Augustinian doctrine of generation

The Augustinian doctrine of generation holds that original sin is transmitted through sexual generation. In Simone de Beauvoir’s historical analysis, this teaching gives reproduction a theological meaning that reaches beyond biology: it makes sexuality a channel through which sin passes to the next generation and illustrates how religious interpretations of women’s bodies have supported their subordination.

Theological claim and transmission

De Beauvoir traces the doctrine to the influence of Augustine, whose account held that original sin was implicated in generation itself. The argument treats the sexual union that produces a child not as morally neutral, but as the means by which sinful human nature is passed on. The passage notes that theologians held this view until the end of the twelfth century, with Saint Anselm as an exception; it also cites Saint Thomas Aquinas as affirming that sexual union accompanied by concupiscence transmits original sin to the child.

Reproduction within a patriarchal history

The doctrine appears within De Beauvoir’s broader argument that women’s social history has been written by men. She describes male lawmakers, priests, philosophers, writers, and scholars as having invoked heavenly authority to justify women’s subordinate condition, while religious traditions drew on stories such as those of Eve and Pandora. In that account, a doctrine that attaches sin to generation belongs to a wider history in which theological ideas have helped give patriarchal arrangements the appearance of eternal moral truth.

Relation to women’s reproductive condition

De Beauvoir also distinguishes the reproductive fact from the social arrangements built around it. Pregnancy and maternity can weigh heavily when women are compelled to bear many children and must raise them without assistance; their burdens can be reduced when women control whether they procreate and society supports pregnancy and childcare. The doctrine’s theological interpretation of generation therefore sits alongside a material history in which women’s reproductive labor has constrained their participation in public life.

Significance in the argument

The Augustinian doctrine of generation is significant less as an isolated theological proposition than as an example of how reproduction can be made to carry a moral and social burden. De Beauvoir’s account connects religious authority to the wider construction of women’s subordinate status, while rejecting the idea that this status follows inevitably from biology. The doctrine helps show how historically produced meanings can make women’s reproductive situation appear divinely ordained rather than socially organized.