Man projects his own unattainable interiority onto woman as mirror and Other

Evidence

What makes Kyo’s attitude human and moving is that it implies reciprocity and that he asks May to love him in his authenticity, not to send back an indulgent reflection of himself. For many men, this demand is diluted: instead of a truthful revelation, they seek a glowing image of admiration and gratitude, deified in the depths of a woman’s two eyes. Woman has often been compared to water, in part because it is the mirror where the male Narcissus contemplates himself: he leans toward her, with good or bad faith. But in any case, what he wants from her is to be, outside of him, all that he cannot grasp in himself, because the interiority of the existent is only nothingness, and to reach himself, he must project himself onto an object. Woman is the supreme reward for him since she is his own apotheosis, a foreign form he can possess in the flesh. It is this “incomparable monster,” himself, that he embraces when he holds in his arms this being who sums up the World and onto whom he has imposed his values and his laws. Uniting himself, then, with this other whom he makes his own, he hopes to reach himself. Treasure, prey, game, and risk, muse, guide, judge, mediator, mirror, the woman is the Other in which the subject surpasses himself without being limited, who opposes him without negating him; she is the Other who lets herself be annexed to him without ceasing to be the Other. And for this she is so necessary to man’s joy and his triumph that if she did not exist, men would have had to invent her. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 401

Categorization

• XREF: Core definition of ‘the Other’ and its function — connects directly to Hegel’s master-slave dialectic and Sartre’s being-for-others, foundational to the book’s whole analytical apparatus. — connects to: Man defines woman not in herself but in relation to himself — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 13; Man’s attempt to possess woman reverses into his own entrapment in the flesh — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 354; The failure to possess woman drives man into self-alienation. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 355 (+7 more)
• DEFINE: Defines how ‘Other’ operates: an object onto which the subject projects what he cannot grasp in himself, annexed without ceasing to be Other.

Broader Connections

• Man needs woman’s confirming gaze to affirm his particular self. #expands (0.90) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 399
• Woman’s contradictory image stems from being man’s inessential Other #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 413
• Both sexes implicitly center perspective on the male, making woman the object #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 681
• Man feminizes the ideal Other because woman is the tangible figure of alterity #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 383
• Man elevates woman to personhood precisely because she remains his feared other #qualifies (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 366