Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy of Lived Experience: Literature and Metaphysics 2001048272

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Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy of Lived Experience Literature and Metaphysics

ELEANORE HOLVECK

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Oxford

Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy of Lived Experience

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com 12 Hid's Copse Road Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 911, England Chapter One rewritten from "Can a Woman Be a Philosopher: Reflections for a Beauvoirian Housemaid," in Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Margaret A. Simons (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995),67-78. Copy, right © 1995 by the Pennsylvania State University Press. Reproduced by permission of the Pennsylvania State University Press. Sections of Chapter Four from "Simone de Beauvoir's Desire to Express la joie d' exister," in Continental Philosophy Vll: Philosophy & Desire, ed. Hugh Silverman (New York: Routledge, 2000), 96-108. Copyright © 2000 by Routledge. Reprinted by permission. Chapter Five expanded from "The Blood of Others: A Novel Approach to The Ethics of Ambiguity." in Hypatia, ed. Margaret A. Simons, vol. 14, no. 4 (1999): 3-17. Copyright © by Indiana University Press. Reproduced by permission of Indiana University Press. Copyright © 2002 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, ing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging.. in .. Publication Data Holveck, Eleanore, 1942Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy of lived experience: Literature and metaphysics / Eleanore Holveck. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0,7425,1335,1 (cloth: alk. paped-ISBN 0,7425,1336,X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Beauvoir, Simone de, 1908- I. Title. B2430.B344 H65 2002 194-dc21

2001048272

Printed in the United States of America o.TM

~ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48,1992.

To John Holveck Seit ein Gesprache wir sind

Contents

Preface Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Chapter 3 Chapter 4

Chapter 5 Chapter 6

IX

Can a Woman Be a Philosopher? Reflections of a Beauvoirian Housemaid Simone de Beauvoir on Literature and Philosophy: Influences and Contemporaries-Husserl, Merleau .. Ponty, Heidegger, Baruzi, Sartre, and N izan

15

Marguerite's Choice against the Spiritual Life: From the Eternal Feminine to the Platinum Blonde

43

She Came to Stay: Beauvoir's Place in the Philosophical Tradition of Kant, Breton, Husserl, and Hegel

67

The Blood of Others: A Novel Approach to The Ethics of Ambiguity

91

The Second Sex: European Science and Woman's Li ved Experience

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

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111

The Mandarins: Lying to Save the Life of an Irresponsible Fashion Model or Why Can't a WOluan Lie like a Man?

131

The Other Woman: Simone de Beauvoir and Toni Morrison Sing the Blues

151 163

Bibliography Vll

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Index About the Author

171 177

Preface

When I first read Simone de Beauvoir's 1946 essay, "Literature and Meta~ physics," it was as if I were talking to myself. I, too, at eighteen, had felt split in half between philosophy and literature, which I loved equally. This book is the result of my continuing commitment to both disciplines. Since this book deals with Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy and fiction, I am indebted to previous scholarship in both areas. In philosophy I have appreciated and been inspired by Margaret A. Si~ mons's Beauvoir and liThe Second Sex": Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism (1999), Eva Lundgren~Gothlin's Sex and Existence: Simone de Beauvoir's liThe Second Sex" (1996), Debra Bergoffen's The Philosophy of Si .. mone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities (1997) and Karen Vintges' Philosophy As Passion: The Thinking of Simone de Beau~ voir (1996). There is excellent work on Beauvoir's philosophy by Linda Singer, Sonia Kruks, Sara Heinamaa, Michele Le Doeuff, Kristana Arp, and many others. My bibliography contains only those I have time to mention explicitly. There are many studies of Beauvoir's fiction from a literary point of view, including Elizabeth Fallaize's The Novels of Simone de Beauvoir (1988), Terry Keefe's Simone de Beauvoir (1998), and Ursula Tidd's Simone de Beauvoir: Gender and Testimony (1999). While I acknowledge the contributions of these and many other literary scholars, my primary intent is philosophical. A classic pioneering work which discusses Beauvoir's philosophicallitera~ ture, along with that of other philosophers like Camus, is Hazel E. Barnes's

