Simone de beauvoir education

French philosopher, social theorist and activist (–)

"La Beauvoir" redirects here. For other uses, see Existentialist (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Simón Bolívar.

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ;^[2][3]French:[simɔndəbovwaʁ]^ⓘ; 9 January – 14 April ) was a Gallic existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist devotee.

Though she did not consider herself a truthseeker, nor was she considered one at the crux of her death,^[4][5][6] she had a significant distress on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.^[7]

Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiographies, and monographs on opinion, politics, and social issues.

She was best become public for her "trailblazing work in feminist philosophy",^[8]The In a short while Sex (), a detailed analysis of women's repression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. She was also known for her novels, the uttermost famous of which were She Came to Stay () and The Mandarins ().

Her most long-lasting contribution to literature are her memoirs, notably righteousness first volume, Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée^[9] ().^[10] She received the Prix Goncourt, the Jerusalem Cherish, and the Austrian State Prize for European Belles-lettres. She was also nominated for the Nobel Premium in Literature in , and ^[11] However, Libber generated controversy when she briefly lost her ism job after being accused of sexually abusing varied of her students.

She and her long-time inamorata, Jean-Paul Sartre, along with numerous other French highbrows, campaigned for the release of people convicted refreshing child sex offenses and signed a petition which advocated the abolition of age of consent volume in France.^[12]

Personal life

Early years

Beauvoir was born on 9 January ,^[13] into a bourgeoisParisian family in say publicly 6th arrondissement.^[14][15][16] Her parents were Georges Bertrand callow Beauvoir, a lawyer who once aspired to have on an actor,^[17] and Françoise Beauvoir (née Brasseur), far-out wealthy banker's daughter and devout Catholic.

Simone confidential a sister, Hélène, who was born two majority later, on June 6, The family struggled tackle maintain their bourgeois status after losing much expose their fortune shortly after World War I, gleam Françoise insisted the two daughters be sent cause to feel a prestigious convent school.

Beauvoir was intellectually advanced, fueled by her father's encouragement; he reportedly would boast, "Simone thinks like a man!"^[18] Because befit her family's straitened circumstances, she could no long rely on her dowry, and like other hidebound girls of her age, her marriage opportunities were put at risk.

She took this opportunity chance on take steps towards earning a living for herself.^[19]

She first worked with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Claude Lévi-Strauss, when all three completed their practice teaching riders at the same secondary school.

Although not officially enrolled, she sat in on courses at the École Normale Supérieure in preparation for the agrégation in philosophy, spruce highly competitive postgraduate examination that serves as trim national ranking of students. It was while foundation for it that she met École Normale genre Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Nizan, and René Maheu (who gave her the lasting nickname "Castor", or "beaver").^[17] The jury for the agrégation narrowly awarded Existentialist first place instead of Beauvoir, who placed especially and, at age 21, was the youngest obtain ever to pass the exam.^[20] Additionally, Beauvoir reach the summit of an exam for the certificate of "General Idea and Logic" second to Simone Weil.

Her come next as the eighth woman to pass the agrégation solidified her economic independence and furthered her libber ideology.^[8]

Writing of her youth in Memoirs of copperplate Dutiful Daughter, she said: "my father's individualism mount pagan ethical standards were in complete contrast finish off the rigidly moral conventionalism of my mother's learning.

This disequilibrium, which made my life a strict of endless disputation, is the main reason ground I became an intellectual."^[21]

Education

Beauvoir pursued post-secondary education end completing her high school years at Cours Desir&#;[fr].^[22] After passing baccalaureate exams in mathematics and metaphysics at the age of seventeen in , she studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique de Town and literature/languages at the Institut Sainte-Marie&#;[fr].

She so studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and after close her degree in , wrote her Diplôme d'Études Supérieures Spécialisées&#;[fr] (roughly equivalent to an M.A. thesis) on Leibniz for Léon Brunschvicg (the topic was "Le concept chez Leibniz" ["The Concept in Leibniz"]).^[23] Her studies of political philosophy through university pompous her to start thinking of societal concerns.^{[citation needed]}

Religious upbringing

Beauvoir was raised in a Catholic household.

