and visibility in Merleau-Ponty, See Cathryn Vasseleu, "Touching the Flesh" in Textures of Light: Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau-Ponty (New York: Routledge, 1998), 60-73.

262 turn our gaze on the subject and in turn reduce him to the object that we understand him

to be—recall Sartre's notion of shame. We cannot do this because this is an attenuated

view of the capacities inherent in the visible. In fact, there is a simultaneity between

looking and being looked at that cannot be reduced to assimilation nor can it be deprived

of its temporal thickness. The temporal nature of the gaze (and of the other senses)

changes the ways in which we come to conceive of our possibilities of being-in-the-world

with others.

The subject that we recognize ourselves to be is not the Sartrean for-itself rather each

one of us is a self that is existentially and temporally ambiguous in a world with others.

This recognition allows for a subjectivity that is far more nuanced than Sartre and Hegel

suggest. As demonstrated above, Heidegger, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty are right in

their similar notions of becoming as experientially temporal. I take Beauvoir's thinking

further and deepen it by exploring the affectations that arise through this temporal

engagement thus overlooking the possibility for reciprocity in this durational becoming.

Recognition does not happen through a life-and-death struggle wherein the gaze reverses

back and forth from subject to subject. Recognition of an other's subjectivity and of one's

own subjectivity happens through a rather messy temporally interesting unfolding

whereby one and the other mutually recognize the reversibility of their sensings calling

into question one's socio-historical positioning as fixed—One and Other. This

understanding cannot happen merely in a frozen look that sculpts the other into her being.

Instead, recognition requires questioning, ranging over, and dwelling on the being of the

101 In the gaze there is a relation of power at stake as we saw in Hegel's struggle, such that the struggle is only possible if there is also resistance. As Foucault says in Power/Knowledge, "there are no relations of power without resistance." (142). See "Power and Strategies" in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Vintage Books, 1980). 263 other. This reversibility, as described by Merleau-Ponty opens a space of generosity that

allows one to remain oneself and not get lost in the being of the other (or being for the

other) insofar as one is a self through disorientation, instability, relationality, and

ambiguity. One is not a self through objectification or subjectification.

Merleau-Ponty explains that the gaze is not merely objectifying and subjectifying, but

rather the gaze has the ability to draw together in the body our disparate connections with

the world. In this sense,

every perception is a communication or a communion, the taking up or completion by us of some extraneous intention or, on the other hand, the complete expression outside ourselves of our perceptual powers and a coition, so to speak, of our body with things102

and with others. Accordingly, perception entails a transcendence that is rooted in

immanence. It is a movement beyond the self-same, a positing of something more, and

finally, a return—becoming a self. Through our presencing and positing of something more the boundaries between self and other grow fuzzy. Beauvoir explains, "man also wills himself to be a disclosure of being, and if he coincides with this wish, he wins, for the fact is that the world becomes present by his presence in it. But the disclosure implies

a perpetual tension to keep being at a certain distance, to tear oneself from the world, and to assert oneself as a freedom."103 Consequently, through disclosing being (presencing) there is the intimate sense of belonging to this world and yet, it is precisely this belonging which allows each individual to be a freedom—a self. It is only through possession wherein we take the world as an object of our thought that we are able to remain an island unto ourselves.

Merleau-Ponty 1962,320. Beauvoir 1976, 23-4. 264 Bergoffen alerts us to Beauvoir's notion of possession as it figures in her ambiguous

ethic. The for-itself may seek to possess the in-itself and by so doing objectify the other

reducing him to an object in one's own field of perception. This is of course what happens in Sartre's reading of the look. The look plays an important role in possession.

Beauvoir writes, "Nothing is more equivocal than a look; it exists at a distance, and at

that distance it seems respectful, but it insensibly takes possession of the perceived

image."104 The for-itself takes possession of the perceptual object/other only insofar as it

longs to be a for-itself-in-itself. Recall from Sartre that the for-itself as a lack ceaselessly

aims to fill itself by reaching out into the world and taking hold of that which it perceives.

Seeking to possess the other closes off the possibility for a dynamical movement between

the self and the other and consequently there cannot be a mutual flourishing. There is

only domination in possession. On the other hand, Beauvoir explains, "My freedom must not seek to trap being but to disclose it."105 Thanks to Beauvoir, wanting to be is better

satisfied through a disclosure of being or rather being as an embodied being-in-the-world then it is through struggling for domination.

