Between Nietzsche and de Beauvoir: Becoming Woman
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/EstudiosNIETen.vi23.16199Keywords:
becoming a woman, Hölderlin, lightning, illusion, projectionAbstract
This essay reads Simone de Beauvoir together with Friedrich Nietzsche on becoming a woman. Drawing on mythology, quite as de Beauvoir does in The Second Sex, connections can be made with Georges Bataille but also with Sarah Kofman’s own engagement with Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo. Death and limitation are part of Nietzsche’s own reflections and correspond to what de Beauvoir highlights in terms of “mysteries, orgies, and bacchanals,” in addition to ‘sacred frenzy,’ and the conjunction of marriage and lightning strikes.
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References
Babich, Babette. 2003. “Nietzsche’s Imperative as a Friend’s Encomium: On Becoming the One You Are, Ethics, and Blessing.” Vol. 32. 29-58.
Babich, Babette. 2009. “Become the One You Are! On Commandments and Praise — Among Friends.” In: Thomas Hart, ed., Nietzsche, Culture, and Education. Farnham: Ashgate. 13-38.
Babich, Babette. 2020. “‘Like a Goddess of Victory’: On Nietzsche and Being Alive.” Presentation for A Night of Philosophy & Ideas Brooklyn Public Library 1 February. https://www.academia.edu/41821342/Like_A_Goddess_of_Victory_On_Nietzsche_and_Being_Alive/.
Babich, Babette. 2021. Nietzsches Plastik. Ästhetische Phänomenologie im Spiegel de Lebens. Oxford/Berlin: Peter Lang.
Babich, Babette. 2022. “Nietzsche’s Ariadne: On Asses’s Ears in Botticelli/Dürer — and Poussin’s Bacchanale.” Open Philosophy, Vol. 5 (4 Aug): 570-605.
Babich, Babette. 2023. “Gadamer, Music, and Improvisation.” In: Sam McAuliffe, ed., Gadamer, Music, and Philosophical Hermeneutics.
Bataille, Georges. 1939. “La pratique de la « joie devant la mort ».” Acéphale, Vol. 5, 11-21.
Bataille, Georges. 1992. On Nietzsche. Bruce Boone. Trans. New York: Paragon Press, [1945]
Battersby, Christine. 2020. “Simone de Beauvoir, Stream of Consciousness and Philosophical Fiction: Becoming a Self in the First Draft of She Came to Stay.”
da Silva Seus, Beatrís. 2020. „Simone de Beauvoir e Friedrich Nietzsche: Afinidades e Dissonâncias.“ Revista Seara Filosófica, Número 21, Inverno: 218-238.
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1949. Le deuxième Sexe. Paris: Galimard.
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1989. The Second Sex. H, M. Parshley, trans. Vintage. 1952.
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1992. Das andere Geschlecht- Sitte und Sexus der Frau. Uli Aumüller and Grete Osterwald, trans. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1973. The Coming of Age, Patrick O’Brien, trans. New York: Warner.
Beck, Adolf. 1981. “Zu Pierre Bertaux’ »Friedrich Hölderlin«.” Hölderlin Jahrbuch, 22: 399-424.
Bergoffen, Debra B. 1997. The Philosophy of Simone De Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Bergoffen, Debra B. 1994. “Nietzsche Was No Feminist.” International Studies in Philosophy, 26/3. 23-31.
Bertaux, Pierre. 1936. Hölderlin. essai de biographie intérieure. Paris: Hachette.
Bertaux, Pierre. 1993. “Was Hölderlin Mentally Ill?” Philosophy Today, Vol. 37, Issue 4 (Winter): 353-368.
Bianchi, Sarah. „Verletzlichkeit und Leben. Nietzsche im Kontext der Anerkennungsdebatte.“ In: Alexander Max Bauer and Nils Baratella (eds.) Oldenburger Jahrbuch für Philosophie. Oldenburg: Bis Verlag.
Bremner, Sabina Vaccarino. 2022. “On Moral Unintelligibility: Beauvoir’s Genealogy of Morality in the Second Sex.” The Monist, Vol. 105, Issue 4 (October): 521-540.
