Women,Hegel, and Recognition in The Second Sex

This paper develops a new account of Beauvoir's “Hegelianism” and argues that the strand of contemporary interpretation of Beauvoir that seeks to represent her thought in isolation from that of Jean‐Paul Sartre constitutes a betrayal of the philosophy of recognition that she derives from Hegel. It underscores the extent to which Beauvoir influenced Sartre's Being and Nothingness and shows that Sartre and Beauvoir both adapted Hegel's ideas and agreed in rejecting his optimism.