Continental · 1908–1986
Simone de Beauvoir
French existentialist whose The Second Sex reshaped feminism
Beauvoir argued that women have been made into man’s “Other”, defined by men rather than by themselves; since there is no feminine essence, freedom means refusing that assigned situation.
Life and thought
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) grew up in a Catholic bourgeois family in Paris whose fortunes declined, and decided early to earn her own living. In 1929 she passed the agrégation in philosophy, placed second only to Sartre, with whom she formed a lifelong, unmarried partnership. She taught in lycées until 1943, then wrote novels, philosophy and memoirs; The Mandarins won the Prix Goncourt in 1954.
In The Ethics of Ambiguity she argued that existentialist freedom is not licence: I can only will my own freedom by also willing the freedom of others. The Second Sex applied this to women. Men have made themselves the Subject and women the Other, defined by and for men; biology, myths, upbringing and marriage turn a female human being into a “woman”. Hence “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”. Women’s freedom means economic independence and refusing that assigned role. The book became a founding text of second-wave feminism.
Works
Shaped by
1905–1980Jean-Paul SartreParisian novelist and philosopher, the public face of existentialism1770–1831Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelThe Second Sex uses Hegel’s master–slave dialectic to analyse woman as the Other.Shaped
1905–1980Jean-Paul SartreLifelong partners who read and criticised each other’s drafts; how much Beauvoir shaped Sartre’s philosophy is debated.born 1956Judith ButlerButler started from Beauvoir’s “becomes a woman”, then questioned her split between sex and gender.Meanwhile, in other traditions
1900–1990Nishitani KeijiKyoto School thinker of nihilism and emptiness1902–1994Karl PopperViennese-born philosopher of science and defender of the open society1908–2000W. V. O. QuineHarvard logician who attacked the analytic–synthetic distinction1909–1995Mou ZongsanLeading second-generation New Confucian and translator of Kant1910–1989A. J. AyerOxford philosopher who brought logical positivism to English readers1911–1960J. L. AustinOxford philosopher of language who founded speech-act theoryOn the record
Beauvoir influenced Sartre’s philosophy.
How far is debated. Beauvoir herself called her philosophy an elaboration of Sartre’s, but since the 1990s scholars have asked whether ideas in Being and Nothingness (1943) first appeared in her novel She Came to Stay (1943); her diaries show ideas developed before, alongside and often against his.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Simone de Beauvoir”