Chae, Yung In. 2016, “Who’s Afraid of Simone de Beauvoir? Female Classics, Feminist Classics, and Feminine Classics.” Eidolon, 14 July. https://eidolon.pub/whos-afraid-of-simone-de-beauvoir-138ec7fe7e19.
Crawford, Claudia. 1995. To Nietzsche: Dionysus, I Love You! Ariadne. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Daigle, Christine. 2011. “A Nietzschean Beauvoir? Becoming Who One Is as a Being with Others.” Simone de Beauvoir Studies, Vol. 27 (1): 61-71.
Derrida, Jacques. 1979. Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles/Éperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche. Barbara Harlow, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hathorn, Richmond Y. Greek Mythology. Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1977.
Irigaray, Luce. 1991. Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche. New York: Columbia University Press.
Janz, Curt Paul. 1993. Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie. Kindheit, Jugend, Die Basler Jahre. Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins. [1978]
Judas-Förster, Elisabeth. 1937. Nietzsche et les Fascists.“ Acephale, (January): 3-13.
Kingsley, Peter. 1999. In the Dark Places of Wisdom.
Kofman, Sarah. 1992. Explosion I. De le « Ecce Homo » de Nietzsche. Paris: galilée.
Kofman, Sarah. 1993. Explosion II. Les enfants de Nietzsche. Paris: galilée.
Kofman, Sarah. 1988. “Baubô: Theological Perversion and Fetishism.” Tracy Burr Strong, trans. In: Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy Strong, eds., Nietzsche’s New Seas: Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics. 175-202.
Kofman, Sarah. 1995. “The Psychologist of the Eternal Feminine (Why I Write Such Good Books, 5).” Madeleine Dobie, trans. Yale French Studies. Another Look, Another Woman: Retranslations of French Feminism. No. 87. 173-189
Le Doeuff, Michèle and Suzanne Dow. 2010. “Beauvoir the Mythoclast.” Paragraph. Vol. 33, No. 1 (March): 90-104.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. After Virtue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Maudsley, Henry. 1874. Responsibility in Mental Disease. London: H.S. King.
Miller, Elaine P. 2012. “Saving Time: Temporality, Recurrence, and Transcendence in Beauvoir's Nietzschean Cycles.” In: Mussett, Shannon M. and William S Wilkerson, eds. Beauvoir and Western Thought from Plato to Butler. Albany: State University of New York Press. 103-123.
Mussett, Shannon M. 2019. “Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics,” The Philosopher’s Magazine. 84: 63-70.
Morales, Helen. 2012. “Feminism and Ancient Literature.” Oxford Classical Dictionary. Ed. Simon Horblower and Antony Spawforth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1901. Le gai savoir (La gaya scienza). Henri Albert, trans. Paris: Societe du Mercure de France.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science. Walter Kaufmann, trans. New York: Random House.
Owen, David. 1993. “Nietzsche’s Squandered Seductions: Feminism, the Body, and the Politics of Genealogy.” In: Keith Ansell-Pearson and Howard Caygill, eds., The Fate of the New Nietzsche. Aldershot: Avebury. 189-210.
Parker, Emily Anne. 2014. “Strange Freedom in Nietzsche and Beauvoir. Trans-Humanities Journal, University of Hawai'i Press, Vol. 7, No. 1 (February): 47-69.
Bremner, Sabina Vaccarino. 2022. “On Moral Unintelligibility: Beauvoir’s Genealogy of Morality in the Second Sex.” The Monist, Vol. 105, Issue 4 (October): 521-540.
Payne, Christine and Michael Roberts, eds. 2020. Nietzsche and Critical Social Theory: Affirmation, Animosity, and Ambiguity. Amsterdam: Brill.
Peters, Michael A., & Tina Besley. 2020. “National Populism and the Rise of the Far-Right – ‘bad Nietzsche rising’ and the ‘Fascism in our Heads’.” In Peters & Besley, eds., The Far-Right, Education and Violence: An Educational Philosophy and Theory Reader. New York: Routledge. 7-17.
