Walker_Love, Ethics, And Authenticity

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Love, Ethics, and Authenticity:Beauvoirs Lesson in What It Meansto Read

MICHELLE BOULOUS WALKER

Beauvoirs distinction between romantic and authentic love offers us an opportunity for thinking through the complex relations among philosophy, reading, and love. If weaccept her account of romantic love as a awed, dependent mode of being, and her suggestion that an authentic loveone that engages maturely with the otheris pos-sible, then we might take the risk of thinking of reading in these terms.

I begin by suggesting, with Beauvoirs help, that a romantic reading demon-strates an immature dependence in relation to the (other) text, or an equallyimmature expectation of completeness in relation to the text, whereas an au-thentic reading offers the possibility of a mature and reexive approach. Such amature reading would accept both the texts possibilities and its limitations,leading usperhapstoward an open and ultimately incomplete reading.Here, Beauvoirs notion of authentic love can be reworked in order to developthe idea of an authentic reading as an ethical encounter. Reading Beauvoirsown work in the light of such a discussion raises the question of what kind of readings she herself performs in relation to other works. In particular, it allowsus to return to the question of how Beauvoir reads Sartrethe Sartre of Being and Nothingness. Miche le Le Duff s immensely inuential reading of Beau-voirs reading of Sartre (in terms of an operative philosophy) can thus berethought in terms of Beauvoirs own categories of romance and authenticity.

If we are to think of reading in terms of the gure of love, then it is necessaryto ask questions about love and how it operates in Simone de Beauvoirs writ-ing. Beauvoirs work provides an insightful place to examine the question of how we as philosophers read, and the ethical implications that follow from this.

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Her account of love inadvertently offers us different ways of thinking about our

relationethical or otherwisewith the text. Love, in the two major formsthat she identies, brings us to an ever greater appreciation of how we read, andit is in this sense that we might think of Beauvoirs work on love as a lesson inwhat it means to read.

BEAUVOIR ON ROMANTIC AND AUTHENTIC LOVE

I am going to take Beauvoirs work on The Woman in Love as my startingpoint. This chapter appears in part VI (Justications) of Book Two in The Sec-ond Sex .1 It is here that Beauvoir elaborates her discussion of love, andinterestingly she does so by relying quite heavily on literary and popular cul-tural references. Although the discussion is punctuated by sporadic referencesto philosophers (writers) such as Nietzsche and Sartre, the chapter is full of marvelous passages from Colette, Katherine Manseld, Cecile Sauvage, IsadoraDuncan, Madame dAgoult, Julie de Lespinasse, and Violette Leduc. Thechapter focuses on love, and yet this is only part of Beauvoirs exploration of human relationships. Indeed, a good part of Book Two of The Second Sex isoriented toward relations in so far as they elucidate the question of WomansLife Today. Chapters such as The Young Girl, Sexual Initiation, TheLesbian, and The Married Woman precede Beauvoirs The Woman inLove, laying a ground of formation and situation for her observations onlove. I want to suggest that there are two dominant forms of love that emergethroughout Beauvoirs discussions in this chapter. Simply put, we might refer tothese as romantic love and authentic love. Romantic love, a deeply awed andinfantile mode of being, where the self is reduced to a slave-like dependence, isdiscussed in Beauvoirs work alongside authentic love, a potential mode of be-ing in which one maturely and independently engages with an other.

For Beauvoir, the most important thing about romantic love is that it is adependent relation, one in which the self is subject to the other. In TheWoman in Love she analyzes the specic situation of women in this regard.Interestingly, she begins with a passage from Friedrich Nietzsches The Gay Sci-ence on the difference between men and women in relation to love:

The single word love in fact signies two different things for man and woman. What woman understands by love is clear

enough: it is not only devotion, it is a total gift of her body andsoul, without reservation, without regard for anything whatever.This unconditional nature of her love is what makes it a faith,the only one she has. As for man, if he loves a woman, whathe wants is that love from her; he is in consequence far from

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postulating the same sentiment for himself as for woman. . . .

(Nietzsche, The Gay Sciencecited in TSS, 652) Nietzsches musings on what we might refer to as the gendered nature of love

serve as an ambiguous frame to Beauvoirs following discussion. From here, shegoes on to develop an account of romantic love that emphasizes the dangersand moral wrong of assuming a dependent love in relation to a transcendentother. In this account, she depicts romantic love as the type of love that robs usof our transcendence, our sense of self and subjectivity. Ironically, romanticlove robs us of our transcendence precisely through the lure or promiseof tran-scendence. Beauvoir writes that [s]hut up in the sphere of the relative,destined to the male from childhood, habituated to seeing in him a superb be-ing whom she cannot possibly equal, the woman who has not repressed her claim to humanity will dream of transcending her being towards one of thosesuperior beings, of amalgamating herself with the sovereign subject ( TSS,653). The result of this search for transcendence through romantic love, Beau-voir argues, is that despite our conscious intentions we are robbed of our freedom to live and think independently of a despotic other. Accordingly, thepower of romantic love is, she claims, the power to seduce us away from our-selves toward the other as center of all value, meaning, and sense:

The measure of values, the truth of the world, are in his con-sciousness; hence it is not enough to serve him. The woman inlove tries to see with his eyes; she reads the books he reads, pre-fers the pictures and the music he prefers; she is interested onlyin the landscapes she sees with him, in the ideas that come fromhim; she adopts his friendships, his enmities, his opinions; whenshe questions herself, it is his reply she tries to hear; she wants tohave in her lungs the air he has already breathed; the fruits and

owers that do not come from his hands have no taste and nofragrance. Her idea of location in space, even, is upset: the cen-ter of the world is no longer the place where she is, but thatoccupied by her lover; all roads lead to his home and from it.She uses his words, mimics his gestures, acquires his eccentric-ities and his tics. (TSS, 663)

Although we will have occasion to return to this very important passagelater in the paper, I should say that what we are referring to here as romanticlove is the love Beauvoir associates with the woman in lovelamoureuse.2

From the outset, we need to distinguish what Beauvoir is saying here aboutromantic love (as a one-sided love that disables and reduces the woman), fromthe reciprocated experience of loving passionately or burning with (mutual)desire. The term romantic, in this context, speaks to the experience of