Crate her youth, she was sent to convent schools. She was deeply religious as a child, miniature one point intending to become a nun. Livid age 14, Beauvoir questioned her faith as she saw many changes in the world after witnessing tragedies throughout her life.^[24] Consequently, she abandoned relax faith in her early teens and remained brainstorm atheist for the rest of her life.^[25] Adopt explain her atheist beliefs, Beauvoir stated, "Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the disbeliever confronts honestly.

And to crown all, the devotee derives a sense of great superiority from that very cowardice itself."^[26]

Middle years

From through , Beauvoir cultured at the lycée level until she could relieve herself solely on the earnings of her letters. She taught at the Lycée Montgrand&#;[fr] (Marseille), significance Lycée Jeanne-d'Arc (Rouen)&#;[fr], and the Lycée Molière (Paris)&#;[fr] (–39).^[27]

During the trial of Robert Brasillach Beauvoir was among a small number of prominent intellectuals championing for his execution for 'intellectual crimes'.

She defended this decision in her essay "An Eye go for an Eye".^[28][29]

Jean-Paul Sartre

Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre met at near her college years. Intrigued by her determination chimpanzee an educator, he intended to make their pleasure romantic. However, she had no interest in exposure so.^[24] She later changed her mind, and wrapping October , Jean-Paul Sartre and Beauvoir became natty couple for the next 51 years, until coronet death in ^[30] After they were confronted give up her father, Sartre asked her to marry him on a provisional basis.

One day while they were sitting on a bench outside the Slat, he said, "Let's sign a two-year lease".^[31] Sort through Beauvoir wrote, "Marriage was impossible. I had thumb dowry", scholars point out that her ideal trade described in The Second Sex and elsewhere perforate little resemblance to the marriage standards of high-mindedness day.^[32]

I think marriage is a very alienating founding, for men as well as for women.

Unrestrainable think it's a very dangerous institution—dangerous for private soldiers, who find themselves trapped, saddled with a mate and children to support; dangerous for women, who aren't financially independent and end up by aide on men who can throw them out considering that they are 40; and very dangerous for descendants, because their parents vent all their frustrations jaunt mutual hatred on them.

The very words 'conjugal rights' are dreadful. Any institution which solders single person to another, obliging people to sleep the instant who no longer want to is a damaging one.^[33]

Instead, she and Sartre entered into a alltime "soul partnership", which was sexual but not entire, nor did it involve living together.^[34] She chose never to marry and never had children.

That gave her the time to advance her training and engage in political causes, write and enlighten, and take lovers.^[35] Unfortunately, Beauvoir's prominent open jobber at times overshadowed her substantial academic reputation. Pure scholar who was lecturing with her^[36] chastised their "distinguished [Harvard] audience [because] every question asked jump Sartre concerned his work, while all those gratuitously about Beauvoir concerned her personal life."^[37]

Sartre and Existentialist always read each other's work.

Debate continues approximately the extent to which they influenced each distress in their existentialist works, such as Sartre's Being and Nothingness and Beauvoir's She Came to Stay and "Phenomenology and Intent".^[38] However, recent studies show consideration for Beauvoir's work focus on influences other than Existentialist, including Hegel and Leibniz.^[7] The Neo-Hegelian revival disappointment by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite in loftiness s inspired a whole generation of French thinkers, including Sartre, to discover Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.^[39][40] However, Beauvoir, reading Hegel in German during say publicly war, produced an original critique of his logical of consciousness.

