Weiss on de Beauvoir

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Chapter 5

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR:

AN

EXISTENTIAL-PHENOMENOLOGICAL ETHICS

Gail Weiss

The George Washington University

1. BACKGROUND

Thanks to the recent efforts of feminist scholars, Simone de Beauvoir's fame as the

lifelong companionofexistential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre is slowly giving way

to a recognition of he originalityofher own work as a philosopher, autobiographer,

novelist, essayist, editor, and political activist. Her ethics, in particular, has received

a great deal of attention, not only because she offers the first formal articulation of

an existential ethics in her 1947 book, Pour une morale de l'ambiguite (published

in English in 1948 as The Ethics

of

Ambiguity and hereafter abbreviated as EA), but

also because the moral challenges she discusses there and elsewhere in her works

seem as appropriate today as they were half a century ago.

Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris on January 9, 1908. Aside from summer

vacations at her relatives' homes in the French countryside as a young girl, a couple

ofyears spent teaching in lycees outside ofParis after she obtained her agregation

in philosophy at the Sorbonne, and her regular travels as an adult, Beauvoir resided

in Paris throughout her life and died there on April 14, 1986. As a member of the

French Resistance, Beauvoir remained in Paris during the difficult years of the

German Occupation, and toward the end of the war, she co-founded and co-edited

with Sartre, Camus, Merleau-Ponty, and others the political journal Les Temps

Modernes.

Beauvoir's best known philosophical work,

Le deuxieme sexe

(published in

English in 1952 as

The Second Sex

and hereafter referred to as SS), was first

published in France

by

Gallimard in two volumes in 1949. In this book, Beauvoir

uses an existential framework to address the question "What does it mean to be a

woman?" Focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on the situation

of

Western

women, her text incorporates insights from a variety of disciplines, including

philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and biology.

Given its fame today as a "landmark" feminist text, it is easy to forget that the

initial public reception of The Second Sex was far from positive. Indeed, the text

107

J J

Drummond and L Embree (eds.), Phenomenological Approaches to Moral Philosophy, 107-118.

2002

Kluwer Academic Publishers.


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SIMONE DE

BEAUVOIR 109

on other texts that take up ethical issues, such

as

Pyrrhus

et

Cineas (1944) with its

discussion of he inevitability ofviolence and oppression and The

Second Sex

with

its focus on the constraints placed upon women's freedom by their existence within,

and subjection to, a set

of

interlocking patriarchal social systems. Yet despite this

interest in the ethical implications of her work, there has been relatively little

agreement among Beauvoir's commentators about what the central claims of her

ethics are, or even about the role women, men, society, and women's own bodies

play in an individual's possibilities for living ethically. A point on which there

is

relative agreement, however,

is

that for Beauvoir the ethical cannot be restricted to

a separate sphere of existence, since ethical issues underlie all of the projects in

which we engage. In other words, we cannot view the ethical

as

coming into play

only on some occasions and not others, since it concerns the very manner in which

we live our bodies, our relations with others, and our situations. This point of

consensus has given rise to alternative readings, however, precisely because the

ethical informs and

is

informed by all of the other key concepts that motivate

Beauvoir's work, including transcendence, immanence, choice, commitment,

freedom, oppression, consciousness, the body, the Other, and the situation.

One's understanding

of

the specific moral challenges posed

by

Beauvoir's

conception of the ethical depends, I would argue, upon which aspect

of

human

existence one takes

as

a starting point for one's analysis. For instance,

if

one begins

from the standpoint

of

freedom and transcendence, two seemingly essential

requirements for ethical existence for Beauvoir

as

well as for Sartre, then one's

emphasis will be placed on how specific individuals can realize what Beauvoir calls

"moral freedom." By contrast, if one focuses on the ethical demands placed upon

us by the existence ofothers, then the emphasis will shift from the subjective to the

intersubjective domain.

