2709626

Sexism and the Philosophical Canon: On Reading Beauvoir's The Second Sex
Author(s): Margaret A. Simons

Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1990), pp. 487-504
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2709626
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Sexism and the Philosophical
Canon: On Reading Beauvoir's
The Second Sex
Margaret A. Simons
Feminist literary critics working with texts by women writers have e

the sexism at work in the shaping of a literary canon. Annette Kolo
example, in "A Map for Rereading: Gender and the Interpretation of
Texts,"' discusses the fate of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallp
Written by Gilman in the macabre style of Edgar Allan Poe, this bo
story of a middle-class wife and mother driven insane by the intelle
social deprivation prescribed by a physician-husband unable to "read" her
toms. Male literary critics, unable to read the connection between Gilman
and Poe's, failed to appreciate her contribution to the literary genre. Gen
shaped the literary canon around her, without her. An obvious quest
feminist philosopher is whether the same process has been at work in ph
An investigation of philosophers' readings of Simone de Beauvoir's Th
Sex3 reveals that it has. Although The Second Sex, unlike The Yellow Wal
found a wide readership among women, it, too, anticipated its own m
within a canon shaped by men.
The Second Sex, completed in 1948 when Beauvoir was forty year
important for its contribution to moral and social philosophy as well
understanding of the social construction of knowledge. It represents the
philosophical achievement of what Beauvoir termed the "ethical perio
Earlier versions of this paper were presented on programs of the Society for Ph
nology and Existential Philosophy, the Eastern Divisions of the Radical Phil
Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy, and the Central Divis
American Philosophical Association. Thanks to the members of those organiz
to my students and colleagues at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
cially to Mikels Skele, Pam Decoteau, Mary Ellen Blackston, Chuck Corr, an
Aronson.
l Annette Kolodny, "A Map for Rereading: Gender and the Interpretation of Literary
Texts," Elaine Showalter (ed.), The New Feminist Criticism (New York, 1985).
2 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (Old Westbury, N.Y., 1973).
3 Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxieme Sexe (Paris, 1949); The Second Sex, tr. H. M
Parshley (New York, 1952).
487
Copyright 1990 by JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS, INC.
488 Margaret A. Simons
literary life. She describes the s

this period, when she developed
social disruption of values caus
these writings also represent an
the other," which formed the su
1920s and 30s.
A graduate in philosophy with a background in literature, Beauvoir shaped
a concrete philosophy of experience, a philosophy of "ambiguity" in which emo-
tions, death, and connection with nature and others are given ontological status
often reserved for the rational, isolated subject. Beauvoir developed what Linda
Singer has termed "the voice of the ethics of otherness," in which freedom
emerges in a situation of relatedness and affinity.5 The problem of the other, the
problem of caring for the other without jeopardizing, relinquishing the self, begins
in the family and for Beauvoir necessitates the development of the childhoods of
the characters in all of her early novels. The importance of context, family,
relationships, and the biological dimensions of human existence, along with the
achievement of self, characterizes the entire body of Beauvoir's work.
Beauvoir's perspective is often identified with that of Jean-Paul Sartre, author
of Being and Nothingness (1943) and Beauvoir's intimate friend from their days
as philosophy students.6 For Sartre, who was identified with existentialism at the
end of World War II, the experience of choice and absolute freedom defines
human reality. His is a philosophy of the absurd: man is "a useless passion,"
"condemned to freedom," unable to find either solace or meaning in relationships
with nature or other people. Encounters with nature lead to "nausea," with other
people to masochism and sadism ("Hell is other people"). Attempts to evade this
reality lead to "bad faith." Personal integrity, "authenticity," defines Sartre's
elusive ideal.
The arguments with Sartre that Beauvoir recounts in her autobiographies
4 Works in this series include: L'Invitee (Paris, 1943) tr. L. Drummond as She Came
to Stay (London, 1949); a lengthy essay on existentialist ethics, Pyrrhus et Cineas (Paris,
1944); a play, Les Bouches inutiles (Paris, 1945), tr. Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier
as Who Shall Die? (Florissant, Mo., 1983); a novel, Le Sang des autres (Paris, 1945), tr.
Roger Senhouse and Yvonne Moyse as The Blood of Others (New York, 1948); a collection
of essays from 1945 and 1946 on ethics, politics, and literature, L'Existentialisme et la
sagesse des nations (Paris, 1963); a novel, Tous les hommes sont mortels (Paris, 1946), tr.
Leonard M. Friedman as All Men Are Mortal (New York, 1955); a well-known essay,
Pour une morale de l'ambiguite (Paris, 1947), tr. Bernard Frechtman as The Ethics of
Ambiguity (New York, 1948). Beauvoir writes that in Les Mandarins (Paris, 1954) tr.
Bernard Frechtman (Cleveland, 1956) she arrives at the most satisfactory fictional resolu-
tion of the problem of the Other. Beauvoir develops her criticism of an ethics of "separa-
tion" in "Faut-il bruler Sade?" Privileges (Paris, 1955), tr. Annette Michelson as Must We
Burn Sade? (New York, 1953). The Privileges collection contains another important essay
by Beauvoir, only recently translated by Veronique Zaytzeff, "Merleau-Ponty and the
pseudo-Sartreanism," International Studies in Philosophy (Fall 1989). An important recent
addition to this series is Beauvoir's Journal de guerre, ed. Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir
(Paris, 1989).
5 Linda Singer, "Interpretation and Retrieval: Rereading Beauvoir," Hypatia, 3, a
special issue of Women's Studies International Forum 8 (1985), 232.
6 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, tr. Hazel Barnes (New York, 1953).
Beauvoir and the Philosophical Canon 489
reveal their philosophical differences. Sartre criticized

