Humans cannot be described statically because humanity is constantly in the making

Evidence

It has often been claimed that physiology alone provides answers to these questions: Does individual success have the same chances in the two sexes? Which of the two in the species plays the greater role? But the first question does not apply to woman and other females in the same way, because animals constitute given species and it is possible to provide static descriptions of them: it is simply a question of collating observations to decide if the mare is as quick as the stallion, if male chimpanzees do as well on intelligence tests as their female counterparts; but humanity is constantly in the making. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 103

Categorization

• DEFINE: The crux of her methodological break from materialist biology: humans are historical projects, not given species with static descriptions. This drives the whole situation-based analysis.
• XREF: Echoes the existentialist being-in-the-making theme that recurs in the third de Beauvoir book and connects to Sartre’s project of self-creation. — connects to: Others’ fixed labels of us are an unrealizable limit on our situation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1283; Even the worst situations remain fundamentally human and thus our responsibility — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1288; Human universality is perpetually made by choice, not given in advance. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 23 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Human beings are processes of their own actions, not fixed essences #corroborates (0.95) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1256
• Human identity is constructed and occasionally invented, not natural and stable #corroborates (0.88) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 839
• Humans are constituted by their social relations rather than an intrinsic essence #expands (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2517
• Human life must be understood under both individual and social attributes at once #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 213