In this paper, I present a new reading of Simone de Beauvoir’s first major work, L’Invitée ( She Came to Stay ), in order to reveal the text as a vital place of origin for feminist phenomenological philosophy. My reading of L’Invitée departs from most scholarly interpretations of the text in three notable respects: (1) it is inclusive of the “two unpublished chapters” that were excised from the original manuscript at the publisher’s request, (2) it takes seriously Beauvoir’s claim that (...) phenomenological philosophy is often better expressed in novels than essays or treatises, and (3) it views the novel’s main characters, Françoise and Xavière, as one woman who has multiple, contradictory, excessive selves. Thus approached, L’Invitée provides us with a thick description of one woman’s embodied consciousness and thereby shows us with specificity what a consciousness whose underlying structures reflect sexual difference looks like. This consciousness not only experiences itself as being both gendered, categorized, disciplined, and defined and in excess of these genders, categories, disciplines, and definitions at the same time, but also experiences its own self-relation through the presence of multiple selves who are each simultaneously attracted to and negating of the other. As such, the defining features of this consciousness involve experiences that I have respectively labeled “ontological multiplicity” and “auto-jealousy.”. (shrink)

The conceptions of jealousy used by philosophical writers are various, and, this paper suggests, largely inadequate. In particular, the difference between jealousy and envy has not yet been plausibly specified. This paper surveys some past analyses of this distinction and addresses problems with them, before proposing its own positive account of jealousy, developed from an idea of Leila Tov-Ruach(a.k.a. A. O. Rorty). Three conditions for being jealous are proposed and it is shownhow each of them helps to tell the emotion (...) apart from some distinct species of envy.It is acknowledged that the referents of the two terms are, to some extent, overlapping,but shown how this overlap is justified by the psychologies of the respective emotions. (shrink)

On conçoit souvent la jalousie comme une émotion ayant pour objet les relations de proximité (amour, amitié, fratrie, etc.). Elle a généralement mauvaise presse et est typiquement envisagée comme une émotion moralement condamnable, voire comme un vice. Or, la jalousie ne porte pas uniquement sur les relations de proximité : elle peut également porter sur divers biens (prestige, richesses, biens matériels, privilèges, etc.). Par ailleurs, certains auteurs soutiennent que des cas de jalousie pourraient être moralement justifiés, voire que la jalousie (...) pourrait être une vertu. La jalousie paraît également jouer un rôle dans l’institution et le maintien d’institutions visant à perpétuer des inégalités entre les individus jaloux de leurs avantages et ceux qu’ils envisagent comme des concurrents cherchant à les déposséder de leurs biens. De fait, la jalousie paraît utile pour la théorie politique de par les liens qu’elle entretient avec la justice distributive. Cet article propose, dans la première section, une discussion portant sur la nature de la jalousie où elle est contrastée avec l’envie et l’indignation. Dans la seconde section, on se demandera si la jalousie est un vice, ou si elle peut être parfois moralement justifiée, ou même être une vertu. La troisième section traitera les rôles joués par la jalousie collective dans la justice distributive et la fondation et le maintien d’institutions sociales visant à protéger les intérêts des jaloux. Pour le faire, le cas de la jalousie économique, telle que David Hume et Adam Smith la concevaient dans les relations commerciales entre États européens au XVIIIème siècle, est considéré. (shrink)

I argue for the view that envy and jealousy are distinct emotions, whose crucial difference is that envy involves a perception of lack while jealousy involves a perception of loss. I start by noting the common practice of using ‘envy’ and ‘jealousy’ almost interchangeably, and I contrast it with the empirical evidence that shows that envy and jealousy are distinct, albeit similar and often co-occurring, emotions. I then argue in favor of a specific way of understanding their distinction: the view (...) that envy is a response to a perceived lack of a valuable object, while jealousy is a response to a perceived loss of a valuable object. I compare such a view with the most compelling alternative theories, and show that it accounts better for paradigmatic cases. I conclude by showing how the lack vs. loss model can handle complications: ambiguous cases, that is, when it is epistemically unclear whether one experiences lack or loss; hybrid cases, that is, when one seems to experience both lack and loss; and borderline cases, that is, when it is metaphysically unclear whether one experiences lack or loss. (shrink)