In summary, part of what it means to be in a position to negotiate one's relations with others in the realm of the visible is to be exposed to the constitutive gaze of others. After

all, the gaze of the other is inescapable. This is what reciprocity really means: seeing and

allowing oneself to be seen, negotiating with representations in the midst of perception

and affectation, and finally, colluding in, shaping, and resisting the images that the other offers. This active role does not entail participating in the patriarchal picture, but rather it is an affirmation of the ambiguity inherent in the gaze. It affirms all the fragmented ways

Beauvoir 1989, 351. Beauvoir 1976, 30. 265 in which one entrusts one's body to the other in order to uncover the meaning of oneself

as an embodied consciousness. Participating in the realm of the visible also allows us to

reclaim our bodies from the ways in which they appear to be in conflict with one another

and the ways in which conflict diminishes our possibilities for joy.

Participation in the realm of the visible, as conceived by Merleau-Ponty and

descriptively elaborated on by Marks, provides us with a way in which to think through a

reciprocity that reaches beyond this historical conflict and calls it into question. It is a

realm wherein there is an overdetermination of both our facticity and our possibilities for

subjectivity that cannot be merely shaped into its for-others or for-itself dimensionality.

Therefore, assuming that we are locked into a particular way of being—a way of being as

Other (such as in the case of woman), a way of being that defines what one can and

cannot do with one's body, limiting one's subjectivity, is simply naive. This should not

come as a surprise given Beauvoir's insistence on the human being as a tending toward bad faith. Recognizing that our being is in flux because we are not a readymade body-

object means that we can never exhaust the ways of seeing made available through our

changing horizons. In turn, this calls on us to rethink our commitments or our old and

tired ways of seeing by giving us the encouragement that we need to "walk through the

minefield of embodied memory."106

In conclusion, the visible, if understood as a phenomenological plentitude and not as

an ontological lack, beckons both self and other to imagine new ways of engaging intersubjectively. It is a way in which we can reassess what we take to be certain about ourselves. It is a way in which we can break the cycle of bad faith. It is in this reimagining of ourselves that we are ushered into authentic being. It is not the case that

106 Marks, 152. 266 we must either change our situation by vying for the space to carry out our own projects

or bow down to bad faith, but rather we must recognize the possibilities inherent in each

and every situation. We must also understand that no situation is determined nor is it ever

completely closed off to negotiation. However, this engagement and understanding can

only be forged if and only if we give the other the freedom to participate in the visible.

This call for participation does not stand to undo Beauvoir's account of woman's

situation as outlined in Section III; this call affirms the suspicion that woman colludes in her oppression. Man is able to relegate woman to the role of inessential because she

elevates him to the role of the essential. Beauvoir explains, "The truth is that if the vicious circle is so hard to break, it is because the two sexes are each the victim at once of

the other and of itself." Neither woman nor man is free in our patriarchal power- terrain. Hence, this formulation does not rely on the good faith of man or the labor of

woman to begin the conversation that ought to take place in the visible, but rather the pathway to liberation is a shared one. It is a human responsibility. Consequently, the

ethical requirement of intersubjectivity for Beauvoir, namely moving beyond the subject-

object duality through disclosure by willing the freedom of the other, remains key.

Beauvoir 1989, 719. 267 Conclusion to Beauvoir's Existentialist Ethics and the Role of the Visible

Throughout this Section, I worked to unpack the role of appearance and more

generally, the role of the visible in the ethical relationship. In order to achieve this it was necessary to pull together Beauvoir's ontological roots, existentialist ethics, and woman's

situation. I found that Sartre's view of the look, although at times forwarded by Beauvoir,

does not take into consideration the nature of the body as situated or as willful. Sartre's notion of the look highlights the importance of the look as constitutive of the subject, but it fails to account for bodily affectivity. Fortunately, Beauvoir's notion of embodiment as

ambiguously a freedom and a facticity shows that Sartre's conception of the look is

lacking. Unfortunately, Beauvoir fails to successfully bring her notion of embodiment into her consideration of one's ethical relationships. This reduces her existentialist ethics to a mere ideal in the face of woman's situation. Therefore, what I proposed in this

section was to use Beauvoir's notion of embodiment, in particular its visible functioning, to bridge the gap between Beauvoir's existentialist ethics and woman's situation.