and her "relativist ethics," in which she tried to accommod
standpoints of her friends while retaining her own. Beauv
voluntarism as exaggerated and joked about his adversion t
to chlorophyll." The experience of World War II led Sar
to work on an ethics and social philosophy, but the o
individual "separation" in his philosophy provided little
social ethic. He was unable to move beyond an abstract
ethics in his 1946 lecture, "Existentialism is a Humanism,"
him unsatisfied.7 His attempts to combine his version
Marxism, beginning with his 1946 essay, "Materialism a
problematic as well.8
To understand oppression, it is necessary to understand
tion; but Sartre's individual, defined solely by his own
grasp. In "Materialism and Revolution" Sartre attacked
an inadequate philosophical foundation for revolution and
action of the revolutionary. But his proposed alternative "
phy" based on freedom recognizes neither oppression nor
phy of Baudelaire (1947) Sartre's rejection of determin
description.9 Baudelaire's childhood is merely the abstr
"choice."
The lack of an adequate analysis of history and cultural identity also weakens
Sartre's work on racism. In his 1946 essay on "the Jewish question" Sartre
provides a powerful condemnation of the anti-Semite for acting in bad faith.10
But since Jewish identity, for Sartre, is entirely the creation of the anti-Semite,
the Jew is given no basis for either cultural identity or collective action. Jews
remain passive and dependent, their fate in the hands of "sympathetic Gentiles,"
who must lead the fight against anti-Semitism and towards the goal of full
integration into society, which has become a culture-less abstraction, the worker'
state. In "Black Orpheus" (1948) Sartre describes "negritude" as a historical
moment to be surpassed.11 Perhaps it was his concern with attacks from the left
that led Sartre, who had become an international symbol of individual freedom,
to deny individual experience in the name of a historical abstraction. For Franz
Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks, Sartre's stance was a betrayal.12 In attempting
to combine an analysis of history with his belief in absolute freedom, Sartre had
arrived, in 1948, at a theoretical impasse that was not to be broken until afte
the publication of The Second Sex in 1948-49.
7 Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism is a Humanism," Walter Kaufmann (ed.), Existen-

tialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (Cleveland, 1956), 287-311.
8 Jean-Paul Sartre, "Materialism and Revolution," Literary and Philosophical Essays
(New York, 1955), 198-256.
9 Jean-Paul Sartre, Baudelaire, tr. Martin Turnell (New York, 1950).
10 Jean-Paul Sartre, Reflexions sur la question juive (Paris, 1946); Anti-Semite and Jew,
tr. George Becker (New York, 1948).
I Jean-Paul Sartre, "Orphee Noir," preface to Anthologie de la nouvelle poesie negre
et malgache (Paris, 1948).
12 Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, tr. Charles Lam Markmann (New York,
1967), 132-40.
The war and the German Occ

frontation with dimensions of s
been able previously to ignore. H
the national library, where she
of Mind.13 Hegel's history of
color all of Beauvoir's work. In
describes human reality as am
freedom, history and choice. Th
ofAmbiguity is significant for it
and for its criticism of "separ
affirm the freedom of others. B
from historical context in the
satisfied.
In The Second Sex Beauvoir m
ethical ideal are the human "M
enquiry is not the individual rea
and women. The moral problems
neither to individual solutions, n
economic, political, legal, cultur
freedom and shapes the experien
Drawing on Hegel's Phenome
Other," an existent doomed to im
by another. Definitions of woma
literature, reflect men's conscio
of the anti-Semite to describe m
sors. Men oppress women in "ba
own freedom. But Beauvoir in he
of the Jew and "negritude," reje
Laying the groundwork for c
women's "lived experience" is th
their oppression. Women's exper
and cannot be subsumed under
Tracing the politicization of wom
reify those differences into a st
philosophy in which individual f
Beauvoir showed that the "wom
philosophy from the time of Pl
acting collectively to gain the po
Beauvoir's work in The Second
sophical impasse that Sartre h
(1952) is a work of pivotal impor
one that evidences Beauvoir's con
Saint Genet that Sartre first uti
social oppression, in this case i
Genet, as a thief. It is here as w
13 G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomen

1967).
14 Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet, tr. Bernard Frechtman (New York, 1963).
the importance of social context and childhood in shap

importance that Beauvoir had demonstrated in The Second
analysis of the devastating effects of socialization on a fem
use of psychoanalysis.
Beauvoir's ability to break through the philosophical imp
stems both from the originality of her method, which loc
margins of culture, in women's experience, and from the or
Unlike most philosophers working within the phenomenolo
voir focussed not on an individual consciousness but o
Second Sex broke new philosophical ground in its critical ap
Nietzsche, Marxism, and psychoanalysis, and its consequ
both feminism and existentialism.
Beauvoir redefined feminist discourse through her epistemological privileging
of female voices, her critique of male views of women as other, and her radical
analysis of gender relationships. Epitomizing Hegel's master-slave relationship,
men and women are in a struggle irreducible to economic class. Conceived by
Beauvoir as compatible with the socialist ideals of collective care and freedom
from economic exploitation, The Second Sex provided the theoretical foundation
for the emergence of radical feminism in the 1960s.
In the light of Beauvoir's contribution to philosophy, it is worth examining

what the philosophical canon says, or does not say, about Beauvoir and The
Second Sex. Most texts on French existential philosophy make at most a passing
reference to Beauvoir, dismissing her as a follower of Sartre and not worthy of
autonomous study. This interpretation first appears in Jean Wahl's 1949 work A
Short History of Existentialism: "We might mention, without discussing, Simone
de Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty, whose theories are similar to those of Sartre,
though sometimes applied to different domains of experience."15 The most widely
used introduction to existentialism, Walter Kaufmann's anthology, Existential-
ism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (1956), does not mention her at all.16 Not that
Beauvoir was unknown in 1956. She was well known as an existentialist writer
in America, where her visit and lectures on existentialism in 1947 were well
covered by the media. The Philosophical Library published an English translation
of The Ethics of Ambiguity in 1948, and of course The Second Sex appeared in
English in 1952.
Kaufmann's failure to mention Beauvoir is all the more curious given his
choice of other authors for inclusion of his anthology. In addition to Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, Jaspers, Heidegger, and Sartre, Kaufmann includes selections from
Rilke, Kafka, and Camus, choices that stretch the philosophical definition of
existentialism much further, one would think, than would the inclusion of Beau-
voir. Kaufmann acknowledges the problem in his preface: "By the time we
consider adding Rilke, Kafka, and Camus, it becomes plain that one essential
feature shared by all these men is their perfervid individualism" (11). Including
a woman might, of course, have changed another "essential feature" of the group.
15 Jean Wahl, A Short History of Existentialism, tr. Forrest Williams and Stanley
Maron (New York, 1949), 31.
16 Walter Kaufmann (ed.), Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (New York, [1956]
1975; page references cited in the text).
In his preface, Kaufmann argue

