Beauvoir extended Merleau-Ponty by recognizing masculinity as a gendered situation too
Evidence
Laura Hengehold has pointed to that in her essay “Beauvoir’s Parrhesiastic Contracts.” She argues that for Beauvoir the sexual being-with of human beings is understood as a situation and that, as such, biological facts take on meaning that remains indeterminate so as to leave things open for the for-itself. She notes that Beauvoir follows Merleau-Ponty in regarding the body as a situation but goes further by recognizing “the gendered nature of bodily situation in Th e Second Sex (the generic human is presumed to be male); but from the fact that ‘femininity’ is a specifi c situation we can also infer that ‘masculinity’ is a situation defi ned, empowered, and limited by reference to women” (197). — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 119
Categorization
- XREF: Directly feeds the Beauvoir-vs-Sartre influence debate and Judith Butler’s later situatedness work. — connects to: Beauvoir’s philosophical apprenticeship was shaped by intellectual humility before Merleau-Ponty — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 370; Beauvoir synthesized Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, exceeding both, to write the Second Sex — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 63; Beauvoir pushes embodied consciousness further than Merleau-Ponty into gendered phenomenology — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 108 (+2 more)
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: whether Beauvoir’s gendered reading of the generic body precedes and exceeds Merleau-Ponty’s own account.
Broader Connections
- Beauvoir transformed phenomenological thought by exposing its patriarchal biases
#expands(0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 85 - Beauvoir pushes embodied consciousness further than Merleau-Ponty into gendered phenomenology
#corroborates(0.82) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 108 - Beauvoir grounded existential freedom within gendered historical situations
#expands(0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 684