The consequences ofemphasizing the subjective dimensions offreedom rather

than its intersubjective dimensions (or vice versa) can be quite serious. For

if

one

concentrates too narrowly on those places where Beauvoir describes freedom as the

transcendence of the givens of one's own situation, the danger is that her ethics

appears to be too solipsistic since the attainment ofmoral freedom appears to be a

purely individual project. On the other hand,

if

one concentrates too heavily on the

passages where she emphatically maintains that one's freedom cannot be achieved

unless others are also free, then freedom (and an ethical existence) seems

impossible to achieve, since millions of oppressed peoples continue to exist in the

world. Rather than privilege one domain at the expense

of

the other, it

is

essential

to appreciate that for Beauvoir, attaining one's moral freedom

is

never merely an

individual project, but always a social and political project as well. Thus the very

project of"willing one's freedom" always occurs within a broader context in which

my freedom both enables and

is

enabled by, constrains and is constrained by, the

freedom of others.


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SIMONE

DE BEA UVOIR

111

Undoubtedly, these are all very different kinds

of

failures, and Beauvoir goes

on to discuss them through the examples she provides of the subman, the serious

man, the nihilist, and the adventurer. The subman clings to his facticity, thereby

failing to recognize and act upon his transcendence, while the serious man's

unquestioning acceptance ofa set of fixed values absolves him of the need to take

responsibility for them. The nihilist responds to the anxiety of his freedom by

attempting to

be

nothing (EA, 52). The adventurer comes closest to living ethically

because the meaningfulness of his actions flows from the commitments he has

made to them, but he operates too solipsistically to be granted ethical standing

unless he wills the freedom

of

others at the same time that he wills his own

freedom.

In all these examples, with the exception of the adventurer, the individual's

failure to become ethical

is

directly due to his failure to live the tension between

freedom and facticity; instead of

affirming this tension as an inescapable feature

of

human existence, he tries to resolve it by negating his freedom (subman), by

negating his facticity (nihilist), or by sacrificing his freedom to a self-created

facticity (the serious man). The adventurer alone does justice to both his freedom

and his facticity, but he too fails

if

he does not recognize that his own freedom

depends upon his securing the freedom

of

others.

The failure

of

he adventurer

is

qualitatively different from the failures

of

hese

others because it highlights the indispensable role the Other plays in determining

the ethicality of my existence. Indeed, the limitations of viewing the tension

between freedom and facticity as the sole ground for Beauvoir's ethics is revealed

especially poignantly at this point in her discussion. Before moving on to discuss

the possibilities and failures associated specifically with the Other, however, it

is

important to take stock

of

what

is

at stake in Beauvoir's depiction

of

ethical

existence as seeking to affirm freedom

as

an "absolute end" over and against the

factical demands of

the situation.

Precisely because this account is

so Sartrean, understanding the ethical

primarily

as

an exercise of transcendence over the immanent aspects of existence

exposes Beauvoir to the same criticisms Sartre faced regarding the dualist ontology

ofL 'etre

et

le

neant

(translated into English

as

Being

and

Nothingness and hereafter

abbreviated

as

BN). Not merely the situation

as

such, but also the individual's own

body is relegated to the sphere of immanence that threatens, if one's will is not

strong enough, to lead one to abandon the movement of ranscendence. Indeed, the

claims Beauvoir makes about women's bodies, for instance, in "The Data

of

Biology" chapter

of

The

Second

Sex,

frequently relegate their bodies to the status

of immanent objects that represent an ongoing threat

to

their transcendence as this

latter

is

apprehended both by the individual herself and by others.

It is

paradoxical, Beauvoir observes, that female members

of

the species that

is

the most independent and individualized are also the most enslaved by the


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112 Gail Weiss

requirements

of

its perpetuation. Menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, all

represent, for Beauvoir, obstacles that women must contend with to realize their

freedom. While, she argues, "the male finds more and more varied ways in which

to employ the forces he is master of; the female feels her enslavement more and

more keenly, the conflict between her own interests and the reproductive forces is

heightened (SS, 25, emphasis added). Of all female mammals, it is woman,

Beauvoir concludes, "who most dramatically fulfills the call of

destiny and most

profoundly differs from her male" (SS, 25).

If freedom and transcendence are associated with escaping the restrictions

placed upon us by our bodies and our situations, and

if

his latter effort is necessary

to secure an ethical existence, then difficulties arise in assessing the ethicality

of

individuals who seem unable to move beyond these constraints or who do not see

the "call

of

destiny" as constraining in the first place. Beauvoir, as many

commentators have observed, does address the status ofsuch individuals, whom she

often characterizes as "the oppressed." She also recognizes that failure to transcend

the "givens" ofexistence need not be due to a "weak will" or a desire to escape the

anguish

of

taking responsibility for one's own choices and the unknown

consequences that follow from them; rather, such failure is often due to the mental

and physical domination of oneself by others, a domination that can lead to what

Beauvoir calls mystification.