philosophers to Sartre's philoso
philosophy less accessible to Ame
of doing philosophy and their de
seems to delight in these very e
fear of being taken for a man w
it sub-philosophical to base di
deception on experience" (41). "
which, more often than not, h
of philosophy and literature: M
Bergson come to mind in this
he finds Sartre "one of the most
Kaufmann also defends Sartre a
in the way of serious criticism
treatment of his thought which
The first, most common, and lea

has written, in a cafe and deals r
remarked that his five short sto
door-post, and an American publ
a paperback edition. In his philos
American publisher has brought
of the rest of the book. Sartre's
philosophy, is designed to incr
never to arouse desire. (45)
Kaufmann argues as well agains

his atheism and his leftist poli
has relevance to criticisms of
assumption in the United States
This view is founded on the l
American colleges .. ." With re
"recent decision to make comm
(48) as well as Heidegger's early
the Nazis. But he argues that "
score" (48).
As though to emphasize his pol
Sartre on Marxism in a revised
mann sees the text as in some
(281). That in 1975, given Kaufm
literary style, and discussions
Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity o
of sexism.
Beauvoir is often simply identified with Sartre, their relationship misstated

to exaggerate Beauvoir's dependency. James Collins, writing from a conservative
religious position in The Existentialists: A Critical Study (1952), refers to Beau-
voir, mistakenly, as Sartre's "wife" and fails to differentiate between them philo-
sophically: "Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir have a firm grasp on the half-truth
that man is not a clod and cannot become perfect after

thing."17
F. H. Heineman, in Existentialism and the Modern Predicament (1958), lists
Beauvoir separately in the index, but the reference in the text implies that Sartre
co-authored Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity. "Sartre and his friend, Simone de
Beauvoir, have seen that an ethics of absurdity does not make sense; the Ethics
of Ambiguity which they advertise instead can hardly be accepted as a genuine
ethics."'8 The mistaken impression that Sartre co-authored The Ethics ofAmbigu-
ity should have been eliminated by a footnote, but by some happenstance the
author failed to provide a footnote in this instance. Nor is The Ethics ofAmbiguity
listed in the bibliographical notes at the end of the book. Instead the author chose
to leave Beauvoir's work uncited and its authorship unclear.
The British philosopher H. J. Blackham in his collection, Reality, Man and
Existence: Essential Works of Existentialism (1965), cannot make up his mind
about Beauvoir. In his introduction he fails to credit Beauvoir's role in the
founding of Les Temps Modernes: "Sartre and Merleau-Ponty were cofoun
of Les Temps Modernes in 1945." Later, in his brief introduction to the select
from Merleau-Ponty, he includes Beauvoir (in the passive voice): "Mauri
Merleau-Ponty is bracketed with Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir as cofounder o
Les Temps Modernes in 1945." The only bibliographic reference to Beauvo
could find places her in the secondary role of Sartre's biographer: "Biographic
material also appears in the three volumes of Simone de Beauvoir's autobi
raphy."19
Ernst Breisach, in his Introduction to Modern Existentialism (1962), like Jean
Wahl, reduces not only Beauvoir but also Merleau-Ponty to Sartre: "Around
[Sartre] have gathered such Sartre-type existentialists as Simone de Beauvoir and
Merleau-Ponty."20 Challenging this interpretation of Merleau-Ponty can provide
the basis for an analogous reinterpretation of Beauvoir, as we can see in Albert
Rabil's little-known Merleau-Ponty: Existentialist of the Social World (1967):
"But the truth of the matter seems to be that Mlle de Beauvoir did not hold
Sartre's view of freedom in the early postwar period. In The Ethics of Ambiguity,
for example, she outlines a phenomenology of freedom in which approximat
realizations of freedom are described and arranged in an ascending order of
validity. Here the 'mixture' of man and the world is the point of departure."21
Rabil's text is not unproblematic. He sees Beauvoir not as a full participant i
the philosophical movement he is describing but as interesting only because
her role in an argument between male philosophers-Sartre and Merleau-Pont
His failure to include The Second Sex in his analysis compromises his interpreta-
tion, for example, of the influence of Kojeve's reading of Hegel on French
existentialism and, most importantly in the context of Rabil's project, his assess
17 James Collins, The Existentialists: A Critical Study (Chicago, 1952), 77, 87.
18 F. H. Heineman, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament (New York, 1958)
176.
19 H. J. Blackham, Reality, Man and Existence: Essential Works of Existentialism (Ne
York, 1965), 12, 350, 349.
20 Ernst Breisach, Introduction to Modern Existentialism (New York, 1962), 107.
21 Albert Rabil, Jr., Merleau-Ponty; Existentialist of the Social World (New York
1967), 133.
ment of the scope of Merleau-Pon

