Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir was a French philosopher most notably associated with her contribution to feminist ideology. Her work is grounded in the philosophical project of exploring the lived experience of women, the birth of patriarchy, and how male superiority has been legitimised and propagated in our culture. What is it to be a woman? What are the ideas from which patriarchy has been legitimised and maintained? These are questions central to Simone de Beauvoir’s work and we will explore them in this explanation.

Fig. 1 - Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir: biography

Simone de Beauvoir was a French writer and philosopher who laid the foundation for modern feminism. Simone de Beauvoir, whose complete name was Simone-Lucie-Ernestine-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, was born in 1908 in Paris. She was raised as a catholic in an upper-middle-class family.

In her youth, she was so devoted to Catholicism that she intended on becoming a nun. However, during her teens, her intellectual curiosity led her to renounce her faith, and instead dedicate her life to the study of philosophy, maths and literature. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne (a prestigious university in Paris). It was here that she met the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who she then went on to have a famously unconventional romantic relationship with.

In 1949, De Beauvoir published her famous book The Second Sex. This is considered her best-known work. The book was a critique of the patriarchy and the status granted to women over the course of history. While today the book is revered as one of the most important foundational feminist works when it was published, it was greeted with controversy: critics classed the book as pornographic and the Vatican banned the text.

Simone de Beauvoir and feminism

Understanding Simone de Beauvoir’s feminism requires that we turn to her great work, The Second Sex. Her work here explores the specific ways that the social and natural sciences have justified patriarchal domination of women through the production of an ideology that dictates that women are ‘naturally’ inferior. In 1976, she wrote:

The Second Sex

The Second Sex is, is in essence, an argument for sexual equality that rejects previously unchallenged, dominant beliefs about the natural inferiority of women.

Her argument can broadly be summarised as taking two directions. The first of these is that masculine ideology exploits genuine sexual differences between men and women, yet it uses these differences to establish and maintain inequality.

The second part of her argument responds to the idea of thinkers such as Plato, who argue that sexual equality can be achieved once we dissolve sexual differences – in essence, making masculinity the absolute human type.

Simone De Beauvoir instead argues that men and women must treat each other as equals while acknowledging there are sexual differences. These differences don’t need to be erased to achieve equality, they must simply be validated. Importantly, for De Beauvoir, equality is not synonymous with being the same.

In line with this thinking, she sees traditional justifications of patriarchy on the basis that there are objective sexual differences between men and women as unjust and immoral. Moreover, the foundation on which the assumption that males are superior to females lies is weak at best and reflects a bias that had yet to be questioned.

This is, arguably, the most famous quotation from The Second Sex and it is a recognition of the sex and gender distinction. While sex is biological, referring to our genitalia and DNA, gender is a social construction that by definition must be learnt or instilled into us (it has no biological basis).

By introducing this idea, De Beauvoir’s commentary on sexual inequality becomes an exploration of the social construction of femininity and a critique of both how these constructions arise and their validity. For De Beauvoir, femininity is not biological, but instead a manifestation of social norms.

The supposedly ‘essential’ sexual differences between men and women are not rooted in nature. They are a reflection of differences in the lived experience of men and women. Legitimising patriarchy on the basis of sexual differences between men and women thus loses credibility as these differences (other than basic biological differences) are borne from external, societal, and cultural influences.

The Other

A central concept in De Beauvoir’s writing is that of women as ‘the other’, who exist in opposition to the subject. The subject is absolute, while the other is inessential. It is this dichotomy that underpins De Beauvoir’s writings on sexual inequality.

A fundamental part of this distinction is that the subject, i.e. men, identify as the paradigmatic epitome of what it is to be human. With this belief internalised, De Beauvoir argues men measure women by their own standard, thus concluding them to be inferior.

Women’s supposed shortcomings are identified through the conclusion that they fail to meet the paradigm of the absolute human that men or ‘the subject’ perceive themselves to be. As a result, these arbitrary conclusions are used to justify the treatment of women as ‘the other’.

Simone de Beauvoir and philosophy

As we’ve mentioned, Simone de Beauvoir is most accurately described as a philosophical writer. Her philosophical project about the roots of sexual inequality is rooted in her identification with existential phenomenology.

Thus, existential phenomenology, which underpins De Beauvoir’s philosophy, combines these two projects.

De Beauvoir’s philosophy, therefore, is the exploration of the reality of the lived experience of being a woman, and how women are perceived. Her work and analysis are fundamentally grounded by her interest in existential phenomenology.

Critics of Simone de Beauvoir’s works

Like all philosophically and politically engaged writers, Simon de Beauvoir’s works have invited criticism.

A common critique of De Beauvoir’s work is that it is actually misogynistic, and is framed by the male imaginary. Some argue De Beauvoir advocates for a masculinised feminism. Usually, what people refer to when they suggest this is De Beauvoir’s negative description of the feminine sexual experience, maternity, menopause, and menstruation. These descriptions can be found in The Second Sex.

Julia Kristeva, the Bulgarian-French philosopher, is most notably associated with criticisms of De Beauvoir that follow this line of argument.

Fig. 2 - Julia Kristeva

However, De Beauvoir has been defended from these critics by acknowledging that her comments are a product of the social context in which she wrote The Second Sex. Let’s not forget that she published this book in 1949, when abortion and birth control were illegal and thus maternity was not a choice but a requirement. As a result, De Beauvoir did not see the celebration of maternity liberating for women.

Another critique of Simone de Beauvoir’s work is that it is blind to class and racial inequality. Elizabeth Spelman (1988) argues that De Beauvoir uses white, middle-class women as the paradigm for the lived experience of all women. On a similar note, some philosophers argue that De Beauvoir’s arguments in The Second Sex are based on hetero-sexist assumptions. Claudia Card (1990) argues that many of her arguments are founded on a discriminatory premise that homosexuality is a choice while heterosexuality is fundamental.

The importance of Simone de Beauvoir’s works

The importance of Simone de Beauvoir’s work lies in her foundational contribution to the history of feminism. Her analysis on the phenomenology of womanhood has been undoubtedly influential in the formation of feminist ideology concerning the nature of sexual inequality across societies.

Her quotation, ‘one is not born but becomes a woman’ is vital in understanding her contribution to feminist ideology.

Before De Beauvoir, a social constructivist view of gender and how this contributes to sexual inequality was rare, if not non-existent. Beauvoir’s historical and philosophical approach to analysing the phenomenology of sex-based inequality was foundational in highlighting the illogical nature of patriarchy legitimised by a biased and flawed understanding of natural, biologically-ensured superiority.

Since the publication of The Second Sex, many believe this is where contemporary feminism began.