Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.
Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiography and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women’s oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism; and for her novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins. She was also known for her open, lifelong relationship with French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
Beauvoir published his letters to her with edits to spare the feelings of people in their circle who were still living. After Beauvoir’s death, Sartre’s adopted daughter and literary heir Arlette Elkaïm would not let many of Sartre’s letters be published in unedited form. Most of Sartre’s letters available today have Beauvoir’s edits, which include a few omissions but mostly the use of pseudonyms.
Beauvoir died of pneumonia on 14 April 1986 in Paris, aged 78. She is buried next to Sartre at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. (via Wikipedia)
A few of her famous quotes are quoted below:
On Love:
The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.
On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself — on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life . . .
I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself.
She was ready to deny the existence of space and time rather than admit that love might not be eternal.
On Life:
Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.
One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.
I am awfully greedy; I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
On Death:
It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life’s parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.
On Feminism:
On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself–on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger.
…her wings are cut and then she is blamed for not knowing how to fly.
A man attaches himself to woman — not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.
No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.
Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female — whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.
Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.
Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise.
If the feminine issue is so absurd, is because the male’s arrogance made it “a discussion.