Paternity was socially invented to give men immortality through heirs

Evidence

The status of the adopted wife and the servant wife establishes the right of every man to be survived by descendants who are not necessarily connected by a blood relationship. This confirms what was said above; this relationship was in a way invented by man when he sought to annex for himself—beyond his finite life—immortality in this world and in the underworld. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 186

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that blood kinship is a social invention crafted to annex immortality through descendants is a dense, paradigm-shifting key to Beauvoir’s whole analysis.
• DEFINE: Defines the institutional ‘invention’ of paternal kinship relations.
• XREF: connects to: Humans pursue symbolic immortality through works, namesakes, and progeny — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 63; Confucian metaphysics made the child’s body sacred as lineage property — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 904; Cultivating ancestry functions as a buffer against death — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 407 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Humans pursue symbolic immortality through works, namesakes, and progeny #expands (0.82) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 63
• Confucian metaphysics made the child’s body sacred as lineage property #exemplifies (0.78) — , The Rod and the Child, 904
• Cultivating ancestry functions as a buffer against death #corroborates (0.75) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 407
• The epiklerate reduced female heirs to procreative tools preserving patrilineal property #exemplifies (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 189