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Fall 2006
Volume 06, Number 1

Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy

Book Reviews

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The Contradictions of Freedom: Philosophical Essays on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Mandarins

Edited by Sally J. Scholz and Shannon M. Mussett (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005). 244 pages. $25.95 paperback. ISBN: 0-7914-6560-8

Reviewed by Robin Margaret James
University of North Carolina at Charlotte, jamesrm25@yahoo.com

Situating the themes and questions addressed in Simone de Beauvoir’s novel The Mandarins in the context of her philosophical projects (most often, The Second Sex and The Ethics of Ambiguity), Scholz and Mussett’s collection is a valuable addition to Beauvoir scholarship, which also speaks to broader political, philosophical, and aesthetic concerns. Although The Contradictions of Freedom is a collection of essays by eleven different authors, a handful of common and frequently interrelated issues run throughout the book. Many of these issues relate in some way to the idea expressed in the title (a phrase from Iris Murdoch’s 1956 review of The Mandarins for The Nation), namely, that for particular individuals situated concretely in precise historical moments and social contexts action can never be completely free or unquestionably ethical.

The editors’ introduction summarizes the plot and some of the main themes in the novel; this summary is complete enough to ground a reader not immediately familiar with The Mandarins. As it also references some of Beauvoir’s autobiographies and letters to provide insight into her thoughts on and purposes in writing the novel, the introduction is valuable for readers familiar with The Mandarins because it situates the novel in its historical context and in the context of Beauvoir’s personal life and philosophical career. Of particular interest is the editors’ research on the various reviews and critiques of the book in both the European and American press. The introductory essay shares with many of the other articles the conviction that, in spite of its uniquely insightful portrayal of a specific moment in twentieth-century history, The Mandarins is relevant to contemporary concerns—if for no other reason than the world of French intellectuals in the 1950s is not so different from that of American intellectuals fifty years later.

While most of the essays draw comparisons between 1956 and 2006, this is the explicit focus of William L. McBride’s essay, "The Conflict of Ideologies in The Mandarins: Communism and Democracy, Then and Now." Although there are some notable differences, McBride argues that the issues faced by Beauvoir’s characters—American cultural and economic imperialism; a new, seemingly interminable "war"; European unification—continue to be pressing concerns today. Moreover, contemporary political discourse is largely shaped by what McBride insightfully claims is the fruition of the mandarins’ nascent worries about the reach of American ideology: "The major historical development of the past half-century has been, in fact, the realization of one of the future possibilities envisaged by a number of the book’s characters, namely, the triumph of American hegemony" (41). Insofar as the "contradiction" between Cold War superpowers has largely been resolved and American neoliberal capitalism is unilaterally colonizing the globe, the "freedom" which it claims to spread is, McBride concludes, "false" (37).

The personal, political, and theoretical contradictions experienced and addressed by (public) intellectuals are the main concern of contributions by Ursula Tidd ("Testimony, Historicité, and the Intellectual in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Mandarins"), Karen Vintges ("The Return of Commitment: Simone de Beauvoir’s The Mandarins Revisited), Gail Weiss ("‘Politics Is a Living Thing’: The Intellectual’s Dilemma in Beauvoir’s The Mandarins"), Sally J. Scholz ("Sustained Praxis: The Challenge of Solidarity in The Mandarins and Beyond"), and Sonia Kruks ("Living on Rails: Freedom, Constraint, and Political Judgment in Beauvoir’s ‘Moral’ Essays and The Mandarins"). Each of these essays addressed the contradictions emerging from how the exigencies of concrete human existence sometimes require the compromise of one’s ideals in order to take needed political action, how intellectual engagement requires compromise in personal and political relationships, and how personal relationships change the significance of political and intellectual ideals. In response, Tidd and Vintges read Beauvoir through Foucault to suggest that intellectual speech is a "practice of freedom" (Tidd, 87) or "ethical-political (self) creation on the individual and collective level" (Vintges, 112). Weiss describes this ethos as a regard for politics as a "living thing," so that "the intellectual’s response to these dilemmas requires that she passionately embrace the ongoing demands of communal life" (131). McWeeny’s account of these "contradictions" is particularly insightful. Noting "the male characters’ blindness toward the notion that the impasse between intellectual theories and political practice must be reconciled with particular human lives" (165), McWeeny argues that these "impasses" are only viewed as such if one (wrongly, from a very privileged perspective) assumes that one’s concrete situation is never a barrier to political participation or intellectual analysis (i.e., that one is "just a person" and not, say, "a Desi" or "a dyke").

