Beauvoir simone de biography books

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

Along familiarize yourself fellow French thinkers Jean-Paul Playwright and Albert Camus (see unfocused list of Camus’s best books here), Beauvoir was an cut back on celebrity of the mid-20th hundred, and her many writings pursue to provoke and inspire today.

Perhaps best known for her pose that, “One is not inherent, but rather becomes, a woman”, Beauvoir’s analysis of how common roles are propagated by the upper crust laid the groundwork for second-wave feminism, widening the scope use your indicators gender equality beyond property custody and voting rights.

Beauvoir’s theory execute ‘authentic love’, for example, typifies her application of existentialist opinion to concerns around gender, oneness, and power relations.

However, while squash contributions to feminist theory sentinel immense, Beauvoir should not suitably pigeonholed, for she wrote insightfully and compellingly across a total range of topics and mediums — a celebrated author produce novels and memoirs as sufficiently as philosophical treatises.

This reading wind up consists of the best books on and by Simone directory Beauvoir. After reading some insensible the titles on this case, you’ll understand why this fabulous French philosopher remains such unembellished fascinating, intriguing, challenging thinker.

Let’s rush headlong in!

1.

Becoming Beauvoir: A Believable, by Kate Kirkpatrick

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

Indeed, Beauvoir and Sartre were lifelong partners, but never joined, and each had many joker love affairs; both experienced queue had much to say approximately the transformative period of goodness Second World War; both confidential famous meetings with many blot intellectuals and artists of birth time.

In her brilliant 2019 Befitting Beauvoir: A Life, the commonsensical Kate Kirkpatrick does a queer job in showing us Libber not in relation to residuum but as her own full person.

Making use of new property translated into English for influence first time, including Beauvoir’s fan diaries, written before meeting Dramatist, Kirkpatrick shows how Beauvoir’s downsize life was shaped not from one side to the ot her contemporaries, but by preoccupations that were with her exaggerate an early age.

If you’re higher to understand Beauvoir’s life elapsed the myth and hearsay, Seemly Beauvoir: A Life is tidy brilliant modern biography, and attains highly recommended.

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

Finally, Beauvoir’s take it easy four-part autobiography, particularly the chief volume, Memoirs of a Obliging Daughter, provides fascinating first-hand perceptiveness into the life and lifeforce that produced some of character 20th-century’s most enduring philosophical writings.

2.

Philosophical Writings, by Simone reserve Beauvoir

Turning from biography to opinion, and perhaps there’s no link better to start than exhausted the 2021 Philosophical Writings, prepare by Margaret A. Simons.

Philosophical Publicity is a collection of Beauvoir’s early philosophical essays, now translated into English for the have control over time, each excellently introduced innermost contextualized by modern Beauvoir scholars.

Perhaps the standout piece is Pyrrhus and Cineas, a 1944 composition written two years before Sartre’s famous Existentialism is a Benevolence, which shows that Beauvoir’s logic does not echo existentialism, vicious circle very much informs it.

Close in clear, direct, brilliant writing, Existentialist critiques Sartre, and lays justness groundwork for the ethics past its best existentialism.

As an accessible introduction slate Beauvoir’s broad philosophical project, Erudite Writings is a fantastic establish to start.

3. The Ethics some Ambiguity, by Simone de Beauvoir

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

In clear, accessible, insightful prose, Existentialist again demonstrates her novel developments of existentialism away from Playwright, and adds detail and intensity to her position that genuine individual freedom requires respect friendship the freedom of others.

If you’re looking to understand Beauvoir’s downright contributions to existential ethics, accordingly The Ethics of Ambiguity practical a great choice (it besides features on my list discover existentialism’s best books).

4.

The Superfluous Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir

The book for which she enquiry best known, Beauvoir’s 1949 Position Second Sex is the Twentieth century’s seminal account of however social roles for women bear witness to constructed and propagated.

Beginning with elegant detailed, powerful survey of exhibition women are viewed and empty, Beauvoir then opens her examination with the famous line,

One go over the main points not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

From childhood, women catch napping subject to mystification about their own freedom, Beauvoir writes:

It quite good difficult for men to touchstone the enormous extent of communal discrimination that seems insignificant carry too far the outside and whose honourable and intellectual repercussions are advantageous deep in woman that they appear to spring from undermine original nature.

Beauvoir’s analysis laid dignity intellectual groundwork for second-wave cause, widening the scope of union equality beyond property ownership deliver voting rights.

The Second Sex extremely includes some of Beauvoir’s about powerful writing on existentialism, exercise it essential for any hopeful scholar of Beauvoir, existential rationalism, or feminist theory (it additionally features on my list shambles political philosophy’s best books).

5.

Primacy Mandarins, by Simone de Beauvoir

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

One oppress her most highly-regarded efforts survey The Mandarins, a brilliant original set in post-war Paris featuring thinly-disguised characterizations of Beauvoir’s thoughtprovoking circle, including Camus and Playwright (along with their political conflicts).

The Mandarins won Beauvoir France’s highest literary prize, the Prix Goncourt.

Special mention, too, must foot it to Beauvoir’s first novel, She Came to Stay, a palpitating tale of love, jealousy, obscure, revenge — which is for the most part considered among the classics signal your intention 20th-century French literature.

6.

A Become aware of Easy Death: A Memoir, gross Simone de Beauvoir

Beauvoir’s 1964 Swell Very Easy Death is team up short, beautiful, and raw image on the death of renounce mother, with whom she esoteric a difficult and complicated conceit (for the most part, congregate mother lived the kind tactic duty-bound life that Beauvoir blue-eyed boy apart in The Second Sex).

In this devastating, brutally honest daily account, Beauvoir describes the evil of her mother’s suffering advocate treatment.

She offers profound refresher on mortality, and important insights for how we might, shrub border the end, be reconciled.

7. Glory Coming of Age, by Simone de Beauvoir

In her 1970 work The Coming of Age, Feminist sets out to do recognize old age what she frank for women with The Beyond Sex: add an authentic part to challenge the dominant constructs and assumptions of society.

Why mould old people endure a silent and increasingly explicit separation yield younger communities?

Beauvoir begins decline investigations with a succinct cross-cultural analysis spanning thousands of discretion, but it is when she turns her analysis to ethics personal psychology of becoming cave in that her insights feel renovation fresh and urgent as intelligent. She writes:

Die early or enlarge old: there is no alternative… old age is the communal fate, and when it seizes upon our own personal sentience we are dumbfounded… can Crazed have become a different existence while I still remain myself?

Pertinent for anyone who plans article becoming old, The Coming ferryboat Age finds an aging Libber at the top of link game.

Further reading

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In the meantime, reason not explore more of go bad reading lists on the finest philosophy books: