Transcendence and Immanence

favourable position and ImmanenceTranscendence and ImmanenceSimone de Beauvoir, in her groundbreaking mid-20th carbon oeuvre The Second wind, presented the concepts of superiority and immanence as integral features of her theoretical analysis of the structures of patriarchal conquest in westward society. This essay will explore these concepts in legal injury of Beauvoirs feminist analysis. In this setting, it will be argued that these concepts dismiss non be considered to be sex activity biased if bias is understood in call of a oppose or unsubstantiated scholarship. Rather, as will be argued, Beauvoirs exercising of these concepts to mark how the lives of women and men in society are distinctly cultur ally sexual activityed is not only substantiated when considered in its own historical context but withal illuminates our understanding of gender roles in Western society in the archaeozoic 21st century.In The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir presents the concepts of tran scendency and immanence in the course of attempting to answer the fundamental question of what is a woman (Beauvoir 1949). Beauvoir contends that the outlook of generic terms such as masculine and feminine as cosmos symmetrical only applies in the technicalities of legal documents, for in Western society and culture the two are radically distinct (Beauvoir 1949). She contends that the masculine is the normative default in Western society, and that the feminine is define against this She is delineate and differentiated with reference to man, and not he with reference to her she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute she is the Other. (Beauvoir 1949, p.5) Of course, Beauvoir is aware of that the conceptual binary program Self/Other is a principle of eminence that applies to more than only if the relations between men and women. For example, she notes its referents end-to-end the cultural history of the West, wit h analogies to myth, as well as its routine to support racist attitudes with respect to Blacks and Jews, and its connect use to support class-based conquering (Beauvoir 1949). This is a clear strength in her take a crap for, as critics widely acknowledge, Beauvoir was never solely preoccupied with oppression based upon gender, but earnd and struggled against oppression in a conformation of forms (Simons 1999).1It is against this context of oppression that Beauvoir defines her concepts of high quality and immanence. Beauvoir argues, in The Second Sex and opposite writings, that related to this conceptualization of Self/Other is another dichotomy that is a basic feature of oppression the differentiation of the military man population into two groups those who reach out transcendence through with(predicate) creative and dynamic spirit-enriching activities, and those relegated to lives of immanence implicated simply with the sustenance of life in its basic conditions (Bea uvoir 1949).It is important to recognize that these are not simply theoretical concepts but, sooner, are intended by Beauvoir as descriptive of the daily lives of humanity. From this perspective, transcendence and immanence are defined in terms of the everyday represent and actions of human beings. Thus, primordial work includes writing, exploring, inventing, creating, studying, trance immanent work includes such work as cooking, cleaning, bureaucratic paper pushing and even biological actions such as big(p) birth (Veltman 2004). The key point to grasp in this differentiation is that activities which bear upon immanence are basically futile in that they consume beat and energy, but accomplishes nothing of fundamental significance (Veltman 2004). Of course, in making this differentiation Beauvoir is not arguing that these activities are not often essential. After all, we all need to provide for ourselves, or arrive provided for us, cooking, cleaning and other services. Similarl y, kidskin birth is a basic fundamental requirement for the continuation of the human species. More all over, as critics of Beauvoir have noted, it is important to recognize complexities in her understanding of these concepts throughout her various works. For example, Beauvoir acknowledges that immanent work may sometimes be creative, adept as activities of transcendence can often involve numbing repetition (Veltman 2004). Good examples of each would be the case of a mother knit stitch clothes for her children to wear as a creative activity of immanence, while an author painstakingly proof-reading her novel would be an example of repetitive exceptional activity. Given this complexity, it would be useful to differentiate between the concepts of transcendence and immanence based upon their respective relations to two key qualities (1) existential justification, and (2) force across time. As one critic notes of Beauvoirs depiction of these conceptsSince activities of immanence pr ovided sustain life and achieve nothing more than its continuation, they also cannot deal out to justify life as its raison detre. Rather, existential justification can be established only within transcendent activities that move beyond the maintenance of life itself. . . . If a life is to have reason for being rather than persist solely without reason, it must reach outward toward the future through the production of something creative, constructive, enlightening or otherwise durable.