Roig and Maruichi. 2022. “Old-age Poverty Has a Woman’s Face.” United Nations, Departmrnt of Economic and Social Affairs: Social Inclusion. 16 November. https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/2022/11/old-age-poverty/.
Saar, Martin. 2007. Genealogie als Kritik: Geschichte und Theorie des Subjekts nach Nietzsche und Foucault. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag.
Scheu, Ashley King. 2015. „Walking in a Man’s World: Myth, Literature, and the Interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.” In: Robin Truth Goodman, ed., Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 81-94.
Schönherr-Mann, Hans-Martin. 2007. Simone de Beauvoir und das andere Geschlecht. Munich: dtv.
Strong, Tracy B. 1996. “Nietzsche’s Political Misappropriation.” In: Bernd Magnus & Kathleen Higgins, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 119-147.
Strong, Tracy B. 2005. “Philosophy and the Politics of Cultural Revolution.” Philosophical Topics, Vol. 33, No. 2, Nietzsche (FALL): 227-247.
Strong, Tracy B. 2008. “Nietzsche and the Political: Tyranny, Tragedy, Cultural Revolution.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies. 35/36. 48-66.
Strong, Tracy B. 2000. Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (3rd ed.). University of Illinois Press. [1975]
Tevebring, Frederika. 2020. “Baubo, Truth, and Joyful Philology in Nietzsche‘s Die fröhliche Wissenschaft.“ The German Quarterly, 93/3 (July): 359-373.
Thorgeirsdottir, Sigridur. 2012a. “Die Philosophie Nietzsches im Spiegel von Philosophinnen im 20. Jahrhundert. Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray und Judith Butler.” In: Renate Reschke and Marco Brusotti, eds., „Einige werden posthum geboren.“ Friedrich Nietzsches Wirkungen. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Thorgeirsdottir, Sigridur. 2012b. „Baubo: Laughter, Eroticism and Science to Come.” Nietzscheforschung. 65-73.
Verkerk, Willow. 2018. “On Love, Women, and Friendship: Reading Nietzsche with Irigaray.” Nietzsche-Studien 46: 135-152.
Wallace, David Foster. 2005. “This is Water? Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.” Commencement Address. Kenyon College. 21 May.
Babich, Babette. 2009. “Become the One You Are! On Commandments and Praise — Among Friends.” In: Thomas Hart, ed., Nietzsche, Culture, and Education. Farnham: Ashgate. 13-38.
Babich, Babette. 2020. “‘Like a Goddess of Victory’: On Nietzsche and Being Alive.” Presentation for A Night of Philosophy & Ideas Brooklyn Public Library 1 February. https://www.academia.edu/41821342/Like_A_Goddess_of_Victory_On_Nietzsche_and_Being_Alive/.
Babich, Babette. 2021. Nietzsches Plastik. Ästhetische Phänomenologie im Spiegel de Lebens. Oxford/Berlin: Peter Lang.
Babich, Babette. 2022. “Nietzsche’s Ariadne: On Asses’s Ears in Botticelli/Dürer — and Poussin’s Bacchanale.” Open Philosophy, Vol. 5 (4 Aug): 570-605.
Babich, Babette. 2023. “Gadamer, Music, and Improvisation.” In: Sam McAuliffe, ed., Gadamer, Music, and Philosophical Hermeneutics.
Bataille, Georges. 1939. “La pratique de la « joie devant la mort ».” Acéphale, Vol. 5, 11-21.
Bataille, Georges. 1992. On Nietzsche. Bruce Boone. Trans. New York: Paragon Press, [1945]
Battersby, Christine. 2020. “Simone de Beauvoir, Stream of Consciousness and Philosophical Fiction: Becoming a Self in the First Draft of She Came to Stay.”
da Silva Seus, Beatrís. 2020. „Simone de Beauvoir e Friedrich Nietzsche: Afinidades e Dissonâncias.“ Revista Seara Filosófica, Número 21, Inverno: 218-238.
