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Existentialism & feminist thought · 1908–1986

Simone de Beauvoir

Freedom is built with others.

Paris · France
Portraits: artistic interpretations
Philosophy

Ideas that shift your perspective.

01

Situated freedom

To be free is not to choose from nowhere. Resources, the body, history and institutions shape a person’s possibilities. Freedom is not cancelled by every constraint, but it becomes concrete through material and social conditions. Emancipation therefore requires more than an instruction to want something strongly enough.

A situation to think through

Before telling someone to change their life, examine what makes that choice possible: income, security, time, health, legal status or support from others.

02

The making of the Other

The Second Sex analyses how women have been defined in relation to a masculine subject presented as the norm. This position as Other is not a mechanical consequence of biology. It is produced through myths, education, institutions and everyday relationships, which can also be transformed.

A situation to think through

In a meeting, notice who is immediately treated as an expert and who must first establish their legitimacy. A norm can operate without ever being stated.

03

The ambiguity of existence

We are both subjects capable of projects and beings exposed to the world, the body and other people’s gaze. An ethics cannot remove this tension with a rule abolishing all uncertainty. It requires decisions, responsibility for consequences and recognition of the freedoms our actions encounter.

A situation to think through

A decision can be necessary without being pure or cost-free. State what it enables, what it risks and to whom you will have to answer for it.

04

Reciprocal emancipation

My freedom cannot be durably realised by reducing others to objects. Possibilities of existence depend on shared relationships and institutions. Beauvoir thus connects ethics with resistance to oppression: opening paths for oneself also requires attention to the conditions under which others can make projects of their own.

A situation to think through

In a collective project, ask not only who obtains a result, but who gains time, a voice and the ability to decide what comes next.

Continue

Bring perspectives into conversation.

Continue with other ways of asking the question.

Critique of values

Friedrich Nietzsche

Critical philosophy

Immanuel Kant

Rationalism · Naturalism

Baruch Spinoza