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Preface

The Literature of Possibility, 1959. As I reread Barnes' book while writing mine, I marveled that it has taken some of us so many years to follow her lead in recognizing Beauvoir's literary philosophical work, even if our interpreta .. tions differ from hers. Elaine Marks's study, Simone de Beauvoir: Encounters with Death (1973), John Cruickshank's 1962 edited collection, The Novelist as Philosopher, and Michael Scriven's 1988 book on Paul N izan were most helpful to me. Recently Beauvoir's first novel, She Came to Stay, has received renewed philosophical attention from Toril Moi, Jane Heath, and Kate and Edward Fullbrook, whose groundbreaking Simone de Beauvoir and Jean . . Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth . .Century Legend (1994) has inspired me to continue my project. Anyone writing today on Beauvoir's philosophy must acknowledge the woman in the United States who is responsible for a sustained interest in her for the last thirty years, Margaret A. Simons. She is a shining example of the best quality of women scholars, a virtue I would call nurturing generosity. I make use of Simons's excellent work in preparing Beauvoir's early journals for publication, under the direction of the gracious and hard .. working Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, along with Barbara Klaw. I use the first philosophical in .. terpretation of these journals in Simons's Beauvoir and "The Second Sex": Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism. My book would never have been written or published without Peg. She published first versions of Chap .. ters One and Five in collections she edited, and she took a great deal of time and patience to read my entire manuscript and to give me countless criti .. cisms and helpful suggestions. For years, Yolanda A. Patterson, founder and president of the Interna .. tional Simone de Beauvoir Society, has sponsored interdisciplinary confer.. ences where graduate students share equal billing with the most famous scholars; she has provided a setting for the dialogue that is indispensable to serious scholarship. I am proud that my first published article on Beauvoir was in Yolanda's Simone de Beauvoir Studies. lowe special thanks to my wonderful colleague, Debra Bergoffen, who read a complete early draft of this book and made penetrating, helpful com .. ments; she incarnates the gift of generosity she finds in Beauvoir's ethics. Sandy Thatcher read the first four chapters and encouraged me to finish the book. Anthony Cascardi gave me helpful criticisms of an early draft. I thank Hugh Silverman, who encouraged several of my early papers and published an early version of Chapter Four. Many sections of this book were first presented in papers at meetings of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, the Sartre Soci.. ety of North America, the International Simone de Beauvoir Society, the Annual International Philosophical Seminar, the Twentieth World Congress

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of Philosophy, and annual conventions of the American Philosophical Asso .. ciation, including group meetings of the Society for the Study of Women Philosophers, the Sartre Circle, and the· Beauvoir Circle. lowe thanks to the late Phyllis Morris, whose presence I miss at every conference, as well as to Stephen Ross, Steve Hendley, and William McBride. Carlos Steele and Francis Crawley made me feel very welcome during the 1994 spring semes .. ter, when I taught a seminar on Simone de Beauvoir's literature and philoso .. phy at the Institute of Philosophy, Catholic University of Leuven in Bel .. glum. At my home, Duquesne University, former President John E. Murray, Jr. and former Provost/Academic Vice .. President Michael P. Weber created an atmosphere where scholarship and collegiality flourish together. There can .. not be many universities where top administrators take the time to person .. ally encourage individual faculty members. I am especially grateful for the sabbatical which permitted me to finish this book. Connie Ramirez, Dean of the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts, has been sup .. porting and encouraging me for over thirty years, as have members of my de .. partment, Bob Madden, Roland Ramirez, Wilhelm Wurzer, and Don Keyes. I am blessed with the support of more recent colleagues like Fred Evans and Therese Bonin, our young medievalist, who helped me find my way through St. Teresa of Avila's autobiography. Former Dean Jack McDonald was an in .. spiration to me in regard to both the intellectual and moral virtues. Joan Thompson is a jewel among adlninistrative assistants. Her ability and willingness to take on extra tasks during the decade when I was department chair enabled me to have time to devote to scholarship. There are so many wonderful staff members, administrators, faculty, and students at Duquesne with whom I have worked, that I hesitate to name them all for fear that I might inadvertently leave someone out. Finally, lowe thanks to Robert Sweeney and Alphonso Lingis, who, in a distant past, first named me philosopher and encouraged me to pursue a Ph.D. Parts of this book have appeared in earlier versions. Chapter One was rewritten from "Can a Woman Be a Philosopher: Reflections for a Beau .. voirian Housemaid," in Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Margaret A. Simons (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 67-78. Sections of Chapter Four first appeared as "Simone de Beau .. voir's Desire to Express la joie d' exister," in Continental Philosophy VII: Philos .. ophy & Desire, ed. Hugh Silverman (New York: Routledge, 2000), 96-108. Chapter Five was expanded from "The Blood of Others: A Novel Approach to The Ethics of Ambiguity," in Hypatia, ed. Margaret A. Simons, vol. 14, no. 4, 3-17.