as a movement is thus incompl
although it had little impact, bec
Beauvoir were possible.
For many people William Barre
tial philosophy, Irrational Man (1
tal philosophy.22 Beauvoir's nam
assortment of other names-from Matthew Arnold to Lao-tse-are. But as Ko-
lodny points out, reading the meaning of ellipse and absence reveals the interpre
tive strategies that shape a canon, and this is certainly the case with philosopher
"readings" of Beauvoir. Few of the texts I examined include a reference to
Beauvoir in their index although, as in this case, Beauvoir is sometimes mentione
in the text itself. The pattern of Barrett's references to Beauvoir is in many ways
typical. After recognizing Beauvoir, with Sartre and Camus, as "brilliant an
engaging writers" and "leaders" of the "Existentialist literary movement," Beau-
voir gradually disappears as an individual. Next referred to in tandem with Sartr
("Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir are still phenomenally productive"), she the
vanishes from the discussion (7).
I only found one other, indirect, reference to Beauvoir in Barrett's book. The
Second Sex is listed in the index, and the reference in the text warrants a close
reading. The context is a discussion of Sartre's existential psychology. Barrett is
criticizing the Cartesian dualism of Sartre's "doctrine of freedom" for "not reall
comprehend[ing] the concrete man who is an undivided totality of body an
mind" (231). One of the counter-examples Barrett offers to this Sartrean duality
contains his reference to The Second Sex: ".. .[C]onsider the psychology of th
ordinary woman. Not of the women one meets in Sartre's novels or plays; nor of
that woman, his friend, who wrote a book of feminine protest, The Second Sex,
which is in reality the protest against being feminine" (232). The tone of th
reference, as well as its content, is startling. Barrett avoids mentioning Beauvoir
by name, using instead an angry phrase "that woman" and a reference to he
relationship with Sartre, before finally referring to her work, which he describes
with a sarcastic turn of phrase. Barrett's refusal to name Beauvoir and hi
dismissal of The Second Sex warrant a careful analysis especially because man
of the factors at work shaping Barrett's interpretation of Beauvoir might b
present, in less explicit forms, in interpretations by other philosophers.
Barrett gives three objections to Sartre's dualistic psychology: man is isolated
from nature the existence of the unconscious is denied, and human relationships
become "a perpetual oscillation between sadism and masochism" that "turns love
and particularly sexual love into a perpetual tension and indeed warfare." It
this third objection that concerns us here. Barrett describes Sartre's analys
of relationships in frightening terms, as "a dialectical ingenuity that is almost
fiendish.... [T]he glance of the Other, in Sartre, is always like the stare of
Medusa, fearful and petrifying" (229).
The argument that follows is Barrett's attempt to explain away this dangerou
human relationship. He begins by criticizing Sartre's "fundamentally masculine
22 William Barrett, Irrational Man (Garden City, New York, 1958; page reference
cited in the text).
psychology that misunderstands or disparages the psych

finds "the element of masculine protest" "strong" in
analysis ... of the viscous, the thick, sticky substance t
liberty like the soft threat of the body of a woman. And t
for the woman is nature and Sartrean man exists in the
which, since it is ultimately unjustified and unjustifiable,
totally from nature" (230). Barrett could have responded to
as Beauvoir did in The Second Sex, by examining the ro
myths about woman that explain male domination. Bea
with women's experience of oppression and desire for liber
reciprocity. Instead, Barrett seeks to eliminate the battle b
eliminating woman/nature as a threat, thus providing a
male domination. His solution is two-fold: to reunite man w
the unconscious and to deny consciousness to women.
Let Barrett himself take up the narrative at the point f
to The Second Sex:
... Take an ordinary woman, one of the great number whose being is the involve-
ment with family and children, and some of whom are happy at it, or at least as
humanly fulfilled by it as the male by his own essentially masculine projects.
What sense does it make to say that such a woman's identity is constituted by
her project? Her project is family and children, and these do in fact make up a
total human commitment; but it is hardly a project that has issued out of the
conscious ego. Her whole life, with whatever freedom it reveals, is rather the
unfolding of nature through her (232).
Barrett's solution to the battle of the sexes is both simple and traditional: woman
is revered, and silenced, as a passive expression of nature. Since woman lacks
consciousness, the oscillation between sadism and masochism stops; woman never
becomes subject. Woman, whose being is involvement with the family, mediates
in that role between man and nature, a relation that for man functions at the
level of unconscious, not as a subject for conscious concern.
Another problem for Barrett and others in the interpretation of Beauvoir's
philosophy is that many of her texts, especially beginning with The Second Sex,
stubbornly resist being cast in a Sartrean context. Barrett saw French existential-
ism as a European philosophy of despair, diametrically opposed to American
optimism and belief in technology. But Beauvoir's philosophy in The Second Sex
is optimistic, based on faith in the liberating potential of technology, which had
brought violence and productivity into the physical grasp of women-as it had
brought control over reproduction. Barrett could not have maintained his concep-
tual framework and at the same time have incorporated The Second Sex into his
analysis.
One explanation for the biases we have discovered in some of the earliest
writings on existentialism is that they were written in the conservative 1950s,
before the reemergence of feminism in the 1960s. One exception from this pre-
feminist era is Hazel Barnes's The Literature of Possibility: A Study in Humanistic
Existentialism (1959).23 Barnes, o

