Successive generations of scholars have been hugely effective at challenging the once-common dismissal of Beauvoir's philosophy and the view that her work was a mere application of “Sartre's existentialism”. But while the originality and significance of Beauvoir's philosophical contributions are now widely acknowledged, there remains a series of foundational debates concerning The Second Sex and the precise nature of Beauvoir's intellectual relationship with Sartre. Although there is little consensus on this last point, it is increasingly common for scholars to distance Beauvoir's feminism from Sartre's early existentialism, especially his theory of existential freedom in Being and Nothingness. This partially derives from an enduring and widespread consensus that Sartre's early theory of freedom is fundamentally insensitive to the empirical realities of oppressive situations and therefore inimical to feminism. In this paper, I argue that the essence of Beauvoir's theory of freedom in The Second Sex is broadly consistent with Sartre's in Being and Nothingness, but that Beauvoir makes some major advances on Sartre by properly developing the relationship between freedom and power, resulting in a compelling existentialist framework for agency that significantly increases the viability of existentialism as a normative philosophy. I aim to demonstrate that recognising the foundational consistencies between Beauvoir's philosophy and Sartre's existentialism by no means detracts from Beauvoir's originality and intellectual independence, but rather champions it by allowing us to appreciate some of the most original and insightful features of The Second Sex and its role in the development of existentialism. The first sections concern the prominent consensus that Sartre's early theory of freedom is situationally insensitive and either unable to coherently explain oppression or committed to denying its existence altogether. I begin by explicating this position and its enduring prominence in the scholarship (I) and argue that its proponents often mistakenly conflate two distinct yet coextensive components of an overarching theory: original freedom and freedom's manifestations (II). I show how this same essential framework grounds Beauvoir's accounts of women's situations, patriarchy, and the phenomenology of oppression in The Second Sex (III). I elucidate its influence on Beauvoir's accounts of complicity and conformity and argue that scholars have overstated the extent to which Beauvoir considers women to be complicit in their oppression, largely due to a failure to distinguish between the inward embracing of oppressive norms and a strategy of outward conformity that is conducive to the authentic pursuit of projects (IV). Following this, I show how this framework informs Beauvoir's novel diagnosis of the motivation of bad faith, the flight from frustration, where bad faith is directly responsive to oppression and lacks the moral sting of bad faith in other contexts and in Sartre's existentialism (V). These sections combine to illustrate the consonance of Beauvoir's existentialism with her feminism and situationally sensitive analysis of oppression. I conclude by arguing that while Beauvoir's existentialism is not founded on any fundamental disagreement with Sartre, her account of freedom and power is nonetheless highly original and in many ways superior. Beauvoir is far more effective at explaining the relationship between freedom and oppression and produces an existentialist framework for agency that significantly improves the viability of existentialism as a normative philosophy (VI). The last forty years of Beauvoirian scholarship have yielded a series of distinctive analyses of Beauvoir's concept of freedom and its relation to Sartre's. I want to begin by summarising the essential claims of four such analyses and elucidating what I take to be two significant features of the development of the relevant debates. Since the 1980s, the scholarship has increasingly favoured the general position that Beauvoir dissents from Sartre's theory of freedom and that this is significant for grounding her feminism. But this emerging consensus derives from new ways of interpreting Beauvoir's work while the scholarship has, broadly speaking, sustained a consistent interpretation of Sartrean freedom throughout this period. In “Simone de Beauvoir and Existentialism” (le Doeuff, 1980), Michèle le Doeuff argues that the feminist contributions of The Second Sex are ultimately undermined by its grounding in existentialism. While existentialism's demand for a “non-psychology” allows Beauvoir to escape the confines of biological and psychological essentialism it also prohibits a coherent explanation of oppression. On le Doeuff's analysis, Sartrean freedom involves a rejection of “every possible determination” over the individual, and a sharp distinction between the situation and the subject who transcends their situation. Consequently, the