Publication Details

Abstract

The study focuses on the analysis of the arguments by which F. J. J. Buytendijk criticized the founding work of philosophical feminism The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. The interpretation is based on the objection of essentialism raised against Buytendijk by contemporary feminist critique (Banchetti-Robino). Our text first reconstructs Buytendijk’s argumentation and places it in the intellectual context of phenomenological biology, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of corporeality and Plessner’s thesis on the eccentric constitution of the human being. We reconstruct Buytendijk’s attempt to formulate a non- Platonizing understanding of essence. According to this model, the human essence is essentially related to corporeality and historicity, it is dynamic and non-identical. Therefore, the sexual difference that takes place within each human individual can reveal an essential moment of this essentiality.