Although Beauvoir gets it right with disclosure as an ethical attitude, the linkage between this fundamental way of being in the world and woman's situation is rather unclear. However, I found that a pathway to disclosure is available through the visible.

The visible realm unveils oneself to oneself as the embodied being-in-the-world one is— being as ambiguous. Disclosure as a transcending in immanence preserves this relationship between one's freedom and one's situation—situation as encompassing of one's relation to the world and to others as they are co-present in the world.

Consequently, disclosure calls for an embodied response to that which appears. It is up to the gazer and the gazed-upon to enter into a relationship that nourishes the corporeal

268 dimension of being-in-the-world with others. An embodied response to the other is a

response in which one's corporeality is affected by and affects how someone appears. The

embodied element of this visual exchange ensures that the overly simplistic subject- object model cannot take hold. Jorella Andrews explains, "What are in fact enacted in

such situations of objectification, mastery, or denigration are varying degrees of refusal to remain within the visible"108 or rather a habitual commitment to perpetuating ways of

seeing that deny the human reality as ambiguous, which in turn close down the possibilities for reciprocity.

Therefore, if one is truly visible, that is, if others foster one's being in its unfolding,

engaging one's affectivity as well as their own, one is visible in the true sense insofar as

"vision enables us to see our possibilities" for being.109 Furthermore, it allows one to foster lived experience as more than cognitive, but also as tactile, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive. Vision acknowledges the worth of one's affectivity by allowing surfaces and depths of being to co-mingle, and open up the possibilities for a genuine embodied reciprocity.

108 Jorella Andrews, "Vision, Violence, and the Other: A Merleau-Pontean Ethics" in Feminist Interpretations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, eds. Dorothea Olkowski and Gail Weiss (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 169. 109 Murphy, 109. 269 Conclusion

Beauvoir's rich existentialist ethics is worth rescuing from the gravity of contemporary Western woman's situation. Beauvoir's ethical prescription is simply that one ought to will the freedom of all given that nothing is more valuable than the freedom needed to pursue one's own projects. Regardless of the projects an individual decides to pursue, she will also desire and need the freedom to pursue those projects. Beauvoir's prescriptive runs into a number of problems when we consider Beauvoir's claim that each human being is situated in a world with others who may or may not value the same projects. Although the existentialist figures the human being as a free being, one's freedom must contend with other competing freedoms. Since each human being is situated differently and hence, lives a different facticity and thus has different projects, conflicting projects are inevitable. How are we to judge whose projects are realized?

Thinkers such as Hegel and Sartre do not merely find conflict to be part of the human reality, but for them our ontology is based on this fundamental hostility. Human beings are fundamentally conflictual beings. This seems to suggest that an existentialist ethics is doomed unless human beings work to foster the freedom of others, but this seems rather unlikely especially if it clashes with our fundamental "nature". Unfortunately, at moments in her work, Beauvoir appears to appropriate the notion of a fundamental hostility. However, it is unclear as to whether she believes it to be an ontological certainty or whether she is merely using it as an explanatory tool for our contemporary

Western situation wherein the projects and desires of one group are privileged over the projects and desires of another group. Her tireless account of woman's situation in The

Second Sex would suggest that she does believe that the human reality is founded on

270 struggle. Indeed, with this potential starting point, an existentialist ethics is indeed in

serious trouble. At the same moment, her championing of ambiguity as a fundamental way of being-in-the-world suggests otherwise. Ambiguity paints the human reality as a reality founded on mutuality and reciprocity.

In order to forward this view, so that Beauvoir's voice may be distinguished from that

of her predecessors and colleagues, it was necessary to unpack the ideas which lent themselves to furthering her notion of ambiguity. What I found was that it was possible to

extend Beauvoir's notion of situation by focusing on its affective aspect. Situation is not just an economic socio-historical way of being-in-the-world; situation is also shaped by

and shapes one's very affectivity. Although I could have entered Beauvoir's thinking on

affectivity through love and the caress,11 decided to enter it through shame and the visible because I found love and the caress too risky given woman's situation. Opening the body of woman to touch risks violence and the reiteration of woman's status as body- object. As I have shown, there are also risks in the visible, but the visible holds more possibilities since we are all already visible for others.

