I. Introduction

Many philosophers-even those who are not philosophers- think that the philosophical perspective of Simone de Beauvoir was determined by her partner Jean Paul Sartre. They assert that she is philosophically dependent on Sartre and that her thoughts lack originality. Indeed, they claim that she would not have written a word if she had not met Sartre and that Sartre helped her attain the place she held in literature; what is more, they allege that her books were actually written by Sartre [1]. There is no doubt that their intimate relationship lasting fifty one years have had a great effect on the formation of these views. Contrary to what is assumed, this relationship helped both of them to think and question constantly, and to take a step to realize themselves. While Sartre states that they mutually influence each other, Beauvoir says this is a kind of coalescence beyond influence [1].

In this study, we will handle Beauvoir’s views and dwell on the issues on which she was influenced by Sartre or she made use of his thoughts. It is necessary to emphasize that the phrase “make use of” is more appropriate from Beauvoir’s point of view, although the title of this essay is “The Impact of Jean Paul Sartre on Simone de Beauvoir”. It is obvious that Beauvoir was generally impacted by Sartre’s identity as a philosopher, but she made use of Sartre’s philosophy while presenting some of her views. We can see the clear evidences of this situation in the following issues that we will handle in detail in our study: Her opinions on the concept of ambiguity, her views on “the other” and her analysis of the women’s situation.

II. The Relationship of Beauvoir and Sartre

Beauvoir’s affair with Sartre began while they were studying for the aggregation in 1929. This relationship marks a turning point in Beauvoir’s life, and she expresses this fact with the following remarks: “The most important thing I have ever done is my life and the most significant experience during my whole life is that I met Sartre” [1]. Meeting with Sartre is vital for her, because she realizes soon that he resembles exactly to the hero that she had dreamed of since she was fifteen years old and that she can always share anything with him [2]. Sartre provides her with the sense of confidence once given by his family and God to her [3]. Based on these feelings, their relationship plays a great role in the development and resurgence of Beauvoir’s identity since the key element of their relationship is conversation They make interminable and contentious discussions throughout their lives. During one of these discussions, Beauvoir feels for the first time that she is inferior to someone in terms of intelligence and culture since Sartre is always successful in making his opinions in the fields of philosophy and politics be accepted by others. Beauvoir also finds him creative in ideological problems, and she thinks that she does not have such a talent. Besides, she states that she does not follow Sartre blindfold: “I have never accepted any opinion and decision without criticizing and bringing myself to account.” [3]. This side of Beauvoir pleases Sartre, indeed. In the following years, Beauvoir becomes an author, a profession of which she has dreamed since her childhood. Her relationship with Sartre gives her the chance to proceed in her career as Sartre is always a source of intellectual caution. For instance, the main character in her novels She Came to Stay (L’Invitée) and The Mandarins (Les Mandarins) is Sartre. Moreover, it is impossible to think of her autobiographical works and her memoirs without Sartre. Nevertheless, the strictness of their relationship and the spiritual exchange they constantly make lead to a suspicion about the originality of Beauvoir’s works and to the rumours that her books are actually written by Sartre. Beauvoir tells an incident that occurred to her in one of her memoirs: “A compassionate friend of mine told me this: If you win the Goncourt Prize, state that The Mandarins is absolutely your own work while talking to the journalists. As you know, there are rumors that your works are actually written by Sartre.” [4]