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women trapped in the clutches of a kind of love that cripples. Of course, this

suggests we need to ask questions about the various relations between roman-tic love and being in love in the popular imagination.Beauvoirs romantic love seems in no sense positive. Her depiction through-

out The Woman in Love suggests a love that stands in place of a life of onesown. 3 At times, Beauvoir suggests romantic love is an almost inevitable re-sponse to the restrictions placed on womens lives: No other aim in life whichseemed worthwhile was open to them, love was their only way out ( TSS, 655).Yet this is coupled with an argument that depicts romantic love as the too easyalternative to a life of responsibility, a choice that women make through la-

ziness and despondency, rather than a reality that is imposed: It is agonizingfor a woman to assume responsibility for her life. . . . [I]t is womans misfortuneto be surrounded by almost irresistible temptations; everything incites her tofollow the easy slopes; instead of being invited to ght her way up, she is toldthat she has only to let herself slide and she will attain paradises of enchant-ment (655). 4 These two aspects of romantic love circulate throughoutBeauvoirs work, and this is perhaps one of the strengths of her analysis. She issensitive to the complex interplay between what a woman chooses and whatshe has internalized. In any case, one of Beauvoirs important tasks in this

chapter is to lay bare the pitfalls of a love that ends up reducing woman topassive object status.Fear and servility overwhelmingly characterize the life of dependency that

Beauvoir equates with romantic love: For woman, love is a supreme effort tosurvive by accepting the dependence to which she is condemned; but evenwith consent a life of dependency can be lived only in fear and servility(678). 5 For Beauvoir, as we have seen, this kind of love leads to a deeply awedmode of being, an inauthentic reduction of self to object status. Romantic loverepeats an infantile dependence or uncritical devotion and seeks to avoid

the difculty of human responsibility.6

It echoes and mimics the superiorityof the other in a servile and demeaning way. It is, Beauvoir writes, one of the loving womans misfortunes to nd that her very love disgures her,destroys her; she is nothing more than this slave, this servant, this too readymirror, this too faithful echo . . . (675). 7,8

As an alternative to the servile and disguring character of romantic love,Beauvoir provides us with glimpses of her vision of genuine or authentic love. 9

Her account of this kind of love can be understood, at least in part, as her re-sponse to the problem of Jean-Paul Sartres rather pessimistic depiction of

human relations (Vintges 1996, 4666; Deutscher 2003, 250). Sartres accountof self-other relations famously depicts mans desire to be godthesubject- for-itself or pure transcendenceas a desire that places him in inevitableconict with others, in amorous contexts and more generally (Sartre 1956,221430). 10 In another of her works, The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir offers



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what might be read as a solution to the problem of Sartres existential combat

(Beauvoir 1962).11

She reworks his notion of inevitable conict between self and other toward a notion of generosity and love (Deutscher 2003, 250). 12

While (diplomatically?) accepting Sartres negative accounts, she suggests thatthis is only a partial truth, and by doing so offers what is arguably a morebalanced and certainly more optimistic account of human love. Beauvoirs dis-cussion of being-in-relation-with-othersand being-for-othersprovides us with anaccount that suggests that while we cannot escape the pain of knowing that wecan never be God, we canand this is importantdiscover the joy of becom-ing human, and the experiences of intimacy this entails (Hansen 1979, 341).

Indeed, we can strive toward a reciprocal relation between self and other (sub-ject and object), and this seems to be what she means by the terms genuine or authentic love. In so striving, our existence ceases to be Sartres useless pas-sion and becomes, instead, a positive existence (Hansen 1979, 340). Wemove from an immature desire to imitate or be the other (God) toward a pro-cess of identication that allows for differentiation. Returning to The Second Sex , we see Beauvoir is quite specic about the reciprocity that love, in general,entails: It is possible to rise above this conict [between self and other]if each individual freely recognizes the other, each regarding himself and the

other simultaneously as object and as subject in a reciprocal manner.But friendship and generosity, which alone permit in actuality this recognitionof free beings, are not facile virtues; they are assuredly mans highest achieve-ment, and through that achievement he is to be found in his true nature(TSS, 172). 13

For Beauvoir, this reciprocal relation with the other is no easy task. And yetit is a crucial one, for it denes the very outline of our human being, the es-sentially ambiguous nature of our humanity, caught as we are between subjectand object in relation to others in our world. One of the lessons we are to learn

is that we must respect the subjectivity of the other who ultimately escapes us.We must love the other in his or her otherness, we must renounce a desire topossess the other and, signicantly, we must simultaneously recognize the other as a being of limitations.

While objectication of the other is inevitable (and a total lack of it argu-ably undesirable), Beauvoir suggests we need to balance this tendency towardthe other by treating him or her as he or she is bothsubject and object. Thereis nothing wrong, then, in an objectication of the other, as long as [one] re-alizes that the other is more than the object he [or she] appears to be. . . . The

objectication which is wrong is that which seeks to treat [others] whollyas objects (Hansen 1979, 342). In Eye for Eye Beauvoir writes: There is noscandal [in the tendency to objectify] until the moment that a man treats hisfellows as objects, when by torture, humiliation, slavery, and murder, he deniesthem their human existence (Beauvoir 1947, 13536).

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Looking in the opposite direction, Beauvoir cautions that it is similarly im-

portant not to fall into the trap of ascribing a pure subjectivity to the othersbeing, that is, to see the other only in terms of his or her freedom or transcen-dence, and not to see his or her limitations. It is wrong (morally, ethically),she suggests, to treat the other as God (Hansen 1979, 342). Indeed, this trap of ascribing a pure or transcendent subjectivity to the other is precisely the ten-dency of romantic love. It is arguably the moral or ethical fault that foundsromantic love.

Accordingly, Beauvoir offers what Linda Hansen has described as two com-plementary aspects of authentic love, and these speak to the essential

interrelatedness of our subjectivity and objectivity (Hansen 1979, 342f.). In therst instance, this authentic love involves our ability to recognize the other as asubjectivity or freedom. In Personal Freedom and Othersin The Ethics of AmbiguityBeauvoir characterizes this ability in terms that emphasize the dis-tance between ourselves and the other. I think, following Emmanuel Levinas,that her account points toward the innite nature of the othertoward desire.

