Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Simone de Beauvoir’s Conception of Freedom and the Drama of Coexistence
Patricia Moynagh
ABSTRACT:
This paper explores Beauvoir’s focus upon coexistence, or the experienced reality that unfolds between the living drama of self and other. Beauvoir’s preoccupation with apprehending the self in relation to others was an early motif and remained a central, constant, animating concern for much of her theorizing. That we exist, or disclose our being, in relation to others is a crucial point. Thus, existence more than implies coexistence. It assumes it. Yet it is how we coexist, or if we do, that remains more crucial still. How we live out our dramas of coexistence and how this pertains, or not, to the desire for freedom is the subject of this study. My analysis draws upon the life and work of Simone de Beauvoir to analyze the self-other dynamic. I propose that such an analysis can produce greater understanding of our own situated existence from which we might appreciate better the merits of freedom. I engage the privileged status that Beauvoir accords the concept of ambiguity. It permeates most of her reflections, and it is through a greater understanding of what Beauvoir means by ambiguity that we position ourselves to judge the merits of her conception of freedom. Finally, I argue that it is useful to see that Beauvoir, like so many political and ethical thinkers and writers, is in a tussle with the legacy of Immanuel Kant. I suggest that while Beauvoir clearly repudiates two formulations of Kant’s categorical imperative, she creatively engages the third. Specifically, I argue that she reconfigures Kant’s kingdom of ends, while relegating his universalizability procedure and his appeal to autonomy to the dustbin. Her reconstruction of the kingdom of ends appears, I argue, within her concept of ambiguity and freedom, both of which I maintain derive their fundamental meanings from our living dramas of coexistence.
keywords: Simone de Beauvoir, Freedom, Drama of Coexistence, Ethics of Ambiguity, Kant, Kingdom of Ends, The Second Sex, Singularity, self-other relationships