Sartre gave us the Idea of the One...de Beauvoir uses the
  example of Sartre's the One, and describes its contrast, as the Others. She
  points out the fact, the curse if you will, of dialectic thinking, is that to
  be the One, dialectically those who are not the One, are the
Others.


               
Western rationalists for the main part of their society’s histories have
maintained that the dominant male in its society, is the One, and that in
contrast, minorities, children and women are the Others. There is an implied
bias due to the use of dialectic reasoning. de Beauvoir show us that with this
concept of the One, the One being the best that nature can provide, (much like
Nietzsche), the Others are cast as being less than the One. That Is, without the
One, the Others cannot exist beneficially by themselves. This of course means
that the Others should be treated like children are treated by their parents.
They need to be ruled, and controlled, because they do not have the cognitive or
  emotional control and understanding that a parent poses.



               
The One is what many described as the Master Class. The natural rulers
that nature or God has placed as leaders in a society. de Beauvoir show us this
is not true in nature, it is only true in our minds. In her work, The Second
Sex, she states:


“But there are deep similarities between the situation of Women
and that of the Negro. Both are being emancipated today from a like paternalism,
and the former master class wishes to “Keep them in their place”-that is, the
place chosen for them” (Sterba, p330)


               
 de Beauvoir shows that the
dialectic mind of the One, the dominant ruling caste, projects their own need
for the Other, onto those who are different than whatever criteria they create,
to be considered the One. She uses the quote from George Bernard Shaw, to
exemplify this:


“The America white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine
boy; and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining
shoes.” (Sterba, p330)


               
Sartre showed us that since the day of the hominids, the dominant male
created his superiority by dialectically claiming all others are inferior, and
that to an extent, before reason, this may have been considered true in the
physical sense, that males were stronger than females, physically. This behavior
developed as man developed. de Beauvoir shows us that with our newly developed
reason, we must rise above this rationalistic western bias, this need to create
the One, because it dehumanizes and belittles all those who are not considered
to be the One. That while as Cavemen we may have needed to have the One, to
survive in primitive hominid cultures, but this ancient bias in cognitive
thinking is no longer true, and leads the horrors man has inflicted on others,
even others who also consider themselves…to be the
One.



                                                                               
REFERENCES


 



                               
Sterba, James, Ethics, 2000,
Oxford University Press, NY, NY


                               
Wartenberg, Thomas, Existentialism, Oneworld Publications,
Oxford, England