appearance of an oppressive, constraining situation must derive from bad faith, a moral fault. Le Doeuff claims that Beauvoir is unwilling to draw this conclusion explicitly. Nevertheless, by grounding her feminism in Sartrean existentialism, Beauvoir is left unable to explain the “fundamental cause” of oppression (le Doeuff, 1980, pp.284–286). Furthermore, Beauvoir's inability to coherently reference external constraints commits her to create burdensome obligations for individuals, including those in distinctly “restrictive” situations: “every time de Beauvoir speaks of a woman who has had some means of affirming herself, of creating, and has not been fully capable of exploiting her opportunity, down at once comes the moral reprobation, and such themes as compliance, auto-compliance, narcissism and the easy way out are invoked” (le Doeuff, 1980, p.288). Seven years later, Sonia Kruks (Kruks, 1987) publishes a very different analysis of freedom in The Second Sex. According to Kruks, Beauvoir advances a middle-ground conception of existential freedom where freedom can be suppressed, but not destroyed, by an oppressive situation. In the case of patriarchy, the situation cannot reduce women to the status of inert objects but it can prevent them from exercising their freedom and gaining a “grasp on the world” (Kruks, 1987, pp.114–116). According to Kruks, this is a subversion of the Sartrean view that ontological freedom exists “independently of social and political freedom” (Kruks, 1987, p.113). By subverting Sartrean freedom in this way, claims Kruks, Beauvoir is able to avoid the problematic normative implications of Sartre's existentialist ethics, especially those relating to oppressed individuals.1 While Sartre is committed to treating all subjects as equally responsible for themselves “no matter how constrained her [their] situation”, Beauvoir is able to say that for some women “there is simply no possibility of choice” (Kruks, 1987, p.114). In “Theorizing the Situation” (Stavro, 2000), Elaine Stavro directly challenges le Doeuff's analysis in 1980, claiming that it “fails to see Beauvoir's departure from Sartre's theory of freedom” (Stavro, 2000, p.136). According to Stavro, this is precisely Beauvoir's project: “to transform Sartrean existentialism by making it contextually sensitive” (Stavro, 2000, p.135).2 While Beauvoir assents to elements of Sartre's existentialism, including the existence and value of a “wilful transcendence” (Stavro, 2000, p.139), she also endorses elements of Merleau-Ponty's theory of sedimentation: the free subject realises themself within the context of a particular historical and cultural situation where certain projects are more or less realisable in accordance with the subject's position within their situation. While Beauvoir maintains that it is possible for a subject to transcend their situation and its prescribed social meaning, she believes that this requires affirmation through sustained patterns of behaviour; it is a gradual and active process, and it cannot be achieved through pure spontaneous willpower (Stavro, 2000, pp.138–141). While there are similarities between this analysis and Kruks’, Stavro's reading is slightly different. Kruks primarily focuses on the external barriers that limit the projects available to women, while Stavro focuses on the internalisation of patriarchal expectations of femininity that affect a psychological alienation from certain projects. On Stavro's analysis, women find it harder to realise creative projects because they are repeatedly told that creativity resides within the masculine domain, for example (Stavro, 2000, pp.139–140). Significantly, while Stavro explicitly rejects fundamental elements of le Doeuff's analysis of Beauvoir she presents a highly consistent characterisation of Sartrean freedom. Similar to le Doeuff's references to a rejection of all external determinants, Stavro claims that Sartre is a “radical ontological dualist” who ties any acquiescence to socially prescribed roles to bad faith (Stavro, 2000, pp.136–137). In a recent publication, Charlotte Knowles (Knowles, 2019) advances an interesting variation on the positions outlined above. Similar to le Doeuff, Knowles claims that Beauvoir is a “central theorist of female complicity” (Knowles, 2019, p.243). On Knowles's analysis, Beauvoir claims that all subjects exist in a permanent state of existential ambiguity which produces certain “metaphysical risks” and troubling phenomena, such as anguish. In response to these risks, subjects routinely recourse to a procedure of self-objectivation by identifying themselves with immanence and their environments. While this procedure is common to men and women, it often manifests among women as an embracing of the essentialised and dependent role that patriarchy prescribes for them, appealing to this archetype rather than resisting it. While this appeal is not the original cause of patriarchy, it serves to reinforce “her own, as