Although this is the common thought, the truth is that they continuously criticize each other and influence each other on their opinions and written works. After all, this mutual influence should be considered ultimately natural, because as Beauvoir says, there are information, memories and pictures that belong to them and that are impossible to be disrupted; they used the same ways, followed the same methods and opened the same doors to understand the world. Most of the time, one of them started writing where the other stopped; they completed the sentences jointly in a sense. When a question is posed to them, they give almost the same answers even if the time and places are different. They reach the same result even when they handle a word, a sense or a shadow. They are no more amazed at this similarity between their inventions [4]. This is the truth, yet there has been no suspicion about the originality of Sartre’s works. While Sartre is always regarded as Sartre in quotations, Beauvoir is always considered together with Sartre. Besides, the fact that Beauvoir views Sartre as a genius suggestive and that she says she is not a genius person like Sartre and she regards herself as a student of him by relying on his thoughts has led to the development of this bias. About this issue, she says: “For me a philosopher is someone like Spinoza, Hegel or like Sartre, someone who builds a grand system and not simply someone who loves philosophy, who can teach it, who can understand it and who can make use of it in essays… Sartre is a philosopher and I am not; and I never really wanted to be a philosopher. I love philosophy very much, but my work has not been in philosophy. I have created a literary work. My interest has been with novels, memoirs and essays like The Second Sex. That is not philosophy. On the level of philosophy, I have been influenced by Sartre. Obviously, I could not have influenced him, since I did not do philosophy. I critiqued it, I discussed many of his ideas with him, but I had no philosophical influence on Sartre. But that he influenced me is certain. But he had no literary influence on me, because I wrote what I, myself wanted to write.” [5]

As understood from this statement, Sartre is a philosopher according to Beauvoir, and she admits that she is influenced by him at philosophical level. Moreover, Beauvoir states that Sartre is influenced by her, yet this influence is at literary level as he regards her as an author, not a philosopher. For instance, she says Sartre may have written The Words (Les Mots) with her influence after she wrote her autobiographical works. Indeed, Sartre supports Beauvoir’s statements by expressing that he gains the clarity and real truthfulness of a gesture he depicts, of an incident he observes and of a situation he analyses thanks to Beauvoir’s realistic rigor and dense experience and that he sees her as a perfect complement and a distinguished reader [3].

III. The Concept of Ambiguity

In Beauvoir’s view, ambiguity is a significant notion. The concept contains versatile and interdependent meanings and points of view. It also forms a fundamental character of human existence. It can be said that man is after a dualism when his ambiguity is analysed. We can give the apparent examples of this as in the below: “Human existence is ambiguous because human beings are both free and unfree, separate and connected to each other, a subject for ourselves and an object for others, consciousness and body, alive yet born to die.” [6]

Here, the ambiguity that Beauvoir puts emphasis on is that the human entity is both an independent and unique subject and an object for others [7]. Beauvoir uses Sartre’s kinds of being while presenting her views on this issue. She goes along with Sartre about the view that the being-in-itself and the being-for-self is present in human, but Beauvoir thinks that this situation leads to his ambiguity. The reason for her view is the current condition of human. To express it in Sartre’s terms, human or the consciousness is not alone in the world that comes out of the brutal and contingent being- in-itself; he exists as a part of human society, an intersubjective community. It is inevitable that man is in a relation with others in the world where he lives together with them. Nonetheless, together with this relation, the existence of man becomes being-in-itself which is a frozen, immobile, futile yet competent existence [8]. This is because the being- in-itself will become the object of the other’s freedom when it is subject to the other’s view. It will be the object while it regards the other as a subject [9]. For this reason, the relationships with others result inevitably in a conflict as a result of the interdependence of the subject and the object, freedom and things, the being-for-self and the being-in-itself, according to Sartre. This situation is interpreted by Beauvoir as the ambiguity of the existence turning into object from being subject. The other is rendered as the person I view; in fact it is the person that views me. I view the object/other; yet at the same time I am viewed by the subject/other. In other words, I am seen as an object. In this case, the being viewed by the other will symbolize a situation that can be reduced neither to the object/other nor to the subject/self [10].

IV. The View on the Other

In Beauvoir’s view, that the other gains a problematical feature is based on the fact that “I” behaves in a hostile way towards the other after its own consciousness comes up against an unfamiliar consciousness. Perceiving itself in an absolute way, “I” considers human or “the other” which has also a consciousness as a threat. This is because not only the objects but also the outsider gaze that views “I” in its own style and arranges all of these by putting itself into the center seizes “I” or destroys it [3]. Viewing the other as a threat, Beauvoir uses the concept in three different meanings. The first meaning is existence, which stands against the person himself and exists separately. The second meaning is “otherness” expressing the identification of woman according to man. The third meaning of the concept is used for the condition of (old) people which are called “other” when observed from an exterior point, as stated in her book The Prime of Life (La Force de l’âge).

