This is short, four-page critique on Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialist feminism. I apologize in advance over any grammatical errors or typos. I hope you enjoy.

Simone de Beauvoir opens The Second Sex with one of the most famous lines in 20th-century philosophy: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” She argues that women are not biologically doomed to second-class status. Instead, society turns them into the “Other” – the opposite of men, who get to be free Subjects. Women end up stuck in “immanence” (repeating the boring daily tasks like housework and child-rearing) and “bad faith” (lying to themselves that this is their natural role). The solution, Beauvoir says, is for women to reject this role, choose real “transcendence” (big life projects, freedom, and equality), and finally become authentic human beings.

This paper argues that Beauvoir is wrong. Although she claims women must reject immanence and “become” transcendent subjects to escape bad faith, Nietzsche’s critique of slave morality in On the Genealogy of Morals reveals that her existentialist feminism is itself a reactive project of ressentiment. By demanding equality and universal transcendence, Beauvoir levels the hierarchical will to power that Nietzsche sees as the only authentic source of self-overcoming, thereby perpetuating the very decadence and bad faith she seeks to overcome.

First, let us clearly lay out Beauvoir’s position. In the Introduction to Volume I of The Second Sex, she writes that woman “is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject… she is the Other” (Beauvoir 2011, xxii). Men get to create the meaning through projects; women are defined only in relation to men. In Volume II, she shows how this traps most women in immanence, the endless cycles of cooking, cleaning, and pleasure others. And in bad faith, where they pretend this limited life is freely chosen. The fix is existential freedom: women must stop accepting the role of Other and instead launch themselves into the world through work, art, politics, or any self-chosen project. Beauvoir even borrows Nietzsche’s language. She quotes The Gay Science §68 – “man created woman” – but turns it into a call for women to create themselves as free subject (Beauvoir 2011, 283).

Now we bring in Nietzsche’s diagnosis. In the First Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche explains how “slave morality” was born. The weak and oppressed felt ressentiment, a deep and poisonous resentment toward the strong. Instead of creating their values, they invented a new moral system: “good” become whatever the weak had (pity, equality, humility), and “evil” became whatever the strong had (power, pride, strength). Nietzsche writes: “The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values” (Nietzsche 1967, I:10). This revolt is reactive: it always needs an enemy (the strong) to define itself against. True strength, by contrast, is active. It flows from the “will to power,” the drive to grow, create, and overcome oneself without needing anyone’s approval.

Beauvoir’s feminism fits Nietzsche’s slave morality perfectly. She defines women against men-as-Subject and says the cure is equality, everyone gets the same transcendence. But Nietzsche would call this leveling dangerous. It weakens the natural hierarchy that makes life interesting and creative. In Beyond Good and Evil §§231–239, Nietzsche mocks the “woman question” says feminism is a symptom of cultural decay: women who demand to be like men are actually making both sexes smaller and uglier. Beauvoir wants every woman to become a transcendent Subject. Nietzsche would reply that real “becoming” is not a group project of equality; it is individual, aristocratic self-overcoming that celebrates difference and power.

The attack is straightforward: Beauvoir’s solution actually creates the bad faith she hates. Her feminism still needs “the patriarchy” as the enemy, just as slave morality needs the master. It is reactive, not creative. By demanding universal transcendence and equality, she flattens the will to power into a herd-like demand that “everyone should be the same.” This is exactly the nihilism Nietzsche warned about. The “last humans” who blink and say “We have invented happiness” while secretly resenting anyone stronger (Nietzsche 2006, Prologue §5). Beauvoir thinks she is freeing women from bad faith, but she is only giving them a new, collective version of it: defining themselves forever by their victory over men instead of by their own overflowing power.

One obvious objection is: “Nietzsche was a misogynist! His opinions on women are outdated and hateful, so we can ignore his critique.” That misses the point. Even if Nietzsche’s personal views on women are harsh (and they are), the concepts he gave us – ressentiment, slave morality, will to power – still work as a diagnostic tool. Beauvoir herself borrowed from Nietzsche, so using his own ideas against her is fair. More importantly, the critique does not depend on hating women; it depends on asking whether her program truly promotes life and creativity or just spreads a new form of weakness disguised as justice.

In the end, Beauvoir is wrong because her existentialist feminism is not the bold transcendence she imagines. It is the latest chapter in the slave revolt Nietzsche described more than sixty years earlier. By turning “becoming” into a demand for equality, she perpetuates decadence and bad faith rather than curing them. Nietzsche offers a harder but more honest path: stop resenting the strong, stop leveling everyone down, and instead create values from your own overflowing will to power. Only then anyone, man or woman, truly become who they are.

Works cited: Beauvoir, Simone de.  The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevalier. New York: Vintage, 2011

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1967

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.