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1949. Le deuxième Sexe. Paris: Galimard.
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1989. The Second Sex. H, M. Parshley, trans. Vintage. 1952.
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1992. Das andere Geschlecht- Sitte und Sexus der Frau. Uli Aumüller and Grete Osterwald, trans. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1973. The Coming of Age, Patrick O’Brien, trans. New York: Warner.
Beck, Adolf. 1981. “Zu Pierre Bertaux’ »Friedrich Hölderlin«.” Hölderlin Jahrbuch, 22: 399-424.
Bergoffen, Debra B. 1997. The Philosophy of Simone De Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Bergoffen, Debra B. 1994. “Nietzsche Was No Feminist.” International Studies in Philosophy, 26/3. 23-31.
Bertaux, Pierre. 1936. Hölderlin. essai de biographie intérieure. Paris: Hachette.
Bertaux, Pierre. 1993. “Was Hölderlin Mentally Ill?” Philosophy Today, Vol. 37, Issue 4 (Winter): 353-368.
Bianchi, Sarah. „Verletzlichkeit und Leben. Nietzsche im Kontext der Anerkennungsdebatte.“ In: Alexander Max Bauer and Nils Baratella (eds.) Oldenburger Jahrbuch für Philosophie. Oldenburg: Bis Verlag.
Bremner, Sabina Vaccarino. 2022. “On Moral Unintelligibility: Beauvoir’s Genealogy of Morality in the Second Sex.” The Monist, Vol. 105, Issue 4 (October): 521-540.
Chae, Yung In. 2016, “Who’s Afraid of Simone de Beauvoir? Female Classics, Feminist Classics, and Feminine Classics.” Eidolon, 14 July. https://eidolon.pub/whos-afraid-of-simone-de-beauvoir-138ec7fe7e19.
Crawford, Claudia. 1995. To Nietzsche: Dionysus, I Love You! Ariadne. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Daigle, Christine. 2011. “A Nietzschean Beauvoir? Becoming Who One Is as a Being with Others.” Simone de Beauvoir Studies, Vol. 27 (1): 61-71.
Derrida, Jacques. 1979. Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles/Éperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche. Barbara Harlow, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hathorn, Richmond Y. Greek Mythology. Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1977.
Irigaray, Luce. 1991. Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche. New York: Columbia University Press.
Janz, Curt Paul. 1993. Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie. Kindheit, Jugend, Die Basler Jahre. Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins. [1978]
Judas-Förster, Elisabeth. 1937. Nietzsche et les Fascists.“ Acephale, (January): 3-13.
Kingsley, Peter. 1999. In the Dark Places of Wisdom.
Kofman, Sarah. 1992. Explosion I. De le « Ecce Homo » de Nietzsche. Paris: galilée.
Kofman, Sarah. 1993. Explosion II. Les enfants de Nietzsche. Paris: galilée.
Kofman, Sarah. 1988. “Baubô: Theological Perversion and Fetishism.” Tracy Burr Strong, trans. In: Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy Strong, eds., Nietzsche’s New Seas: Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics. 175-202.
Kofman, Sarah. 1995. “The Psychologist of the Eternal Feminine (Why I Write Such Good Books, 5).” Madeleine Dobie, trans. Yale French Studies. Another Look, Another Woman: Retranslations of French Feminism. No. 87. 173-189
Le Doeuff, Michèle and Suzanne Dow. 2010. “Beauvoir the Mythoclast.” Paragraph. Vol. 33, No. 1 (March): 90-104.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. After Virtue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Maudsley, Henry. 1874. Responsibility in Mental Disease. London: H.S. King.
Miller, Elaine P. 2012. “Saving Time: Temporality, Recurrence, and Transcendence in Beauvoir's Nietzschean Cycles.” In: Mussett, Shannon M. and William S Wilkerson, eds. Beauvoir and Western Thought from Plato to Butler. Albany: State University of New York Press. 103-123.
Mussett, Shannon M. 2019. “Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics,” The Philosopher’s Magazine. 84: 63-70.
