Sexuality expresses an underlying quest for being rather than grounding it.
Evidence
The existent is a sexed body; in its relations with other existents that are also sexed bodies, sexuality is thus always involved; but as the body and sexuality are concrete expressions of existence, it is also from here that their significance can be ascertained: without this perspective, psychoanalysis takes unexplained facts for granted. … Sexuality must not be taken as an irreducible given; the existent possesses a more primary “quest for being”; sexuality is only one of these aspects. … Working the soil and digging a hole are activities as primal as an embrace or coitus: it is an error to see them only as sexual symbols; a hole, slime, a gash, hardness, and wholeness are primary realities; man’s interest in them is not dictated by libido; instead, the libido will be influenced by the way these realities were revealed to him. Man is not fascinated by wholeness because it symbolizes feminine virginity: rather, his love for wholeness makes virginity precious. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 127
Categorization
- XREF: Directly reverses the Freudian causal arrow Beauvoir attacks and anticipates her phenomenological grounding; also connects to Sartre’s Being and Nothingness which she cites explicitly. — connects to: Sexuality is a fundamental structure of being-for-others, not a mere physiological accident — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 970; Desire, not observed traits, originally discloses sexual being to consciousness.; Sexuality is an ontological structure of the For-itself, not a physiological given — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1003 (+4 more)
- DEFINE: Introduces the central existentialist move: the body as a ‘concrete expression of existence’ rather than a biological given, and ‘quest for being’ as the primary category.
Broader Connections
- Desire is a chosen mode of consciousness, not a passive impingement
#expands(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 979