Title: Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity
Abstract: Simone de Beauvoir is best known as the author of The Second Sex, but she was also the author of a vast array of other political and philosophical writings. Together, these provide a major contribution to political philosophy and theory that has so far been little explored. This book is a study of Beauvoir's political thinking. In addition to locating Beauvoir in her own intellectual and political context, it shows how Beauvoir's work still speaks to a host of issues that remain of concern today. She is an important interlocutor in debates about the values and dangers of humanism; about the strengths and limits of "ideal theory"; about how best to theorize power, identity, and oppression; about the limits to rationalism and the dangers of ethical purism; and about the place of emotions, such as the desire for revenge, in politics. In discussing her contributions to such debates, her work is put into conversation with many contemporary thinkers, including feminist and race theorists, and with historical figures in the liberal, Hegelian, and Marxist traditions. Beauvoir's political thinking emerges from her fundamental insights into the ambiguity of human existence. Combining phenomenological descriptions with structural analyses, she focuses on the tensions of human action as both free and materially constrained. To be human is to be an embodied subject, capable of free choice and yet contingent and physically vulnerable. It is also to be in the world among many other such existents, among whom interconnections may be both reciprocal and conflictual, involving both solidarity and oppression. Because such ambiguities are intrinsic to politics and are not subject to resolution, Beauvoir shows us that failure is a necessary part of political action and that we need to acknowledge this while also assuming responsibility for its outcomes.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-11-14
Language: en
Type: book
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 117
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