CHAPTER

1

Can a Woman Be a Philosopher? Reflections of a Beauvoirian Housemaid

The girl had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could say, "My daughter is a nurse," or "My daughter is a school teacher," or even "My daughter is a chemical engineer." You could not say, "My daughter is a philosopher." ... One day Mrs. Hopewell had picked up one of the books the girl had just put down and opening it at random, she read, "Science ... is concerned solely with what,is. Nothing-how can it be for science anything but a hor, ror.... [S]cience wishes to know nothing of nothing." ... These words had been underlined with a blue pencil and they worked on Mrs. Hopewell like some evil incantation in gibberish. She shut the book quickly and went out of the room as if she were having a chill. -Flannery O'Conner

Mrs. Hopewell, a character in the short story "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Conner,l surely expresses the thoughts of many a mother, even though no one to my knowledge has yet written a song entitled "Mamas, Don't Let Your Baby Daughters Grow Up to Be Philosophers." Mrs. Hopewell typifies the bourgeo~s Southern woman, impoverished by historical circumstances as well as the death of her husband, who naively envies and trusts the "good country people" who work for her. I am thankful that Mrs. Hopewell is not my mother. My mother lives in a personal care home with residents who are all at least seventy. Whenever she and I are together, she thinks nothing of announcing

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loudly to any of her neighbors unfortunate enough to be, for example, trapped on an elevator with \:IS, "This is my daughter, the philosopher." For my mother, this phrase is one of simple identification. She calls me her daughter, the philosopher, in order to distinguish me from my sister Alex, her daughter, the mathematician. In this chapter, I discuss whether or not daughters can be philosophers. In this book I am particularly interested in the one woman of our time who had a major claim to the title of philosopher but who, time after time, seemed to reject it: Simone de Beauvoir. The ultimate purpose of my work is to explain Beauvoir's unique way of combining philosophy with literature in some de .. tail, as well as to articulate the philosophical positions in some of her major novels and short stories. In this chapter I begin this project by giving my in .. terpretation of how several women from the time of Thales have done phi .. losophy; by outlining my interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy in this book; and by telling you how I personally became a philosopher.

The First Word: The Tale of the Laughing Housemaid It must be admitted that the initial relationship between philosophy and women was not promising. According to a legend related by Plato in the Theaetetus (174A), Thales of Miletus, the first philosopher of Western Euro .. pean culture, was looking up at the stars so intently one day that he fell into a well. A servant woman laughed scornfully at him for this, wondering how he could claim to know anything about the sky, when he could not even see what was directly in front of his feet. Martin Heidegger quotes this story from Plato with enthusiasm and, in .. deed, makes it the basis of a preliminary definition of philosophy: "Philoso .. phy, then, is that thinking with which one can start nothing and about which housemaids necessarily laugh."2 This Heideggerian position illumi .. nates the situation of Mrs. Hopewell's daughter in Flannery O'Conner's short story; she was reading the wrong philosophical essay. Heidegger's "What Is Metaphysics?" could not help Joy, or Hulga as she preferred to be called, re .. late to the men that her mother thought suitable for her. No wonder Hulga's Bible ..selling confidence man leaves her without a leg to stand on; an abstract Heideggerian metaphysician is quickly outwitted by "good country people." Many today are trying to articulate the relation between women and phi .. losophy, often employing a literary symbol. Luce Irigaray names the mother, the mater, the material, the sea. Linda Singer fancied herself the bandit who steals from whatever philosophical system she wants, agreeing with Helene