Shame, a result of visibility, highlights our vulnerability before the other. Although I am uncertain as to whether or not shame is a necessary affect for becoming subject in

Beauvoir's work (given her affinity with Sartre's reading of the look), if we were to take ambiguity seriously shame would not be necessary. It is not necessary because we can see the other as an embodied consciousness. The other need not be seen merely as a body-object or in Sartrean terms as one truly is (in-itself). Regardless, it is this moment of vulnerability before the other—the moment when one stands visible before the other as

1 See Bergoffen (1997) for a reading of Beauvoir's ethic of the erotic. 271 an appeal to the other, that highlights Beauvoir's ontological roots, her existentialist

ethics, and her reading of woman's situation.

By remaining faithful to Beauvoir's thinking, I find that the way in which an

individual can appeal to an other as ambiguous is through disclosing oneself to the other.

Disclosure is the opening of oneself to the world and to others. This unveiling is a letting

be and a stepping back. It is transcending in immanence, an idea which pushes Beauvoir's

thinking far beyond Sartre's ontological thinking, so that the world and others may unveil

itself/themselves to the disclosing being. Thus disclosure teaches the human being that

she is ambiguous—both immanent and transcendent, self and other, and for-itself and in-

itself. Although disclosing oneself to an other entails putting oneself at risk before the

other, this risk is a necessary step in cultivating both one's own ambiguity and a

reciprocity based on moral freedom. I open myself to the other so that she may be.

Problematically, Beauvoir's investigation of woman's situation concludes that it is not

always possible to will the freedom of the self and the other. Earlier I investigated a

permutation of this problem in the Hegelian dialectic between man and woman. Although

woman recognizes man thus imbuing him with subjectivity (freedom), she herself is not a

subject in the eyes of man and thus she is not recognized as a full-fledged subject

(freedom). Unfortunately, citing the visible as the answer to moral freedom, given that it teaches the human being of her fundamental ambiguity and thus her need for willing the

freedom of the other, does not dispel the real concern that an inequitable situation brings to bear on one's possibilities for freedom.

Willing the freedom of others is especially problematic if one is not free herself.

Beauvoir takes up the dilemma of oppression in two different ways in The Second Sex.

272 Her overt understanding of the question of competing projects is a problem of bad faith

and alienation. Beauvoir argues that woman's tendency toward mystification affirms

man's projects and displaces woman's projects. This is the existentialist position whereby

every human being is free to choose her life. Consequently, if woman chooses to take the

world as ready-made by trading in her own projects for those of man's projects, she

colludes in her own oppression. Her situation is inequitable, but since it is partially of her

making, she is still somewhat responsible for woman's overall situation. On the other

hand, The Second Sex also brings to light the opacity of situation—situation is not as

transparent as Sartre and perhaps even early-Beauvoir argue. Recall that Sartre's attention

to the projects of the for-itself obscure one's embodied affectivity and furthermore, negate

one's in-itself. For Beauvoir, it could certainly be the case that woman is unable to bring

to consciousness the projects that confirm woman's situation as the inessential Other.

These oppressive practices could be operating just below the surface of woman's

consciousness in her pre-consciousness by shaping her perceptual life. These behaviours

and attitudes cannot be undone through critique alone or by working through one's

mystification issues. Although feminist work is a wonderful place to begin to think

through woman's situation as oppressed—it can open the door to new and exciting

practices that may challenge one's rather implicit ideas about one's own situation, it is not

enough. Furthermore, recognizing woman's situation as potentially one of victimization may simply lead the individual to approach the world through "resistance, wariness, and

suspicion."2 Recognizing that one's situation is a product of victimization does not yield to ambiguity. Instead, work must be done at the level of one's affectivity in order to

2Bartky 1990,21. 273 choose those practices (projects) that further one's own freedom and thus may assist in

furthering the freedom of others.

Another major problem that arises in willing the freedom of others is the potential for

violence. Given Beauvoir's account of woman's situation we must be wary of the

extraneous factors that oppress women. It is not enough to look to woman's psyche to

account for her otherness. Unfortunately, Beauvoir's direct discussion of violence is

rather inadequate. Beauvoir admits that violence is possible, but she argues in Pyrrhus

and Cineas that violence only affects one's exteriority and cannot reach one's situated

heart.3 Are we to believe that woman must risk this 'superficial' violence in order to arrive

at reciprocity? Surely, this cannot be the case.

Beauvoir's thinking on violence does deepen when she delves into woman's

embodiment and muddies the linkage between one's exterior and one's interior. In The

Second Sex, she argues that woman ought to work herself out of the dualistic relationship

of the One-Other by recognizing that every human being is fundamentally ambiguous.

