Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris on January 9th, 1908 to a Catholic mother and an atheist father. At the age of fourteen, she followed her father’s steps and practiced atheism. When Beauvoir was twenty-one, she attended the Sorbonne and specialized in philosophy, a male dominated field. She was the ninth woman in France to pass the comprehensive philosophy exam and to receive her degree. During her studies, Beauvoir met philosopher, novelist, and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre. Both Beauvoir and Sartre followed existentialism, a philosophy that emphasizes the concrete existence of the individual human person as a radically free and responsible agent who determines his/her own life. Ultimately, there is no fixed essential human nature;
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He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.”
Beauvoir developed her concept of “the Other” from Sartre’s notion of “being-for-others”: “my sense of how others see me—I am an object for another person’s consciousness,” leading to a conflict of interpretations. Beauvoir moves this concept from the individual to society by explaining how men have imposed their interpretation of women upon women. Also, she shows how an individual consciousness uses its view of the other to construct its own identity and to assert its own freedom. Ultimately, her motive is to answer why woman is the Other. According to philosopher Hegel, reality is made up of the interplay of opposing forces. Conferring with Hegel, for a being to define itself, it must also define something in opposition to itself. Beauvoir states, “[A]t the moment when man asserts himself as subject and free being, the idea of the Other arises.” Meaning, for every subject, there must be an object. This idea is completely imbalanced when applied to women and men. Man has always occupied the role of the self, the subject, and the free being. Man sees woman as the object, the deviation, the inessential. A woman’s only value is as a sexual partner, nothing more. This is why a woman is called “the sex”; she appears essentially to the male as sex. Women complete men, but themselves are incomplete. It is fundamentally unnatural to live in this type of role, leaving women hesitant between the enforced role and her liberty. In other words, in order to accept the role of Other, women must reject their humanity as well as convey their
He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.”
Beauvoir developed her concept of “the Other” from Sartre’s notion of “being-for-others”: “my sense of how others see me—I am an object for another person’s consciousness,” leading to a conflict of interpretations. Beauvoir moves this concept from the individual to society by explaining how men have imposed their interpretation of women upon women. Also, she shows how an individual consciousness uses its view of the other to construct its own identity and to assert its own freedom. Ultimately, her motive is to answer why woman is the Other. According to philosopher Hegel, reality is made up of the interplay of opposing forces. Conferring with Hegel, for a being to define itself, it must also define something in opposition to itself. Beauvoir states, “[A]t the moment when man asserts himself as subject and free being, the idea of the Other arises.” Meaning, for every subject, there must be an object. This idea is completely imbalanced when applied to women and men. Man has always occupied the role of the self, the subject, and the free being. Man sees woman as the object, the deviation, the inessential. A woman’s only value is as a sexual partner, nothing more. This is why a woman is called “the sex”; she appears essentially to the male as sex. Women complete men, but themselves are incomplete. It is fundamentally unnatural to live in this type of role, leaving women hesitant between the enforced role and her liberty. In other words, in order to accept the role of Other, women must reject their humanity as well as convey their