Tada.
de Beauvoir relies heavily on Sartre’s notions of free will, and the lack of an essential human nature to make her points about women’s ideal role in society. Sartre defines a free act as being composed of motive, action, and end. These factor’s surely all exist for a woman making decisions, so the situation cannot be purely metaphysical. In fact, Sartre denies outright that our past or society restricts our freedom. Any effect on a woman from society must be in the form of an illusion- the nature of society acts to make a woman think she is less free, when in fact this is not the case. To an extend, this places the burden on the individual woman to see her own way out of the illusion, though of course an enlightened person who has already done this can help. I am reminded of Plato’s cave. A lot of Beauvoir’s view fails if key points of Sartre’s view fails, a point to which I will return later.
So what is the nature of this illusion? First, it comes from popular notions of the nature of a woman. We talked about numerous quotes from people like Aquinas and Aristotle saying that a women was either an incomplete man, or a man with the addition of some imperfections or problems. Either way, masculinity is The Standard, and femininity is some negative deviation from this standard. Men made this claim unchallenged, for women seemed to be unwilling or uninterested in challenging it. Because of these notions, de Beauvoir argued that women see themselves in terms of how they are unlike men, and further, that those differences are most likely detriments. This illusion, then, is most likely to lead to beliefs that woman are ill-suited for some paths in life, such as politics or philosophy. This dichotomy, that men can do whatever they want, yet women are limited to things that fit their role. Hence, women see limitations to their free will that men do not perceive.
Let us look at de Beauvoir’s influences. First, Karl Marx. Mark believed that there was no such thing as human nature that pertained to anything above the level of animal needs- in a nutshell, he claimed that if we changed society, there was no limit to how much we could change the individuals in that society. Sartre took this idea and ran with it, arguing that the past and our environment do not encroach on our free will, and in fact points at that lack of a essential nature, our nothingness, as a key component without which free will could not operate. de Beauvoir observes that women seem to have a very limited, undesirable role in society. How can this be, if her will is condemned to be free? It must be that women cannot see their own freedom, because of the society they live in. Hence, change the society, and women will be able to perceive and enjoy their inherent freedom as much as men.
There is a good chance, though, that Marx is wrong. The notorious criticism of Communism is that it underestimates human nature- there really is a “way people are”, and that way they are makes them lazy, unmotivated and corrupt under a communist system. With this in mind, feminism could certainly benefit from a few approaches that did not rely on the non essentialism of human nature.
Marx got his beliefs about human nature and society by reversing the position of Hegel. Hegel believed that the idea was the starting point of society, and that a good or bad nation would result from the qualities of the ideas of it’s people. If Marx went astray with his denial of human nature as primary, then reversing this position would seem to suggest a couple solutions to the would-be feminist who doesn’t agree with Marx. First, it is absolutely essential that the individual change their views of women. It is incumbent upon each person to believe the right things about women. Society will take care of itself if it’s individuals come to think correctly. However, this is not to say that women can enact any and every change that they want- for to reject Marx is to admit the possibility of an essential human nature, and perhaps, the existence of essential male and female natures. If there is an essential female nature, then it may be that some of the things woman want to change about society are against that nature, and hence, beyond our power to change.
However, even if men and women have natures that don’t let them change their roles in society, there is still a powerful option left to the feminist- rather than changing women’s roles, the feminist can change the perception of women’s roles as being secondary. In an essentialist framework, inequality does not come from women having fixed roles in society, it comes from those roles being seen as inferior- and that distinction is certainly subjective, and can be affected. For example, there is no objective reason why being a politician needs to be seen as comparatively great, and raising a family as comparatively lowly. There is no objective reason why being a talented philosopher is comparatively impressive, and being a talented chef comparatively mundane. What I found most interesting about this approach is that under an essentialist framework, trying to make women’s roles and men’s roles the same is actually a way of institutionalizing sexism- for it defines a successful feminist movement by the degree to which women become like men and never the other way around.
I’m definitely going to at least hint at Sartre being wrong at the beginning, that is a nice touch.
Really, take out the sexual escapades and the book would be about 50 pages, not its current 416.