Immanence is defined by futility, not by repetition or lack of creativity.
Evidence
Immanence, on the other hand, produces nothing durable through which we move beyond ourselves but merely (1) perpetuates life or (2) maintains the status quo. Activities of immanence include not only the everyday labors that sustain and repair the body and mind, like cooking, cleaning and, presumably, television watching, but also bureaucratic paper pushing and biological functions such as giving birth. Beauvoir occasionally characterizes immanence as repetitive and uncreative (SS, 65–69; 474–78), although immanence is not defi ned against transcendence in terms of its repetitiveness or uncreativity, for activities of immanence can involve creativity or self-expression in like manner as activities of transcendence can involve repetition. Activities of immanence are characteristically futile— immanence consumes time and labor but accomplishes nothing— and the combination of necessity and futility involved in maintenance labor, in turn, makes some forms of immanence necessarily repetitive. Th e labor required to cook, clean, wash, or rake leaves, for instance, is necessary for the maintenance of life but is eventually negated and brought to nothing once taken up into the endless cycle of life itself (SS, 474–478). Since activities of immanence merely sustain life and achieve nothing more than its continuation, they cannot themselves serve as the justifying ground for living. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 598
Categorization
- DEFINE: Corrects a common misreading that Beauvoir defines immanence by repetitiveness; the real defining feature is futile maintenance that accomplishes nothing durable.
- XREF: connects to: Beauvoir defines immanence as repetitive domestic labor that produces nothing new. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 606
Broader Connections
- Beauvoir defines immanence as repetitive domestic labor that produces nothing new.
#contradicts(0.90) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 606