Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to clarify what Simone de Beauvoir's feminism consists in, to delineate its philosophical roots and to clarify Beauvoir's use of the notion of woman as "Other" and its role in woman's struggle for liberation. Beauvoir's feminism, as it is expressed in The Second Sex, is compared to the thought of Edith Stein, a student and assistant of Edmund Husserl, who wrote her doctoral dissertation, On the Problem of Empathy, under Husserl's supervision in 1916. I discuss the influence of Husserl on the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre, and Sartre's influence upon Beauvoir. I try to show how Edith Stein's analysis of empathy illuminates the often perplexing discussion by Beauvoir about how woman is seen as "Other" in relation to man. All of this is with an end to showing the critical role empathy must play in any philosophically sound feminism. ;I begin with a discussion of the relation between feminism and Edmund Husserl's "science of intentionality" in order to show how Jean-Paul Sartre's rejection of Husserl's thought in turn influenced Simone de Beauvoir's thinking. Sartre's rejection of Husserl's "Transcendental Ego" led to the existentialism upon which Beauvoir based the ethics of her feminism. ;While Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism was the basis of Simone de Beauvoir's ethics, however, there are several important differences between their views, particularly regarding their respective discussions of "the Other" . I discuss the importance of noting that Sartre's treatment of "the Other" in Being and Nothingness is ontological whereas Beauvoir's use of the term is sociological. The philosophical implications of this difference are discussed with an end to showing that Beauvoir's views escape some of the criticisms waged against Sartre's. I show that Beauvoir's feminism does not contradict the notion of freedom which is so central to her existentialism even if Sartre's views fail in this respect. ;After showing how Beauvoir's feminism not only allows for but encourages women to have reciprocal relationships with men, I turn to Edith Stein's phenomenological analysis of empathy in order to show how her views offer the philosophical backbone that Simone de Beauvoir never explicitly provided. I show that Stein's account of human interaction escapes the problems that both Sartre's and Beauvoir's views may be vulnerable to, and that her analysis provides important insights into how empathy enables us to know ourselves as well as others. I conclude by showing why any philosophically sound feminism must also be a humanism, and offer examples of how empathy can contribute to this end