De Beauvoir’s work is pioneering in many ways, because of the methodology she uses, but also regarding the theories she develops on women and on Existentialism. As was
mentioned earlier, Le Deuxième Sexe is a reference work which is the first of a kind, namely a detailed, comprehensive account of women which comprises various disciplines. But the fact de Beauvoir opted for Existentialism as a framework to draw on is also groundbreaking, because Existentialist theory is not the most auspicious one to tackle the question of women. For instance, it can be said that Existentialism is dismissive of women, and, as Michèle Le Doeuff puts it, ‘there is no place for a woman in such a system, and even less for a woman who produces philosophy’ (Le Doeuff 2007: 165), and she goes on, explaining that, for Sartre, the feminine was disgusting, as when he declares that ‘the obscenity of the feminine is that of every gaping thing’ (quoted in Le Doeuff, ibid. 81). If Sartre’s depiction of women’s bodies is
derogatory, it can be said that Existentialism as a whole is phallocentric, to the point where Jeffner Allen coins the phrase ‘patriarchal existentialism’ and explains that as this theory does not speak to women, the latter cannot identify with it (Allen in Allen and Young 1989: 72). This is why feminist philosophy needs to challenge this status quo by incorporating women’s
experience in Existentialism, as did de Beauvoir in Le Deuxième Sexe, and the methodology she resorted to was to use phenomenology, which refers to the study of phenomena, and precisely relates to our experience and our perception of the world.
Using that approach locates de Beauvoir in the tradition of her male phenomenologist counterparts, but because her research topic deals with women, she is able to identify issues in traditional philosophical concepts, and to convincingly challenge them. As mentioned before, Sartre’s arguments on ‘The Look’ are, for example, male-centred, and the Hegelian
master/slave dialectic is inaccurate regarding the relation between men and women, because the latter are denied mutual recognition as subjects, being therefore cast as absolute Others. The path de Beauvoir follows is insightful: she first starts examining the position of women in society, realising that women have been seen as inferior to men and were mostly assigned to work in the home and to take care of childbearing, which could be described as being slaves to men, in a society dominated by the latter. That notion of oppression, and the unequal
relationship between men and women led de Beauvoir to reflect upon Hegel’s master/slave dialectic, in which she noticed that the mutual recognition both she and Hegel advocate is not realised for women, who are absolute Others in relation to men.
1.6.3.2. How has her phenomenological method been used by successors?
By following such logic throughout her book, de Beauvoir opened the way for feminist philosophers to use phenomenology in their analyzes. For instance, Iris Marion Young, in her influential essay Throwing Like A Girl, examines the way young girls are said to throw balls differently than boys of the same age, and explores other ‘feminine’ behaviours such as sitting, or walking to then discuss girls and boys’ socialization (Young 2005: 32). Young draws
substantially on de Beauvoir, but she regrets that the latter mostly focuses on obvious
phenomena affecting women, such as menstruation or pregnancies, as opposed to studying the ‘situatedness of the woman’s actual bodily movement and orientation to its surroundings and its world.’ (Young ibid.29) However, de Beauvoir’s notion of feminine and masculine behaviours being socially constructed, as well as the existential phenomenology she uses, are at the core of Young’s work, thus reaffirming de Beauvoir’s feminist philosophical impact.
1.6.3.3. Le Deuxième Sexe as dealing with feminist topics at the level of the everyday, but also
with philosophical depth
By using factual examples from women’s everyday lives, de Beauvoir has grounds to develop her existential theory, which gives two dimensions to Le Deuxième Sexe: the everyday and the philosophical. De Beauvoir succeeds in merging philosophy with her subjective concern as a particular woman, and in doing so, gives us an innovative feminist philosophical work in which she intertwines the everyday and the metaphysical (Bauer 2001: 858). For example, she directly starts her book by asking the metaphysical question ‘What is a woman?’ and answers in the personal, stating that she is a woman herself (Bauer 2001: 870). That combination of
concrete personal situations and of philosophical reflections is one of the strengths of Le Deuxième Sexe and it explains its success too, because readers can relate to the lived experiences described in the book.
However, the philosophical side should not be overlooked, as it gives a richer depth to de Beauvoir’s message regarding equality between men and women, but also because it
presents us with original philosophical thought. The entanglement of philosophical concepts and methods with feminist concerns would seem enough to describe Le Deuxième Sexe as a
feminist philosophical work, but we can add that the author goes beyond her condition of being a woman, and what is more, a woman trained in philosophy. What is meant is that de Beauvoir herself grew up in a patriarchal environment, but her seemingly masculinist viewpoint (which we will mention when analysing the critiques The Second Sex received) might be ironic. De
Beauvoir encourages women not to be afraid of using men’s tools (such as language) so as to be heard and to give impetus to the women’s movement, which illustrates a feminist
philosophical strategy. De Beauvoir was accused of being a masculinist and her work is
assumed to be particularly contradictory. However, we do not have to take this as a weakness, because the apparent contradictions are actually supporting de Beauvoir’s case. For example, and as was seen before, the negative depiction she makes of female embodiment in her chapter on biological data should not be taken at face value, and de Beauvoir’s grim account is emphasising her point, because she wants to show how social and cultural constraints put values on biology. For de Beauvoir to claim (speaking of the female ant) that ‘the fertilized female [...] is imprisoned for twelve years laying eggs ceaselessly.’ (The Second Sex, loc. 869) does not mean that the author is not aware of the anthropomorphism of her text, but that she might be using it as an aspect of her feminist philosophy.
I contend that de Beauvoir’s demanding training and rigorous work gave her an
awareness of the seemingly contradictory examples she uses. It was all the more a feat at her time, considering that she could not resort to the contemporary feminist theory which is
available nowadays, and she was creating an idiom (of the difference between gender and biological sex for instance), which might make her sound self-contradictory. But once again, her derogatory description of women’s bodies merely helps her make the argument that ‘physiology cannot ground values: rather, biological data take on those values the existent confers on them.’ (The Second Sex, loc. 1169)
According to Nancy Bauer, Le Deuxième Sexe is a particularly relevant instance of feminist philosophy, and, besides being profoundly feminist in its themes and its reach, the book aims to challenge philosophy ‘to transform itself, internally and from the ground up’ (Bauer 2001: loc.536). If this is the case, then the translators are faced with the challenge to convey both the feminist and the philosophical message presented by de Beauvoir, which was not achieved with Le Deuxième Sexe’s first English translation, as we will now show through the analysis of the reception of The Second Sex and the critiques it received after its 1953 publication.