Although it also addresses political questions, the second half of the book is more historically oriented. Shannon M. Mussett’s "Personal Choice and the Seduction of The Absolute in The Mandarins" and Thomas W. Busch’s "Simone de Beauvoir on Achieving Subjectivity" read The Mandarins in the context of French existentialism and Merleau-Ponty; Jen McWeeny’s "Love, Theory, and Politics: Critical Trinities in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Mandarins" and Eleanore Holoveck’s "When a Woman Loves a Man: Ownness and Otherness in The Mandarins" address Beauvoir’s critiques of Hegelian and Husserlian phenomenology, respectively. Peg Brand’s "Salon-Haunters: The Impasse Facing French Intellectuals" is the only essay to address The Mandarins in terms of aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Even though the editors’ stated intent is to address the philosophical (as opposed to literary) aspects of the novel, because Brand’s essay sits at the end of the collection (like a straggler) and is the only essay to explicitly address aesthetics, it seems as though the collection discounts the extent to which aesthetic concerns are themselves philosophical concerns.

Although the relationship between aesthetics and political philosophy is directly addressed in only one essay, there are two such themes which the essays in this collection address indirectly: the philosophical significance of the novel’s style, and the relationship between "frivolous" and "serious" intellectual activity. The editors, Tidd, and Kruks address feminist or methodological issues related to the novel’s style. Though the first concern appears to be purely stylistic in nature, the longstanding stereotype that women can create only on the basis of experience and not from abstract concepts makes this a feminist issue. Thus, we can see why, as the editors remark, Beauvoir "adamantly refuses to agree with those who claim that the book is nothing more than surreptitious autobiography" (16). However, roman a clef need not be un-philosophical; the above criticism of Beauvoir’s novel is not only misogynist but based on a false dichotomy between concrete experience and abstract concepts. Arguing that the relationship between the novel and Beauvoir’s own life demonstrates a necessary "reflexivity of the intellectual’s role" (88) or "self-critical intellectual metacommentary" (88), Tidd demonstrates that autobiographical reflection is an essential part of a sound and ethical intellectual life. For Kruks, The Mandarins addresses the seeming contradiction in writing a philosophical novel. Kruks claims that Beauvoir rejects the philosophical or "thesis-novel" because "it contradicts the actual intent of a novel: ‘[A] novel is about bringing existence to light in its ambiguities, in its contradictions’ [1979b, 447]" (67). Like Beauvoir’s more explicitly philosophical texts, The Mandarins demonstrates that the human condition is fundamentally ambiguous; thus, theories that would deny this are invalid and unjust.

The second theme follows from the dilemma faced by several characters: whether to pursue intellectual activities for political ends, or for aesthetic ones. Scrassine views it as a zero-sum game, where one has time for either politics or theory; Henri struggles with his desire to disengage from public life and write solely for (his) pleasure; Nadine worries that she will be "taken for a society woman who writes for housewives" (Beauvoir 536; cited Brand, 221); Brand claims that Beauvoir "worr[ies] that her writing might be judged as an example of aestheticism—lighthearted and pleasant—and not humanism" (221). Throughout the collection, authors follow Beauvoir in dichotomizing political activity and "private" aesthetic/theoretical work. For example, in their introduction, the editors describe how Henri’s "foolish plans to write a ‘light novel’ with no political significance give way to his true feelings about the role of literature" (13) without problematizing the assumptions behind Beauvoir’s characterization. No one addresses the falseness of this dichotomy and the feminization of this "lighthearted and pleasant," "privatized" endeavor. Although Kruks reads The Mandarins as a critique of Kantian disinterestedness (70-72), no one questions the ways in which the feminization of pleasure mirrors Kant’s gendered distinction between the beautiful ("lighthearted and pleasant") and the sublime (virile, rational). Just as The Second Sex claims that femininity is the "inessential" to the masculine One, is not art here being feminized as "inessential" to the Absolute of public life/freedom? Is not one of the "contradictions of freedom" the need to balance political and aesthetic concerns?

In spite of these few criticisms, the various essays work with and against one another to create a valuable scholarly text, not just a textbook-like guide or companion to The Mandarins. The range of interpretation and analysis is one of the strengths of this collection because, as a whole, the book works to raise questions for further scholarly inquiry and to perpetuate interest in Beauvoir’s novel.

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