The concrete physical experience of motherhood (“one body for two”) allows us to relegate philosophical questions about gender to their rightful place, to talk about the female body without gender connotations, and to think about this place of origin for all of us, through pregnancy, as a “being-with” that precedes and makes possible the separate being that will be born.

Un corps pour deux is the book by the phenomenological philosopher—“feminist and mother of three children”—Marie Leborgne Lucas1, which places the difference between the sexes, which others have sought to erase, back at the heart of philosophical thought, but this was without taking into account the “forgotten” reality of pregnancy.

The fact that we are all “born of a woman” – and the umbilical scar is a lifelong mark of this – cannot fail to be integrated into a Metaphysics of Sex2, which, thanks to Marie Leborgne Lucas, we can do indirectly by reporting on her work.

Of course, the philosophical approach refers to a long list of other thinkers (Nicholas Smith, Camille Froidevaux-Metterie, Luce Irigaray, Adrienne Rich, Elisabeth Spelman, Florentien Verhage, Iris Marion Young, Barara Katz Rothman, Sylviane Agacinski, Antoinette Fouque, Laurence Aubrun, Carol Stabile, Élisabeth Badinter, Yvonne Knibiehler, Talia Welsh, Yvonne Verdier, Michelle Harrison, Emily Martin, Gaëlle Baldassari, Matilde Blézat, Julia Kristeva, Carla Canullo, Imogen Tyler, Claudia Serban, Françoise Cailleau, Frances Gray, Eva Maria Simms, etc.)3, Curiously, most of these authors come from the Anglo-Saxon world and few have been translated in Voltaire’s country. Thus, this essay emerges in a world of thought that is virtually untouched by the issue. The fact is that pregnancy (in women!) has been obscured, erased, a veritable “matricide”! Or it is recognized only as “prey of the species” (Simonne de Beauvoir), a reduction to animality, even a pure container, disregarding the interactions between mother and child and ultimately “justifying” surrogacy.

From a scientific point of view, some authors have written about how much women lose their minds during pregnancy (Pete Moore), fortunately corrected by others (Elseline Hoekzema, Jodi Pawluski, Fiona Elmaleh, Clare McCormack). Culturally, a big belly is at best a good luck charm that must be touched, most often without permission, since, in people’s minds, it is independent of the person carrying it—this belly is not public (cf. the prey of the species).

This conception of women as nothing more than “(mother) carriers” – they are simply “expecting” a child, as it is said in many languages – dates back to the dawn of our societies, as explicitly stated by Aeschylus and Aristotle – even if the anachronistic criticism of sexism may seem debatable – and has continued to this day. The fact is that the discovery of the egg cell is very recent (Oscar Hertwig, 1876) – and therefore the respective contributions of men and women to reproduction. We now know that the egg cell chemically attracts the sperm cell, a breach in the epic (and gendered) novel of the latter’s valiant struggle for life!

Philosophically, in order to begin to think about the “monster” of pregnancy, we must abandon the typically Western concepts of separate monads. Here, we can call on Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), for whom “man is one with his body, is not separate from the world and is mixed with otherness.”

It is trite to say, but menstruation is a constant reminder of one’s potential fertility, but also “an opportunity to renew [one’s] relationship with things.” This potentiality, which fundamentally distinguishes women from men, is that of an otherness springing from within, unlike the male body, which forever marks the boundary between the self and everything else. This relationship with otherness, inscribed in their flesh, is a major discriminating factor between women and men; its impact can be measured in their respective initial philosophical thoughts. While talk about menstruation has recently become more open, giving rise to discourse that is non-sexist (in the pejorative sense) but objectively sexist (recognizing a difference between the sexes), talk about menopause still needs to be liberated.

The awareness of pregnancy is that of something unheard of, to the point of speaking of “transcendence” in relation to the “bursting otherness” within oneself. From being alone, you become two, but you only know this afterwards; pregnancy necessarily takes you by surprise: the world that was outside is now inside. Whether or not there is a desire to have children—a complex question—consent is always given after the fact, when the pregnancy is confirmed, and all the more so since the choice to keep the child is now linked to women’s “freedom.”

With its corollary of nausea, bodily metamorphosis (such as the gap between the usual body and the new one, which creates clumsiness and helplessness) and societal judgments (“it’s not an illness!”), pregnancy brings with it a flood of disruption and reduced power. On the other hand, the senses—especially smell, but also taste—are awakened and open us up to a new world. At the same time, awareness of the body and what is happening within it increases, particularly through the frequency of movements in utero. Pregnant women may “feel more connected to their bodies” and even gain an unparalleled “sense of fulfillment.”