dominated discipline, locates The
and other literary writings and
By the 1970s one would expec
the feminist reemergence. Rober
tentialism (1972, reprinted 1978)
on the surface it does. Solomon
the index, and the introduction t
includes Beauvoir with Sartre,
existentialist philosophers, rema
mitment to social-political issu
"Simone De Beauvoir has contr
liberation movements as well a
But the author's interpretative
an earlier, more explicitly sexist
footnotes and references, for
information about the edition, of
and the wrong title is given f
Ambiguity. Entitled in French P
as L'Ethic de Ambiguite and give
he gives detailed information on
Later in the introductory secti
from that of the other French ex
and originality. Solomon writes
sophical novels, but his philoso
the first mentioned in discussi
rejected this affiliation)." Note
when Solomon discusses Beauvoir: "Simone De Beauvoir is also best known as a
novelist [no mention of philosophy], but her two theoretical works in existentialist
theory including the only explicit formulation of existentialist ethics within the
movement, demonstrate her confessed allegiance to Sartre's philosophy" (245)
While the others do "philosophy," Beauvoir's work is only "theory." Notice as
well, the reversal in the treatment of Camus's and Beauvoir's self-naming. Solo-
mon asserts Camus's identity as an existentialist philosopher and then adds
a parenthetical note mentioning Camus's own "rejection of that affiliation."
Beauvoir's self-description, in contrast, has become a "confessed allegiance" that
Solomon is only too happy to accept. Solomon's recognition of Beauvoir's work
in ethics is undermined by the implied lack of originality. She merely made
"explicit" an ethics implied elsewhere, presumably by Sartre to whom she ha
"confessed allegiance."
Later in this introduction, Solomon repeats the contrast: "De Beauvoir simi-
larly exemplifies in her novels what she theorizes in her essays; Camus published
The Stranger and his philosophical essay Myth of Sisyphus as a matched pair
(247). In a passage defining Sartre's relationships with the other three philoso
23 Hazel Barnes, The Literature of Possibility: A Study in Humanistic Existentialism

(Lincoln, Neb., 1959).
24 Robert Solomon, From Rationalism to Existentialism: The Existentialists and Their
Nineteenth-Century Backgrounds (New York, 1972; page references cited in the text).
25 See for example the reference to Being and Nothingness in Solomon, 340.
phers, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, and Camus, the sexism in S

tion is apparent. He describes Sartre as founding Les T
Merleau-Ponty, ignoring Beauvoir's role as a founding ed
Beauvoir is solely in terms of her personal relationship with
Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre were and still are lovers"
seen above, including a full discussion of Beauvoir's ph
required Solomon to reformulate his analysis of post-1945 e
relation to Marxism and to address Beauvoir's critique o
women, which he was unable and/or unwilling to do. Bu
of existentialism can ignore the post-1945 texts without
interpretive difficulties, as Solomon's one reference to The
The reference occurs, in stereotypic fashion, within a dis
philosophy, in this instance Sartre's analysis of the anti-Sem
faith who has "created the Jew from his need.... He is a man who is afraid,...
not of the Jews, of course, but of himself.... The Jew is only a pretext: elsewhere
it will be the Negro, the yellow race; the Jew's existence simply allows the anti-
Semite to nip his anxieties in the bud by persuading himself that his place has
always been cut out in the world."26 The passage from The Second Sex that one
might expect to follow this example from Sartre would be one drawing the
obvious analogy between the bad faith of the anti-Semite and that of the sexist
man. But instead Solomon quotes a passage supposedly demonstrating women's
bad faith in denying themselves freedom:
Similarly Simone De Beauvoir points out bad faith in women regarding their
humanity-a woman treats herself as a sexual object (as a "woman") in order to
deny her freedom. De Beauvoir declares that the common bad faith of woman is
her appeal to her "feminine" nature: "Woman is a female to the extent that she
feels herself as such.... It is not nature that defines woman, it is she who defines
herself."27
Actually Beauvoir is not criticizing woman's bad faith here, although she does
so elsewhere, but praising psychoanalysis for its insights into embodied conscious-
ness. She is thus differentiating herself philosophically from Sartre rather than
aligning herself with him, an interpretation that Solomon's sexist assumptions
about Beauvoir's work prevents him from seeing.28
26 Solomon, 290, citing 8, 26-27 of Anti-Semite and Jew, tr. George J. Becker (New
York, 1948).
27 Solomon, 290; quoted from Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1952, 38.
28 It should be noted in this regard that as always the inaccuracies in the English
translation of The Second Sex might be a factor in a misreading. In this case for instance,
the translator eroded the passage's philosophic referents, as an examination of part of the
passage reveals. The original French reads: "Ce n'est pas le corp-objet decrit par les savants
qui existe concretement, mais le corps vequ par le sujet. La femme est une femelle, dans
la mesure ou elle s'eprouve comme telle" (Le Deuxieme Sexe, vol. I, 76.). The same passage
in the Parshley translation reads as follows (my own translations are inserted in brackets):
"It is not the body-object described by biologists that actually [concretely] exists, but the
body as lived in [lived] by the subject. Woman is a female to the extent that she feels
[experiences] herself as such." The concept of "concretely experiencing one's lived body"
provides a hermeneutic link with French existential phenomenology that is lost in the
phrase "actually feeling one's body as lived in." For further discussion of problems in the
Parshley translation see Margaret A. Simons, "The Silencing of Simone de Beauvoir:
Guess What's Missing From The Second Sex?" Women's Studies International Forum, 6
(1983), 559-64.
Not only is Beauvoir's passage

bad faith, but in Solomon's ac
women's oppression have disap
anxieties, analogous to those of t
in a sexist superiority over wo
alone responsible for her oppres
with some justification, and ir
Sex. Beauvoir does, elsewhere in
and complicity with her oppr
Beauvoir's analysis of women's
why men have constructed that s
of men's sexist consciousness.
If the lack of a full discussion of post-1945 existentialism is a source of
interpretative problems, perhaps interpretations that focus directly on these later
political writings might provide a more adequate reading of Beauvoir. Marjorie
Grene, who deals with Sartre's Critique in her 1973 text, Sartre, is interesting in
this regard. Grene puzzles over Sartre's later "interest in [childhood and] concrete
individual life."29 She describes as inadequate the hypothesis that these new
interests might be accounted for by Merleau-Ponty's influence. But she never
thinks of the possibility that these innovations might reflect the influence on
Sartre's work of Beauvoir, whose studies of "concrete individual life" were well
known. By 1973, of course, it may have been not too early but too late, the sexist
gender politics of philosophy having successfully excluded Beauvoir from the
philosophical canon, so that without a feminist context for locating the effects of
sexist bias, even a woman philosopher was unable to trace her influence.
An ambitious project in the formalization of the American philosophical

