Known typically for her association with Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir exerted an enduring influence upon modern day feminism. "One is not born, but rather becomes a woman" is the primal theme in The Second Sex. Some may not deem her a major philosopher, but to humanists, socialists and Marxists, she is an original thinker. Philippe Knab deduces that in the Second Sex, “firstly, she put forward a series of empirical claims about women as the Other, that is, about what the role gender played in her society. Secondly, she puts forward a philosophical argument for why sexism is wrong. Clearly, the validity of the empirical part of the argument depends on one's historical cultural background.
Read the entire essay from the Solitary Purdah archives
No comments:
Post a Comment