Simone de Beauvoir
"When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form."
Simone de Beauvoir
The Second
www.kirjasto.sci.fi/beauvoir.htm
"Levi-Strauss, at the end of a profound work on the various forms of primitive societies, reaches the following conclusion: "Passage from the state of Nature to the state of Culture is marked by man's ability to view biological relations as a series of contrasts; duality, alternation, opposition, and symmetry, whether under definite or vague forms, constitute not so much phenomena to be explained as fundamental and immediately given data of social reality."4 These phenomena would be incomprehensible if in fact human society were simply a Mitsein or fellowship based on solidarity and friendliness. Things become clear, on the contrary, if, following Hegel, we find in consciousness itself a fundamental hostility toward every other consciousness; the subject can be posed only in being opposed ― he sets himself up as the essential, as opposed to the other, the inessential, the object."
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
(1908-1986)
THE SECOND
(Le Deuxieme e)
First published in 1949
English translation in 1953 by H.M. Parshley (New York: Knopf)
Vintage Books paperback edition 1989
COMPLETE TEXT:
http://wwwlb.aub.edu.lb/~webcsp/reading_selections/CVSP206/TheSecondSex-Simone-de-Beauvoir.doc.
"To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue none the less to exist for him also: mutually recognizing each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other. The reciprocity of their relations will not do away with the miracles ― desire, possession, love, dream, adventure ― worked by the division of human beings into two separate categories; and the words that move us ― giving, conquering, uniting ― will not lose their meaning. On the contrary when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form. "The direct, natural, necessary relation of human creatures is the relation of man to woman,'' Marx has said.6 "The nature of this relation determines to what point man himself is to be considered as a generic being, as mankind; the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being. By it is shown, therefore, to what point the natural behavior of man has become human or to what point the human being has become his natural being, to what point his human nature has become his nature."
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