In this study, we will dwell on the first meaning of the concept, which is the existence that stands against the person himself and exists entirely apart from himself. Beauvoir held two main views on the other during two different periods. Her first views are the ones before the World War II broke out. She changed her opinions after the war. Her views on the other before the war show similarity to the ones of Sartre, although she claims that she gave place to her views on the other in her works earlier than Sartre. For Sartre, the other is a threat to my existence, and it is also a threat to my freedom. In Sartre’s view, the “being-for- others” represents the “being-for-self” becoming an object through the gaze of others. In this case, “the being-for-self” turns into a “being-in-itself”, and becomes an object, which expresses ambiguity according to Beauvoir since a person subjected to the gaze of others is degraded as an object. That person is no longer free; he loses his own freedom because of the gaze of the other. The other looking at him makes him a vulnerable being [8]. He is no longer a subject realizing himself, but only an object of the other. Therefore, the person should deny the other that imposes restrictions on his freedom, and he should overcome it by making him an object [11]. This situation is defined through Sartrean terms and style in the following way: My freedom is at hazard in the presence of the other, because when I am subject to his gaze I go into his orbit and turn into an element of his world that I can never reach. At that exact moment, there comes a severe bleeding, and my world begins melting; now I am entirely given to the other with my appearance. The other is the one looking at me; it is the subject. I am a being not only because I exist as the person that I have been (my factivity) and that I have to be (my contingency), but also because I exist for another person [12]. My being that becomes vulnerable against the other leaves me. Once it grabs me, there is no hope of emancipation. I am no longer a freedom that realizes and designs itself. This is because the other has taken the innermost side of my existence: my freedom [10]. It shows me that the only frontier that my freedom hits originates from the relationship with the other. Hence, I am in a constant conflict with the other. For instance, blush is not an expression of a relation with myself but of a conflict with the other [13].

Being the captive of the other, human now thinks by taking the other into consideration. He judges himself, detects his features and mistakes and reveals his physiological features through the other [14]. In this case, the person starts thinking by bearing the limits of others in mind. However, freedom is that the individual creates his own values on his own. It is the power of behaving in accordance with the individual’s own will, not in accordance with the will and value of others [14]. This is why Beauvoir uses the following principle as a reference point for ethics: “To be free is to create the imperatives of our choices and acts on our own.” In her view, human freedom is the source of the moral imperative. We need to notice our freedom by accepting its burdens rather than escaping from them [15]. Our freedom can find its real meaning only if it is saved from dependence on the other.

Beauvoir considers the existence of the other as a threat to her own existence. Interpreting freedom in an individualist way and viewing others as an obstacle before freedom, which is nothing but man’s acting in accordance with his own plan, Beauvoir changed her opinions about the other after she experienced the war, and she had to redefine freedom after the breakout of the war. For Beauvoir, the freedom of individuals cannot realize itself any more. Viewing itself as absolute, “I” becomes dependent upon external conditions. This different view of hers results from the fact that Sartre was conscripted in September 1939, captured by Germans in 1940 and that he came back in March 1941. After the experiences of war, Beauvoir reviews freedom not as a threat to man but an essential condition for the realization of man’s own freedom [16]. Besides, this experience helps her to discover history. She states: “The spring of 1939 marked a watershed in my life. I renounced my individualistic, antihumanist way of life. I learned the value of solidarity… History seized me and never let me go again [17].

In this context, the discovery of the effect of the other and history is substantial since it changed Beauvoir’s mind about the other, as understood from the quotation. First of all, this discovery helped her to see the burden of the past. Moreover, this discovery revealed the fact that the collective history is a necessity that can be met with others. She also understood that it was necessary to obtain the testimony of others as a moral imperative [11]. Beauvoir differs from Sartre in this view, because Sartre notices a dilemma in his view. For him, “Man is born free; to want to be free is to be moral; however not every person acts in a moral way, therefore it is contradictory to suggest that every man is free.” [15]. Beauvoir solves this contradiction by making distinction between ontological freedom and moral freedom. That is to say, we are not always morally free although we are ontologically free all the time. Moral freedom is important for Beauvoir, and it constitutes the basic form of the ethics of ambiguity. Moral freedom is an answer to the ontological freedom of a person. Saying “To want to be moral, to want to be free, is one and the same decision” in

The Ethics of Ambiguity (Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté), Beauvoir means to say that man cannot want to be unfree as freedom is an ontological structure of human existence, yet he can achieve choosing to want to be free. In other words, we can attain moral freedom by taking an active part in the transition period of our factivity, by designing ourselves within the bounds of future conditions or by welcoming the outcomes of our choices [15].

