Abstract

While the importance of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex for contemporary feminism has never been doubted, very little philosophical work has been devoted to the analysis and critique of the work. This dissertation seeks to fulfill some of that lack. ;The format of the project is threefold. The first chapter introduces those philosophical concepts necessary for understanding de Beauvoir's analysis. The second chapter explicates those portions of The Second Sex in which de Beauvoir explains the causes of women's continued oppression. The third and fourth chapters address certain philosophical problems that are found in The Second Sex; that is, whether cogent arguments can be constructed to support her position that women ought not to be allowed to choose the traditional roles of being housewives and mothers, or whether or not love, as commonly understood, is possible if one accepts de Beauvoir's Sartrean ontology. ;The dissertation argues that de Beauvoir is correct in arguing that women should not be allowed to choose to simply be housewives and mothers, and that if one accepts de Beauvoir's ontology, she is offering an ideal of human relations which is built on a combination of utility and the Socratic notion of continued dialectical critique of each person by the other. It is argued that this new notion of love is far superior to the traditional notion of romantic love