The thinking-philosophizing of Simone de Beauvoir is grounded in existentialism, its detours, and attempts.
The attempts of existentialism at investigating meaning, meaninglessness, value, death, otherness, anxiety, choice, freedom, and responsibility shape Beauvoir’s questioning and mark the scope of her thinking-philosophizing.
Simone de Beauvoir on Freedom, Responsibility, and Anxiety
The togetherness of freedom, choosing, responsibility, and anxiety lies at the heart of the existentialism of Beauvoir.
Beauvoir says that freedom, free choosing, and genuine deciding lead to or deliver oneself into anxiety, dread, and fear, for freedom means taking up and accepting one’s own responsibility.
In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir remarks that adolescence marks a moment at which anxiety is greatly experienced, for in adolescence choosing, deciding, freedom, and responsibility become for the first time real and genuine possibilities.
Beauvoir says that “but whatever the joy of this liberation may be, it is not without great confusion that the adolescent finds himself cast into a world which is no longer ready-made”.
To find oneself suddenly “cast into a world which is no longer ready-made” is to experience freedom, glimpse responsibility, and endure anxiety. That is, to find oneself suddenly “cast into a world which is no longer ready-made” is to encounter the freedom of deciding and the genuineness of choosing as real possibilities for the first time.
Beauvoir also says that adolescence marks a moment at which the fallibility of the decisions of parents and the fallibility of the choices of authority figures begin to show themselves and render themselves radically apparent to the adolescent.
This means that adolescence is a moment at which we encounter, for the first time, the groundlessness of all deciding and the arbitrariness of every choosing. This encounter renders apparent not only that there is freedom and there is free choosing, but also that responsibility is closely linked together with freedom. This realization, again, delivers the adolescent into anxiety.
Simone de Beauvoir and Nihilism
A critique that is often directed toward existentialism is that it is nihilistic; that is, existentialism argues for meaninglessness and valuelessness. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir refuses and argues against these claims.
Beauvoir argues that meaning and value are neither impossible nor forever absent; meaning and value are merely ambiguous. Beauvoir says that there is a difference between the ambiguity of meaning and value, which takes place as uncertainty and undecidedness, and the impossibility and nothingness of meaning and value, which occur as radical valuelessness and inevitable meaninglessness.
Mere ambiguity means that there are meanings and there are values, awaiting to be rendered possible or apparent and brought about. Mere ambiguity means that meaning and value are neither predetermined nor fixed. Mere ambiguity means that we are the scope in which and through which meaning and value arise and first become possible.
Beauvoir rejects both the claims that existentialism is nihilistic and nihilism itself by rendering responsibility an essential part of all deciding and every choosing, from which meaning and value emerge and announce themselves.
According to Beauvoir, each individual “bears the responsibility for the world which is not the work of a strange power, but of himself, where his defeats are inscribed and his victories as well”.
Freedom, responsibility, meaning, and value are linked together in such a way that makes us both free to either create or deny meaning and value and responsible for this creation or denial.
Only to oneself belongs the freedom either to render possible and apparent or to render impossible and absent meaning and value. Taking up one’s freedom renders meaning and value possible and apparent; taking up one’s freedom brings about meaning and value and shows that meaning and value are not absent from the world and life.
If one fails to take up one’s freedom, then meaning and value disappear or fail to appear in the first place. This means that it is not existentialism that renders the world meaningless and valueless, but rather one’s failure to take up one’s freedom and responsibility.
For Beauvoir, we are the scope in which meaning and value arise. Life has neither a predetermined meaning nor a fixed value; life has meanings and values; undetermined and unfixed. Some values and meanings are there, awaiting to be revealed and rendered apparent; some values and meanings need to be brought about and rendered possible.
Beauvoir also says that the Other links together oneself and one’s own freedom. This means that the Other is either what brings one closer to one’s freedom or what renders apart oneself and one’s own freedom. This claim separates the existential thinking-philosophizing of Beauvoir from many other existential attempts at thinking the relation linking oneself together with the Other.
More specifically, Beauvoir says that the Other blocks one’s own freedom and renders free choosing and deciding impossible by seeing meaning, value, and the world as pre-determined, given, fixed, and stable. The Other liberates and frees oneself for one’s own freedom by recognizing and acknowledging the meaning and the value that one renders possible, renders apparent, or brings about.
Hence, one’s choosing and deciding involve and pass through the Other. The Other might distance oneself from one’s own freedom; the other might also deliver oneself into one’s own freedom.
In Existentialism Is a Humanism, Sartre endeavors to link together one’s free deciding and genuine choosing with the freedom of the Other, but Sartre’s attempt is problematic and different from Beauvoir’s attempt.
Beauvoir on Bad Faith
Bad faith or self-deception is another theme that existentialism discusses, questions, and problematizes. Bad faith occurs when we refuse our freedom and endeavor to negate it. Bad faith also occurs when we refuse to accept or when we negate the freedom of the Other.
For Beauvoir, bad faith or self-deception must be rejected. This rejection, Beauvoir says, brings one closer to one’s freedom, for it indicates that one is responsible for one’s own freedom.
In The Second Sex, Beauvoir says that the failure of women to acknowledge that they are responsible for their own freedom is both a sign of their bad faith and a product of a patriarchal society, which persuades and obliges women into abandoning their freedom and refusing the responsibility pertaining to free choosing and genuine deciding.
Beauvoir says that in a patriarchal society, women choose to be the Other, to be what is inessential in society. According to Beauvoir, this happens because women refuse responsibility and abandon freedom.
Beauvoir speaks of what she calls the woman’s situation and says that patriarchal society situates women in a specific site in which every deciding is deciding against them and all choosing is choosing against them. Patriarchal society, Beauvoir says, renders choosing and deciding possible only when choosing and deciding are against women.
According to Beauvoir, disrupting the situation and every situating is necessary so that bad faith does not take place, since it happens when responsibility is refused and freedom is negated.
The notion of one’s situation is an existential notion. It refers to what decides one’s own existence; that in which one finds oneself, but also what can be challenged, disrupted, and changed.
Existentialism places one’s situation in the world over against human nature or essence. That is, what can be re-thought, problematized, suspended, challenged, and disrupted; and what is predetermined, fixed, and stable.
Existentialism rejects the suggestion that there is in oneself what is predetermined, fixed, or stable, and argues that what decides oneself can be constantly suspended, disrupted, re-thought, and challenged. From out of what decides us, our deciding emerges.
This means that existentialism acknowledges not only that our lived experience is governed by the political, social, cultural, and historical situation in which we are found, in which we find ourselves, but also the possibility of disrupting all situating and every situation.
Beauvoir, Existentialism, and Systematizing
The thinking-philosophizing of Beauvoir emerges from existentialism; it takes existentialism as its ground and extent. There is in both Beauvoir’s thinking-philosophizing and existentialism a deep rejection of all systematizing and every system.
For Beauvoir, human existence evades all systems and every systematizing. Neither the world nor human consciousness could be explained or rendered close to oneself by any systematizing, according to Beauvoir.
The thinking-philosophizing of Beauvoir emerges from the conviction that existentialism and phenomenology offer a path through which the world, the human situation, and human reality could be thought or re-thought, disrupted or re-imagined, questioned or investigated.