Simone de Beauvoir - Ceren and Christal

Simone de Beauvoir was born in 1908 on Boulavard Raspail. She was a French writer, existentialist philosopher, feminist, Marxist, Maoist and social theorist. She wrote novels, monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography in several volumes. She is now best known for her metaphysical novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins, and for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. She is also noted for her lifelong polyamorous relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre.


When Simone was 21 she lived with her granny and studied philosophy at Sorbonne. She joined a group of students, who, at that time, had a bad reputation. They were Paul Nizan, Andre Hermaid, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre became her best friend and intellectual equal. Their relationship became famous for the two commitments that they made to each other and the public. The first was a promise to remain free to love other people. The second was to preserve their unity by practicing perfect honesty and total openness about everything. Together, they decided that nothing would ever be covert between them. She may have had too high of expectations, but she maintained the courage to break concrete patterns and social taboos. She went to study German philosophy in Berlin. She was dedicated to the feminist movement and spoke out against the way the French institutionalized poor unmarried mothers. She was also a committed atheist who felt strongly that religion supplied a reason to evade truth.

Simone de Beauvoir played an important role in the development of existentialism and feminism in the 20th century. existentialist ethics that were founded upon the Satrean notion of radical human freedom that was on the one hand open to all the possibilities the future held, and on the other hand was committed to taking responsibility for all of one’s chosen actions. For de Beauvoir, part of the problem with this is the fact that human life is characterized by an ambiguity created by the combination of both an inner and an outer life.


At the time of her death she was honoured as a crucial figure in the struggle for women’s rights, and as eminent writer having won the Prix Goncourt, the prestigious French literary award, for her novel The Mandarins.



Bibliography

• She Came to Stay, (1943)
• Pyrrhus et Cinéas, (1944)
• The Blood of Others, (1945)
• Who Shall Die?, (1945)
• All Men are Mortal, (1946)
• The Ethics of Ambiguity, (1947)
• The Second Sex, (1949)
• America Day by Day, (1954)
• The Mandarins, (1954)
• Must We Burn Sade?, (1955)
• The Long March, (1957)
• Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, (1958)
• The Prime of Life, (1960)
• Force of Circumstance, (1963)
• A Very Easy Death, (1964)
• Les Belles Images, (1966)
• The Woman Destroyed, (1967)
• The Coming of Age, (1970)
• All Said and Done, (1972)
• When Things of the Spirit Come First, (1979)
• Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre, (1981)
• Letters to Sartre, (1990)
• A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren, (1998)