Beauvoir reframed Sartre’s alienating male Look as a reciprocal female gaze

Evidence

Developing her argument begun in Th e Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir claims that each human freedom is sustained and completed in the Other. Th is claim is directly at odds with Sartre’s description of the inhuman male “Look,” with its negation of otherness and its implicit Master status. To this description, Beauvoir juxtaposes the necessity of a frank and unbiased interchange between the sexes, which bypasses the need for any judgmental “Look.” As far as the author is concerned, a woman’s “Look,” in comparison to that of a man, has no “abstract severity.” In fact, in relation to the male, she is oft en required to fulfi ll the role of a narcissistic mirror, to refl ect his own image. In this respect, her “Look” is crucial to the male project of self-affi rmation, and it is here that Beauvoir implicitly contests Sartre’s depiction of the perpetual self-alienation in the gaze of the Other. Th e female “Look” is not inhuman: it is confi rmed in the presence of “two living eyes” (SS, 185; DS I, 302). Beauvoir’s transformative approach to Sartre’s theory of the “Look” draws much inspiration from her reading of literature. She fi nds the ideal of reciprocal recognition in the work of both Stendhal and Malraux. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 277

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Ethics of Ambiguity argument begun earlier in this same book, and to Sartre’s Being and Nothingness theory of the Look as analyzed in the reader’s Continental scholarship. — connects to: Beauvoir’s positive vision is fraternity between equals, not women’s supremacy — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 15; Beauvoir supplied the politics Sartre’s account of the look lacked — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 68; Beauvoir transformed phenomenological thought by exposing its patriarchal biases — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 85 (+5 more)
• SEED: The female Look as narcissistic mirror versus reciprocal recognition offers an essay angle on how Beauvoir feminized and humanized Sartre’s phenomenology.

Broader Connections

• Beauvoir grounds selfhood in the Other’s gaze where Sartre denies such dependency #expands (0.90) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 267
• Beauvoir holds Others as essential, challenging Sartre’s ontological individualism #corroborates (0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 184
• Beauvoir’s Second Sex reuses Sartre’s slimy imagery to describe feminine sexuality #expands (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 386