It is only as something strange, forbidden, as something free, thatthe Other is revealed as an Other. And to love him genuinely is tolove him in his otherness and in that freedom by which he es-capes. Love is then renunciation of all possession, of all confusion.One renounces being in order that there may be that being whichone is not. Such generosity, moreover, can not be experienced onbehalf of any object whatsoever. One cannot love a pure thing inits independence and its separation, for the thing does not havepositive independence. (Beauvoir 1962, 67)

Authentic or genuine love welcomes the strangeness of the other. Indeed, itexists in and through this strangeness. This independent love denounces pos-

session and the demeaning relations possession entails. There is a generosityemerging from this encounter with the strangeness of the other, and this gen-erosity nds further expression in the closing pages to Beauvoirs discussion of The Woman in Love. Here Beauvoir thinks of generosity in terms of the giftof self I make to the other in recognition of our mutual freedoms: Genuinelove ought to be founded on the mutual recognition of two liberties; the loverswould then experience themselves both as self and as other: neither would giveup transcendence, neither would be mutilated; together they would manifestvalues and aims in the world. For the one and the other, love would be rev-

elation of self by the gift of self and enrichment of the world (TSS, 677).14

The second aspect of authentic love speaks to the contingence or situationof the other. Beauvoir contends that while encountering the other in his or her strangeness, we ought simultaneously to recognize the other as one in situation,as a grounded and limited human being. This being-in-situation arguably



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brings us closer toor more proximate withthe other, to some extent undo-

ing the strangeness so crucial to an authentic love. If there is a paradox here, itis the paradoxor ambiguityof genuine love: the essential interrelatednessof subjectivity and objectivity in the intimate domain. Beauvoir writes: Anauthentic love should accept the contingence of the other with all his idiosyn-crasies, his limitations, and his basic gratuitousness. It would not pretend to bea mode of salvation, but a human interrelation ( TSS, 664). To see the other aslimitedas something more nite than the strange subjectivity and freedomthat escapes all our attempts to possess itis to see the other in what Hansenrefers to as his or her objectivity (Hansen 1979, 343).

Accordingly, the reciprocity and mutual recognition that characterize Beau-voirs descriptions of authentic love move between subject and object, betweenself and other, in such a way as to empower us rather than to diminish us. It isthen perhaps not so surprising to nd Beauvoir concluding The Woman inLove with a powerful coupling of love with life. She writes: On the day whenit will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength,not to escape herself but to nd herself, not to abase herself but to assert her-selfon that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger (TSS, 679).

READING AND LOVE

Now that we have looked at the two quite different perspectives on love Beau-voir discusses, I want to think about how these categories might help us tounderstand different approaches to reading. I want to ask whether we can thinkabout reading and our relation with the text in terms either of romance or au-thenticity. Although Beauvoirs discussions of love do not attempt to do this, Ithink that her work inadvertently offers insightful ways for understanding the

manner in which philosophers read.15

Let us begin with a notion of romantic reading. What initially strikes meabout romantic reading is that it appears in opposition to the kind of reductivereading I elsewhere characterize as aggressively, impatiently, and somewhatprematurely closing off the possibilities of the text. 16 Such readings work toreduce the text to a relatively simple statement or position, a position that canultimately be rejected and left behind. In effect, these readings work to carica-ture the text in order to make it easy to dismiss. In contrast to reductivereadings, the problem with romantic reading is that it demonstrates a high de-

gree of deference to the text. Romantic reading performs an immaturedependence in relation to the text or an equally immature expectation of com-pleteness in relation to the text it readsan overestimation of what the textcan realistically achieve. Here the reader operates as a faithful (or even passive)servant in relation to the dominance of the text. It is this notion of romantic

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readingas dependent and deferentialthat I shall consider in what follows,

but it would be interesting in the future to think through the ways in whichthese two seemingly antagonistic tendenciesreduction and deferenceactu-ally work together in complex ways in certain contexts. It is not altogether clear to me that aggressive reduction and excessive deference are in fact oppo-sitional terms. (No doubt the psychoanalysts would have much to say on thispoint!)

Attentive to Beauvoirs account of the dangers of romantic love, I suggestthat a reading characterized as romantic risks an uncritical or blind devotion,without reservation, and a faith that too readily becomes a delity; an uncrit-

ical confusion of self with text; and a displacement and a disguring thatenslaves the self in a servile relation with the text. Here the reader is subject tothe text, incapableor unwillingto think independently of it. Through thelure or false promise of transcendence, the text robs us of our own indepen-dence and subjectivityour own voice. Such a deferential reading positions usin a dependent relation with the other/text. 17 It reduces us to an infantile de-pendence on the textan inauthentic reduction of self to mute object status.In psychoanalytic terms we might say that an uncritical, devotional reading foreclosesany sense of lack in the other/text and, in doing so, sets up an expec-

tation of completeness, an overestimation the text can never fulll. As aconsequence of such devotion we avoid the responsibility of engaging authen-tically with the text, of facing the difcult process of separating from it in order that we might experience it anew. To paraphrase Beauvoir: one of the romanticreaders misfortunes is to nd that our love for the text disgures us, destroys us;we are nothing more than this slave, this servant, this too ready mirror, this toofaithful echo.

On the other hand, an authentic readingand we are still following Beau-voir herewould offer a somewhat different approach. As an alternative to this

particular depiction of romantic reading, I propose authentic reading as oneoffering the possibility of a mature and more reexive approach to the other/ text, that is, one that reads in terms of both the subjectivity and the objectivityBeauvoir identiesthe texts innite possibilities as well as its limitations. Anauthentic or genuine reading would (maturely, condently) regard the text asother and independent, and yet it would see itself as connected to what it readsin signicant ways. It would not confuse the text with itself, and yet it wouldnonetheless be capable of acknowledging its links with the text. It would opengenerously toward the text, secure that it would not become that text. An au-

thentic reading would take pleasure in encountering the text as somethingstrange, forbidden, as something free and revealed as other. It would renouncepossession (total comprehension?) in order that the text remain open to futureor contrary readings. An authentic reading would assume the contingence of the text, its lacks and limitations, its ground. 18 It would not treat the text as



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authority or God. An authentic reading would attempt to engage (realistically)

with what the text knows, and what it does not or cannot know, that is, itsfailures, shortcomings, and oversights. While all readings engage in some man-ner or other with the text, an authentic reading would differ by not beingalienated from its own process, that is, by not falling prey to mysticationsconcerning its relations with the text. An authentic reading would celebratethe ambiguity of the text, revel in its multiple meanings, and wonder at itsability to effortlessly escape us.19 It would be a reading that would accept boththe texts possibilities and its limitations, leading usperhapstoward anopen and possibly incomplete reading. An authentic reading might, then, pro-

visionally be characterized as an ethical reading, an ethical encounter with thetextethics here denoting something like mature expectation, appraisal, or encounter. To paraphrase Beauvoir: it is only as something strange, forbidden,as something free, that the text is revealed as other. And to read it genuinely isto read it in its otherness and in that freedom by which it escapes us. Reading isthen renunciation of all possession, of all coincidence. We renounce totalcomprehension in order that there be meaning that escapes us. Such is thegenerosity of an authentic reading.

