Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–86)

(Beauvoir’s debut, a novel which is an account of a triangular relationship between one man and two women. Its philosophical theme is the conflictual relation between human beings, considering the fact that one exists for and is judged by the other.)

(Beauvoir’s first philosophical essay, which analyses the human being as transcendence and human interdependence. It is also her first inquiry into existentialist ethics.)

(Through the story of an immortal man whose experiences reach over the centuries, Beauvoir investigates in this novel the importance of human mortality for the meaning of human life.)

(Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialist ethics, centred around the concepts of ambiguity. Authenticity, freedom and the relation between ethics and politics are essential themes.)

(Contains four essays previously published in Les temps modernes, whose themes are the metaphysical novel, ethics and politics, revenge and justice, and whether existentialism is a philosophy of despair.)

(A comprehensive study of the situation of women from prehistory to the 1940s, which shows Beauvoir’s philosophy in its maturity. Introduces the important notion of woman as the Other. Note that the English translation is neither complete nor wholly correct philosophically.)

(‘Faut-il brûler Sade’, an essay on Marquis de Sade’s philosophy, also shows important aspects of Beauvoir’s ethics. Republished in the essay collection Privilèges along with ‘La pensée de droite aujourd’hui’, which treats right-wing ideology, and ‘Merleau-Ponty et le pseudosartrisme’, a defence of Sartre’s philosophy against Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s critique in Les aventures de la dialectique.)

(A critical account of The Second Sex from a feminist perspective.)

(Relevant critique of the usual interpretation of Beauvoir’s The Second Sex as a theory of gender. Maintains instead that her book should be seen as a phenomenological description of the sexual difference.)

(An important study of Beauvoir’s concepts of freedom and situation and the philosophical relationship between Beauvoir, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.)

(Discusses the difficulties women face in gaining recognition as philosophers, with Beauvoir as a case study. Analyses the androcentric aspects of Sartre’s philosophy and illustrates the differing approaches to existentialism taken by Sartre and Beauvoir.)

(An analysis of the philosophical foundations and structure of The Second Sex. Expansion of the material of §§2–3 of this entry. Originally published in 1991 in Swedish.)

(A comprehensive study of her life and work from a combined socio-historical, psychoanalytic and feminist perspective.)

(A feminist critique of Beauvoir’s concepts of transcendence and immanence.)

(Gives an account of the omissions and of the mistranslations of philosophical terms in the English edition of The Second Sex. Essential for readers of the English edition.)

(An account of the complex, two-way, philosophical relationship between Beauvoir and Sartre.)

(A collection of essays treating various aspects of Beauvoir’s philosophy, her ethics, her views on the body and sexuality, her concept of freedom, and the relationship between her philosophy and Sartre’s. For the most part not difficult reading.)

(An analysis of Beauvoir’s concept of freedom and its relation to her ethics.)

(An easily comprehensible summary of Beauvoir’s philosophy and its relation to her life. Argues that Beauvoir’s ethics is an ‘art of living’, which she formulated through her autobiography and fiction.)