# 228: Existentialist Freedom
Story behind the Passage
Today in my Feminist reading circle, we discussed Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex. I never read the whole thing before but as soon as I started reading the first chapters again in preparation for the course, I immediately felt catapulted back to the time when I was in my teenage years. I must have been 16 or so when I read most of the other books by Beauvoir — above all Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter and The Mandarins. What I remember most about all her works are the female friendships that she describes in her coming-of-age stories and the larger context of French intellectual society at the time of her writing. I remember, whenever I thought about entering a time machine and beaming myself to some historical period, I would have chosen the 1960s in Paris. Well, I said the same thing about the 19th century in the U.S. before, I know. Let us just assume that both periods are equally important to me…
The reason for this importance is not even that clear. Perhaps, so I think, I always fell in love with all these weird and rebellious characters that you would find in French Salon culture. Of course, this is such a romanticized approach to the entire thing. As we also know, many of these people ended up killing themselves because all their thinking (and drinking) drove them nuts. What we know about de Beauvoir and Sartre is that they also had a wild relationship — not just in sexual liaison terms. After all, intellectual power play is power play after all. I just wonder how much is too much when it comes to all the thinking. This might sound funny but actually, I am not overdoing it with the thinking. I like it but I do not let it get in the way of doing “real” work, I mean, develop solutions and manage some stuff.
This issue of what is too much also kept coming up in the discussion we had today. I was quite happy about the conversation that emerged, even though we have to work on time management. I am definitely “too much” of a liberal when it comes to giving people space to share. But since business schools are generally not the place where people get to share a lot of deep philosophical thinking, that is o.k., I think. In any case, what I am saying is that the issue of too many choices and ultimately “too much” freedom also came up. And this made me think of one of the key passages that struck me as I was reading the text yesterday.
My Learnings
“This means that in focusing on the individual’s possibilities, we will define these possibilities not in terms of happiness but in terms of freedom.” Well, I am not going to go into the “feminine condition” first. Obviously, this is part of the reason why gender seems to be such a big issue. And this is also why I sort of feel that women themselves are creating many barriers. But I am drifting off here. What I am simply saying is that de Beauvoir herself started her argument based on the idea that that there simply is a feminine condition of some kind and then tried to figure out ways of changing this — i.e., how to become the person you can become. This is where existentialism comes in.
I have never gone deeply into the philosophy but now that I reread the text, I think that I should take a second look. It is one of the philosophies that I seem to embody without knowing the proper label for it. This also tells you a lot about how helpful labels might be in any case. Can you “live” a philosophy only if you know the name of it? For sure not! This also tells you more about the fact that we are all philosophers in some way, we are just not aware of it and we certainly do not write papers about it. The point still is that, as de Beauvoir writes here, the goal of life might be happiness of some kind for the individual. But counter to Utilitarianism, this is not where she starts with her thinking on existentialist philosophy.
Again, without being an expert on existentialism, there is one crucial thought that makes it a very helpful concept for contemporary debates. At the center of it is the question of where to start if you want to avoid being “made” into whatever you can become if you let social institutions and/or norms shape you? And if the answer means you have to derive this from somewhere else, ifrom within yourself, this becomes a hopeful journey but a tricky one. You eventually end up asking the really big questions: Where does ‘who you are’ come from and what does it mean to have “free will” if something like this exists, especially with respect to shaping your own life journey?
One answer or at least path the existentialists showed was “lived experience.” That is actually the reason why this resonates so much with me. If there is anything I believe in, it is that all knowledge comes from experience. So, if you just keep thinking about this or that, that will make you the “victim” of becoming this or that — i.e., these are the people who follow some kind of philosophy which ultimately might promise happiness but at the same time robs you of your individual freedom to become whatever you might become instead.
I know, this might sound confusing but I can simply end by then saying what freedom means to me: It means leaving behind everything you know to approach every situation in life with the eyes of a child. This will not mean that you forget everything you have learned. There is a difference between learning and truly making this learning become part of yourself. So, I assume that all this previous learning is stored in your body and mind but in a way that it is already interwoven with all other things. That also means that, even if you wanted to, you would not be able to identify the different “sources” anymore, i.e., the different philosophies or theoretical approaches. And this is why your ultimate life philosophy will automatically be unique and at the same time free from outer manipulation. In other words: You live life as it happens to you and you derive your own conclusions. These conclusions will automatically influence your decisions and make them free from social interference.
In my case, this has also led me to the state in which I can still tell the difference between things, also in binary terms. But I am not able to jump to these conclusions all the time that make one thing look bad or minor and the other thing big and powerful. I simply do not see it this way. I see so much potential in everything that happens to us. I truly believe that, if you yourself are not able to see gender differences and discrimination in all situations, then your environment will not reflect this back to you. Please, I am not saying that there is no discrimination and no women suffering in the world because of severe affliction done to them. I just think that any “counter response” in the sense of talking-back discourse and counter-hatred is not the way to solving it. For me, it is all about humanism. This is the radical source that is always available. If I see the human behind the gender mask, and I decide to focus on the human first, the mask will simply disappear and become irrelevant for me.
Then there usually is much room for joint “becoming.”
Reflection Questions
1) What does “feeling free” mean to you? When do you experience this state of mind?
2) If you were able to go on a time journey and travel to any period in history — which year would you choose? Why?
3) What do you appreciate most about your sex or gender?