What I have briey outlined here is that Beauvoirs descriptions of love

romantic and authenticoffer us broad ways of characterizing the approachesto reading many of us either consciously or unconsciously adopt. In this light,authentic reading offers tentative steps toward a practice of reading I would liketo term ethicalone embodying a genuine and mature encounter with thetext. As such, authentic love holds the promise for a more mature and arguablymore ethical encounter with what we choose both to read and reread. Wemight be tempted from the previous discussion to infer that romantic lovebeing predominantly the domain of women in a patriarchal contextsuggestsromantic reading as a predominantly feminine mode. And while there would

be good reason to think that this femininity referred solely to women, I want tosuggest that when it comes to reading, the romantic tendency is one that re-mains perhaps all too familiar to men and women alike. Feminine it may be,but a femininity that is readily adopted by readers of either sex. Simply put,romantic reading is the type of reading that remains slavishly attached to thetruth, brilliance (or wrongness) of the text.

AUTHENTICITY AS ETHICS ?

Beauvoirs discussion of authenticity has led me to suggest provisionally that anauthentic reading is also an ethical one. But on what grounds do I make thisclaim? In what sense might we say that authenticity and ethics meet? It seemsto me that Beauvoirs work answers this question. If we return to The Ethics of Ambiguity, we nd her descriptions of those moral attitudes or characters that

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fall short of what she herself considers to be ethical behavior. Beauvoir de-

scribes the serious man, the nihilist, the adventurer, the passionate man, andthe aesthete, and claims that in complex ways each fails to engage ethicallywith his world. Although she presents a detailed discussion that is, at least inpart, a defense of existentialism against those claims that it has no ethicsthatit offers no concrete content for actionwhat she also does here is to distin-guish ethical from non-ethical behavior. It becomes clear that authenticity is,for Beauvoir, the route to a life ethically lived.

What is interesting for my purposes is that we can see some similarities be-tween her depictions of the serious man and her depictions of the woman in

love. Likewise, there are links between her characterization of the ethical man(the man of good will) and authentic love. Beauvoir claims the fault of theserious man is that he plays the part of the inessential ( TEOA , 46) and thathis aim is to lose himself in [the object or other] (47). She suggests womenand the humble typically occupy this attitude through laziness and timidityin resignation (48). Signicantly, Beauvoir suggests the serious man putsnothing into question (49). This nal point arguably connects the seriousman with both the woman in love and romantic reading. It suggests an attitudeof deference that accords with our previous discussion. Beauvoir goes on to de-

scribe the nihilist, the adventurer, the passionate man, and the aesthete, andwhat is most relevant here for our discussion is her claim that passion, pride,and the spirit of adventure all lead in complex ways to tyranny, and by this shemeans a foreclosure of the other in unacceptable ways. This she condemns fromthe standpoint of existential ethics (72).

In contrast to these attitudes, Beauvoir puts forward the man of good willwho embodies an authentic and thus ethical approach to the other and hisworld. This ethical subject acknowledges the freedom of the other and refusesto follow the tyrant whose self-certainty leads him to annul the others being.

According to Beauvoir, the man of good will embodies one of the most impor-tant consequences of existential ethicsthe rejection of every principle of authority (142). Such an ethics nds its truth if it considers itself as a freeengagement of thought in the given, aiming, at each discovery, not at fusionwith the thing, but at the possibility of new discoveries (79). What we havehere is Beauvoirs understanding of ethics as a particular and free engagement with the other, and I think we can take this model of engagement and use it tomeasure what happens (or fails to happen) when we read.

RETURNING TO BEAUVOIR : HOW DOES SHE READ?

While Beauvoirs work on love and authenticity provides us with an interestingway of thinking about readingabout how we as philosophers read, and our relation with the textit arguably offers us something else. It offers us a way of



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thinking more specically about her own ways of reading. In the light of this,

we might think of Beauvoir as one who reads generally (Kant, Hegel, and oth-ers); as one who readsmore specicallythe work of Jean-Paul Sartre; as onewho readsvery specicallySartres Being and Nothingness; and, nally, asone who reads (interprets) the couple Beauvoir and Sartre. (In addition tothis we might include Beauvoir as one who, famously, reads her own work. 20 )In what follows, I shall briey explore two of these instances by posing the fol-lowing questions: What kind of reading does Beauvoir perform in relation toSartres Being and Nothingness?And how does Beauvoir read (interpret/repre-sent) her (intellectual) relation with Sartre? I shall ask these questions with

images of authenticity and romance always close at hand.It is now relatively common to speak of the tensions (or even contradic-tions) in Beauvoirs relation to Sartres existential philosophy. For instance,there are references to the dual nature of her analysis, the tension between her feminist analysis and her phenomenological or existential framework. What issuggest here is that the feminist perspective of Beauvoirs analysis sits rather uneasily with the Sartrean (and Hegelian) framework, categories, and commit-ments it purportedly upholds. Indeed, this depiction of Beauvoirs work has led,in certain cases, to a rather uncritical appraisal of her intellectual contribu-

tion.21

Despite this, there remain what I would like to depict as open andgenerous accounts of Beauvoirs work, ones attempting to engage with the realcomplexity of Beauvoirs existential relationones asking questions about thekind of philosophy that Beauvoir ultimately achieves. 22 Among these, Miche`leLe Duffs readings are exemplary. Over what now amounts to years, Le Duff has read Beauvoir and offered us, in turn, critical insight into largely neglectedaspects of Beauvoirs philosophical work. Let us now look briey at just a few of the things Le Duff has had to say.

LE DUFF S READING OF BEAUVOIR S READING OF SARTRE :OPERATIVE PHILOSOPHY

In an early paper, Le Duff is concerned, among other things, to ask questionsabout Beauvoirs intellectual relation with Sartre, and she does so partlythrough her notion of the erotico-theoretical transference (Le Duff 1977).This exploration is concerned with the erotics of the pedagogical relation andrefers very specically to the transference that develops between the one whois presumed to know and she who wishes to know all he (presumably) knows.

