Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir

by Sara Heinämaa Professor of Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Overview

Simone de Beauvoir's Le Deuxième Sexe has been studied extensively since its appearance in 1949. Through the years, certain passages have taken on prestige; others are seen as unimportant to understanding Beauvoir's argument. In Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference, Sara Heinämaa rediscovers those neglected passages in her quest to follow Beauvoir's line of thinking. Heinämaa, like some other recent philosophers, finds that Le Duexième Sexe is a philosophical inquiry, not the empirical study it is commonly thought to be.

Others who view Beauvoir's masterpiece as a work of philosophy argue it is a criticism not only of Sartrean phenomenology, but of phenomenology as a whole. Heinämaa thinks differently. She finds that Beauvoir's starting point is the Husserlian idea of the living body that she found developed in Merleau-Ponty's Phénoménologie de la perception. So when Beavoir wrote Le Duexième Sexe, she was writing not as Sartre's pupil, but as a scholar in the tradition of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780847697854
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	03/19/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	182
Sales rank:	878,660
Product dimensions:	5.28(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Sara Heinämaa is senior research fellow in the Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 The philosopher and the writer Chapter 2 The living body Chapter 3 Sexual and erotic bodies Chapter 4 Questions about women Chapter 5 A genealogy of subjection Chapter 6 The mythology of femininity

Editorial Reviews

In her exciting new book, Sara Heinämaa takes Beauvoir scholarship to a new level, a new depth, providing the definitive analysis of Beauvoir's appropriation of Husserlean phenomenology. Heinämaa gives the best analysis I've ever read of Beauvoir's account of women's oppression, solving interpretive riddles that have bothered me for years. It is a great book, one destined to become a classic.

Margaret Simons

Heinamaa's work is essential reading for its interpreters. Recommended.

Choice Reviews

With great scholarly aplomb, Sara Heinämaa convincingly shows the phenomenological significance of Simone de Beauvoir's work. This is an excellent first book from an emerging philosophical talent.

Simon Critchley

Heinämaa restores to Simone de Beauvoir her place within and beyond philosophy in this elegant and original rereading of her work. Here, Beauvoir comes into her own as a genuine thinker of life in its experienced complexity—a philosopher in the best sense of the word.

Elizabeth Grosz

Heinamaa's work is essential reading for its interpreters. Recommended.

Choice

Heinamaa's work is essential reading for its interpreters. Recommended.

CHOICE