The man-woman relation measures how fully humanity’s natural behavior has become human

Evidence

“The direct, natural, and necessary relation of person to person is the relation of man to woman,” said Marx. From the character of this relationship follows how much man as a species-being, as man, has come to be himself and to comprehend himself; the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being. It therefore reveals the extent to which man’s natural behavior has become human, or the extent to which the human essence in him has become a natural essence—the extent to which his human nature has come to be natural to him. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1982

Categorization

• XREF: Marx’s humanization-of-nature criterion resonates with Beauvoir’s blending of ethical transcendence and natural facticity, and her debt to Hegelian and Marxist dialectics despite rejecting their obfuscations. — connects to: Woman’s role is to be the mediating consciousness through which man discovers himself — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614
• DEFINE: Defines the central evaluative criterion Beauvoir upholds: the man-woman bond as the index of how far the species-being has humanized its natural condition.

Broader Connections

• Woman’s role is to be the mediating consciousness through which man discovers himself #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614