In a later version of this work, Le Duff raises important questions concerningthe historical relation of the female disciple and male master, and she notesthat in each historical case the women involved experienced great passions for their male instructors: although they lived in very different times, thesewomen had one thing in common: they all experienced great passions, and

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their relationship with philosophy existed only through their love for a man, a

particular philosopher (Le Duff 1989, 104).From here she moves to Beauvoir and Sartre, claiming this famous couplerepresents a somewhat modern variation on a traditionally sexist themewomans lack of any direct relation to the institution of philosophy or thebreadth of philosophical thought. She writes that the erotico-theoretical trans-ference is equivalent to an absence of any direct relationship of women tophilosophy (Le Duff 1989, 104). Further, [t]his curious form of transferenceseems to me to be basically the price women pay for the amateur position towhich they are condemned (105). 23 In The Philosophical Imaginary, Le Duff

explains her reasons for thinking of Beauvoir and Sartre in terms of the erotico-theoretical relation. In short, she claims Beauvoir was conned to the femi-nine condition, that is to say accepted a ready-made philosophy; or that, inaccepting existentialism as a constituted doctrine, she was excluded from thephilosophical enterprise (119).

While Le Duff s early discussion highlights the traditionally feminine(might we tentatively say romantic?) position Beauvoir adopts in relation toboth Sartre and the institution of philosophy, in a piece written after the initial1977 publication Le Duff moves on, building an altogether more complex

analysis of what this relation actually entails. In her inuential paper Simone deBeauvoir and Existentialism (Le Duff 1980), Le Duff is more concernedwith rereading Beauvoirs use of Sartres existentialism. She is interested in whatBeauvoir manages to dowith it, that is, the difference that Beauvoirs own anal-ysis makes. In this piece, Le Duff traces the merging of what we might refer to asdelity and indelity in Beauvoirs use of existential philosophy, and goes on tosuggest that on the one hand, Beauvoir works within Sartres philosophicalstructure, that is, she works without disrupting his existential philosophy. On theother hand, Beauvoir ultimately produces feminist insights that counter the in-

dividualist constraints of Sartres existentialism, that is, her work disrupts andexceeds these individualist existential constraints. Le Duff writes:

My intention is to show how the ethic of authenticity functionsas a pertinent theoretical lever, an operative viewpoint for ex-posing the character of womens oppression. Consequently, onecannot, as I confess I am in the habit of doing, dissociate thephilosophical substratum of . . . Beauvoirs work from that moreempirical dimension, which I see as more relevant today thanthe conceptual grid via which this feminist investigation is ex-ecuted. But even if they cannot be divorced, there is still no pre-established harmony between this philosophical position andthe results to which it leads in The Second Sex . (Le Duff 1980,278; see also Le Duff 1991, 111f.)



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Le Duff s point is that Beauvoir uses Sartrean existentialism as an operative

viewpoint for exposing the character and detail of womens oppression. But howexactly does Beauvoir do this? Given the real problems with both the excessiveindividualism and misogyny of Sartres early work, the question of how Beau-voir manages to use his existentialism as the basis for a feminist philosophicalanalysis is indeed an interesting one. 24 If her work remains (as some wouldclaim) a too faithful account of Sartres philosophy, then how is it that she isable to develop her feminist critique? Le Duff s response to questions such asthese is to suggest that Beauvoir transforms the universality of Sartres existen-tial philosophy into a perspective or point of view, that is, she uses

existentialism as a methodologynot as a truth. Beauvoir recognizes that externalconstraints are internalized and accepted as part of ones self-denition. This,Le Duff claims, represents a considerable challenge to the Sartrean position(of Being and Nothingness) because it admits that consciousness needs to be atleast partially understood in terms of external forces (Le Duff 1980, 283).

Le Duff goes on to suggest that what is interesting is that Sartres existen-tialism (unwittingly) makes it possible for Beauvoir to formulate a feministposition. Because existentialism rules out the belief in a xed essence or humannature, Beauvoir is able to reason that women are in no sense naturally subser-

vient to men. Sartre argues for the transcendence of the subjectits ability tofree itself of a pre-given human natureand Beauvoir simply and very cleverlyapplies this to women. In the end, Beauvoirs analysis in The Second Sex leads tovery different conclusions and observations from Sartres in Being and Nothing-ness. In essence, she transforms Sartres existentialist problematic well beyondits original parameters. 25

Ultimately, Le Duff s reading refuses simply or too quickly to reduceBeauvoirs work to Sartres philosophical schema. Le Duff is really successful,I think, in situating Beauvoir as someone other than a faithful or dependent

reader of Sartre. And perhaps all the more so because she is willing simulta-neously to acknowledge the ambivalent moments in Beauvoirs reading, thosemoments where Beauvoir appears faithfully (and very surprisingly!) to repeatsome of Sartres more problematic statements. We could say that one of thestrengths of Le Duffs reading is that it allows the tensions in Beauvoirsthought to remain, without attempting to erase these ambiguities in the nameof a coherent or predictable text. 26

RETHINKING OPERATIVE PHILOSOPHY WITH THE HELP OF BEAUVOIR S OWN

CATEGORIES OF ROMANCE AND AUTHENTICITY

I want to suggest that Le Duff s claimthat Beauvoirs reading works as anoperative viewpointcan further be understood in Beauvoirs own terms,that is, as a question concerning love. This means we can reread Le Duff s

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readingunderstanding it anewby returning to Beauvoirs own categories,

romantic and authentic love. Beauvoirs terms help us to further appreciate theimportant insight that Le Duff s work bringsin this case, to the question of how Beauvoir reads. I am, in effect, suggesting that (i) Le Duff s discussionof the erotico-theoretical transferenceor transference in this intellectualsense more generallybrings us back to Beauvoirs question of romance, or more specically to the stultifying effects of the romantic love characterized sowell in The Second Sex , and (ii) Le Duff s analysis of an operative philoso-phy makes great sense when we think of it in terms of Beauvoirsunderstanding of authentic love. To say this is to highlight and support Le

Duffs own claims by going back to Beauvoir. To date, the greater focus hasbeen on Le Duffs very important claim that Beauvoir reads operatively, butwe should not forget the fact that Le Duff identies two somewhat conictingtendencies in Beauvoirs reading of Sartre. To remember that Beauvoir is alsoat times prey to a transferential reading of Sartre is to suggestin my termsthat we think of this in terms of romance.

