Feminist Interpretations Of Jean Paul Sartre

While Sartre was committed to liberation struggles around the globe, his writing never directly addressed the oppression of women. Yet there is compatibility between his central ideas & feminist beliefs. In this first feminist collection on Sartre, philosophers reassess the merits of Sartre's radical philosophy of freedom for feminist theory. Contributors are Hazel E. Barnes, Linda A. Bell, Stuart Z. Charme, Peter Diers, Kate & Edward Fullbrook, Karen Green, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Sonia Kruks, Guillermine de Lacoste, Thomas Martin, Phyllis Sutton Morris, Constance Mui, & Iris Marion Young.

Simone de Beauvoir made her own distinctive contribution to existentialism in the form of an ethics which diverged sharply from that of Jean-Paul Sartre. In her novels and philosophical essays of the 1940s she produced not just a recognizably existentialist ethics, but also a character ethics and an ethics for violence. These concerns, stemming from her own personal philosophical background, give a vital, contemporary resonance to her work. De Beauvoir's feminist classic The Second Sex reflects her earlier philosophical interests, and is considerably strengthened by this influence. This book defends her existentialist feminism against the many reproaches which have been levelled against it over several decades, not least the criticism that it is steeped in Sartrean masculinism.

Second Wave feminism collapsed in the early 1980s when a universal definition of women was abandoned. At the same time, as a reaction to the narcissism of white middle class feminism, "intersectionality" led to many different feminisms according to race, sexual preference and class. These ongoing segregations make it impossible for women to unite politically and they have not ended exclusion and discrimination among women, especially in the academy. In Inclusisve Feminism, Naomi Zack provides a universal, relational definition of women, critically engages both Anglo and French feminists and shows how women can become a united historical force, with the political goal of ruling in place of men.

One of the most influential thinkers of her generation draws us into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises in these three “immensely intelligent stories about the decay of passion” (The Sunday Herald Times). Suffused with de Beauvoir’s remarkable insights into women, The Woman Destroyed gives us a legendary writer at her best. Includes "The Age of Discretion," "The Monologue," and "The Woman Destroyed." "Witty, immensely adroit...These three women are believable individuals presented with a wry mixture of sympathy and exasperation." —The Atlantic

A progenitor of modern egalitarianism, communitarianism, and participatory democracy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a philosopher whose deep concern with the relationship between the domains of private domestic and public political life has made him especially interesting to feminist theorists, but also has made him very controversial. The essays in this volume, representing a wide range of feminist interpretations of Rousseau, explore the many tensions in his thought that arise from his unique combination of radical and traditional perspectives on gender relations and the state. Among the topics addressed by the contributors are the connections between Rousseau&’s political vision of the egalitarian state and his view of the &"natural&" role of women in the family; Rousseau&’s apparent fear of the actual danger and power of women; important questions Rousseau raised about child care and gender relations in individualist societies that feminists should address; the founding of republics; the nature of consent; the meaning of citizenship; and the conflation of modern universal ideals of democratic citizenship with modern masculinity, leading to the suggestion that the latter is as fragile a construction as the former. Overall this volume makes an important contribution to a core question at the hinge of modernism and postmodernism: how modern, egalitarian notions of social contract, premised on universality and objective reason, can yet result in systematic exclusion of social groups, including women. Contributors are Leah Bradshaw, Melissa A. Butler, Anne Harper, Sarah Kofman, Rebecca Kukla, Lynda Lange, Ingrid Makus, Lori J. Marso, Mira Morgenstern, Susan Moller Okin, Alice Ormiston, Penny Weiss, Elie Wiestad, Elizabeth Wingrove, Monique Wittig, and Linda Zerilli.

A critical figure in twentieth-century literature and philosophy, Jean-Paul Sartre changed the course of critical thought, and claimed a new, important role for the intellectual. Christine Daigle sets Sartre’s thought in context, and considers a number of key ideas in detail, charting their impact and continuing influence, including: Sartre’s theories of consciousness, being and freedom as outlined in Being and Nothingness and other texts the ethics of authenticity and absolute responsibility concrete relations, sexual relationships and gender difference, focusing on the significance of the alienating look of the Other the social and political role of the author the legacy of Sartre’s theories and their relationship to structuralism and philosophy of mind. Introducing both literary and philosophical texts by Sartre, this volume makes Sartre’s ideas newly accessible to students of literary and cultural studies as well as to students of continental philosophy and French.

Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb, and an international group of scholars explore the philosophical and literary relationship between Beauvoir and Sartre in this penetrating volume.