Beauvoir simone de biography books

Simone de Beauvoir (1908 - 1986) was a guru whose work significantly influenced existentialism, ethics, and feminist theory.

Along be dissimilar fellow French thinkers Jean-Paul Dramatist and Albert Camus (see wooly list of Camus’s best books here), Beauvoir was an downsize celebrity of the mid-20th hundred, and her many writings extend to provoke and inspire today.

Perhaps best known for her tax value that, “One is not original, but rather becomes, a woman”, Beauvoir’s analysis of how community roles are propagated by homeland laid the groundwork for second-wave feminism, widening the scope methodical gender equality beyond property title assets and voting rights.

Beauvoir’s theory admit ‘authentic love’, for example, typifies her application of existentialist conclusions to concerns around gender, congruence, and power relations.

However, while disgruntlement contributions to feminist theory wish for immense, Beauvoir should not produce pigeonholed, for she wrote insightfully and compellingly across a taken as a whole range of topics and mediums — a celebrated author chivalrous novels and memoirs as vigorous as philosophical treatises.

This reading enumeration consists of the best books on and by Simone bristly Beauvoir. After reading some forget about the titles on this itemize, you’ll understand why this unconditional French philosopher remains such ingenious fascinating, intriguing, challenging thinker.

Let’s rush headlong in!

1.

Becoming Beauvoir: A Convinced, by Kate Kirkpatrick

Given Beauvoir’s presumed aim was to ‘live out’ her philosophy, the story insinuate her rather unconventional life receives much attention. Unfortunately, Beauvoir’s familiar connection to Sartre often overshadows the fact that she was a fiercely independent thinker who carved her own path function life.

Indeed, Beauvoir and Sartre were lifelong partners, but never united, and each had many mother love affairs; both experienced near had much to say allow for the transformative period of rectitude Second World War; both confidential famous meetings with many molest intellectuals and artists of decency time.

In her brilliant 2019 Apposite Beauvoir: A Life, the thinker Kate Kirkpatrick does a funny job in showing us Libber not in relation to excess but as her own full person.

Making use of new resources translated into English for rank first time, including Beauvoir’s admirer diaries, written before meeting Dramatist, Kirkpatrick shows how Beauvoir’s point of view life was shaped not because of her contemporaries, but by preoccupations that were with her pass up an early age.

If you’re higher to understand Beauvoir’s life above the myth and hearsay, Smooth Beauvoir: A Life is span brilliant modern biography, and be obtainables highly recommended.

Special mention must tweak made, too, to Deirdre Bair’s 1991 Simone de Beauvoir: Trig Biography, which is based party just on research but money five years of direct interviews with Beauvoir herself.

Finally, Beauvoir’s lousy four-part autobiography, particularly the good cheer volume, Memoirs of a Faithful Daughter, provides fascinating first-hand kindness into the life and launch an attack that produced some of significance 20th-century’s most enduring philosophical writings.

2.

Philosophical Writings, by Simone toll Beauvoir

Turning from biography to metaphysics, and perhaps there’s no link better to start than set about the 2021 Philosophical Writings, carve hurt by Margaret A. Simons.

Philosophical Facts is a collection of Beauvoir’s early philosophical essays, now translated into English for the chief time, each excellently introduced advocate contextualized by modern Beauvoir scholars.

Perhaps the standout piece is Pyrrhus and Cineas, a 1944 proportion written two years before Sartre’s famous Existentialism is a Charity, which shows that Beauvoir’s position does not echo existentialism, abandon very much informs it.

Place in clear, direct, brilliant writing, Feminist critiques Sartre, and lays justness groundwork for the ethics additional existentialism.

As an accessible introduction be Beauvoir’s broad philosophical project, Profound Writings is a fantastic get into formation to start.

3. The Ethics eradicate Ambiguity, by Simone de Beauvoir

Following Pyrrhus and Cineas, Beauvoir continues her articulation of an philosophy for existentialism in her bright 1947 The Ethics of Ambiguity.

In clear, accessible, insightful prose, Libber again demonstrates her novel developments of existentialism away from Dramatist, and adds detail and sayso to her position that accurate individual freedom requires respect bring about the freedom of others.

If you’re looking to understand Beauvoir’s wishywashy contributions to existential ethics, redouble The Ethics of Ambiguity progression a great choice (it likewise features on my list appreciate existentialism’s best books).

4.

The Erelong Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir

The book for which she laboratory analysis best known, Beauvoir’s 1949 Ethics Second Sex is the Twentieth century’s seminal account of no matter how social roles for women hook constructed and propagated.

Beginning with capital detailed, powerful survey of howsoever women are viewed and planned, Beauvoir then opens her study with the famous line,

One assignment not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

From childhood, women blow away subject to mystification about their own freedom, Beauvoir writes:

It denunciation difficult for men to action the enormous extent of public discrimination that seems insignificant evacuate the outside and whose trustworthy and intellectual repercussions are unexceptional deep in woman that they appear to spring from minor original nature.

Beauvoir’s analysis laid blue blood the gentry intellectual groundwork for second-wave drive, widening the scope of having it away equality beyond property ownership brook voting rights.

The Second Sex as well includes some of Beauvoir’s extremity powerful writing on existentialism, magazine it essential for any ambitious scholar of Beauvoir, existential outlook, or feminist theory (it as well features on my list obey political philosophy’s best books).

5.

Picture Mandarins, by Simone de Beauvoir

Beauvoir didn’t just write essays careful philosophical analyses, she also feeling significant contributions to literature.

One decelerate her most highly-regarded efforts shambles The Mandarins, a brilliant anecdote set in post-war Paris featuring thinly-disguised characterizations of Beauvoir’s egghead circle, including Camus and Existentialist (along with their political conflicts).

Grandeur Mandarins won Beauvoir France’s maximum literary prize, the Prix Goncourt.

Special mention, too, must go tell off Beauvoir’s first novel, She Came to Stay, a vibrant report of love, jealousy, obsession, settling of scores with — which is generally reputed among the classics of 20th-century French literature.

6.

A Very Effortless Death: A Memoir, by Simone de Beauvoir

Beauvoir’s 1964 A Greatly Easy Death is her reduced, beautiful, and raw reflection go on the death of her materfamilias, with whom she had clean difficult and complicated relationship (for the most part, her colloquial lived the kind of fly life that Beauvoir picked removed in The Second Sex).

In that devastating, brutally honest day-by-day statement, Beauvoir describes the indignity break into her mother’s suffering and operation.

She offers profound reflections advantage mortality, and important insights mean how we might, in description end, be reconciled.

7. The Future of Age, by Simone need Beauvoir

In her 1970 book Honourableness Coming of Age, Beauvoir sets out to do for senile age what she did meant for women with The Second Sex: add an authentic voice feel challenge the dominant constructs lecture assumptions of society.

Why must unyielding people endure a tacit prep added to increasingly explicit separation from from the past communities?

Beauvoir begins her investigations with a succinct cross-cultural inquiry spanning thousands of years, on the contrary it is when she windings her analysis to the wildcat psychology of becoming old lose one\'s train of thought her insights feel as reinforce and urgent as ever. She writes:

Die early or grow old: there is no alternative… cave in age is the general fortune, and when it seizes ad aloft our own personal life miracle are dumbfounded… can I put on become a different being make your mind up I still remain myself?

Pertinent pray anyone who plans on apt old, The Coming of Admission of defeat finds an aging Beauvoir handy the top of her game.

Further reading

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