Morales, Helen. 2012. “Feminism and Ancient Literature.” Oxford Classical Dictionary. Ed. Simon Horblower and Antony Spawforth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1901. Le gai savoir (La gaya scienza). Henri Albert, trans. Paris: Societe du Mercure de France.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science. Walter Kaufmann, trans. New York: Random House.
Owen, David. 1993. “Nietzsche’s Squandered Seductions: Feminism, the Body, and the Politics of Genealogy.” In: Keith Ansell-Pearson and Howard Caygill, eds., The Fate of the New Nietzsche. Aldershot: Avebury. 189-210.
Parker, Emily Anne. 2014. “Strange Freedom in Nietzsche and Beauvoir. Trans-Humanities Journal, University of Hawai'i Press, Vol. 7, No. 1 (February): 47-69.
Bremner, Sabina Vaccarino. 2022. “On Moral Unintelligibility: Beauvoir’s Genealogy of Morality in the Second Sex.” The Monist, Vol. 105, Issue 4 (October): 521-540.
Payne, Christine and Michael Roberts, eds. 2020. Nietzsche and Critical Social Theory: Affirmation, Animosity, and Ambiguity. Amsterdam: Brill.
Peters, Michael A., & Tina Besley. 2020. “National Populism and the Rise of the Far-Right – ‘bad Nietzsche rising’ and the ‘Fascism in our Heads’.” In Peters & Besley, eds., The Far-Right, Education and Violence: An Educational Philosophy and Theory Reader. New York: Routledge. 7-17.
Roig and Maruichi. 2022. “Old-age Poverty Has a Woman’s Face.” United Nations, Departmrnt of Economic and Social Affairs: Social Inclusion. 16 November. https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/2022/11/old-age-poverty/.
Saar, Martin. 2007. Genealogie als Kritik: Geschichte und Theorie des Subjekts nach Nietzsche und Foucault. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag.
Scheu, Ashley King. 2015. „Walking in a Man’s World: Myth, Literature, and the Interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.” In: Robin Truth Goodman, ed., Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 81-94.
Schönherr-Mann, Hans-Martin. 2007. Simone de Beauvoir und das andere Geschlecht. Munich: dtv.
Strong, Tracy B. 1996. “Nietzsche’s Political Misappropriation.” In: Bernd Magnus & Kathleen Higgins, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 119-147.
Strong, Tracy B. 2005. “Philosophy and the Politics of Cultural Revolution.” Philosophical Topics, Vol. 33, No. 2, Nietzsche (FALL): 227-247.
Strong, Tracy B. 2008. “Nietzsche and the Political: Tyranny, Tragedy, Cultural Revolution.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies. 35/36. 48-66.
Strong, Tracy B. 2000. Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (3rd ed.). University of Illinois Press. [1975]
Tevebring, Frederika. 2020. “Baubo, Truth, and Joyful Philology in Nietzsche‘s Die fröhliche Wissenschaft.“ The German Quarterly, 93/3 (July): 359-373.
Thorgeirsdottir, Sigridur. 2012a. “Die Philosophie Nietzsches im Spiegel von Philosophinnen im 20. Jahrhundert. Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray und Judith Butler.” In: Renate Reschke and Marco Brusotti, eds., „Einige werden posthum geboren.“ Friedrich Nietzsches Wirkungen. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Thorgeirsdottir, Sigridur. 2012b. „Baubo: Laughter, Eroticism and Science to Come.” Nietzscheforschung. 65-73.
Verkerk, Willow. 2018. “On Love, Women, and Friendship: Reading Nietzsche with Irigaray.” Nietzsche-Studien 46: 135-152.
Wallace, David Foster. 2005. “This is Water? Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.” Commencement Address. Kenyon College. 21 May.
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Published
2023-03-23
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Babich, B. (2023). Between Nietzsche and de Beauvoir: Becoming Woman. Estudios Nietzsche, (23), 15–45. https://doi.org/10.24310/EstudiosNIETen.vi23.16199
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