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Cixous and Catherine Clement who play on the similar sounds of La Genet and Le }eune Nee,3 and who also name the hysteric and the woman dancing the tarantella as ancestors. Michele Le Doeuff claims the figure of the fool in Shakespeare's plays.4 I respect all of these positions but point out that the proper role for women was given to us at the very beginning of philosophy. I am happy to claim as my ancestress the housemaid who laughed at Thales. And it was Simone de Beauvoir who sobered me up. I argue that one reason Beauvoir would not, at times, admit to being a philosopher like Thales, Plato, or Heidegger was that these metaphysicians spent too much time on nothing. I realize that I am not the only philosopher to show an interest in this nameless housemaid cited by Plato. Jacques Taminiaux grants her title to Hannah Arendt. He argues that Arendt, reconsidering the Platonic and Aristotelian themes reappropriated by Heidegger, reverses Heidegger's de .. marcation between the inauthentic public world and the realm of Dasein's ownmost possibility for being. Taminiaux contends, "[T]he specious argu .. ments [i.e., formulated by Heidegger] she calls 'metaphysical fallacies' all consist in hiding away the fact that the thinker belongs to the common world of appearances."s While Heidegger holds that Dasein's authentic exis .. tence is singularized by its being .. towards .. death, Taminiaux notes that in The Life of the Mind, Arendt claims that stories or narratives can reveal the uniqueness of an individual life. Adriana Cavarero provides a more radical feminist approach to "the maid .. servant from Thrace," whose lineage she traces as she steals her from the pa .. triarchal symbolic order. Recognizing Arendt's viewpoint, Cavarero utilizes Luce Irigaray's critique of the traditional philosopher's claim that he beholds higher truths in the realm of abstract ideas, a world above and apart from everyday experience; "the philosopher abandons the world of his own birth in order to establish his abode in pure thought, thus carrying out a symbolic matricide in the erasure of his birth."6 Both Arendt and Cavarero, then, can trace their lineage back to our laughing housemaid, because they emphasize a world of everyday appear.. ances, a material world, in opposition to a world of abstract pure ideas which is cut off, and isolated, from that material, i.e., Irigaray's maternal, world. Both Arendt and Cavarero turn to narratives, to literature, in making their point. I claim that Beauvoir's position on philosophy and literature is in this tradition. Beauvoir refused to call herself a philosopher, because she some .. what mistakenly accepted the narrow view of philosophy held by her male forerunners, teachers, and colleagues. However, Beauvoir developed a view of philosophy that is expressed, even created, in literature; this view enabled

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her to write that pioneering work in feminism, The Second Sex. Because of her COIUluitluent to writing philosophy in the ordinary language of fiction, Beauvoir's philosophy of real, lived experience does not reinterpret symbols in the history of thought like Arendt and Cavarero. Her philosophy of lived experience, expressed in fiction, applies to actual housemaids; it encourages them to create their own philosophy in their own language.

Beauvoir's View of Philosophy and Literature in Her Autobiography From an early age, Beauvoir considered philosophy to be an abstract reflec . . tion that explains all things from a universal point of view. For example, Beauvoir wrote that when she and her best friend Zaza first studied philoso . . phy as teenagers, from texts based on St. Thomas Aquinas, she was attracted to the subject because it allowed her to pose ultimate questions about the universe. Philosophy, she thought then, aimed at an understanding of the to . . tality of the real; instead of detailed facts and empirical laws, philosophy studied essential structures; it presented a necessary order, a sufficient reason. However, she continued ironically, from day to day, Zaza and she did not seem to apprehend any great thing [grand chose].7 Beauvoir remarked frequently that she preferred literature to philosophy and that she had wanted to be a writer from the age of fifteen, in part because her father thought writers to be superior to philosophers, scholars, and aca . . demics. 8 In one illuminating passage in The Prime of Life, she writes that Sartre believed that her understanding of philosophers, including that of Ed . . mund Husserl, was better than his. She explains that this was because Sartre was so original that it was difficult for him to take up a point of view which differed from his own. She, being less original philosophically, was able to un . . derstand other philosophers better. 9 She seems serious, although the idea that one can be a good philosopher only by misunderstanding all the great philosophers who preceded one seems questionable at best, even if this ex . . plains Sartre's method. She continues to explain that she is not passive in re . . gard to philosophical texts. When she agrees with a theory, it changes her way of being in the world [mon rapport au monde];lO it colors her experience. 11 Beauvoir did not understand why she was continually asked to justify the fact that she did not create an original philosophy as Sartre did. Rather, she argues, it is up to philosophers who create great systems to justify such "mad performances [delire concerte]' and where they get the stubbornness to give their fleeting insight the value of a key to the universal [aper~u la valeur de des universelles]. I have often said that the feminine condition does not in . .