well as other women's, social and material unfreedom” (Knowles, 2019, p.252). However, Knowles dissents from le Doeuff by arguing that this procedure is not Sartrean bad faith but rather something more similar to Heidegger's flight from authenticity (Knowles, 2019, pp.245–248). This is because bad faith, according to Knowles, involves the constitution of artificial obstacles “that can never really constrain us or limit our freedom” (Knowles, 2019, p.249). Beauvoir's position is more similar to Heidegger's das Man because the social and material obstacles for women are real and can genuinely constrain and limit freedom. But these constraints do not destroy existential freedom entirely; subjects remain free to either embrace or resist their situations, which is why appeals to patriarchal archetypes of womanhood constitute a form of complicity. Nonetheless, this is not the same conclusion as le Doeuff's in 1980. First, rather than claiming that women are morally obliged to “exploit” every opportunity to affirm themselves, the implication seems to be that women are obliged to not actively embrace their unfreedom. Second, Knowles claims that for Beauvoir liberation can only be achieved through a two-fold process involving both personal responsibility and socioeconomic changes (Knowles, 2019, p.259). So while Knowles’ claims about complicity distance her analysis from those of Kruks and Stavro, she disagrees with le Doeuff's analysis that Beauvoir places all responsibility on the shoulders of women. While each of these publications provides a distinctive analysis of Beauvoir's concept of freedom, the philosophical foundations of The Second Sex, and the nature of the philosophical relationship between Beauvoir and Sartre, we can readily appreciate a general trend in the literature. Since the late 1980s, there has emerged a growing consensus that Beauvoir dissents from Sartre's concept of freedom in Being and Nothingness. Certainly by the beginning of the 21st century le Doeuff's position had become a minority view. Furthermore, the scholarship generally accepts that Beauvoir's dissension from Sartre is either prudential or essential for grounding her feminism in The Second Sex. In broad terms, scholars typically accept that Sartrean freedom is situationally insensitive and inimical to feminism. I want to argue that this is a pervasive mischaracterisation of Sartrean freedom that ultimately obscures some of the essential elements of The Second Sex. This analysis of Sartrean freedom typically derives from an oversimplification. Le Doeuff, Kruks, Stavro, and Knowles each appear to arrive at their conclusions by isolating a single element of an overarching theory while neglecting other crucial elements. In Part 5 of Being and Nothingness, Sartre distinguishes between original freedom and freedom's manifestations. Original freedom refers to the ontological condition of the being of consciousness and the “power of nihilation”: the upsurge of the for-itself and the introduction of nothingness into being. Freedom's manifestations are a sequence of figures, including transcendence; wills, passions, and desires; and volitional acts, each of which is contingent on original freedom (B&N. 463–480). According to Sartre, all volitional acts refer to the wills, passions, and desires that motivate them. For example, the act of setting my alarm clock refers to my desire to wake up at a certain time. In turn, these motivations refer to consciousness' procedure of extending towards its future self and its ‘possibles’, the various positions the future self might occupy. The present consciousness then determines the value of these possible positions, their desirability, or undesirability, thereby engendering the motivations for present actions: to avoid being late for work tomorrow, I should set my alarm clock. This procedure is a form of transcendence, and transcendence is contingent on the ontological condition of the being of consciousness, the for-itself. The entire sequence, therefore, ultimately refers to the for-itself which is why Sartre designates it original freedom: “Man is free because he is not himself but presence to himself. The being which is what it is can not be free. Freedom is precisely the nothingness which is made-to-be at the heart of man and which forces human-reality to make itself instead of to be” (B&N. 463).3 There are two specific senses in which original freedom is “situationally insensitive”. First, all conscious subjects are originally—ontologically—free by definition because original freedom refers to the only possible mode of existence of the being of consciousness: consciousness cannot exist without being this condition that is freedom. Second, all subjects lay equal claim to this ontological condition: the master is no more or less a for-itself than the slave is. But original freedom is only one part of an overarching theory, and each of freedom's manifestations is grounded in the situation and the