The present article aims to illustrate the intellectual intersection between Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau–Ponty, focusing on their exploration of embodiment and sexuality. We want to show that Beauvoir’s major philosophical work, The Second Sex, is not merely an application of Sartre’s philosophy to feminist issues, but incorporates the thoughts of many authors and philosophies. Through Merleau–Ponty’s treatment of embodiment, sexuality, and the relationship between object and subject, we wish to demonstrate their intellectual connection and address the chapter on Sexual initiation as a phenomenological representation of the specific lived experience of what we call being a woman. It is well–known that Beauvoir spent several years deeply studying German phenomenologists and later published a review of Phenomenology of Perception in which she demonstrated her knowledge and positioning in the field, indicating agreement with Merleau–Ponty’s establishment of the concept of the subject. The goal is to bring toge-ther both intellectual paths and show that they are more intertwined in understanding perception, embodiment, subject, and object than researchers of her texts generally acknowledge. Above all, we wish to show that Beauvoir was a philosopher who, through the use of various philosophical methods, created a complex analysis of the female condition and should not be reduced to secondary literature.