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cline us to this type of pigheadedness."12 Here is as sober and articulate a model for our scornful housemaid as we might wish. Beauvoir holds that philosophers pretend to explain all things universally, but these "universals" are based in the consciousness of some individual thinker who claims knowl, edge of them, a claim that must be justified. In the 1974 "Conversations with Jean,Paul Sartre" published with the English translation of Beauvoir's Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre, Beauvoir asked Sartre whether he would prefer to be remembered for his literature or for his philosophy. He replied that literature is essentially above philosophy. Be' cause philosophy occurs in a specific historical context, philosophical truth is always overtaken and left behind by future philosophers. Literature, on the other hand, is, in a sense, timeless. Beauvoir agrees that it is literature, not philosophy, that has an absolute character. 13 Beauvoir turned to literature be' cause she was not interested in abstract speculation which had little to do with her own everyday life. She was not exactly a sober housemaid herself, but she kept both feet on solid ground.

Beauvoir's View of Philosophy and Literature: An Outline of This Book Current scholarship leads us to question these somewhat simplistic di, chotomies in Beauvoir's autobiography: philosophy and literature; Sartre and Beauvoir; great philosopher and great writer. In their ground,breaking study, Simone de Beauvoir and }ean,Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth,Century Legend, Kate and Edward Fullbrook outline how Beauvoir herself created the myth of Sartre, the great philosopher, in her autobiography; they argue, also, that Beauvoir actually originated the major philosophical categories of Being and Nothingness in her first published novel, L'invitee. Margaret A. Simons, whose work on Beauvoir's early diaries, with the generous and indispensable editing of Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, has transformed Beauvoir scholarship, argues that the young Beauvoir had a Inajor interest in philosophy and was doing serious work on major philosophical issues long before she met Sartre. In this book I hope to contribute to this discussion with a detailed inves, tigation of Simone de Beauvoir's analysis of the relationship between philos, ophy and literature. In the next chapter I begin my project by discussing Beauvoir's characterization of philosophy and literature in several of her major essays; I then trace aspects of her theory back to the philosophers Ed, mund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, through interpretations of Maurice Merleau, Ponty and Jean Baruzi. I place Beauvoir's theory of the metaphysi, cal novel within the French literary philosophical tradition; in particular I

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place her early fiction alongside works by her contemporaries who wrote philosophical fiction, namely, Paul Nizan and Jean .. Paul Sartre. I also men .. tion colleagues who appreciated Beauvoir's philosophical fiction, e.g., Gabriel MarceL Thus Chapter Two begins to establish the major point of my book. In her early career Simone de Beauvoir did philosophy in fiction. The equal passion that Beauvoir had for both literature and philosophy in her adolescence led her to incarnate much of her philosophical thinking predominantly in the female characters whose stories she related. At first, her fiction comments on the philosophical positions of others, mainly the philosophers she studied, read, and discussed as a university student. However, even in her early short stories and novels, an analysis of the texts shows Beauvoir's own original philosophical point of view, one quite distinct from contemporaries like Nizan and Sartre. I devote Chapters Three, Four, and Five to extended analyses of Beau .. voir's criticisms of major figures in the history of philosophy and the devel .. opment of her own unique point of view in When Things of the Spirit Come First, V invitee , and The Blood of Others. I show how Beauvoir first developed many important philosophical themes in these early works of fiction. She re .. jected all forms of philosophical idealism as she initiated her brand of phe .. nomenological epoche in her early short stories, When Things of the Spirit Come First; she formulated her critique of Hegel and of Breton's surrealism in Vinvitee; in The Blood of Others she developed more explicitly her notion of existential conversion, which reveals one's own freedom and the freedom of others at the same time. I argue that the important philosophical positions that Beauvoir developed in these works of fiction contributed to her philo .. sophical position in The Second Sex, her most important philosophical work. Although The Second Sex is not my major focus in this book, I devote Chap .. ter Six to Beauvoir's great contribution to twentieth .. century philosophy in order to show how my interpretation of her position on literature and phi .. losophy might add to its critical appraisaL Finally, in Chapter Seven, I argue that after The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir developed a somewhat new approach to literature in her important novel, The Mandarins. Returning more directly to early influences like Emile Zola, Charles Peguy, and Paul Nizan, with the addition of her own serious analyses of the female condition, Beauvoir developed her own conception of literature engagee, what Ursula Tidd characterizes as self.. creation in a testi .. monial project. My major focus is to reveal the philosophical positions that Simone de Beauvoir developed in some of her fiction. In regard to the issue of whether

Can a Woman Be a Philosopher?