subject's particular empirical reality. This is especially apparent in Sartre's descriptions of the facticity of freedom and projects (B&N. 503–573). Crucially, projects are distinct from fantasies of an abstract, desired existence. Of course, the object of a project is a particular existence. The subject aims at bringing about or avoiding a certain outcome. However, this outcome is not an abstract future, but rather a modification of the subject's present existence and their present facticity: “freedom is not just any kind of surpassing of any kind of given. By assuming the brute given and by conferring meaning on it, freedom has suddenly chosen itself; its end is exactly to change this given, just as the given appears as this given in light of the end it has chosen. Thus the upsurge of freedom is the crystallisation of an end across a given and the revelation of a given in the light of an end; these two structures are simultaneous and inseparable” (B&N. 529).4 Unlike abstract fantasies, projects can motivate actions and engender the meaning of the present: the meaning of my present is to pursue a certain course of action as doing so will modify my present so as to bring about a certain future. When we declare that the slave in chains is as free as his master, we do not mean to speak of a freedom which would remain undetermined… Of course the slave will not be able to obtain the wealth and the standard of living of his master; but these are not the objects of his projects; he can only dream of the possession of these treasures. The slave's facticity is such that the world appears to him with another countenance and that he has to posit and resolve different problems; in particular it is necessary fundamentally to choose himself on the ground of slavery and thereby to give a meaning to this obscure constraint. Contra le Doeuff and Stavro, Sartre does not present a dualist account of consciousness and its environment. Indeed, consciousness can never be reduced to its facticity and environment because it is necessarily and permanently a transcendence—surpassing—of its facticity and environment. But this does not mean that consciousness is “disembodied” and capable of adopting any perspective it chooses. Consciousness is permanently embodied because transcendence is a surpassing of facticity, a motion that permanently refers to its point of departure.8 I can transcend toward a future where I am no longer in this position, but I cannot transcend toward a future where I was never in this position. Relatedly, Kruks is in error to claim that, for Sartre, ontological freedom exists “independently of social and political freedom”. Certainly, no material, political or social condition can ever render a subject “unfree” in the sense of original or ontological unfreedom. But facticity conditions both the formulation and accomplishment of projects: in order for a desired outcome to constitute the object of a project, it must be realisable qua an eventual modification of the present. Man is freedom and facticity at the same time. He is free, but not with that abstract freedom posited by the stoics; he is free in situation. We must distinguish here, as Descartes suggests, his freedom from his power. His power is finite, and one can increase it or restrict it from the outside. One can throw a man in prison, get him out, cut off his arm, lend him wings, but his freedom remains infinite in all cases. The automobile and the aeroplane change nothing about our freedom, and the slave's chains change nothing about it either…Violence can act only upon the facticity of man, upon his exterior. Even when it stops him in his élan towards his goal, violence does not reach him in his heart because he was still free in the face of the goal that he proposed to himself. what singularly defines the situation of woman is that being, like all humans, an autonomous freedom, she discovers herself as Other: an attempt is made to freeze her as an object and doom her to immanence, since her transcendence will be forever transcended by another essential and sovereign consciousness. Woman's drama lies in the conflict between the fundamental claim of every subject, which always posits itself as essential, and the demands of a situation that constitutes her as inessential. Many women throughout history have been concretely denied the means to attain financial independence, thereby rendering marriage a practical necessity. For other women, financial independence was in principle possible but their situations nevertheless coerced them towards the traditional marriage structure and financial dependence. The work available to them was poorly paid and did not offer “the moral and social benefits they could legitimately expect in exchange for their work” (SS. 738). Additionally, unmarried women routinely faced social prejudices. The coercion involved can be described in terms of a spectrum or continuum. Those in the most restricted situations face a choice