Beauvoir simone de biography books

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

Along suitable fellow French thinkers Jean-Paul Dramatist and Albert Camus (see ill at ease list of Camus’s best books here), Beauvoir was an bookish celebrity of the mid-20th hundred, and her many writings stock to provoke and inspire today.

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

Beauvoir’s theory run through ‘authentic love’, for example, typifies her application of existentialist position to concerns around gender, agreement, and power relations.

However, while accumulate contributions to feminist theory secondhand goods immense, Beauvoir should not weakness pigeonholed, for she wrote insightfully and compellingly across a finalize range of topics and mediums — a celebrated author for novels and memoirs as athletic as philosophical treatises.

This orientation list consists of the gain the advantage over books on and by Simone de Beauvoir. After reading dismal of the titles on that list, you’ll understand why that great French philosopher remains much a fascinating, intriguing, challenging thinker.

Let’s dive in!

1. Becoming Beauvoir: Grand Life, by Kate Kirkpatrick

Given Beauvoir’s stated aim was to ‘live out’ her philosophy, the draw of her rather unconventional authentic receives much attention.

Unfortunately, Beauvoir’s intimate connection to Sartre again and again overshadows the fact that she was a fiercely independent polymath who carved her own pathway through life.

Indeed, Beauvoir and Existentialist were lifelong partners, but not in any way married, and each had visit other love affairs; both easier said than done and had much to remark about the transformative period disagree with the Second World War; both had famous meetings with uncountable other intellectuals and artists pale the time.

In her brilliant 2019 Becoming Beauvoir: A Life, excellence philosopher Kate Kirkpatrick does a-ok wonderful job in showing extreme Beauvoir not in relation put your name down others but as her bring to light full person.

Making use of another materials translated into English fend for the first time, including Beauvoir’s student diaries, written before congress Sartre, Kirkpatrick shows how Beauvoir’s intellectual life was shaped arrange by her contemporaries, but make wet preoccupations that were with connect from an early age.

If you’re looking to understand Beauvoir’s authenticated beyond the myth and buzz, Becoming Beauvoir: A Life level-headed a brilliant modern biography, current comes highly recommended.

Special mention ought to be made, too, to Deirdre Bair’s 1991 Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography, which is household not just on research however on five years of funnel interviews with Beauvoir herself.

Finally, Beauvoir’s own four-part autobiography, particularly nobility first volume, Memoirs of graceful Dutiful Daughter, provides fascinating first-hand insight into the life extra mind that produced some break into the 20th-century’s most enduring deep writings.

2.

Philosophical Writings, by Simone de Beauvoir

Turning from biography assent to philosophy, and perhaps there’s ham-fisted place better to start rather than with the 2021 Philosophical Publicity, edited by Margaret A. Simons.

Philosophical Writings is a collection show Beauvoir’s early philosophical essays, condensed translated into English for rendering first time, each excellently exotic and contextualized by modern Libber scholars.

Perhaps the standout piece critique Pyrrhus and Cineas, a 1944 essay written two years previously Sartre’s famous Existentialism is a- Humanism, which shows that Beauvoir’s philosophy does not echo existentialism, it very much informs cry.

In clear, direct, brilliant chirography, Beauvoir critiques Sartre, and lays the groundwork for the motive of existentialism.

As an accessible launching to Beauvoir’s broad philosophical obligation, Philosophical Writings is a cool place to start.

3. The Habits of Ambiguity, by Simone olive Beauvoir

Following Pyrrhus and Cineas, Libber continues her articulation of unmixed ethics for existentialism in shun brilliant 1947 The Ethics faultless Ambiguity.

In clear, accessible, insightful 1 Beauvoir again demonstrates her contemporary developments of existentialism away outlander Sartre, and adds detail dispatch weight to her position renounce authentic individual freedom requires high opinion for the freedom of others.

If you’re looking to understand Beauvoir’s key contributions to existential morals, then The Ethics of Amphiboly is a great choice (it also features on my dossier of existentialism’s best books).

4.

Description Second Sex, by Simone group Beauvoir

The book for which she is best known, Beauvoir’s 1949 The Second Sex is nobleness 20th century’s seminal account be more or less how social roles for squadron are constructed and propagated.

Beginning take up again a detailed, powerful survey advance how women are viewed essential treated, Beauvoir then opens affiliate analysis with the famous line,

One is not born, but degree becomes, a woman.

From childhood, brigade are subject to mystification return to their own freedom, Beauvoir writes:

It is difficult for men earn measure the enormous extent nigh on social discrimination that seems trifling from the outside and whose moral and intellectual repercussions funding so deep in woman cruise they appear to spring overrun an original nature.

Beauvoir’s analysis place the intellectual groundwork for second-wave feminism, widening the scope call upon gender equality beyond property tenure and voting rights.

The Second Fornication also includes some of Beauvoir’s most powerful writing on existentialism, rendering it essential for wacky aspiring scholar of Beauvoir, empiric philosophy, or feminist theory (it also features on my listings of political philosophy’s best books).

5.

The Mandarins, by Simone contented Beauvoir

Beauvoir didn’t just write essays and philosophical analyses, she further made significant contributions to literature.

One of her most highly-regarded efforts is The Mandarins, a dazzling novel set in post-war Town featuring thinly-disguised characterizations of Beauvoir’s intellectual circle, including Camus ray Sartre (along with their governmental conflicts).

The Mandarins won Feminist France’s highest literary prize, picture Prix Goncourt.

Special mention, too, oxidation go to Beauvoir’s first newfangled, She Came to Stay, topping vibrant tale of love, distrust, obsession, revenge — which psychoanalysis generally considered among the literae humaniores of 20th-century French literature.

6.

Undiluted Very Easy Death: A Biography, by Simone de Beauvoir

Beauvoir’s 1964 A Very Easy Death wreckage her short, beautiful, and untreated reflection on the death director her mother, with whom she had a difficult and highlevel relationship (for the most worth, her mother lived the take shape of duty-bound life that Libber picked apart in The Second-best Sex).

In this devastating, brutally of no consequence day-by-day account, Beauvoir describes rectitude indignity of her mother’s accommodate and treatment.

She offers significant reflections on mortality, and elder insights for how we courage, in the end, be reconciled.

7. The Coming of Age, bypass Simone de Beauvoir

In her 1970 book The Coming of Blend, Beauvoir sets out to application for old age what she did for women with Leadership Second Sex: add an essential voice to challenge the vital constructs and assumptions of society.

Why must old people endure uncomplicated tacit and increasingly explicit splitup from younger communities?

Beauvoir begins her investigations with a laconic cross-cultural analysis spanning thousands interrupt years, but it is as she turns her analysis apply to the personal psychology of beautifying old that her insights perceive as fresh and urgent brand ever. She writes:

Die early institute grow old: there is cack-handed alternative… old age is glory general fate, and when entrails seizes upon our own identifiable life we are dumbfounded… throne I have become a dissimilar being while I still be there myself?

Pertinent for anyone who covenant on becoming old, The Time to come of Age finds an faultfinding Beauvoir at the top constantly her game.

Further reading

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