Existentialism and Romantic Love by S. Cleary

Author:S. Cleary
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781137455819
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK
Published: 2015-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

Simone de Beauvoir and Loving Authentically

Romantic loving is, for Simone de Beauvoir, existentially dangerous. The two most important points of departure from the treatment of loving that Stirner, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre identified are: Beauvoir’s acknowledgment that situations modify freedom; her attempt to create an ethics; and the way she incorporates equality and economic independence as a way to navigate through the dangers of love. Less concerned with creating a system than Jean-Paul Sartre was, Beauvoir was more attentive to practical solutions.1 I argue that while Beauvoir did not solve all the existential dilemmas (mainly because she appeals to non-existential solutions), she does enrich our understanding of the complexity of the problems of loving with her analysis of what constitutes inauthentic loving and the conditions under which authentic loving ought to be achievable.

Beauvoir argued in The Second Sex that one has to be free from oppression in order to be free to love authentically. The problem for women is that throughout all of history, they have been subordinate to men. Our patriarchal society has shaped women’s situation, inhibited women’s capacity for free choice, and so practically, women have had fewer possibilities available to them than men have had. Women’s disadvantaged status explains why dependency became a ubiquitous condition for them. This is undesirable existentially because it is an escape from standing forth in the world as a self-governing subject. The existential rub lies in the fact that individuals are responsible for their actions, and therefore, women have been complicit in their subordinate situation. Beauvoir called for men to end the oppression and for women to stop accepting it. Only when women are free from oppression and dependence and are free to pursue the same opportunities as men will authentic loving be possible, according to Beauvoir.

Unlike the philosophy of Sartre, whose pre-Marxist existentialism can be quarantined to his early works, Beauvoir’s writing is more integrated, making it difficult to isolate existential texts. For example, her magnum opus The Second Sex is a medley of existentialism in the premium it places on individual self-assertion and transcendence, Marxism in the emphasis she gives to work as the path to freedom and equality, and Marxist determinism in her thesis that economic changes will bring about social change. It also includes social and biological determinism in her pardoning of women’s bad faith on account of their upbringing and reproductive organs. This breadth of ideas shall be discussed further in the context of her philosophy of loving.

The phrase “I am not myself today” is common enough, but how or why one is oneself is much less common. Beauvoir’s philosophy begins here. She finds it astonishing that she should be in this particular life as opposed to thousands of other possibilities and starts questioning her existence.2

Like her existentially minded predecessors, Beauvoir agreed that one is what one does, existence precedes essence, individuals create their own values and reasons for living, and one’s being is one’s passion, which is one’s choice.3 To be an individual is to express oneself meaningfully by engaging in the world and striving toward concrete ends.

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