On The Interaction Between Beauvoir’s Feminism And Sartre’s Existentialism

Feminism of Beauvoir’s Existentialism and Existentialism of Sartre were traced back to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. The formation of their ideological system was benefited from Heidegger’s Being and Time. Started from Hegel’s master-slave dialectics and the existential idea of Heidegger’s authenticity, in-authenticity, Sartre applied it in his existentialism, and he distinguished it into “being-in-itself” and “being-for-itself”; Beauvoir dialectically applied it in her idea of the relationship between men and women, and distinguished it into “self” and “the other”.Sartre distinguished existence into “being-in-itself” and “being-for-itself”, the people was “being-for-itself”, this existence has the feature of “transcendence”; “being-in-itself” is inert, and it can present only draw support from the intentional activity of “being-in-itself”. Corresponding to this, Beauvoir divided people into “self” and “the other”, took the opinion of “women are the other”. So, female as “the other” was intrinsic property, non transcendence, male was opposite in the site of “self”. Furthermore, because of Sartre advocated “existence precede essence”, if people chose to shrank responsibility, then it is: “self deception”. Beauvoir continued Sartre’s idea of self deception in the problem between male and female, she thought that female took the sinking and comfortable state, and chose the life style of self deception, so it is “the other”, and then became the appendage of the men. Liberation of women was from “the other” to “this one”.Beauvoir’s influence on Sartre was freedom, equality and inter-subjectivity, relationship between men and women. First of all, Beauvoir suggested the concept of “moral freedom” to claim freedom of oneself must start from the premise of freedom of others, affected by this, Sartre turned from the abstract view of personal “absolute freedom” in ontology of early stage to the “relative freedom” of late thought, and free content, limit in the specific social and historical environment. At the same time, this view of freedom was also the moral critique of the patriarchal society, and it ensured the equality between men and women. The second, Beauvoir committed inter-subjectivity, that is “mutuality” of self and the other, and emphasized the positive aspect of relation between self and the other. On the issue of self and the other, Sartre initially thought that their relation was an inevitable conflict:“the other was prison”. Then he was influenced by Beauvoir, Sartre claimed that all the form between people had the mutual relation, self was “this one” of the other, the other was “he exists” of self, self and the other had essential and intrinsically unified relation.