4.

MYSTIFICATION AND OPPRESSION

Mystification, she suggests, involves the belief that one has no control over one's

situation, that the givens of the situation wholly constitute the situation as such and

that they alone define its meaning and possibilities. The mystified individual does

not seek to transform the situation through her free choices because she does not see

herself as having any choices to begin with. "Ignorance and error," Beauvoir

asserts, "are facts as inescapable as prison walls" (EA, 38). Although Beauvoir

seeks to differentiate the case

of

the severely oppressed person from the case

of

he

subman and the serious man, who also fail to enact their freedom positively, this

description

of

the phenomenon

of

mystification-as well as the word

"mystification"

itself-suggests

that the oppressed individual exists in a state

of

false consciousness, unaware

of

the "true" nature

of

the situation in which she is

immersed. Ignorance and error, however, are often considered to be morally

blameworthy (especially within a Sartrean framework), and it is because Beauvoir

has not yet seriously addressed the role that others play in enabling or inhibiting my

freedom that this acknowledgment of the constraints placed upon one by an

oppressive situation seems rather unsatisfactory.

Hence it seems clear that Beauvoir cannot give a comprehensive account

of

ethical ambiguity

if

she relies solely upon the opposition between transcendence


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SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

113

and immanence, since the Other introduces further ambiguities into the situation

with which each ofus must contend. Moreover, ifwe try to reduce the role played

by the Other to that

of

another for-itself who

is

also trying to secure (or flee from)

an ethical existence and who, in doing so, may engage in projects that often conflict

with and even threaten my own, then the Other becomes another potential obstacle

to my freedom rather than a means of achieving it.

It

is a virtue ofBeauvoir's account that she moves away from both Sartre's and

her own negative descriptions of the inevitable conflicts that characterize

intersubjective relationships to introduce and defend the claim that my own freedom

requires (rather than merely tolerating) the freedom ofothers. And ifone begins an

examination ofBeauvoir's ethics by unpacking the significance

of

his latter claim,

a claim that

is

made not once but several times across different works, the focus of

her ethics changes dramatically.

5. ETHICS AND THE

OTHER

One danger

of

viewing an ethics predicated on the opposition between

transcendence and immanence as the sole voice in Beauvoir's work

is

that we fail

to see how she moves beyond not only the Cartesian ontological framework

employed by Sartre, but also Hegel's depiction

of

the "master-slave dialectic"

as

models for intersubjective relationships In both Sartre's and Hegel's accounts of

what Sartre calls "being-for-others," my relations to others are characterized by

structural inequalities that must continually be renegotiated but can never be

eradicated. Garcin's famous proclamation that "hell

is-other

people" in Sartre's

play No Exit, and Sartre's claim that "I grasp the Other's look at the very center of

my act

as

the solidification and alienation

of

my own possibilities" (BN, 352) are

just two examples of he constant conflict that marks our relations with others in his

work.

If

the look

of

the Other,

as

Sartre asserts, reveals no more and no less than

"my transcendence transcended," then it is indeed difficult to see how the Other can

be other than an obstacle to the exercise of

my freedom.

It

cannot be denied that Beauvoir also repeatedly emphasizes the inevitable

conflicts that characterize intersubjective relationships. "To be sure," she tells us

in The

Second Sex,

"every human relationship implies conflict, all love brings

jealousy" (SS, 347). And yet,

as

one contemporary Beauvoir scholar has

persuasively argued, this conflictual model of intersubjectivity, a model that is so

in keeping with both Sartre's and Hegel's respective accounts, is

not the only

framework to which Beauvoir appeals in order to describe our relations with

1

See Debra Bergoffen, The Philosophy

of

Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomen

ologies, Erotic Generosities (Albany, NY: State University ofNew York Press, 1997).


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114

Gail Weiss

others.

