Meaning of "Existence Precedes Essence" Explained Simply

The proposition that "existence precedes essence" is a central statement of Existentialism, which goes against the traditional philosophical view that the essence (nature) of a thing is more fundamental and immovable than its existence (the fact of its being). To existentialists, people - through their consciousness - create their own values ​​and determine the meaning for their life because man does not possess any essential identity or value. By presenting the actions that make up him or her, he or she makes his or her existence more important.

The idea can be found in the works of philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in the 19th century , but was explicitly formulated by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in the 20th century in his 1946 lecture "Existentialism is Humanism", although some of its initial inspiration can be found in Heidegger's "The Being and Time" . A similar statement was made by Simone de Beauvoir who uses this concept in her feminist existentialism in "The Second Sex" to develop the idea that "one is not a born woman, but becomes that".

Sartre's claim about how "existence precedes essence" is best understood in contrast to a solid principle of metaphysics that essence precedes existence , i.e. which is such a thing as human nature , determined by the cosmic order (or God), laid down by religious tradition or legislated by political or social authority . A typical claim for this traditional thesis would be that this person is essentially selfish or that he is a rational being.

For Sartre, the idea that existence precedes essence means that a personality is not built on something of a previously designed model or a precise goal, because it is the person who chooses to engage in such an enterprise. Not denying the limiting conditions of human existence, he responds to Spinoza who claimed that man is determined by what surrounds him and holds that "we are doomed to be free".

See also: What Sartre meant in "existence precedes essence"

Sartre on Love and Freedom

Essence vs. Existence in Sartre’s Philosophy

Summary of Book 2 of the Second Sex / Simone de Beauvoir

Summary of Book 2 of the Second Sex / Simone de Beauvoir

(first read part 1 of the summary)

Book II begins with Simone de Beauvoir's most famous sentence , “ We are not born a woman, we become it.“. De Beauvoir seeks to destroy the essentialism which claims that women are born women, but on the contrary are constructed as such by social indoctrination. De Beauvoir supports this thesis by retracing the education of women from her childhood, through her adolescence to her sexual relations. At each stage, Beauvoir illustrates how women are forced to abandon their claims to transcendent and authentic subjectivity in favor of an acceptance of a “passive” and “alienated” role, leaving the active and subjective role to the man. . De Beauvoir studies the roles of wife, mother, and prostitute to show how women, instead of transcending themselves through work and creativity, are reduced to monotonous existences,

However, a common misconception about De Beauvoir is to believe that the woman is no longer free. It should be remembered that De Beauvoir is an existentialist philosopher, in other words that she considers the ontological freedom of beings to be absolute: man does not destroy woman's freedom by objectifying woman, but he tries to make it one. object. Woman remains a transcendence, transcended by male transcendence, or formulated otherwise: a transcended transcendence.

Nevertheless, and this is all the complexity and subtlety of Beauvoir's analysis, women can be responsible and participate in their own subjection. De Beauvoir thus distinguishes 3 inauthentic behaviors (Sartre would say in bad faith) in which women flee their condition of transcendence in order to fix themselves in pre-determined beliefs and values. These three attitudes, forming as many tables are: the narcissist, the lover and the mystic. These three categories have in common the flight of their freedom for the benefit of the object. In the case of the narcissist, the object is herself, in that of the lover, her beloved, and in that of the mystic, the absolute or God.

Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex - summary

“ Woman is determined and differentiates herself in relation to man and not the latter in relation to her; it is the inessential in front of the essential. He is the subject, he is the Absolute: she is the Other  ”

According to contemporary philosophers, Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex is a revolutionary work, because she is the first feminist who manages to justify her positions by philosophical and historical theses. the second sex has a considerable influence on the generations of women who have succeeded it. De Beauvoir defends the following thesis: male / female inequality is historically and ideologically constructed. Women must take back possession of their destiny, not as a woman, but as a man like the others. Thus, the woman should no longer be "woman", in other words the lower sex, the Other, but a man.

Published in two volumes in 1949, this work immediately found both an enthusiastic audience and very harsh critics. The Second Sex has been so controversial that the Vatican listed it as one of their banned novels.

Furthermore, Simone de Beauvoir argues that human existence is an ambiguous game between transcendence and immanence, but men have had the privilege of expressing transcendence through projects, while women have been forced to repetitive and uncreative life of immanence. De Beauvoir therefore proposes to study how this radically unequal relationship emerged and how it is expressed.

Summary of Book 1 of the Second Sex:

The book is divided into two main approaches. The first book investigates the “Myths and Realities” relating to women generated by anthropological, biological, psychoanalytic, materialist, historical and literary points of view. In each of his analyzes, De Beauvoir rejects causal monism: none of them is sufficient to explain the oppression of woman by man, each participates in the construction of woman as Other of man. Thus, biological differences (pregnancy, breastfeeding, menstruation, etc.) contribute to the male / female difference but cannot justify the male / female hierarchy. Biology or history is always interpreted from a partial point of view, that of man.

