The Second Sex in Philosophy

Sep 02, 2014 Dr. A rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: the-history-of-philosophy-curated

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Read this and reviews of other classics in Western Philosophy on the History page of www.BestPhilosophyBooks.org (a thinkPhilosophy Production).
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Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex remains one of the most important texts for Second Wave Feminism and, more specifically, is a key text in establishing the philosophical grounds for a feminist analysis of sex and gender.

In the introduction to this work, Beauvoir asks the question “What is woman?” and she means this in the rigorously phenomenol ---
Read this and reviews of other classics in Western Philosophy on the History page of www.BestPhilosophyBooks.org (a thinkPhilosophy Production).
---

Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex remains one of the most important texts for Second Wave Feminism and, more specifically, is a key text in establishing the philosophical grounds for a feminist analysis of sex and gender.

In the introduction to this work, Beauvoir asks the question “What is woman?” and she means this in the rigorously phenomenological way that Heidegger asks “What is being?” (see his Being and Time . It may seem an obvious question, but getting to an answer is anything but simple.

Famously, Beauvoir answers that one is not born but becomes a woman, and that woman is "Other" to man. Spelling out the meaning of this will take several hundred pages and an extended study of woman in every aspect - philosophically, psychologically, and socio-culturally in literature and myth. In this way, Beauvoir lays the foundations for the monumental distinction between sex and gender that will set the stage for second wave feminism.

Beauvoir was famously partnered with existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, whose philosophical influence has tended to eclipse her work. However, the interests in radical Otherness and in intersubjectivity as a phenomenological project was one that Beauvoir developed from her earliest writings. Her study of sex and gender is one that she saw as related to other forms of otherness, such as racialized and religious otherness.

This long awaited translation by Sheila Malovany-Chevallier restores the philosophical rigor excised from the text in the 1950’s translation, and has been hailed as the translation that Beauvoir herself would have wanted by feminist philosopher (and former student of Beauvoir) Margaret Simons. Indeed, it is truly a joy to read this new translation. Both readers who have already read the earlier translation of The Second Sex and new readers alike will benefit from years of feminist work restoring Beauvoir’s philosophical legacy.

Those interested in continuing to read should pick up Beauvoir’s An Ethics of Ambiguity, which establishes the basis for her work in existentialist ethics.

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Read this and reviews of other classics in Western Philosophy on the History page of www.BestPhilosophyBooks.org (a thinkPhilosophy Production).
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