Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy, and Feminism

In the introduction to The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir notes that "a man never begins by establishing himself as an individual of a certain sex: his being a man poses no problem." Nancy Bauer begins her book by asking: "Then what kind of a problem does being a woman pose?" Bauer's aim is to show that in answering this question The Second Sex dramatizes the extent to which being a woman poses a philosophical problem.

This book is a call for philosophers as well as feminists to turn, or return to, The Second Sex. Bauer shows that Beauvoir's magnum opus, written a quarter-century before the development of contemporary feminist philosophy, constitutes a meditation on the relationship between women and philosophy that remains profoundly undervalued. She argues that the extraordinary effect The Second Sex has had on women's lives, then and now, can be traced to Beauvoir's discovery of a new way to philosophize -- a way grounded in her identity as a woman. In offering a new interpretation of The Second Sex, Bauer shows how philosophy can be politically productive for women while remaining genuinely philosophical.

Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

Full eBooks: 

• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)

• Simone de Beauvoir: The Ethics of Ambiguity

Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy of Lived Experience: Literature and Metaphysics

Simone de Beauvoir developed her philosophy of lived experience as she actually wrote fiction. Hence Beauvoir should be placed among major philosophical novelists of the twentieth-century like Toni Morrison and Nadine Gordimer, and Beauvoir's theory of the metaphysical novel acknowledges multicultural traditions of story-telling and song which are not locked into the theoretical abstractions of the Greek philosophical tradition. In Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy of Lived Experience, Eleanore Holveck presents Simone de Beauvoir's theory of literature and metaphysics, including its relationship to the philosophers Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre, with references to the literary tradition of Goethe, Maurice Barrès, Arthur Rimbaud, André Breton, and Paul Nizan. The book provides a detailed philosophical analysis of Beauvoir's early short stories and several major novels, including The Mandarins and L'invitée, from the point of view of "other" women who appear on the fringes of Beauvoir's fiction: shop girls, seamstresses, and prostitutes. Holveck applies Beauvoir's philosophy to her own lived experience as a working-class teenager who grew up in jazz clubs similar to those Beauvoir herself visited in New York and Chicago.

Eleanore Holveck is associate professor and former chair of the Philosophy Department at Duquesne University. She has written extensively on the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir.


Holveck offers a nuanced reading of the influences on Beauvoir thought, a careful critique of contemporary discussions of her work, and an original interpretation of Beauvoir's literature both in itself and in its importance for bringing Beauvoir's category of the other to discussions of class and race. Holveck's voice is strong and clear . . . careful and respectful; best of all it is funny and ironic. This book is a pleasure to read. (Bergoffen, Debra )

"Holveck's project is both learned and daring, identifying many literary and philosophical allusions in Beauvoir's novels and challenging the philosophical status quo. I enjoyed it immensely. It is an invaluable resource for those interested in Beauvoir's philosophy and literary writings." (Simons, Peg )

Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

Full eBooks: 

• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)

• Simone de Beauvoir: The Ethics of Ambiguity

Simone de Beauvoir's Political Thinking

The first book devoted exclusively to Beauvoir’s politics

By exploring the life and work of the influential feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir, this book shows how each of us lives within political and social structures that we can--and must--play a part in transforming. It argues that Beauvoir’s careful examination of her own existence can also be understood as a dynamic method for political thinking.

As the contributors illustrate, Beauvoir's political thinking proceeds from the bottom up, using examples from individual lives as the basis for understanding and transforming our collective existence. For example, she embraced her responsibility as a French citizen as making her complicit in the French war against Algeria. Here, she sees her role as an oppressor. In other contexts, she looks to the lives of individual women, including herself, to understand the dimensions of gender inequality.

This volume’s six tightly connected essays home in on the individual’s relationship to community, and how one’s freedom interacts with the freedom of other people. Here, Beauvoir is read as neither a liberal nor a communitarian. The authors focus on her call for individuals to realize their freedom while remaining consistent with ethical obligations to the community. Beauvoir's account of her own life and the lives of others is interpreted as a method to understand individuals in relations to others, and as within structures of personal, material, and political oppression. Beauvoir's political thinking makes it clear that we cannot avoid political action. To do nothing in the face of oppression denies freedom to everyone, including oneself.

Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

Full eBooks: 

• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)

• Simone de Beauvoir: The Ethics of Ambiguity

Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir

For almost twenty years, feminist readings of Simone de Beauvoir's feminist classic The Second Sex have been dominated by dismissive interpretation of Beauvoir's philosophy as Sartrean and phallocentric. Beauvoir's angry refusal to acknowledge either her philosophical originality or her lesbian relationships led to an interpretive impasse on two issues: her relationship to existentialism and her relationship to feminism. It was not until Beauvoir's death in 1986 that this interpretive impasse would be broken. Feminist scholars reacted to news of Beauvoir's death in 1986 by initiating a reevaluation of her life's work, a task encouraged by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, her adopted daughter, who edited for posthumous publication many of Beauvoir's personal notebooks and letters to Sartre. Some of the most exciting new interpretations of Beauvoir's philosophy that have resulted are brought together here for the first time; many of them, indeed, were written expressly for this first volume of essays on Beauvoir's philosophy written since her death. From phenomenology and literary criticism to analytic philosophy and postmodern deconstruction, this collection presents a unique variety of methodological approaches to reading Beauvoir: placing her within the phenomenological tradition and identifying the Husserlean influence on her work; using the posthumously published letters and notebooks to shed light on Beauvoir's own experience of oppression and to deconstruct the philosophical movement that exploited her; analyzing the themes and structure of Beauvoir's novel The Mandarins to study her philosophy of the erotic; examining the structure of her argument about women's biology and sexual difference to challenge the criticism of Beauvoir's phallocentricism; locating her writings on decolonization as a historical antecedent of the postmodern philosophy of destruction.

Margaret A. Simons is Professor of Philosophical Studies at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. She is coeditor (with Azizah al-Hibri) of Hypatia Reborn: Essays in Feminist Philosophy (Indiana University Press, 1990).

Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

Full eBooks: 

• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)

• Simone de Beauvoir: The Ethics of Ambiguity

Simone De Beauvoir (Routledge Critical Thinkers)

'Tidd does an excellent job of linking the life to the work ... This is an accessible study that doesn't reduce of simplify De Beauvoir's work in any way, while simultaneously attempting to understand her way of living.' - Independent on Sunday 'The task of presenting a major thinker and prolific writer in such a short space cannot have been easy, but Tidd has done it very well. She has synthesized a lot of information and presented it in a clear narrative ... she expertly weaves together Beauvoir's life and the major historical events of the twentieth century and shows what impact these have had on her thinking and writing ... Tidd obviously respects Beauvoir, and this is reflected in the tactful handling of some of the more controversial aspects of her life. This is an excellent introduction to Beauvoir's work, life, and myth.' - Modern language Review 'Ursula Tidd distils some of her earlier groundbreaking analysis on Beauvoir's understanding of self and other, and resituates it in a more general appraisal of the author's life and works ... particularly helpful for students, or indeed anyone looking for a way into Beauvoir's oeuvre ... a wide-ranging and informative study.' - French Studies 'Tidd's brief survey of Beauvoir's life ends with a poignant commentary: "She sought to inscribe a path of freedom from which those who came after her could derive their own." Tidd offers her readers a roadmap to that path which is well worth following.' - Metapsychology

Ursula Tidd is a lecturer in French at the University of Manchester, and the author of Simone de Beauvoir, Gender and Testimony (1999).

Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

Full eBooks: 

• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)

• Simone de Beauvoir: The Ethics of Ambiguity