2

For instance, in The

Second

Sex, Beauvoir also describes the possibility of

an ethical, erotic encounter between two lovers in which neither dominates the

other, and in which each recognizes the transcendence of he other (SS, 401 ). In this

encounter, the two lovers freely give themselves to one another without one seeking

to entrap the other or to lose herself in the other. As Beauvoir observes, "Under a

concrete and carnal form there is mutual recognition of the ego and of the other in

the keenest awareness

of the other and of the ego" (SS, 401).

This mutual celebration of the intertwining ofmy own freedom and facticity

with that

of

the other offers a positive model of ethical engagement that moves us

beyond the limitations

of

the for-itself/in-itself and transcendence/immanence

dichotomies. Nonetheless, it remains to be seen how well the early version

of

Beauvoir's existential ethics, with its emphasis on individual freedom and

responsibility for one's situation, can simultaneously encourage the development

oflong-lasting, nonhierarchical relationships with others outside as well as within

the erotic domain.

The key to reconciling my own freedom with an affirmation of the freedom of

the other whose projects may and often do conflict with my own lies in Beauvoir's

conception of he "existential conversion" that she claims is necessary to transform

my original freedom into moral or genuine freedom. I perform this existential

conversion by willing myself free, a paradoxical project insofar as I actively will

to possess the freedom I already possess. Moreover, Beauvoir claims that I must

will to possess my freedom in an indefinite movement, that is, I must actively

affirm my freedom through all

ofmy actions in such a fashion that my freedom will

realize itself through its own self-perpetuating movement. One danger

of

willing

my freedom, however, is that I may end up willing it in the form of he in-itself, that

is, as something given, rather than as a perpetual accomplishment. The opposite

danger is that I will become so entranced with the movement

of

transcendence that

is synonymous with my freedom that I will fail to realize my freedom in a specific

project, a project that in tum will result in a concrete tranforrnation ofmy situation.

We can better understand these dangers as well as how to avoid them through

Beauvoir's distinction between what she calls the "will to be" and the "will to

disclose" the world

of

my concern. Both draw upon my freedom. The will to be,

however, causes my freedom to

tum

against itself by willing itself as facticity (and

this is precisely what Beauvoir accuses the serious man of doing). The will to

disclosure, she suggests, reveals the limits of the will to be precisely because it is

attuned to the ambiguities of human existence that preclude fixed and fmal

meanings. According to Beauvoir, "the disclosure implies a perpetual tension to

keep being at a certain distance, to tear oneself from the world, and to assert oneself


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SIMONE DE BEA UVO/R 115

as a freedom" (EA, 23-24). Thus the requirements for ethical existence demand that

I disengage myself from the world in order to make its disclosure possible, but I

must also exercise my transcendence concretely upon the world of my concern

through the pursuit of a specific project. For if the will to disclose the world does

not issue in action, then it becomes an empty intellectual exercise, devoid ofethical

significance.

Whereas death would seem to present a natural limit to my efforts to will my

freedom in an indefinite movement, Beauvoir argues that "just as life is identified

with the will-to-live, freedom always appears as a movement

ofliberation.lt

is only

by

prolonging itself through the freedom ofothers that it manages to surpass death

itself and to realize itself as

an

indefmite unity" (EA,

32).

Insofar as the will to

disclose the world discloses a world in which I coexist with others, I cannot will to

disclose the world without willing that the world should

be

equally disclosed to

them. And Beauvoir suggests that this is a movement that I will to continue even

when I am no longer part of that world and when other wills must take up my

projects and transform them.

6. N EMBODIED ETHICS

I earlier claimed that the varying interpretations offered

ofBeauvoir

s ethics depend

largely upon which of her existential concepts is used as the starting point for

analysis. While Beauvoir's emphasis upon ethically realizing my freedom through

the transformation

of

the givens

of

my situation relies primarily upon the notion

of

transcendence (and thereby sets up a tension between transcendence and

immanence that makes the situation of the oppressed individual who does not

and/or cannot seek to alter the situation extremely problematic), she also recognizes

that my freedom is dependent upon the freedom

of

others and that actively working

toward the latter is the only way of giving lasting meaning to the former. Clearly,

the notion of ranscendence has not been abandoned with this focus onmy relations

with others; quite the contrary, the intersubjective dimensions of my existence

deepen the significance of human transcendence

by

presenting it as a collective

achievement rather than an individual project. The question remains, however, how

a collective affirmation of human freedom can

be

achieved in and through the

various conflicts and tensions that mark intersubjective existence.

