Simone de Beauvoir

This chapter considers the thought of French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir on the nature of human sexual difference. In following Beauvoir’s work, the Ethics of Ambiguity, it begins with a discussion of the philosophical stances that undergird her influential thought on the biological origins of the human female and male, and the existential dynamics that give rise to the categories of woman and man. Next, it follows Beauvoir’s masterwork, The Second Sex, in determining how the human female was cast in the role of the “second sex”, and how she can and must cast off that imposition.