canon resulted in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, published in 1967, under the
editorship of Paul Edwards.30 The importance of this multi-volumed work makes
it worthy of a close and detailed reading. The Encyclopedia contains no mention
of Beauvoir in the index, either as a separate entry or in the four columns of
listings under "French Philosophy." Had the editors alphabetized her name
under "B," she would have come right after the entry on "Beauty"; but instead
they jumped to Beccaria, an eighteenth-century Italian criminologist whose work
on penal reform was surely no more important a philosophical contribution that
Beauvoir's work in The Second Sex on gender reform. Nor is Beauvoir listed
under "D," in which case her name would have followed the entry on "Death."
That entry ended with a reference to Heidegger and Sartre, but no mention of
Beauvoir, a striking omission since A Very Easy Death, Beauvoir's powerful
account of her mother's death, had been published in English translation in
1965.31 Beauvoir is mentioned in the entry on Sartre, where she is cited with
Merleau-Ponty as one of the founders of Les Temps Modernes. Of the four French
existentialist philosophers mentioned in this entry-Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Beau-
voir, and Camus-only Beauvoir lacks an entry under her own name in the
29 Marjorie Grene, Sartre (New York: 1973), 244-45.

30 Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (8 vols.; New York, 1967; page
references cited in the text).
31 Simone de Beauvoir, A Very Easy Death, tr. Patrick O'Brian (New York, 1965).
Encyclopedia. The contrast with Camus is particularly intere

the explanations which might account for a failure to in
identity as a literary writer, for example, or the politic
writings, would also apply to Camus.
Beauvoir is also mentioned in the entry on "Existentialism
dair MacIntyre. She in not mentioned in sub-sections s
choice" or "existentialism and psychoanalytic topics," alth
where The Second Sex defined new philosophical ground. Th
voir is again included under a discussion of Sartre: "[Sa
analyses] are employed, too, in the novels of Simone de B
and political writings also use the Sartrean concept of ch
odd claim, since Beauvoir's criticism of Sartre's concept of c
of absolute freedom define an area of philosophical differen
Beauvoir's name also appears in the "Bibliography for the
entry under the sub-section entitled "Assessments of Existe
ography" mentions Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity with the
ant in its own right and in relation to Sartre" (III-IV, 11
itself there is no mention of Beauvoir or her "important" w
is a lengthy discussion of Camus. The contrast between the
Camus and that given Beauvoir is particularly dramatic in th
author of the article remarks that "Camus wrote no technic
In this case the author had seemingly better philosophical g
Beauvoir instead of Camus, if forced to choose between them
was Beauvoir who was excluded.
What differentiates Beauvoir from Camus? What could account for her exclu-
sion from the Encyclopedia? One such factor might have been the bias the editor,
Paul Edwards, admits towards the "empirical and analytic tradition of Anglo-
Saxon philosophy" (I-II, xi). Such a bias would have limited the number of entries
from French philosophy, increasing the likelihood that Beauvoir, considered at
best a minor figure in continental philosophy, would have been excluded.
But what other factors might help account for the editor's failure to include
a discussion of Beauvoir's work in the Encyclopedia? As Kaufmann reported,
American philosophers often objected to Sartre's discussion of sexuality, his
atheism, and his radical politics. Similar objections might play a role in the
problematic reception given Beauvoir and The Second Sex by the editor of the
Encyclopedia. Given the cultural equation of woman with sex and the taboo
against women being sexually active, it should be no surprise that Beauvoir's
discussion of female sexuality in The Second Sex met with public outrage. As
Beauvoir recalls in her autobiography: "I was accused of many things: everything!
First of all, indecency.... One might almost have believed that Freud and
psychoanalysis had never existed. People offered to cure me of my frigidity or to
temper my labial appetites ... [Mauriac] wrote to one of the contributors to Les
Temps modernes: 'Your employer's vagina has no secrets from me.' "32
The American publisher emphasized sexuality in the marketing of The Second
Sex. The 1968 Bantam paperback edition features a photograph of a naked
32 Simone de Beauvoir, The Force of Circumstances, tr. Richard Howard (New York,
1977), I, 186-87.
woman on the front cover and sexual allusions on the back: "A Frenchwoman
who never loses sight of the needs and desires of both sexes."33 The sexua
marketing of Beauvoir's text undoubtedly presented interpretative difficulties for
many American philosophers, given the traditional association of philosophy
with theology in American colleges. But the editor of the Encyclopedia does not
seem to belong in this category. There are a string of entries under the general
topic of sexuality and discussions of both Freud and psychoanalysis in the Ency-
clopedia. The entry on Wilhelm Reich, written by Edwards himself, takes up
almost eleven pages. Thus, even if The Second Sex were Beauvoir's only important
philosophical text (and it is not), a reluctance to discuss sexuality would not seem
to be an adequate explanation of the absence of any discussion of Beauvoir's work
in the Encyclopedia.
Beauvoir's attacks on religion in The Second Sex might also be a factor. Sh
began her research with an analysis of the myths about women defined by men
"through all their cosmologies, religions, superstitions, ideologies and litera
ture."34 Hardly an approach designed to endear Beauvoir to theologians. But the
Encyclopedia editor authored an entry on "Atheism" that extends for sixteen
pages, which would seem to eliminate a theological bias as an explanation of the
failure to include Beauvoir's work. There is some indication that Beauvoir would
have fared better in the Encyclopedia as a woman had she been less sexual and
more devoutly religious. One of the few women philosophers, perhaps the only
one, to have her own entry in the Encyclopedia is Simone Weil, who is described
by the author of the entry, Germaine Bree, a Professor of Romance Languages,
as a "French author and mystic" (VII-VIII, 284). Using a non-philosopher to
author an entry was an exception in the Encyclopedia, one which undermines
Weil's identity as a philosopher. But being cast in the classic woman's role of
mystic-martyr might have made Weil seem to fit as a woman-philosopher when
Beauvoir, the bohemian companion of Jean-Paul Sartre, did not.
In The Second Sex Beauvoir conceives of a radical transformation of society
that is as heavily reliant on Marxist philosophy as it is on existentialism and
psychoanalysis. Could this political engagement pose a problem for the editor of
the Encyclopedia? The editor included several entries on Marx and Marxist
philosophy, and the author of the entry on Sartre includes a discussion of Sartre's
politically radical Critique.
There is evidence in the Encyclopedia of political conservatism and a tendency
to distance itself from philosophies of social change. There is an entry on racism,
but it deals almost exclusively with a discussion of English and German racist
theories. In 1966, two years after he received the Nobel Peace Prize, there in no
mention of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and no entry on Civil Rights. Nor
is there any mention in the Encyclopedia of feminism, women's rights, or women
at all, except in a couple of passing references to "women and children" in
discussions of man's private property. All discussions of women's nature and
social role by major figures in the history of philosophy such as Plato, or John
Stuart Mill, are missing from the Encyclopedia. Not in the sections on Saint-
Simon or Engels or even in the entry on "Equality," in which the "rights of man"
is the subject, is there any awareness that women exist.
33 Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York, 1968), covers.

