The Second Sex as the Experience of the Reappraisal of Values

Article

Abstract

[In Russian]

A camel, a lion, a child… The metaphor of three metamorphoses
of the human spirit, used by Nietzsche in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, ironically became a kind of intellectual matrix for
The Second Sex of Simone de Beauvoir – one of the most significant
feminist texts in 20th century philosophy. In the manner of
Nietzsche, de Beauvoir reveals the genesis of values, establishment
of which legitimated the subordinate position of women in
the society.
Finding out the historical roots of existentially defective
«condition» of woman, where there is no place for free choice (i.e.
for the possibility to «be oneself»), the author of The Second Sex
shows that the notions of «bad» and «good» as well as «masculine
» and «feminine» are determined by the hegemonic relations
and came into being in the «struggle for recognition» in which
woman did not take part at all. Being the object of power for a
long time she could not even lay claims to the role of subject capable
to turn the course of history.
Showing contingent, situational and dynamic character of
values in general and patriarchal values in particular, Simone de
Beauvoir points out to the valid reasons for the critique and revaluation
of them. The process that was later coined by Julia Kristeva
as the «feminization of values» can be considered as a multistage
movement-to-freedom: from the stage of heteronomous morality
(which was represented by Nietzsche in the figure of a camel)
through the stage of nihilism (a lion) to the stage of independent
self-definition and creation of new values (a child). This way to
freedom, ably described by S. de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, is
possible only through the recognition of a woman as the author
of her own biography.
The paper demonstrates actuality of Simone de Beauvoir’s
egalitarian feminism for the contemporary ethics by the comparative
analysis of her ideas with the positions of Friedrich Nietzsche,
Carol Gilligan, Julia Kristeva and Axel Honneth.