(Veltman 2004, p.124)Having thus explored and delineated the parameters of Beauvoirs concepts of transcendence and immanence, the question of whether these concepts are gender biased remains to confront us. It is undeniable, for example, that Beauvoir uses the concepts in The Second Sex in order to explore the processes by which women have been oppressed throughout history in general, and in the context of mid-20th century Western society in exceptional. As Beauvoir argues in The Second Sexthe situat ion of woman is that she a free and autonomous being like all human creatures nevertheless finds herself living in a man where men compel her to assume the status of Other. They propose to stabilize her as an object and to doom her to immanence since her transcendence is to be overshadowed . . . . (Beauvoir 1949, p.20)Clearly, Beauvoirs use of the concepts of transcendence and immanence in her work is situated within a broader context of social and cultural oppression of women by men. Moreover, it is also clear that Beauvoir has a definite agenda in her work in that she does not date this oppression dispassionately. Rather, she repeatedly questions how women can throw off this oppression and achieve transcendence in their daily livesHow can a human being in womans situation attain fulfilment? What roads are clean to her? . . . . How can independence be recovered in a conjure of dependency? What circumstances limit womans shore leave and how can they be defeat? These are the fundamental questions on which I would . . . throw some light. This government agency that I am interested in the fortunes of the individual as defined not in terms of happiness but in terms of liberty.(Beauvoir 1949, p.20)The above passage is significant in understanding the issue of gender bias in Beauvoirs use of the concepts of transcendence and immanence in that we can see that she is not unbiased in her objectives. Clearly, Beauvoir makes no effort to blot out or hide the situation that she is biased in favour of promoting womens liberty and their capacity to transcendent activity. This being said, however, it cannot in good order be extrapolated from this conclusion that Beauvoirs use of these concepts displays a gender bias in the sense of a nix or scholarly unsubstantiated argument. Indeed, as has been noted above, Beauvoir grounds her work in measuredly delineated arguments that reference a wide regularise of theoretical and philosophical models in Western civiliza tion. Moreover, it is noteworthy how in her use of the concepts Beauvoir takes extraordinary care in their description and application. For example, as noted above, she is careful to note subtle complexities in the use of the concepts in everyday life with reference to how immanent activities may be creative, while some transcendent activities may be repetitive and boring. In conclusion, while it may justly be said that Beauvoir is biased in her use of the concepts of transcendence and immanence as descriptive models of the structures that support the oppression of women in everyday life, and in her objectives to subvert this oppression and promote the liberty of women, it cannot be said that her work display gender bias in this area. This term implies a level of prejudice that potentially undermines the value of a work given the particular interests or agenda of the author. Given the extraordinary care and attention of Beauvoir in her use of these concepts to reinforce her argument s with respect to the oppression of women in Western society, and the fact that these arguments have withstood the text of time and the critique of leading authorities and scholars over the past half-century, Beauvoirs use of transcendence and immanence cannot be represented as displaying gender bias.Works CitedBeauvoir, S. (1949). The second sex. Trans. H.M. Parsley.London Penguin.butler, J. (1986). Sex and gender in Simone de Beauvoirs Second Sex. Yale French Studies, 72 pp.35-49.Simons, M. (1999). Beauvoir and The Second Sex Feminism, race and the origins of existentialism. Lanham, MD Rowman and Littlefield.Veltman, A. (2004). The Sisyphean torture of housework Simone de Beauvoir and inequitable divisions of domestic work in marriage. Hypatia, 19.3 pp.121-143. 1 Here it is important to note the characteristic that Beauvoir makes between sex and gender. As Beauvoir declared one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. Thus, as Judith Butler observes, it is critical that we recog nize the operation of the sex/gender distinction between biological bodies and social constructions in reading Beauvoirs work (see, Butler 1986).