IB Philosophy 10.11.4 Volume II, Part I: Childhood - Consciousness and Ambiguity Notes

The Ambiguity of Consciousness

1. Simone de Beauvoir opens The Second Sex with the claim that human existence is fundamentally ambiguous, meaning that every individual is both a free consciousness and a materially situated being. This ambiguity is not a defect to be overcome but the basic structure of what it means to be human.
2. Building on the facticity/transcendence framework (the idea that we are both thrown into fixed circumstances and capable of going beyond them) introduced in 10.11.1, de Beauvoir argues that the ambiguity of human existence, being neither purely free nor purely determined, is the key to understanding women's consciousness under patriarchy.
3. De Beauvoir's concept of ambiguity diverges from Sartre in a crucial respect: she insists that social structures do not merely provide a backdrop for free choice but actively shape the range of choices available. Where Sartre emphasises radical freedom, de Beauvoir stresses that freedom is always exercised within material and social constraints that affect different individuals unequally.
4. In Volume II, de Beauvoir applies this understanding of ambiguity to the experience of the girl child.
5. The girl is born with the same capacity for transcendence as the boy, yet from infancy she encounters social expectations that encourage her to adopt a passive, object-like relation to herself. Her consciousness is shaped by forces that push her toward immanence even as she retains the existential capacity for freedom.
6. Immanence in de Beauvoir's usage denotes a mode of existence confined to repetitive, maintenance-oriented activities that do not generate new possibilities. Transcendence, by contrast, involves reaching beyond one's present situation to create meaning, pursue goals, and assert freedom.
   1. The tension between these two poles defines the ambiguity of the girl's consciousness.

Embodiment and the Objectifying Look

1. The objectifying Look (analysed in 10.11.2) is experienced by girls with particular intensity from an early age. What 10.11.4 adds is the phenomenological (first-person, lived-experience) dimension: drawing on Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir shows how internalised scrutiny transforms the body from a vehicle of action into an object of self-observation.
2. De Beauvoir argues that the girl's bodily self-awareness becomes a site of ambiguity. As the girl matures, she is taught to regard her body not as a vehicle for action but as an object to be observed and judged by others.
   1. This transformation of the body from subject to object creates a split within consciousness, producing the experience of being simultaneously a self and a spectacle.
   2. At puberty, the girl who was once unselfconscious about her body suddenly becomes aware that others, especially men, are evaluating it. She begins to monitor her own appearance before leaving the house, not from vanity but because she has internalised the gaze as a constant companion.
   3. This split, experiencing oneself as simultaneously subject and spectacle, is what de Beauvoir describes as the beginning of the alienated consciousness that defines adult femininity.
3. De Beauvoir connects this to the broader existentialist thesis that bad faith arises when individuals deny their freedom by treating themselves as fixed things. The girl who accepts the role assigned to her is in bad faith, yet de Beauvoir insists that responsibility lies primarily with the social structures that constrain her choices, not with the girl herself.