This interweaving of flesh can rightly be called creation, in the same way as that of an artist whose intimate gift allows creation, even more so since it is not a simple thing that is being created but a living being. Thus, “the pregnant body is carnally inserted into the fabric of the world”; “the pregnant being experiences the other within itself and experiences itself as another.”

This intertwining, which we become aware of through internal movements, will remain, even when “it moves” becomes “he moves,” because it is not yet an “alter ego,” even if it is already another subject. These movements are not mere sensations; they are the revelation of another within me: “the inconceivable incarnation of a completely other,” which is reminiscent (mutatis mutandis) of the incredible event that happened to the Virgin Mary.

If the categories of self and non-self are blurred, those of outside and inside are equally so: another within me! I am touched within myself, but not by myself! In a very carnal way, “what is outside me is inside me, there is no distance between me who perceives and what is perceived.” This internal co-presence “is a total intermingling of the perceived and the perceiver.” The recent (1950s and ongoing) ultrasound revolution has brought the hidden being to its anticipated personification, but at the same time has made the mother’s body transparent.

When I am pregnant, I am neither one nor two, I am plurality. I am no longer an “I,” but I am not a ‘we’ either. Husserl must therefore be supplemented: consciousness is no longer directed toward something, but at the same time “toward another within that modifies its perception of the world.” We should therefore say: “we walk,” “we swim,” “we listen to music,” etc.

This “incomplete fusion” is marked by a common placenta, a unique mixture of the two organisms, which is both a protective barrier between them and a place of cellular exchange. This indicates that beings are first and foremost “unseparated and interdependent, while still being distinct”; our origin is “co-existential”; intersubjectivity comes first! Although the placenta is ultimately rejected and destroyed—when separate existence reasserts itself—this common and relational origin does not disappear. This completes Husserl’s intuition: there is an instinctive relationship with others and with the world through the “relational situation of subjectivity.” In other words, “human identity requires human otherness.” Being cannot be thought of as isolated; it is first and foremost a link to others, it is one with them, but without fusion. And everything stems from its initial, unconditional hospitality.

There are several ethical implications:

  • First, we are indebted and in debt; we owe our lives (and care) to another. We become responsible for the vulnerability of others. The pregnant body is “the foundation of the ethical relationship with the other, with the stranger.”
  • Second, this relationship is non-contractual and therefore non-reciprocal; all gifts are necessarily free.
  • Finally, due to its interdependent nature, harmony, love, and cooperation form the basis of this ethical relationship.

It should be noted that such ethics are not feminine or feminist in nature; every human being who comes into the world has passed through a matrix of interdependence, gratuitous giving, and indebtedness.

We could summarize the conclusion on childbirth with passion: often unbearable suffering, a kind of agony, a journey through death… but one that gives life.

One might wonder what is metaphysical about this experience, this experience of motherhood and the philosophical perspective that has been applied to it.

Admittedly, the phenomenological approach, by its very nature, tends to remain within the conditions of human life in its existential unfolding, with the ever-present criticism of an overly subjectivist conception of consciousness. However, such a reduction should not be read here. Who would dare to say that the being-in-situation or the being-in-the-world has not been properly accounted for here?

In fact, we have seen a possible metaphysical perspective emerge in many places, and not especially when the word “transcendence” was used. We will mention only one: the compatibility of the one and the many.

This specificity of woman’s motherhood (which was not treated as such in our Metaphysics of Sex – too bad about that!), as presented by Marie Leborgne Lucas, is in its own right a lesson in gender, which was truly lacking in the French language.

Traditional metaphysics of being is known for its difficulties in reconciling being and beings, the one and the many, even if the notion of participation (Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure) resolves the question to a large extent. However, there is a metaphysics of relation that has been around since at least St. Thomas Aquinas, passing through Lanza del Vasto and can be read in Jean Borella. To put it simply, we could say that being and relation are convertible or that being is fundamentally relational. Is this not what we read in this body for two, in the “neither I nor we”? Or in “being is first and foremost a link to others, it is one with them, but without fusion”?

We will mention for the record the notion of “non-two” which, in Advaita Vedānta, qualifies union without fusion or, in Christianity, the subsisting relations that exist within the Trinity, a crucial concept that has enabled the development of a metaphysics of relationship and which finds a true echo in this “body for two,” as the consequences drawn in terms of “solidarity” ethics will confirm if necessary.

Footnotes

  1. Marie Leborgne Lucas, Un corps pour deux, Petite philosophie de la grossesse. Pour un féminisme incarné, Desclée de Brouwer, 2025.[↩]
  2. Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics of Sex, L’Harmattan, 2022.[↩]
  3. It is gratifying to see that the vast majority of those expressing their views on pregnancy are women. This avoids the ridiculousness of the past, as Jacky Fleming has shown in The Trouble with Women, Square Peg, 2016 (translated by Dargaud as Le problème avec les femmes, 2016).[↩]