Dualism

In postmodern times (after 1968), Jacques Derrida (b. 1930) developed deconstruction. Derrida believes that Western thought was centered on binary hierarchical oppositions (dualisms). Examples were male and female, mind and body, nature and culture, object and subject, and so forth. Critical analysis should expose the dualistic assumptions that are taken as "given," and show the polarity itself to be a "construct," rather than something existing independently. To Derrida and his postmodern followers must be added the challenge from feminist epistemology and philosophy of science. Interestingly the male/female polarity had been "deconstructed" well before Derrida, in Simone de Beauvoir's (1908–1986) The Second Sex, where she wrote, "Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being … She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other."