So, taking Le Duff s account a little further (and, as I have suggested, thismeans going back to Beauvoir), I want to suggest that Beauvoirs own readingis, for the most part, a mature and authentic assessment of Sartres work. In this

sense, her reading engages with Sartres philosophy as both subject and ob-ject. What I mean by this is she is able to acknowledge (though perhaps notovertly or consciously) the shortcomings of his thought, replete as it is withmasculine frailties, faults, omissions, and limitations. She is able to do this, Ishould add, without objectifying it or rejecting it out of hand. When reading inthis mode, Beauvoir remains philosophically connected and yet independentfrom Sartres existential position. There is no confusion of her thought withhis. She moves in an open and generous manner toward his text, importantly toreturn to herself and her own independent (feminist) conclusions. At this mo-

ment, Beauvoir establishes what I would refer to as an authentic connectionwith the strange otherness of the Sartrean text. She does this, as we have seenLe Duff suggest, by bombarding the existential framework with the detail andminutiae of womens lives.

Yet there are moments when Beauvoir seems to read Being and Nothingnessfaithfully, as if it were a total system.27 Adopting Beauvoirs own terms, I sug-gest we think of this faithful rendering of Sartres existential philosophy as akind of romantic reading, one that constructs Sartre and his work (albeit mo-mentarily?) as absolute reference (an absolute subject or subjectivity). Indeed,

Beauvoirs faithful and rather uncritical reliance on the dualist structure andterminology of existentialism can be thought of in these terms. For example,her faithful return to the couple of immanence/transcendenceespecially inher discussion of the nomadbrings along with it a whole host of unanalyzedassumptions and prejudices, ones that do some considerable injustice to her



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feminist work.28 Likewise, Beauvoirs uncritical adoption of Sartres liberal

problematic, and the excessive individualism that at times follows from this,suggests a too ready acceptance of Sartres position (Le Duff 1980, 287). Arethere grounds, here, for thinking of these moments in her reading as romantic?Let us return to Beauvoirs own account of what romantic love entails: Themeasure of values, the truth of the world, are in his consciousness . . . (TSS,724). We would be hard pressed here to demonstrate a purely romantic rela-tionin Beauvoirs sense of the term. While it might be fair to say she rather uncritically adopts Sartres dualist metaphysic and its liberal context, it is prob-ably quite another thing to label this romantic. Or is it?

BEAUVOIR READING THE COUPLE SARTRE AND BEAUVOIR

Let us now move on to ask how these two types of reading (one romantic,one authentic) square with what Beauvoir herself has had to say about her relation to Sartre and his philosophy. It has been said that Beauvoir consis-tently refused to characterize herself as a philosopher, suggesting this was rightlySartres role.29 Beauvoir has often been portrayedin a manner that annoys a

good many of usas Sartres follower or disciple,30

and yet what remainsperhaps most important is the question of what role, if any, she has played inthe circulation of this myth. In her appeal to reopen the question of inu-ence between Beauvoir and Sartre, Margaret Simons suggests that Beauvoirsdepiction of herselfin philosophical termschanges dramatically from theperiod before meeting Sartre to that afterwards. From the time she meets Sartreher own quite personal philosophical questions appear to be absorbed intowhat many depict as her faithful elaboration of Sartrean themes. According toSimons, Beauvoir stated more than once and unequivocally that she was not a

philosopher, that she did not do philosophy, and that she could not have in-uenced Sartres philosophy. However, she notes this denial is contradictedby Beauvoirs own written words in her recently discovered 1927 diary, writtenwhile Beauvoir was a philosophy student at the Sorbonne, two years before her rst meeting with Sartre (Simons 1998, 1718). 31 In this diary Beauvoir statesher passionate commitment to doing philosophy, outlines her literary meth-odology for doing philosophy, acknowledges early philosophical inuences,and denes major themes of her own later philosophy and that of Sartres Being and Nothingness (Simons 1998, 18).

Does Beauvoirs apparent retreat from her identity as philosopher tell usanything about how she reads her (intellectual) relationship with Sartre? Andif so, can we draw on the distinction she draws between romantic and authenticlove in order to understand her reading of the couple? In Force of Circum-stance, the third volume of her autobiography, published originally in 1963

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(Beauvoir 1968), Beauvoir has the following to say about her relation with

Sartre:[W]e might almost be said to think in common. We have acommon store of memories, knowledge and images behind us;our attempts to grasp the world are undertaken with the sametools, set within the same framework, guided by the same touch-stones. Very often one of us begins a sentence and the other nishes it;32 if someone asks us a question, we have been knownto produce identical answers. The stimulus of a word, a sensa-tion, a shadow, sends us both traveling along the same inner path, and we arrive simultaneously at a conclusiona memory,an associationcompletely inexplicable to a third person. . . .Our temperaments, our directions, our previous decisions, re-main different, and our writings are on the whole almost totallydissimilar. But they have sprung from the same plot of ground.(Beauvoir 1968, 643)

How are we to read this? Perhaps we can begin to think about what Beauvoir is saying if we recall the passage we cited fromThe Second Sex at the beginning

of this paper:The measure of values, the truth of the world, are in his con-sciousness; hence it is not enough to serve him. The woman inlove tries to see with his eyes; she reads the books he reads, pre-fers the pictures and the music he prefers; she is interested onlyin the landscapes she sees with him, in the ideas that come fromhim; she adopts his friendships, his enmities, his opinions; whenshe questions herself, it is his reply she tries to hear; she wants tohave in her lungs the air he has already breathed; the fruits andowers that do not come from his hands have no taste and nofragrance. Her idea of location in space, even, is upset: the cen-ter of the world is no longer the place where she is, but thatoccupied by her lover; all roads lead to his home and from it.She uses his words, mimics his gestures, acquires his eccentric-ities and his tics. (TSS, 663)

In this instance perhaps Beauvoirs relation to Sartre verges on what sheelsewhere refers to as romantic love. All paths lead back to Sartre. It is possible

to suggest that in this passage Beauvoir tries to see with his eyes, thatshe reads the books he reads, that she is interested only in the ideasthat come from him, that she adopts his opinions, that when she questionsherself, it is his reply she tries to hear (if someone asks us a question, we havebeen known to produce identical answers). Now, we may protest that what



