Beauvoir held that every Self-Other duality inevitably breeds conflict

Evidence

Beauvoir’s initial approach to transposing the Master-Slave relation to the problematic area of gender relations is her view that the dual structure “malefemale” contains within it the seeds of confl ict and oppression, since she claims that wherever there is a duality (Self-Other) there must inevitably be confl ict. Human consciousness, she argues, contains within itself a fundamental hostility toward every other consciousness: “Th e subject can be posed only in being opposed— he sets himself up as the essential, as opposed to the other, the in essential, the object. But the other consciousness, the other ego, sets up a reciprocal claim” (SS, xvii; DS I, 17). — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 265

Categorization

• DEFINE: Fixes Beauvoir’s specific account of alterity as always-entailing conflict, distinct from a more open dialectic.
• XREF: connects to: Levinas made the Self-Other relationship philosophy’s central concept — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 625; Beauvoir holds that Other-encounter need not end in conflict but can achieve authentic ambiguity. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 114; Beauvoir’s threefold ambiguity defines the human as immanent-transcendent, free-yet-unmade, and conflicted-with-yet-requiring the Other. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 112 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Beauvoir grounds politics in a double alterity through self-otherness #expands (0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 465
• Beauvoir rejects conflict as the paradigmatic model of human relationships #contradicts (0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 656