From now on, Beauvoir regards the other not as a threat to her own freedom but as an essential condition of her freedom, without which she cannot be free. In this case, when we ask for freedom, we realize that it is completely based on the freedom of others and that their freedom is based on ours. It is crucial to point that freedom as the definition of human does not depend on the other, however when there is a matter of commitment, things change: “Then I will have to demand others’ freedom together with my freedom. If I do not mind others’ freedom I cannot mind mine, either.” [18]. “The other and the freedom of the other is important to me, because the other can walk with me and move forward with my transcendency only if he stands at the same point as I stand.” [19]. It is clear that I need to mind the freedom of the other for the sake of my freedom.

To sum, Beauvoir differs from Sartre in this issue through two main points. First, Beauvoir later adopted a different view about the “other” which was considered as a threat to man’s freedom, while she once held a similar view with Sartre’s. Although Beauvoir asserts that she had her opinions about the other earlier than Sartre, there are similarities between her early views and Sartre’s view on the other. As a matter of fact, Beauvoir states that she held these views as a result of her own experiences, while Sartre had his opinions about the other at a conceptual level during that time. Nevertheless, it is possible that they influenced each other when we remember the constant interaction between them. Therefore, it is quite natural that Beauvoir obtained some results from her practices.

Secondly, Beauvoir displays an understanding different from that of Sartre on the matter of getting others’ testimony as a moral imperative by making a distinction between ontological freedom and moral freedom.

V. The Philosophical Source of the Second Sex

Creating a tremendous impression when it was published in 1949 and making Beauvoir come under fire, The Second Sex is about the woman representing “the other sex” as she is always identified in accordance with man. The main thesis of The Second Sex is that woman is regarded as “the other", which means she is secondary to man. From this point of view, Beauvoir analyses how woman is designed as a “other” of man. In this analysis, her starting point is anti- essentialism of existentialism. In other words, she thinks the preceding thing is not essence, but existence. To argue that existence precedes essence is to say that man exists before everything. In this context, human is not a well designed mechanism that has been shaped in compliance with a plan, and the personality of man has not been made by a template.

Man just exists without being an existence which is designated by its essence. That man has an existence expresses that he is what he is not and that he is not whatever he is [20]. Existence comes before essence only in human. First there is man, then the other things happen [21]. In Beauvoir’s view, a given human essence is out of question. When it comes to women, this view will lay foundation for the question of whether woman nature is determined biologically or socially. The common answer to this question is that gender is a well-advised arrangement which is socially built, whereas sex is biological [22]. In this case, it seems that women are put into certain roles arranged for them.

Analysing the thing that makes woman a woman from different points of view in The Second Sex, Beauvoir gets the concept “the other”. To indicate how she adapted the ontological and ethical allegements of existentialism while she was trying to get this concept, she states that men perceive themselves as “I", whereas women perceive themselves as “other”. Beauvoir reforms the thesis of Sartre (man as I; woman as other) in The Second Sex. If the other becomes a threat to “I", then woman becomes a threat to man. If men want to be free, they have to subjugate women [23]. So, Beauvoir’s view of woman as the other is based on the terms derived from the power struggle between the viewer and the viewed. This view that she enhanced via Sartre is put forward by using some Hegelian premises. Beauvoir shows a Hegelian approach towards freedom in the context of woman especially through the Master-Slave dialectic: The relation of a self-consciousness with itself is mediated with its relation with the other. A self- consciousness should be a being-for-others and should be in relation with another consciousness to become a being-for- self or to gain an identity. Hegel grounds this relationship on the struggle of two freedoms, and he explains the possibility that the asymmetrical power relation turns into a reciprocity in a dialectical way [24]. It can be helpful to remind Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic here: In Hegel’s view, a consciousness cannot reach its own consciousness only through reflexion and thinking about the role of constructing the knowledge of the thing. It is necessary to live in another place and to apply for desire in order to anatomize the self- consciousness on which the knowledge of the thing depends. The self-consciousness desires to be recognized by another self-consciousness in their relation. These two independent consciousness dragged by this desire into a deadly struggle differ in their attitude towards death and find themselves positioned as master and slave. Now they will have an experience in their relationship proving that independency implies dependency and dependency implies independency [24].