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Beauvoir portrays here is something quite otherthat she attests to the mutu-

ality and reciprocal nature of their relationship.33

But it is Beauvoirs own pointthat the ction of reciprocity is precisely what makes an unhealthy andsomewhat blind delity possible for the woman in love. 34 It is the woman inloves error to confuse the mutuality of the same inner pathways with thereality of all paths back to him. Sartres silence on the question of their re-lation (and signicantly Beauvoirs meaning for him) does not help. When hedoes comment on the mutuality and reciprocity of his relation with another writer it is, signicantly, not Beauvoir he refers to, but his intellectual son.This is a difcult issue, and I am more than mindful of the dangers of returning

to this most signicant of intellectual couples. To paraphrase Beauvoir, surely[e]nough ink has been spilled in quarrelling over [this couple] . . . and perhapswe should say no more about it (TSS, 13).35

With this in mind let me say something briey about my own reservations intaking this particular pathabout the effects of reading Beauvoir in this par-ticular way. In suggesting that we think, albeit momentarily, of Beauvoirsreading of her intellectual relation with Sartre as romantic, we risk reducingthe complexity and originality of Beauvoirs work to something less than it is.We risk tying her back to Sartre in such a way as to close off more nuanced

readings of her work. We risk, too, reinforcing the stereotype of romance as apeculiarly feminine state. So why take this risk? Perhaps to demonstrate thepower and pervasiveness of what I am referring to here as romantic reading.Although I have shown that Beauvoir is acutely aware of the dangers inherentin a romantic ination of othersindeed she is the one who does so much toalert us to this dangershe nonetheless falls prey to this same romantic im-pulse.36 Not always, and not even often, but perhaps enough to demonstratethe need for vigilance. Beauvoirs romantic lapse suggests this threat remains anever-present possibility for the less than vigilant reader. We have all found

ourselves at this point some time in our own philosophical careers. We haveallat some moment or phaselovingly inated the words of our favoritephilosophers (or philosophies) and immaturely overestimated their worth. Wehave imagined them impervious to critical attack and failed to think indepen-dently of them. In short, we allas students of philosophyretain atendency (however small) toward a youthful and somewhat romantic relationto the work we read. But is not this romance a phase or moment we need toexperience in order that we might develop the maturity to move on? In fact,does not Socrates say as much when, in Platos Phaedrus and Symposium,37 he

declares the passion of erotic love ( eros) as the initial motivation and groundfor the philosophers journey? If this is the case, then there might well be causeto rethink romance and authenticity as moments in a continuum or evolutionof reading, rather than as opposed or mutually exclusive terms. In the end, wemight discover that the romance of being in love represents a necessary or

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inevitable moment in the movement toward an authentic, engaged, and eth-

ical reading; that it is an immature gesture in the direction of a future relationthat, if attained, will ensure the maturity of difference. 38 Perhaps what mattersmost about romantic reading is not that we avoid itthis might be unrealis-ticbut rather that we learn from it and ultimately move beyond it; that our reading matures and in so maturing opens us to the other in more creative andgenerous ways.

NOTES

My thanks to Caitlin Goss for her careful and generous reading of this paper, and for her invaluable help. Thanks, too, to Matthew Lamb, Marguerite La Caze, Julie Kelso, Sa-bine Sielke, and Hypatias anonymous readers for their very helpful suggestions.

1. Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman in Love in The Second Sex (Beauvoir 1984,65279). Hereafter referred to in the text as TSS.

2. In The Second Sex H. M. Pashley translates lamoureuse as the woman inlove.

3. Beauvoir points out that the denial of self or losing of oneself in the other,typical of romantic love, can (paradoxically) take the form of making oneself indispens-

able to the other: She reads the papers, clips out the articles, classies letters and notes,copies manuscripts, for him (TSS, 660).4. Here, romantic love is a particular form of being-for-the-other that offers one

a way of avoiding the hard work and responsibility of forming the self.5. It is noteworthy that a discussion of servility and dependence emerges early in

Beauvoirs work, and nds considerable expression in The Ethics of Ambiguity(Beauvoir 1962, 37). Hereafter cited as TEOA .

6. See Morgans discussion of Beauvoirs work on the question of why womenchoose or opt for romantic love, over and against accepting their existential re-sponsibility (Morgan 1986, 11748).

7. Beauvoir points out that the servility of the woman in love has a shadowy under-side. She suggests a subtle change in the terms of the relation when the woman in love, inmaking herself a slave, has found the surest means of enchaining him. . . . [Love] comes inthe form of a gift, when it is really a tyranny (TSS, 666). Romantic love has the ability tobecome tyrannical. Such a love demands and sucks at the very being of her lover. Arethere echoes here with the (paradoxically) threatening nature of Sartres sickly femininein-itself inBeing and Nothingness? (Sartre 1956, 60811).

8. It is worth noting Beauvoirs strategy of othering here, that is, the clearlynegative identication she herself draws with the woman in love. We could simply say

that in this instance the woman in love operates as object of Beauvoirs philosophicalinquiry.

9. Morgan refers to authentic love as genuinely reciprocated human love andpoints out that this would preserve both self-respect and autonomy (Morgan 1986,146).



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10. In Being for Others Sartre writes: I shall never touch the Other save in his

being-as-object (Sartre 1956, 410). And further: The essenceof the relations betweenconsciousnesses is not the Mitsein: it is conict (429).11. See also TSS, 423 and Diprose 1998.12. See also Lundgren-Gothlin 1996, 149, 21718 and Vintges 1996, 4666.13. For a discussion of reciprocity and friendship in Beauvoirs work, see Ward

1999, 3649. Ward suggests that in this passage Beauvoir makes it clear that the Hege-lian masterslave relation can be overcome (43).

14. Gothlin writes that Beauvoirs authentic love is founded upon reciprocal rec-ognition, friendship, generosity, and understanding (Gothlin 1999, 88).

15. Coupling reading with love is by no means straightforward. There are, of course, many senses in which a romantic relation with another (body) differs from whatwe might call a romantic relation with the text. Exactly how far can the analogy betaken? Nonetheless, it is worth considering the various forms of transference or cathexeswe enact on a text as we read, and these arguably cannot be understood outside of our imaginaryor phantasticrelations with the text as the voice of the Other.

16. For a discussion of the ethical problems associated with reductive readings, seeBoulous Walker 2006. Here I suggest that an ethical reading is one that opens a space of intimate (and proximate) encounter with the text.

