A extra satisfactory vital response, nevertheless, is to argue that de Beauvoirʼs use of Hegelian concepts actually reflects tensions between Kojèvian and Sartrean accounts of human existence and their implications. In addition, the implication of the individual within the species, rather than being interpreted negatively in de Beauvoirʼs sense, is seen by Hegel as a presaging (but in addition as a transition in direction of) that which is crucial to spiritual existence. As well as, the blurring of the subject-object (existent-life) distinction which but cannot be thought is accompanied by the blurring of the existent-other distinction within the relation between any particular person girl and ladies as a bunch. Many women have recognised themselves in Beauvoir’s portrait of ‘the woman in love’ – some have even accused her of writing self-portraiture. The significance of sexual intercourse is that inside it, even if solely at a given moment, ʻthe distinct existences in their mutual relationship are not external to one another however have the feeling of their unityʼ. Many psychoanalysts at the moment admit that the younger woman could remorse not having a penis without believing, however, that it has been removed from her physique, and even this remorse will not be basic.
In 65 million years, based on the speculation of evolution, every mammal that we see today (over 4,000 species) evolved from small, 4-legged creatures like Didelphodon. Near the very finish of the credits, we see the squeaky-voiced teen cleaning up the theater. This has led many feminist commentators to see reliance on Hegel as key to the weaknesses of de Beauvoirʼs argument. Here we find the important thing to the idea of the emergence of spirit non-naturally from nature. The human animal is peculiar, Hegel suggests, as a result of it depends for its survival not merely on implicit, instinctually programmed mechanisms or habits (letting nature take its course) to make sure the survival of the species but on positing its survival as an explicit object each as species and as particular person (hence the introduction of the idea of self-consciousness as want). Self-consciousness is introduced as ʻgenus by itself accountʼ, the easy essence which has itself as pure ʻIʼ for object and which identifies itself as distinct from the ebb and flow of organic life as a whole. In so far as de Beauvoirʼs analysis draws upon Hegelʼs account of these dualities in his Philosophy of Nature and within the section on self-consciousness within the Phenomenology, feminist critics have argued that de Beauvoir necessarily carries over elements of the androcentrism of Hegelʼs analysis wherein girls are associated with the inferior time period of every duality.
There is a persistent tendency in direction of confusion about womanʼs being evident in de Beauvoirʼs personal thinking of women not only in terms of their transcendent potentialities but additionally when it comes to their immanence: woman as ʻother to herselfʼ, because the slave of the species isn’t absolutely exorcized from the person who demands to be recognized as an existent. De Beauvoir herself makes womanʼs bodily situation, her natural being, in itself a temptation to embrace immanence and evade transcendence, which although an option not open to an animal retains woman positioned primarily in relation to species relatively than individuated existence. ʻanimate Natureʼ (dwelling, natural, bodily existence) and comprehending ʻspiritʼ (self-conscious existence). The significance of reproduction (as de Beauvoir rightly notes, citing Hegelʼs view that the delivery of the youngster signifies the death of the parents) lies in the best way by which it indicates the implication of particular person animals (female or male) in a species which transcends and yet dominates their speedy individuated existence. Then aggressiveness in direction of the father develops, however at the identical time the child interiorises the fathers authority; thus the superego is built up in the child and censures his incestuous tendencies. Hegel goes on to recommend that that is true from essentially the most elementary level at which an individual little one learns to feed itself to probably the most complicated ranges of human growth.
The account begins not with self-consciousness but with life, the organic ongoing reproduction of the human genus – a story of the life cycle of intercourse, delivery, sustenance and death. Hegel tells this story in a method within the Encyclopaedia texts, providing a philosophical account of the relations between nature, spirit and the ways in which they can be comprehended in thought. The story of the identity and nonidentity of nature and spirit is taken up and expounded once more in a different approach in the Phenomenology of Spirit. In the relation between male and feminine, progenitor and offspring in nature, Hegel claims to discern a dynamic of mutual self-determination and of universality inside particularity, which he argues can be crucial to comprehending the character of spirit. The realm of reality is subsequently the realm of self-consciousness (of consciousness reflecting upon itself), and the task of the philosopher becomes that of comprehending the event of self-consciousness and the different modes of its self-understanding. At the identical time, however, Hegel is insistent that nature is distinct from spirit, since in nature these dynamics are skilled implicitly as a matter of feeling and intuition, whereas in the realm of spirit they are experienced explicitly as a matter for selfconscious reflection and determination – that’s, as food for thought and motion.