Perhaps the most serious challenge to the possibilityofprolonging my freedom

through assisting in the realization of the freedom of others is offered through an

extended autobiographical example provided

by

Beauvoir

herself-namely

her

description ofher mother's fmal illness and subsequent death from stomach cancer

in

Une mort tres douce

(1964; translated and published in English as

A Very Easy

Death,

1965). This autobiographical narrative itself has an ambiguous place in

Beauvoir's work. It is not fiction, not philosophy, and not quite like her earlier


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116

Gail Weiss

autobiographies either, since the focus

is

not primarily on herselfbut on her mother,

Franc;oise de Beauvoir.

3

Despite the fact that it is by no means a formal ethical

treatise and has not received much philosophical attention, it is

an important work

to discuss because it offers a very poignant description of the challenges that

deception poses to ethics.

In the course of

A Very Easy Death,

Beauvoir reveals the limits not only of a

Kantian, disembodied ethics, but also a Sartrean morality that seems inevitably to

align any form ofdeception with bad faith. Moreover, I would argue that the ethics

that appears in an unthematized form in this narrative cannot be subsumed within

the disclosure of individual freedom discussed in

The Ethics ofAmbiguity

or within

the model

of

mutually confirming subjectivities that Beauvoir provides in the erotic

encounter described in

The Second Sex.

This

is

because neither

of

these accounts

can do justice to the paradoxically enabling consequences of the deception

practiced by Beauvoir and her sister toward their mother in the face of her

impending death.

In

A Very Easy Death,

Simone de Beauvoir painstakingly describes the roles

she, her sister, the doctors, and the nurses all played in deceiving her mother about

the seriousness

of

her illness and the imminence

of

her death. Beauvoir willfully

(albeit with much anguish) participates in the deception, because she recognizes

that although her mother tacitly knows that she

is

dying, Franc;oise

is

not

emotionally, intellectually, or physically equipped to acknowledge the diagnosis

explicitly. Significantly, Beauvoir's participation in her mother's self-deception

appears within the text to be an

ethical

response to her mother's desire even though

this desire demands responses that are at odds with Beauvoir's own ethical

inclinations. These latter, rejecting the path

of

willful self-deception, privilege the

lucid evaluation

of

the situation that characterizes the will to disclosure.

An emphasis on lucidity and a disavowal

of

deception

is

not only a key feature

ofBeauvoir's and Sartre's existential frameworks, but also

is

foundational to the

Kantian, deontological model and to the entire rationalist tradition. Indeed, Kant

argues that we must abstract from the particularities of

the individuals involved in

a given situation in order to determine a universal ethical response to that situation.

Insofar

as

a moral response, for Kant, rests solely on reason and must be applicable

to

any situation in which questions

of

deceiving another might arise, his ethics

demands that we ignore those aspects ofFranc;oise de Beauvoir's personality that

explain her desire for deception.

Undoubtedly, there are many individuals (including Simone de Beauvoir

herself) who would prefer the additional suffering that comes with knowing the

3

Beauvoir pursues a similar strategy in her later volume Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre,

trans. Patrick O'Brian New York: Pantheon, 1984).


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SIMONE DE BEA UVOIR 117

truth to any relief from suffering that might follow from allowing oneself to be

deceived about one's situation. Moreover, the wish to be deceived, as Sartre points

out in

Being and Nothingness, is

itself contradictory and doomed to failure, since

one must know what one wants

to

be deceived about in order to engage actively in

the project ofself-deception. Despite these and other difficulties with the project

of

self-deception, much less Fran9oise's tacit demand that her daughters assist her in

realizing this project, a surprising, very un-Kantian and un-Sartrean result occurs

from the family's collusion-namely, Fran9oise de Beauvoir experiences a sense

of moral agency that she has perhaps never before realized (or at least has not

realized since her childhood and early adolescence). The affirmation that she can

demand and receive respect and consideration from others because

of

her

bodily

suffering, Beauvoir implicitly suggests, is precisely what allows Fran9oise to

experience the transcendent dimensions of her own embodiment in the final days

ofher life.