17. Is romantic reading grounded in a specically Christian tradition and training?Is there something peculiar to the Christian tradition (biblical hermeneutics?) that ori-ents us culturally toward uncritical, devotional readings? Does the need to assimilateoneself to the text bind a certain practice of reading in the West to an unproductivesincerity and delity?

18. To paraphrase Beauvoir: an authentic reading should accept the contingenceof the text with all its idiosyncrasies, its limitations, and its basic gratuitousness. It wouldnot pretend to be a mode of salvation, but an interrelation.

19. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir talks about our individual abilities to graspthe ambiguity of life, and juxtaposes this with the work of the majority of philosophers

whose project it has been to mask this ambiguitya project as inauthentic as it is im-possible (see TEOA , 710).

20. In developing a practice of authentic reading, the question naturally arises:what does it mean for a writer to read her own work? Beauvoir herself is notablefor attempting to provide readers with what might be termed authorized readingsof her work via texts such as the autobiographical All Said and Done(see Beauvoir 1974).

21. In the context of uncritical appraisals of Beauvoirs intellectual contribution, Ithink that it is important that we continue to analyze our relations and transferences(both critical and otherwise) to Beauvoir, given her signicance as symbolic maternalgure for several generations of feminist philosophers and theorists. For a discussionof the theoretical signicance of the motherdaughter relation, especially in the context of philosophical thought, see Boulous Walker 1998, 15977. For references to contemp-tuous dismissal and cavalier mistranslation and misrepresentation of Beauvoirs work,

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see Simons 1998, 17. For a critical and engaged discussion of our relations with Beau-

voirand what this means for our readingssee Le Duff, in Simons 2006, 1119.22. The plethora of excellent critical work on Beauvoir over the past ten years

(e.g., Heina maa 1996; Lundgren-Gothlin 1996; Vintges 1996; Bergoffen 1997; Diprose1998; Simons 1998; Tidd 1999) is testimony to the engaged readings that have emerged(partially) in response to earlier reductive and arguably less ethical accounts (see alsothe special edition of Hypatia (Fall 1999) and Simons 2006).

23. Further: Only an institutional relationship, with a place and meaning in anorganized framework, can avoid the hypertrophy of the personal relationship betweenmaster and disciple (Le Duff 1989, 105).

24. For a discussion of this point, see Le Duff 1980.25. Beauvoir offers us the following non-Sartrean analysis: Woman is from the

start constituted as inessential by patriarchal society; however, she experiences herself asessential, as subject, and hence lives a dilemma. One is not born, but rather becomes awoman (The Formative Years: Childhood, in TSS, 296).

26. Secomb raises some interesting points in relation to Le Duffs reading of Beauvoir. She suggests that Le Duff positions Beauvoir as a point-of-view philoso-pher, rather than a more conventional system-building philosopher. In essence, sheclaims that Le Duffs reading overlooks or minimizes the concept-creations at workin Beauvoirs thought (Secomb 1999, 112).

27. At the beginning of her paper, Le Duff notes that Beauvoir remains strangelycommitted to a whole conceptual apparatus that is now a trie obsolete (Le Duff 1980, 27778).

28. For a critical discussion of this aspect of Beauvoirs work, see Boulous Walker 1998, 16370.

29. For a discussion of Beauvoirs very complex and deliberate depiction of herself as a philosopher masquerading as a writer, see Secomb 1999, 106.

30. For a detailed discussion of this point, see Simons 1998, 17. For an alternativedepiction, see Deutschers account of Beauvoir and Sartre in Deutscher 2003. For a rel-

atively early discussion of Beauvoirs absence from the philosophical canon, and theimportance of reading her work beyond Sartres, see Singer 1985, 23138.

31. See Beauvoir 2006; see also Barnes 1959, 12122. For more on Beauvoirs de-nials, see Simons and Benjamin 1979. For more on Beauvoirs 1927 diary, see Ward1999, 39f.

32. We might think of this as an almost psychotic identication that moves fromindependence toward a disturbing kind of ventriloquism. This passage is perhaps evenmore disturbing when we discover that Sartre has written the following: a thoughtcould exist really formed by you and me at the same time. Why disturbing? Becausehere Sartre refers to his collaboration with Benni Levi (who Jardine describes as Sartresintellectual son), not with Beauvoir (see Jardine 1986, 91).

33. Ward has some insightful things to say in this regard. She notes that whileBeauvoir claimsin regard to Sartrethat We were two of a kind, and our relation-ship would endure as long as we did (Beauvoir 1960, 27), a careful reading of Beauvoirs



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uvre reveals fault lines between this statement and Beauvoirs discussions of what ac-

tually constitutes, for her, a relation of reciprocity (see Ward 1999, 39; see also Beauvoir 1992).34. Beauvoir writes: Even in mutual love there is fundamental difference in the

feelings of the lovers, which the woman tries to hide (TSS, 670). Further: she musteither suffer or lie to herself. Most often she clutches at the straw of falsehood. Shefancies that the mans love is the exact counterpart of the love she brings to him . . .(TSS, 669).

35. Beauvoir refers here to women and to feminism, and she continues: It is stilltalked about, however, for the voluminous nonsense uttered during the last centuryseems to have done little to illuminate the problem ( TSS, 13).

36. Might anger or disappointment accompany our need to chastise Beauvoir?Perhaps the feminist daughter of Beauvoir nds it intolerable that her (phallic)mother is susceptible to a romance that seems inappropriate in the context? Our re-sponses to Beauvoirs statements about her relation with Sartre are complex and needfurther consideration. For a discussion of the complexity of our own readings of Beau-voir, see Le Duff 2006, 1119.

37. Cf. Platos Phaedrus 245b and Symposium209e.38. Perhaps romantic love is only a problem from the perspective of the existential

ontology (transcendence/immanence) that Beauvoir works within. Probably not, but

this need not stop us thinking beyond existential categories to how romantic love mightevolve from devotion, through authenticity, toward generosity. (Morgan believes thatBeauvoirs ontology largely determines her condemnation of romantic love. See Morgan1986, 136 and Walsh 1998.)

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Beauvoir, Simone de. 1947. Eye for eye. Trans. Mary McCarthy, Politics(JulyAugust):13536. New translation by Kristana Arp. In Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophical writ-ings, ed. Margaret A. Simons. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 2004 (originallypublished as il pour il, Les temps modernes1 (5), 1946: 81330).

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Walker_Love, Ethics, And Authenticity