What I found
interesting in reading excerpts of Beauvoir’s Second Sex was the argument she made on immanence and
transcendence, within the context of the relationship between man and women.
“(…) man represents both the positive and the
neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in
general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting
criteria, without reciprocity.” (The Second Sex)
First of
all, her main idea is that the woman is always “the other” and has always been
“othered”; in fact, in the preface, she follows Hegel’s dialectics to show how
man and woman fit in his dialectical scheme. “He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other.” Man
establishes the Other – woman – in defining himself as a man, rendering her an
object of submission. As we said in class, when talking about how men and women
are brought up in a different way, Beauvoir states that “Woman is determined not by her hormones or by mysterious instincts, but
by the manner in which her body and her relation to the world are modified
through the action of others than herself”.
So her idea
is that woman is the other of the man and, because of this, men define
themselves as men through their opposition to women, through this rejection.
Therefore, women’s existence is a sort of “negative” existence, if we follow
the dialectical process. This idea of woman has always prevailed, as a being
which “is less” than a man; as Aristotle said “The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities”.
The
important distinction she makes is that women belong to immanence, while only
men can become transcendent. Being able to become transcendent entails freedom.
Thus women are inherently dependent and prevented from freedom; this condition
of dependence is what allows men to be free and to be transcendent. However,
this dependence is mutual, because without women, men cannot accede to
transcendence or define themselves, because of the dialectical relationship
among men and women, where women constitute the negation.
Ultimately
there’s a dead-end situation, since we need both immanence and transcendence
and thus if women were to have also transcendence, then no one would cover
their position.
Therefore,
the only solution seems to be the deconstruction of the distinction between men and women and the repartition of
immanence and transcendence between them.
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