What is paramount here, just as in the erotic encounter discussed earlier, is an

affirmation ofthe other

as

subject rather than

as

object. As a distinctively embodied

subjectivity, the desires

of

the other can never be reducible to my own. However,

the "bodily imperatives" that motivate Beauvoir's acceptance of her mother's

wishes cannot be done justice through the model

of

an erotic relationship (though

there are undoubtedly,

as

Freud and even Beauvoir herself point out, strong erotic

dimensions in the child's relation to her mother).

4

The insufficiency of the erotic

model provided in

The Second Sex to

account for these bodily imperatives becomes

abundantly clear when these latter emerge from the bodies ofstrangers or even from

my own body.

The poignant picture Beauvoir offers in

A Very Easy Death

of an ethical

relationship between a mother and her daughters that paradoxically arises through

a shared deception requires a rethinking of the sufficiency of earlier existentialist

as

well

as

deontological models in providing a comprehensive account ofour moral

possibilities. This means that there is much more work to be done if we are to

plumb the depths

of

Beauvoir's ethical insights. The challenge

of

such a project

should not discourage us, however, since

as

Beauvoir herself notes in

The Ethics

of

Ambiguity,

"There

is

an ethics only

if

there

is

a problem to solve" (EA, 18).

In closing, I would argue that the tensions that arise among the various

depictions of ethical encounters that Beauvoir offers, must be taken not

as

a failure

on her part, but

as

emblematic of the multiple ambiguities that characterize human

4

For an in-depth discussion of the expression "bodily imperatives" please see chapter

seven

ofmy ody Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality

(New York: Routledge, 1999).

This term is intended to stress the tension between Beauvoir's embodied ethics and Kant's

categorical imperative.


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118

Gail

Weiss

existence, ambiguities that we must all contend with

on

a daily basis. If it is indeed

true, as she observes, that "without failure, no ethics," (EA, 10), then we must seek

ethics

in

and through this failure rather than

by

striving to transcend the very need

for ethics itself.

SELECTED BIBUOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Beauvoir, Simone de.

Pyrrhus et Cineas.

Paris: Gallimard, 1944.

. P o u r

une morale de 'ambiguite.

Paris: Gallimard, 1947; The

Ethics ofAmbiguity.

Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Philosophical Library 1948; rpt. Citadel Press,

1997.

--- .

Le deuxieme sexe.

2 vo1s. Paris: Gallimard, 1949;

The Second Sex.

Trans. H.M.

Parshley. New York: Knopf, 1952; rpt. Vintage, 1989.

--- .

Une mort tres douce.

Paris: Gallimard, 1964;

A

Very

Easy Death.

Trans. Patrick

O'Brian. New York: Pantheon, 1965.

--- .

La Ceremonie des adieux suivi de Entretiens avec Jean-Paul Sartre. Aout

Septembre 1974


Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre.

Trans. Patrick

O'Brian. New York: Pantheon, 1984.

Hegel, G.W.F.

Phiinomenologie des Geistes

[1806];

The Phenomenology

of

Mind.

Trans.

J.B. Baillie. London: MacMillan, 1910.

Kant, Immanuel.

Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten

[1785];

Groundwork

of

the

Metaphysic

of

Morals.

Trans. H.J. Paton. New York: Harper Row, 1964.

Sartre, Jean-Paul.

L 'etre et le neant.


Being and Nothingness.

Trans.

Hazel

E.

Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956.

Secondary Sources

Bergoffen Debra.

The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies,

Erotic Generosities.

Albany, NY: State University

ofNew

York Press, 1997.

Fallaize, Elizabeth, ed.

Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Reader.

London: Routledge, 1998.

Kruks, Sonia.

Situation and Human Existence: Freedom, Subjectivity, and Society.

New

York: Routledge, 1990.

Lundgren-Gothlin, Eva.

Sex and Existence: Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex.

Trans.

Linda Schenck. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996.

Simons, Margaret.

Beauvoir and The Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins

of

Existentialism.

Lanham, MD: Rowman Littlefield, 1999.

---

ed.

Feminist Interpretations

of

Simone de Beauvoir.

University Park, PA:

Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.

Weiss, Gail.

Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality.

New York: Routledge, 1999.

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