Speaking with Each Other: A Beauvoirian Model

ABSTRACT According to Simone de Beauvoir, realizing ourselves and genuinely understanding ourselves and others are conditioned by speaking with each other. The task of this article is to present the relevant mode of mutual communication, explain why it is required, and briefly gauge if it may propose a challenge to Arendt’s view of “enlarged mentality.” For Beauvoir, self-realization and understanding people require a mode of mutual communication, which (1) is second-personal (involving mutual claims on each other’s responsiveness) and (2) affirms, rather than denies, the fundamental separateness between us. Such a mode of communication is required by virtue of the free yet situated nature of the human self. Beauvoir’s approach is a challenge to Arendt’s picture of thinking with each other representatively if this picture recommends that we imaginatively inhabit others’ perspectives from our own first-person perspective.