AccScience Publishing / BIJP / Volume 14 / Issue 3 / DOI: 10.29228/beytulhikme.76345
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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Simone de Beauvoir’s Feminist Phenomenology 

Eylem Yenisoy Şahin1
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1 Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi, Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi, Felsefe Bölümü 16059, Bursa, Türkiye
BIJP 2024, 14(3), 735–754; https://doi.org/10.29228/beytulhikme.76345
Received: 3 May 2024 | Published online: 9 September 2024
© 2024 by the Authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

In this article, I will try to show that Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist philosophy follows Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and in this respect, she is a feminist phenomenologist. In Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, essence refers to an unfixable, intersubjective, and historical meaning; transcendental is nothing but intersubjectivity. In his phenomenology, the Cartesian subject and all other opposing dualities are tried to be overcome. The body becomes our unique means of meaning, action, and existence allowing us to open to the world we share with all other things. Beauvoir follows these parameters while trying to understand what woman is and what she can be. After critically evaluating existing assumptions and theories, Beauvoir focuses on women’s experiences. She ultimately shows that the existing woman is not eternal, natural, or absolute, but a socially/politically constituted reality and therefore changeable. This phenomenological reduction and description that Beauvoir shows through the question of woman provides an important philosophical basis for all problems that require social criticism.

Keywords
Simone de Beauvoir
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
feminist phenomenology
phenomenological reduction
phenomenological description
social criticism.
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Beytulhikme An International Journal of Philosophy, Print ISSN: 1303-8303, Published by AccScience Publishing