References for Theme: De Beauvoir Citations
- De Beauvoir, Simone
- Ethics of Ambiguity (1962)
(p.83) The oppressed has only one solution: to deny the harmony of that mankind from which an attempt is made to exclude him, to prove that he is a man and that he is free by revolting against the tyrants. In order to prevent this revolt, one of the ruses of oppression is to camouflage itself behind a natural situation since, after all, one can not revolt against nature. When a conservative wishes to show that the proletariat is not oppressed, he declares that the present distribution of wealth is a natural fact and that there is thus no means of...
- Ethics of Ambiguity (1962)
(p.88) certainly the proletarian is no more naturally a moral man than another; he can flee from his freedom, dissipate it, vegetate without desire, and give himself up to an inhuman myth; and the trick of “enlightened” capitalism is to make him forget about his concern with genuine justification, offering him, when he leaves the factory where a mechanical job absorbs his transcendance, diversions in which this transcendence ends by petering out: there you have the politics of the American employing class which catches the worker in the trap of sports, “gadgets,” autos, and frigidaires. On the whole, however, he has...
- The Second Sex (1989)
(p.117) One of the most basic problems of woman, as we have seen, is the reconciliation of her reproductive role and her part in productive labor.
- The Second Sex (1989)
(p.137) For the majority of laborers, labor is today a thankless drudgery, but in the case of woman this is not compensated for by a definite conquest of her social dignity, her freedom of behaviour, or her economic independence
- The Second Sex (1989)
(p.680) It is not to be supposed, however, that the mere combination of the right to vote and a job constitutes a complete emancipation: working, today, is not liberty. Only in a socialist world would woman by the one attain the other. The majority of workers are exploited today.
- The Second Sex (2011)
(p.538) It is through work that woman has been able, to a large extent, to close the gap separating her from the male; work alone can guarantee her concrete freedom. The system based on her dependence collapses as soon as she ceases to be a parasite; there is no longer need for a masculine mediator between her and the universe. The curse on the woman vassal is that she is not allowed to do anything; so she stubbornly pursues the impossible quest for being through narcissism, love, or religion; when she is productive and active, she regains her transcendence; she affirms herself concretely as subject in her projects;...
- The Second Sex (2011)
(p.68) to give birth and to breast-feed are not activities but natural functions; they do not involve a project,which is why the woman finds no motive there to claim a higher meaning for her existence;she passively submits to her biological destiny. Because housework alone is compatible withthe duties of motherhood, she is condemned to domestic labor, which locks her intorepetition and immanence; day after day it repeats itself in identical form from century tocentury; it produces nothing new.
How to contribute.
