Refine
Language
- German (1)
Document Type
- Articles (1)
Has Fulltext
- yes (1)
Year of publication
- 1995 (1)
>Myths of Femininity and the Splitting of Human Existence: Simone de Beavoir's Critique of the Religious Justification of >Femininity<: In her celebrated work, Le Deuxième Sexe, Simone de Beauvoir analyses factors that are constitutive of the life situations women find themselves in. Of particular importance here are male conceptions about how women are or should be, since in a patriarchal world men even possess the power to mould the life situations available to women. For centuries they have defined the essence and nature of women and set up ideals of femininity, these being invariably informed by the assumption that >women's essence is their (absolute) otherness<. Simone de Beauvoir interprets the representational forms of femininity thus set up as in reality myths, because (and in so far as) they can be decoded as hermeneutic nodes around which have collected male images of self, world, and God, i.e. as an expression of how men have come to see the conditio humana, of how they have attempted to come to terms with their own existential situation. In end effect, myths of femininity testify to an inability to authentically shoulder the burden of human existence in all its ambiguity. The Christian representational forms of femininity are only one exemplary area, though one that is of elemental importance in our culture because of its persistent influence. These theses by Simone de Beauvoir are expounded here in five steps. After sketching her biographical and philosophical background, the author goes into Simone de Beauvoir's notion of gender as a social category, then into the celebrated thesis of woman as the other sex, as simply the other – in order to lay the groundwork for a discussion of her religious critique. The author concludes her treatment by proposing eight interlocking theses.