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Simone de Beauvoir (January 9, 1908 - April 14, 1986) was a French author, philosopher, and feminist.
Born Simone Lucie-Ernestine-Marie-Bertrand de Beauvoir on January 9, 1908 in Paris, France, she eventually studied at the elite École Normale Supérieure where, in 1929, she met Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1981 she wrote ''La Cérémonie Des Adieux (A Farewell to Sartre), a painful account of Sartre's last years.
Beauvoir has come to be seen as the mother of post-1968 feminism, with philosophical writings linked to, though independent of, Sartrian existentialism. She is best known for her work Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex, 1949) which contained detailed analysis of women's oppression.
Simone de Beauvoir died of pneumonia on April 14, 1986 and was buried alongside Sartre at the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris, France.
The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir reasons creatively a feminist version of existentialism in "The Second Sex" published first in French in 1953. Beauvoir's argument on The Other differs slightly from her lover and academic friend Jean Paul Sartre's archetype found in his short work, The Look. In The Second Sex, she ascribes women's oppression mainly to the essential sexual differences between men and women, and how they experience gender; how the eye of the other (l'autre) falls. However in the existentialist school of thought 'essence does not precede existence', hence '[o]ne is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.'The main difference between both philosophers' works is that for Sartre, classifying others as The Other is an expression of power and pride, but for Beauvoir, the other represents exclusion of others from a group.
Sartre's concept of the other is consciousness being interrupted by an other. An example that illustrates his concept is me (or a conscious person) sitting in a cafe who is curious about or maybe wants or fears the presence of something. For Sartre this curiosity or will is the human situation. Another consciousness for example might try to transcend my consciousness, where I am become that consciousness' object. Here, consciousness is trying to reduce me (also consciousness) into immanence (or death). From this, Simone de Beuvoir shows that in a patriarchal society (like the one I have grown up in) males qualify as normal and females qualify as others.
One of Beavoir's most interesting arguments is that, throughout history, women have been considered the deviation, the abnormality. Even Mary Wollstonecraft considers men to be the ideal which women should aspire to be. Simone de Beauvoir says this has held back women. It has maintained the perception that women are a deviation from the normal, that they are outsiders attempting to emulate normality. She says that, for feminism to move forward, they need to break out of this assumption.
Beauvoir asserts that females are equally capable of choice as males are and can choose to elevate themselves and reduce male consciousness down into immanence. Although not stated explicitly by Beauvoir, an example that actualizes females choosing transcendence is in the context of a Sorority where females can claim their collective as we where being female is normal and a male consciousness is classified as the other.
Males in their arrogance and masculine pride, feel like they transcend all other objects including vermin, degenerates or Jews in Nazi Germany for example. Females in Nazism were although not reduced as much as Jews were, nonetheless, still reduced by male consciousness into imminence. Males look down from their transcended position onto women because they (females) are outsiders from what is normal, where white males qualify as normal.
'The Second Sex' by Simone de Beauvoir (http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/2ndsex.htm) (Free Online Version - English Translation).
Other works
Although the work receives little attention, Pour Une Morale de L'ambiguïté (The Ethics of Ambiguity, 1947) is perhaps the single best point of entry into French existentialism. The simplicity of the work is a marvel in and of itself, as de Beauvoir reduces the gnashing of teeth that many associate with reading Sartre's overly-analytical Being and Nothingness to a few pages of light reading.
Other major works: L'Invitée (She Came to Stay, 1943); Memoires d'une jeune fille rangée (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, 1958).
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)
- 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)
External links
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