Beauvoir synthesized Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, exceeding both, to write the Second Sex
Evidence
To get the Beauvoir we deserve, we need to read her as an engaged existential phenomenologist, whose central concerns were ethical and political. In the Second Sex, as the riddle and the answer that opened this chapter show, Beauvoir understood that the endurance of patriarchy relied on a unique intertwining of political and existential structures that implicated women and men intimately, socially, and politically. She discovered that a structural analysis that ignored what Sartre called bad faith, and/ or an existential analysis that ignored what Merleau-Ponty identifi ed as the anonymous structures of experience, would miss the mark— would have no political or existential eff ect. Th us, paying her debts to Sartre and Merleau-Ponty but beholden to neither, Beauvoir created a unique phenomenological political liberatory text—Th e Second Sex. … I read Th e Second Sex as the scene of a ménage à trois, where the angles of Sartre’s and Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts are triangulated through the cutting edges of Beauvoir’s thinking. Th ough neither Sartre’s concepts of bad faith and the look nor Merleau-Ponty’s idea of ambiguity can by themselves adequately account for women’s failure to rebel, taken together, they can, when properly spliced, satisfy Beauvoir’s desire to birth the independent woman. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 63
Categorization
- SEED: The ‘menage a trois’ reading of the Second Sex as synthesizing Sartre and Merleau-Ponty is a strong argumentative frame for an essay on Beauvoir’s philosophical independence.
- XREF: Connects to the broader Beauvoir-Sartre authorship debate and to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of ambiguity. — connects to: Beauvoir’s Second Sex reuses Sartre’s slimy imagery to describe feminine sexuality — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 386; Sartre’s writer-reader reciprocity mirrors Beauvoir’s happy couple in The Second Sex. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 281; Merleau-Ponty treated Beauvoir’s novel as original and pre-dating Sartre’s work. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 311 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Beauvoir’s Second Sex reuses Sartre’s slimy imagery to describe feminine sexuality
#exemplifies(0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 386 - Beauvoir’s concept of sexual difference derives from Merleau-Ponty, not Sartre.
#exemplifies(0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 399 - Beauvoir’s transcendence concept is largely non-Sartrean, especially in The Second Sex
#qualifies(0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 578 - Beauvoir extended Merleau-Ponty by recognizing masculinity as a gendered situation too
#expands(0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 119 - Beauvoir may have misread Sartre through Merleau-Ponty’s interpretive lens
#qualifies(0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 212 - Beauvoir’s philosophical apprenticeship was shaped by intellectual humility before Merleau-Ponty
#qualifies(0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 370 - Sartre’s writer-reader reciprocity mirrors Beauvoir’s happy couple in The Second Sex.
#exemplifies(0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 281 - Merleau-Ponty treated Beauvoir’s novel as original and pre-dating Sartre’s work.
#corroborates(0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 311