somewhat analogous to that in Sartre's description of the slave: they must choose either marriage and dependence or risk destitution. Women in less restricted situations can choose not to marry without facing quite the same degree of risk, but doing so is still likely to incur significant material sacrifices and social repercussions. On Beauvoir's account, the traditional marriage structure offers few projects for women. Many married women find themselves confined to the home where their vocation becomes domestic chores. Famously, Beauvoir takes a rather dim view of homemaking. This is not an intellectual snobbery on Beauvoir's part but rather an existentialist claim about the nature of projects. Projects engender a meaningful existence by constituting an outline of the future qua modification of the present, but domestic chores are cyclical, “Sisyphean”. Rather than a project towards the future, chores involve the preservation—maintenance—of the present: “because she is doomed to repetition, she does not see in the future anything but a duplication of the past… in this circular movement, time's sole becoming is slow degradation” (SS. 655). For this among other reasons, Beauvoir places considerable emphasis on economic liberation. “Work alone can guarantee her concrete freedom…” by removing the “…need for a masculine mediator between her and the universe” (SS. 737). But while economic liberation may be essential, it is not sufficient for true liberation. To achieve true liberation it is necessary that women cease to face social coercion in the formulation and pursuit of their projects. As Beauvoir discusses at length in Volume 1 Part 3 Chapter 1, patriarchy prescribes for women a feminine ideal: an amorphous, often contradictory series of values, characteristics, and behaviours that will determine her value or acceptability in effectively all areas of life (SS. 163–220). According to Beauvoir, there is no way to simply opt out of this system. The feminine ideal is laden with themes of passivity, subordination, and objectification that many women do not wish to participate in or endorse. But non-participation is often interpreted as a positive rejection: “The adolescent girl often thinks she can simply scorn convention; but by doing so, she is making a statement; she is creating a new situation involving consequences she will have to assume” (SS. 740). For women pursuing romantic and sexual relationships with men, the perceived success or failure to embody feminine virtues will often determine the outcome of their romantic and sexual projects; to realise them successfully, it is often necessary to conform to the feminine ideal, at least outwardly. For women pursuing a career, the perceived failure to conform to the feminine ideal will likely incur punitive consequences for both their personal and professional life (ibid.). We will recall that Kruks characterises Beauvoir's account of patriarchy in terms of a “suppression” of freedom. Strictly speaking, this description is inaccurate. Patriarchy suppresses power—the manifestation of freedom—but it does not suppress freedom itself. Consciousness is always more than its situation, even when a subject's situation renders them effectively powerless. This is not a mere semantic distinction. It concerns a significant element of Beauvoir's account of the phenomenology of oppression. The claim is not only that patriarchy oppresses women by denying them opportunities and conditioning the pursuit of their projects. Beauvoir is also claiming that this tension between freedom and power—the condition of being existentially free yet unable to manifest that freedom—is itself oppressive and harmful. As Jonathan Webber highlights, for Beauvoir, “pursuing projects with values at their core is not an optional feature of human life” (Webber, 2018a, p.225). The “permanent need to transcend oneself” is incessant, even for subjects trapped in immanence. Consciousness cannot simply be what it is; it must permanently justify its existence and refer to its future for the meaning of its present.10 For women in the most constrained situations, the immanence of their situation is fundamentally incongruent with their ontological freedom, resulting in boredom and existential frustration. It is impossible to find sustainable contentment and satisfaction in immanence. As Beauvoir writes in Pyrrhus and Cineas, “All enjoyment is project. It surpasses the past toward the future, toward the world that is the fixed image of the future… As soon as it falls back on itself, enjoyment becomes ennui again” (P&C. 96). For Beauvoir, this explains why some women attach disproportionate meaning to trivial matters, obsessing over minor imperfections in the home (SS. 488–504). It is also why some women invest significantly in beautification practices, one of the few creative outlets available to them, and others devote themselves to religion and spirituality (SS. 670–677). They are trying to resolve the