De Beauvoir then analyzes the role of myths in the construction of this ideology of male domination, in particular the myth of “the eternal feminine”. This paradigmatic myth, which integrates multiple myths of women (such as the myth of the mother, the virgin, the motherland, nature, etc.) tries to trap the woman in an impossible ideal by denying the individuality and by refusing the singularity of women and their situations. This myth of the eternal feminine has created an ideal of woman, generating an expectation always disappointed. Real women are thus always seen as burdens, incompleteness.

See second part: summary of Book 2 of the Second Sex / Simone de Beauvoir

see our List of Great Feminist Theory Books

5 Important Feminist Thinkers to Know

Feminist and gendered thought is an amazing example and perhaps the only one of its kind in the power of a stream of thought that manages to bring about far-reaching changes in reality. It is difficult today to compare the relationship between men and women today with that of men and women a century ago so a combination of feminist thought and action began to emerge that would become a movement that would change the face of our society. The list of feminist thinkers (as well as some men) is long and respectable, we have gathered for you here some of the prominent figures worth getting to know.

 

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is rightly recognized primarily as a marvelous writer in her sensitivity but alongside her literary work also retains a place of honor at the beginning of feminist thought. In Wolfe's book "A Room of One’s Own" she wonders why women have diminished throughout history writing books. Her answer is that they never had a "room of their own" in which to write books, when in "room" Wolf means not only a physical space but what such a private physical space represents.

 

Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir's feminism is found not only in the content of her library but also in her career, her role in the feminist revolution and the way she broke out and claimed a place of honor within the masculine European philosophy of her time. In her important book "The Other Sex" Beauvoir argues that woman has always been the "other" of man and has been defined in relation to him, without an identity of her own. De Beauvoir's inquiry into the sources of inequality between men and women was fundamentally an intellectual inquiry, but it paved the way for many ideas that sought to change the situation. Renowned philosopher Jean Paul Sartre is also remembered, among other things, as the stormy partner of Simone de Beauvoir.

 

Betty Frieden

In 1963, Betty Frieden published a book called "The Feminine Mystique" with a chapter on "The Problem That Has No Name." High-middle-class white women who lived the "American Dream" in the suburbs suffered, despite all the happiness of their lives, from unexplained symptoms of depression and anxiety. Frieden was the one who pointed out that what causes these women to suffer is a feeling that they are no longer content with the life of a housewife, of a mother and wife, and that they seek self-realization outside the walls of the home. Frieden's book is identified as one of the causes of the wave of women's work in the 1960s and 1970s. Fan Fact: Frieden's theory was used by the creators of the "Mad Man" series who even named one of the main characters after her.

 

Judith Butler

Judith Butler belongs to the so-called "third wave" of feminism that seeks to abolish the gender distinctions and power relations contained within them. At the forefront of this struggle can be found Butler with books like "Gender Trouble" and formative ideas like "Performances" of "Gender". Butler examined the phenomenon of drag queens and argued that what they show is the way gender roles are something we "perform", unwritten codes of dress, movement, speech, etc. that drag queens mimic in an extreme way. This argument leads to the conclusion that gender differences are a matter of social construction, not nature.

 

Raewyn Connell

Australian Raewyn Connell is perhaps not the most influential thinker in the field of gender in the twentieth century but it is worth getting to know her for two reasons. First Connell is interesting as a gender thinker who experienced firsthand the complexity of the issue today, when she was born a man and eventually became a woman. Connell‘s biography of course influenced her thinking and she became one of the pioneers of the gendered preoccupation with masculinity, after decades in which men enjoyed the status of observers on the debate. Connell has published a highly influential book called "Masculinities" which claimed that there is more than one way to be a man and also, as Connell proves, one does not have to be a man at all.

Know your Feminism:

see our List of Great Feminist Theory Books

Simone de Beauvoir's explanation for gender inequality in "The Second Sex"

Simone de Beauvoir's gender theory is considered to be one of the pioneers of feminist thought. Her book "The Second Sex" is seen as a milestone in explaining how and why women were and are subjected to men's rule. While some of Simone de Beauvoir's insights might be seen today as self evident (such as "a woman is not born a woman but becomes one"), other remain revolutionary till this day.

In the second chapter of "The Second Sex", titled "History", Simone de Beauvoir tries to explain how gender inequality established itself in the course of history and how is it that we came to take in for granted. de Beauvoir offers an existential approach to the examination of how is it that the woman was marked as society's "other" and subsequently "lesser".

Simone de Beauvoir argues that whenever there are two different human categories at the same time and place, there will always be one striving to subject the other to its rule. The burden of childbirth in ancient societies made women dependant on men's labor, and thus enabled the initial inequality. In this situation women were banished from activities such as hunting an fighting that were seen as man's purpose in his strive to elevate himself from nature (which was the woman's domain and there she stayed).

With the shift to agrarian societies and the introduction of the need to plan ahead, women gained importance by providing the continuation of the family/community/species, and her powers were recognized and feared (here the "witch" was born). The response was the objectification of women and they're treatment as property at the disposal of men. They were reduced to a mere function, and not an integral part of human existence. Women, Simone de Beauvoir argues, were the eternal and absolute "other" of men.