Although Beauvoir's Hegelian roots, which signal struggle argue that woman ought to

challenge man for the position of the One, there is a competing voice that Bergoffen refers to as Beauvoir's muted voice.4 If woman imagines herself outside of this

suffocating relationship, she risks less in the encounter. She risks less because she is able to imagine herself not merely as seen by the other, but also as integral to her own constitution as a subject—she is not merely overthrowing man. The realization that she is integral to her own constitution as body-object or body-subject, attenuates the power of the other to reduce her to the inessential Other. Unfortunately, imagining herself outside

J Beauvoir 2004, 141. 4 Bergoffen 2003, 235. 274 of the One-Other relationship does not completely release woman from the risk of violence. Opening oneself to the other as an ambiguity—a fleshed subjectivity, is dangerous.

There are acts of violence that simply close down the possibilities for communion and communication. In cases such as these, it is not that the visible fails to provide an ethical grounding. It is that the other (the one who does violence) has closed himself off to the visible by accepting the other not as an ambiguity, but as a body-object—flesh.

Therefore, the problem of violence does not undo the rich ethical ground of the visible.

Visibility is the radical inexhaustible questioning of the other. Seeing is not done to an other or for an other, but rather vision reveals one's own bodily embeddedness in that which one sees.5 In other words, if one is able to recognize the propagation of self in the other, violence becomes less likely given that violence closes down the violators' own possibilities for freedom. If violence is committed it is not done so through vision. Recall

Andrews' explanation that "What are in fact enacted in such situations of objectification, mastery, or denigration are varying degrees of refusal to remain within the visible."6

Violence is a habitual commitment to perpetuating ways of seeing that are shallow and further, mask over the human reality as a mutuality. This is what effectively closes down possibilities for reciprocity and thus, also possibilities for freedom.

Although there is little hope for reciprocity in Beauvoir's later thinking, she argues throughout her work that woman must overcome her mysticism. For the existentialist, woman's projects carry the potentiality to shift what being woman entails. Woman must learn to call into question that which shapes her being insofar as every project she takes

5 Andrews, 173. For a full phenomenological account of this bodily propagation see Merleau-Ponty's Chapter "The Intertwinging—The Chiasm" in Merleau-Ponty 1968, 130-55. 6 Ibid, 169. 275 up stands in relation to the cluster of meanings that sketch out woman's possibilities for being and existing. If woman confines herself to the dictates of femininity, a way of being in the world that is for the most part a lapse into otherness and immanence, she affirms the value of being as Other. This is not only problematic to the identity of woman, but it levels off woman's very possibilities for becoming—woman appears as naturally immanent or naturally other.

Woman as immanent is not able to will the freedom of all because she cannot will her own freedom. Only free beings can will the freedom of others. Thus each woman must ask herself whether her commitments or projects are good for all women. In other words, is this project worthy of the value that it will acquire through my acting upon it? As individual women, we have a responsibility to (re)think our commitments to any static notion of womanhood and perhaps even subjecthood. Beauvoir advocates for this reworking, but she does not tell us how we can achieve it other than by living ambiguously. I show that we can rethink our commitments by muddying the concept of woman through exploring one's affections through the visible. Change may cost very little. It is only when we call our long-held economic, psychological, historical, biological, and socio-cultural commitments, projects, and desires into question through our bodily affections that we can begin to imagine the possibilities for mutuality.7

To achieve mutuality we must reject the image of ourselves as merely body-objects or body-subjects and therein remain visible to the other—a question to be explored, but never fully unpacked. Through interperceptuality we may challenge the other to remain in the visible by calling him away from his thinking nature and into the realm of the

7 Beauvoir explains that mutuality is founded "by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood." (Beauvoir 1989, 732) 276 perceptual (not that the two realms are discrete). Sartre explains in a great moment of

clarity, "In order for the oppressor to get a clear view of an unjustifiable situation, it is not

enough to look at it honestly, he must also change the structure of his eyes." I maintain

that like the oppressor, the oppressed must also change the structure of her eyes. This sort

of appeal—learning to see anew, to see with and not in the stead of the other, a seeing

which is based on ambiguity and not on congealed objectivity or on reified subjectivity,

would entail a truly unique embodied intersubjectivity.

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