conflict between their freedom and their situation, a specific dimension of oppression that exists precisely because freedom is irreducible. Choosing defiance is a risky tactic unless it is a positively effective action; more time and energy are spent than saved. A woman who has no desire to shock, no intention to devalue herself socially, has to live her woman's condition as a woman: very often her professional success even requires it. But while conformity is quite natural for a man — custom being based on his needs as an autonomous and active individual — the woman who is herself also subject and activity has to fit into a world that has doomed her to passivity. The main body of Volume 2 Chapter 10—“The Independent Woman”—focuses on “privileged women”, women who have “gained economic and social autonomy in their professions” (SS. 739). This has received considerable critical attention, especially in the last decade, with some scholars arguing that Beauvoir is effectively ignorant of other forms of oppression, and how they interact with patriarchy (Collins, 2017; Gines, 2014; Knowles, 2019). But this conclusion is inconsistent with the flow of the chapter. Beauvoir begins by talking about working-class women and why she thinks that they struggle to escape the traditional feminine world, and then goes on to explain why in her view privileged women are in a better position to make that escape: precisely because they are privileged. That is, the chapter's focus reflects Beauvoir's awareness of other forms of oppression and the systematic distinctions she makes on that basis. Privileged women have access to careers that will grant them economic and social autonomy, so choosing independence over tradition is more likely to increase power. Furthermore, it is more reasonable to expect—oblige—privileged women to challenge tradition because they are less likely to incur significant material harm by doing so; although she risks some punitive consequences, a woman with the means to support herself independently is not risking destitution. So ought we conclude that privileged women who conform are inwardly embracing their oppression? Beauvoir is commonly interpreted as being rather critical of her middle-class contemporaries, but her position is generally more sympathetic than is often claimed. Beauvoir writes that some women are willing accomplices because “they stand to profit from the benefits they are guaranteed” (SS. 679). But she is broadly describing “the upper classes… the high bourgeoise and aristocracy” (ibid.).11 Within the more general ‘middle’ classes Beauvoir recognises women who are “confined to the domain of the intermediary” despite their relative privilege (ibid.). Her attitude towards these women is markedly more sympathetic, and she recognises the very real constraints to their projects. This is especially clear in her discussions on work in “The Independent Woman” (SS. 739–761). Work is an integral component of Beauvoir's feminism. This is partly because it can grant economic and social autonomy, and partly because a fulfilling vocation is itself a significant manifestation of freedom qua project. However, she believed that a woman's professional success was often contingent on her being at least acceptable in accordance with patriarchal expectations of femininity, and she accepted the legitimacy of conformity as a strategy for navigating a career. In fact, she specifically reproached those who accuse feminists of hypocrisy for conforming to traditional feminine beauty norms: “if you want to be our equals, stop wearing makeup and polishing your nails. This advice is absurd. Precisely because the idea of femininity is artificially defined by customs and fashion, it is imposed on every woman from the outside” (SS. 739–740). This is essentially consistent with her claims about working-class women and the decision to either conform or break from tradition: it is primarily about power. While patriarchal norms and expectations are oppressive, conforming to them is entirely consonant with personal liberation if it allows the subject to develop their career and, in turn, their economic and social autonomy; aggregately, there is a positive effect on power. Of course, one might raise the issue of collective oppression: irrespective of whether conformity is prudential for an individual it is nonetheless a form of complicity insofar as it perpetuates, or at least fails to challenge, norms, and expectations that oppress women collectively.12 The essence of this concern is eminently reasonable, and there is no question that Beauvoir's account of liberation involves challenging patriarchal norms and expectations. However, this dimension of Beauvoir's feminism is very much historically situated, and it seems that in her view the boundaries between personal and collective liberation are not altogether distinct. Overcoming the myth of women's innate inferiority is one of the foundational elements of Beauvoir's account