Sartre initially confined flesh to mother-child love and cast it as female submission.

Evidence

Sartre was unable at that point to translate his notion of fl esh in the mother-child relationship to that of sexual relations between adults. Flesh is still for him there, female passive submission (although Sartre allows that her fl esh “blossoms”). Th e male is agent, who desires and takes. But his body cannot fl ourish unless he becomes feminine and fl esh, and abandons himself passively—which is taboo for Sartre in L’Idiot. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 149

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Sartre’s restricted early notion of flesh vs. Beauvoir’s fuller reciprocal conception — a key terminological distinction in the influence debate.
• XREF: connects to: Beauvoir functioned as both censor-father and giving-mother in Sartre’s late psychic triangulation — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 154

Broader Connections

• Beauvoir functioned as both censor-father and giving-mother in Sartre’s late psychic triangulation #expands (0.72) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 154