Beauvoir relocates meaning-creation from solitary consciousness to shared human practices

Evidence

First, freedom cannot be realized in transcendent projects except against a backdrop of a human world infused with meanings and signifi cations that are created by free beings. Without the existence of other free beings whose communications and practices create shared meanings, transcendent projects would be, if not impossible, meaningless. Th is point, Kristana Arp notes, is a recapitulation of Edmund Husserl’s insight that consciousness is the source of human signifi cation, although Beauvoir emphasizes that the signifi cations necessary for transcendent projects originate in shared human practices rather than in consciousness itself. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 618

Categorization

• XREF: This move—from Husserl’s transcendental consciousness to intersubjective practice—echoes strands of later Continental thought the reader may connect to Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. — connects to: Beauvoir grounded existential freedom within gendered historical situations — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 684; Beauvoir argues even solitary creative work requires other free beings to carry it forward. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 621
• QUESTION: Worth checking how far this practice-based meaning marks a genuine early divergence from Sartre’s account of signification.