When it comes to Sartrean interpretation of Master-Slave dialectic, Sartre focuses on “reciprocal recognition” theme. Power struggle is transformed into a struggle between competitive “views” in which one of the opposite sides has to be “viewer” and the other one “viewed”. In this struggle which is depicted by Sartre as between “being for self” and ”being in self’, the women assume the role of “being in self” and the men undertake the independent and transcendental status of “being for self” [25]. If the viewer is the “subject” the viewed turns into the “object”. At this junction, Beauvoir calls attention to the emphasis on the other while building one’s self (essence) that is the distinction between “self” and “others” in terms of explaining the relationship between men and women. “Self” is always threatened by “other” and since throughout the history men are the “self” and women are the “other” men are always threatened by women. Thus men have always pursued the subjugation of women [26]. In this context, Beauvoir asserts that “selfhood” needs the “otherhood” to define itself as the “subject” and consequently the “otherhood” category is imperative so that “selfhood” can build itself as a “self’ [27] in which case the woman which is the “other” is established according to the men, not her “self” making her the non-essential presence against the essential presence. The man is the “subject”, the absolute presence whereas the woman is the other kind [28]. Being the “other” or remaining as the “other” equals to being “passive”, meaning that women have to accept this cultural innateness.

Beauvoir, from an existentialist point of view, claims that women, just like men and just as men, have to exert that they are “presence for the self” by standing up to every practice that keeps them in the position between “presence within self’ and “presence for the other” and for that to happen the first thing to do is all the essentialist presuppositions regarding women have to be abandoned and societal roles have to be rebuild. The tragedy of women lies behind the fact that the roles assigned to women are not chosen by women themselves but in fact imposed on them. Therefore, the women are free to refuse, revise and redefine all the roles that have been imposed on them [26]. Women refusing their status of “otherhood” will be the proof of their redemptiveness. When they refuse and dismiss any and every feeling related to the “otherhood” that has become a part of their selves, they will automatically be refusing being an “object” [25]. This refusal will force people who see women as “objects” to recognize their presence as “subject”.

VI. Conclusion

In this study about the influence of Sartre on Beauvoir, we have seen that Beauvoir especially makes use of Sartre’s kinds of being while presenting some of her views. It is ultimately clear that Beauvoir was influenced by Sartre’s identity as a philosopher. However, it is hard to say that she holds exactly the same opinions with Sartre especially about the issues we tried to analyze above. Beauvoir uses Sartre’s philosophy, for sure, and she even pursues some of his views; but this should not be mistaken for imitation. Beauvoir is an intellectual who can express her ideas in a unique way. As Rullman says, her authenticity lies behind her existentialist store of idea, her skill of improving and shaping her distinctive opinions, the fact that her theories are based on her own experiences and that they are not mere philosophical fictions. It is crucial to emphasize that Beauvoir never uses subject matters where she draws upon Sartre’s philosophy as they are. For instance, Beauvoir concurs with Sartre on the view that both being-in-itself and being-for-self exists in man, yet she thinks that the existence of these in man leads to ambiguity. Likewise, it is seen that before the war Beauvoir shares similar opinions with Sartre about “the other", which is considered as a threat to freedom; however, it is possible to say that she later adopts a view different from Sartre’s. Finally, she develops Sartre’s thesis (man as “I”, woman as the other) in The Second Sex in an idiosyncratic manner. Here, women take on the position of being-in-itself, whereas men assume the role of being-for- self.