34 Beauvoir, The Force of Circumstances, 185.
The contemporary women's liberation movement was i

1966. But Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique had bee
In 1963 and 1964 the first federal laws prohibiting sex discr
ment were passed in the United States. Women's changing r
ant social issue during the period when the Encyclopedia
instead of a vehicle for social transformation and understan
course of women purged from the philosophical canon, p
instrument of political repression and silencing.
With the rebirth of feminism as a political movement in
formation of the Society for Women in Philosophy in 1969,
took up the critiques of the canon begun by Beauvoir.
definitions of a philosophical problem in their discussions of
tive action and presented wide-ranging critiques of the hist
philosophy of women's nature and social role. More recen
phers have begun to challenge philosophical conceptions o
design alternative philosophical methods able to trace the
experience. Yet problems, stemming from the destructive for
cal canon, remain in the interpretation of historical texts by
including those of Simone de Beauvoir.
The complex readings of The Second Sex by feminist p

separate study. However, there is a pattern of problematic r
which should be discussed here, since it can lead to the same
dismissal found in the male-defined philosophical canon.
Beauvoir?" a feminist philosopher demanded of me a cou
out-of-date, male-identified, and just Sartrean anyway."
The reduction of Beauvoir to Sartre may be simply a
philosophical tradition we have been discussing. But wha
Beauvoir is "out-of-date" and "male-identified"? They are
The Second Sex Beauvoir glorifies most men's activities a
demeans women's domestic work as "immanence." Motherhood is evidence of
woman's "enslavement to the species," a burden that society must lessen if wom
are to emerge as autonomous individuals. But Beauvoir could have interprete
motherhood in more positive terms, analogous to that of sexuality. In The Secon
Sex Beauvoir argues that women's "passive" sexuality can provide a more "au
thentic" experience of embodiment and Mitsein than is traditionally available to
men, who are anxious to remain distinct from and in charge of their body and th
other person. Beauvoir could have argued that motherhood, with its ambiguity o
connection and separation, provides women with another privileged experien
of embodiment and Mitsein. But she did not. One also searches in vain for a
celebration of female friendship in The Second Sex. The "original Mitsein" that
defines the subject of Beauvoir's most important theoretical work is the heterosex
ual relationship. She may, in contemporary terminology, "deconstruct" hetero-
sexuality and call for collective action by women; but the objective is to transform
the relationship between men and women, not to leave it.
How are feminist philosophers to read this evidence of Beauvoir's "male
identification"? How can we read a woman writer who seems so "out-of-date"?
Patrocinio Schweickart provides a suggestion in "Reading Ourselves: Toward a
Feminist Theory of Reading." Sh

from Adrienne Rich's reading o
and the woman writer are feat
setting is judicial: one woman i
second is dialogic: the two wom
awareness of context is crucial in
takes the part of the woman w
trivialize or distort her work," a
the political and cultural context
second, a dialogic model of readi
which the author lived and wo
own world. It also demands an
woman's reading is necessarily sh
What were the circumstances
of our readings? Born the eldest
Simone de Beauvoir was educated
by World War I, lacked the dowr
regarded her future at best with
literary education, but neither w
Weil, who entered a boy's lycee
the 1920s, Beauvoir, following th
girl's school. She was taught by f
than their erudition. Her father
failure of his aristocratic preten
for despair.
Beauvoir's earliest novel, When Things of the Spirit Come First, describes the
struggle of young women to survive the stifling confines of family, Church, and
school.36 Not all women lived through it. When Simone's close childhood friend,
Zaza, who valued babies as much as books, died in the midst of a struggle with
her mother over an arranged marriage, Simone felt that she had won her freedom
at the cost of her friend's life.37
Simone de Beauvoir became close friends with Maurice Merleau-Ponty fol-
lowing a national exam in philosophy in which they ranked second and third
after Simone Weil. Some time later she first met Jean-Paul Sartre, while studying
for another exam, the national agregation examinations for philosophy teachers.
Sartre had flunked the exam the year before and was preparing for another
attempt. One of his friends invited Beauvoir, who was known for her intelligence
and knowledge of the history of philosophy, to join their study group. Sartre took
first place on the exam, and Beauvoir second, making her, at twenty-one years
of age, the youngest female student ever to pass the exam.
35 Patrocinio Schweickart, "Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Read-

ing," Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio P. Schweickart (eds.), Gender and Reading:
Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts (Baltimore, 1986), 53, 54.
36 Simone de Beauvoir, When Things of the Spirit Come First, tr. Patrick O'Brian (New
York, 1982).
37 I am indebted to Carol Ascher for her interpretation of Zaza's death, see "The
Anguish of Existence; Remembering Simone de Beauvoir," a paper presented at the
meeting of the Eastern Division, American Philosophical Association, December 30, 1987.
In spite of their apparent equality at this stage, dramatic

set Beauvoir apart from Sartre and Merleau-Ponty in the
The prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure, where both Sartre
were students, had been opened to women only the year
with the urging of her mother, was preparing for the entr
possibility apparently never occurred to Beauvoir and he
preoccupied with the problem of protecting their "innocent"
secular influence of the Sorbonne. Although she consistently
fered discrimination as a woman, Beauvoir may, as a result,
inferiority and exclusion from the male-dominated world o
This interpretation is suggested by a discussion I had with
when, following a suggestion from Michelle LeDoeuff, I
her "experience at the Ecole Normale Superieure." SB: "I w
That's false." MS: "Just a year as an auditor ... ?" SB: "No
MS: "You didn't..." SB: "I took courses at the ENS like ev
courses there when I was preparing my agregation. When yo
agregation, you have the right to take courses there, but I w
Later in the 1930s, when trying to decide on a subject
relationships with the Other, Beauvoir first thought of Weil,
pendent woman philosopher who spoke of herself as a man,
the challenge to the male world further than had Beauvoir h
tion Sartre went on to post-graduate work in phenomenolog
Berlin, and during the Occupation he was offered a posit
Normale Superieure entrance class at the distinguished lycee
to boys only. His place in philosophy was secure as long a
voir's experience was less privileged. She ran up against the
in female education. Before the war she had risked censure by
pate in a government propaganda campaign to increase t
aimed at her female students. During the war she had a posi
students for the entrance examination to a women's trainin
were malnourished and overburdened by their work and fam
When Beauvoir refused to use her influence to force a former
an engagement, the girl's mother had Beauvoir fired for "co
Once again the victim of a sexist double standard, Beauvo
academic philosophy.
She came increasingly to identify herself as a literary wr
the philosopher, although she saw literature as the appro
expression of philosophical ideas. Her first published nov
was the subject of Merleau-Ponty's study of the "metaphysi
1945, when asked to contribute a piece to an anthology o
replied that "where philosophy was concerned I knew my ow
piece, Pyrrhus et Cineas, initiated the "moral period" in
culminated in The Second Sex. In retrospect, it is philosophy
tions are most apparent.
38 Margaret A. Simons, "Two Interviews with Simone de Bea

no. 3 (1989), 21.
39 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Metaphysics and the Novel," Sen
anston, Ill., 1964), 26-40.
Understanding this context clar

including, for example, her pref
rather than a philosopher. We
activities, her angry attack on w
ment of her individuality, and ev
was a token woman, struggling
on the fringes of the male-domi
threatened in woman's sphere th
threat to traditional women such as her mother and Zaza than to men like her
father and Sartre, in spite of their sexism, which is so apparent to us now.
When writing The Second Sex in 1948-49, Beauvoir could not have imagined
what the future, and our present, would be. She wrote before Black Power and
Gay Pride, before the birth control pill and the sexual revolution, before Algiers,
the wars in Vietnam, May 1968, KinderCare, and AIDS. She did not understand
the depth of male violence supporting women's oppression. She could not imagine
how vital female friendships would become to those who continued her assault
on male-dominated institutions, nor how important and politically-charged the
concept of "woman-identity" would become to those leaving woman's traditional
role, and identity, behind.
But Beauvoir spoke out world-wide for women's liberation throughout the
lonely years of the 1950s and 60s, inspiring and giving personal encouragement
to many of the feminist theorists who helped launch the contemporary movement.
And when, in 1972, French women came to her for support, she became an active
participant in a movement led by women years younger than herself. Now that
she has become part of women's history, and her texts the most tangible connec-
tion with her, this relationship has become part of the "feminist story of reading"
described by Schweikert.
As we have seen, the male-defined philosophical canon has erected barriers to
access and legitimation by women philosophers. These barriers have encouraged
women in philosophy to distance themselves from their female predecessors,
including Beauvoir, and to validate their identities as philosophers through refer-
ence to male-authored texts, or a supposedly gender-free methodology. But with
the challenge to the philosophical canon comes the possibility of reclaiming a
feminist philosophical heritage and its connection with Simone de Beauvoir.
Feminists will, as Schweikart suggests, "stand witness in her defense" across the
differences of culture, generation and time and join with her as "two women
engaged in intimate conversation."
Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

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Sexism and the Philosophical Canon: On Reading Beauvoir's The Second Sex

Author(s): Margaret A. Simons

University of Pennsylvania Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

Feminist literary critics working with texts by women writers have e

Copyright 1990 by JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS, INC.

literary life. She describes the s

reveal their philosophical differences. Sartre criticized

7 Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism is a Humanism," Walter Kaufmann (ed.), Existen-

The war and the German Occ

13 G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomen

the importance of social context and childhood in shap

In the light of Beauvoir's contribution to philosophy, it is worth examining

In his preface, Kaufmann argue

The first, most common, and lea

Kaufmann argues as well agains

Beauvoir is often simply identified with Sartre, their relationship misstated

that man is not a clod and cannot become perfect after

ment of the scope of Merleau-Pon

psychology that misunderstands or disparages the psych

Existentialism (1959).23 Barnes, o

23 Hazel Barnes, The Literature of Possibility: A Study in Humanistic Existentialism

phers, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, and Camus, the sexism in S

Not only is Beauvoir's passage

An ambitious project in the formalization of the American philosophical

29 Marjorie Grene, Sartre (New York: 1973), 244-45.

Encyclopedia. The contrast with Camus is particularly intere

33 Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York, 1968), covers.

The contemporary women's liberation movement was i

The complex readings of The Second Sex by feminist p

Feminist Theory of Reading." Sh

35 Patrocinio Schweickart, "Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Read-

In spite of their apparent equality at this stage, dramatic

38 Margaret A. Simons, "Two Interviews with Simone de Bea

Understanding this context clar

Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

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