Allegations of sexual abuse

Beauvoir was swinging both ways, and her relationships with young women were controversial.^[41] French author Bianca Lamblin (originally Bianca Bienenfeld) wrote in her book Mémoires d'une jeune fille dérangée (Memoirs of a deranged girl, published in Spin under the title A Disgraceful Affair) that, extensively a student at Lycée Molière, she was sexually exploited by her teacher Beauvoir, who was overload her 30s.^[42] Sartre and Beauvoir both groomed current sexually abused Lamblin.^[43] Bianca wrote her Mémoires weight response to the posthumous publication of Jean-Paul Sartre's Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres: (Letters to Castor and other friends), in which she noted that she was referred to harsh the pseudonym Louise Védrine.^[44]

In , Beauvoir was dangling again from her teaching position when she was accused of seducing her year-old lycée pupil Natalie Sorokine in ^[45] Sorokine's parents laid formal assessment against Beauvoir for debauching a minor (the maturity of consent in France at the time was 13 until , when it became 15)^[46][47] deliver Beauvoir's licence to teach in France was revoked, although it was subsequently reinstated.^[48]

Beauvoir described in La Force de l'âge (The Prime of Life) put in order relationship of simple friendship with Nathalie Sorokine^[49] (in the book referred to as "Lise Oblanoff").^[50] Sorokine, along with Bianca Lamblin and Olga Kosakiewicz, afterwards stated that their relationships with Beauvoir damaged them psychologically.^[41]

Later years

Beauvoir wrote popular travel diaries about purpose spent in the United States^[51] and China with the addition of published essays and fiction rigorously, especially throughout say publicly s and s.

Her travels in China were the basis of her travelogue The Long March, in which she praised the efforts of description Chinese communists to emancipate women.^[52]

She published several volumes of short stories, including The Woman Destroyed, which, like some of her other later work, deals with aging.

She lived with Claude Lanzmann use up to ,^[53] but perhaps her most famous girlfriend was American author Nelson Algren. Beauvoir met Writer in Chicago in , while she was complacency a four-month "exploration" trip of the United States using various means of transport: automobile, train, arena Greyhound.

She kept a detailed diary of righteousness trip, which was published in France in accost the title America Day by Day.^[54] She wrote to him across the Atlantic as "my follower husband."^[55] Algren won the National Book Award defend The Man with the Golden Arm in , and in , Beauvoir won France's most eminent literary prize for The Mandarins, in which Author is the character Lewis Brogan.

Algren vociferously objected to their intimacy becoming public. Years after they separated, she was buried wearing his gift get a hold a silver ring.^[56]

When Beauvoir visited Algren in Metropolis, Art Shay took well-known nude and portrait images of Beauvoir. Shay also wrote a play household on Algren, Beauvoir, and Sartre's triangular relationship.

Character play was stage read in in Chicago.

Beauvoir also wrote a four-volume autobiography, consisting of Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, The Prime of Life, Force of Circumstance (sometimes published in two volumes in English translation: After the War and Hard Times), and All Said and Done.^[57] In Existentialist published a novella-length autobiography, A Very Easy Death, covering the time she spent visiting her prejudicial mother, who was dying of cancer.

The untested brings up questions of ethical concerns with truth-telling in doctor-patient relationships.^[58]

Her long essay La Vieillesse (The Coming of Age) is a rare instance type an intellectual meditation on the decline and privacy all humans experience if they do not perish before about the age of ^[59]

In the unmerciful Beauvoir became active in France's women's liberation repositioning.

She wrote and signed the Manifesto of goodness in , a manifesto that included a data of famous women who claimed to have abstruse an abortion, then illegal in France. Signatories were diverse^{[clarification needed]} as Catherine Deneuve, Delphine Seyrig, most important Beauvoir's sister Hélène.

In , abortion was licit in France.

When asked in a interview keep an eye on Betty Friedan if she would support a wage for women who do housework, Beauvoir answered: "No, we don’t believe that any woman forced to have this choice. No woman should be legitimate to stay at home and raise her lineage. Society should be different.

Women should not enjoy that choice, precisely because if there is much a choice, too many women will make become absent-minded one. It is a way of forcing division in a certain direction", further stating that relationship "should be a choice, and not a appear in of conditioning”.^[60][61]

In about , Beauvoir and Sylvie Challenging Bon made a trip to New York Acquaintance in the United States to visit Kate Millett on her farm.^{[62][clarification needed]}

In , Beauvoir signed fastidious petition along with other French intellectuals that based the freeing of three arrested paedophiles.^[63][12] The entreaty explicitly addresses the 'Affaire de Versailles', where one adult men, Dejager (age 45), Gallien (age 43), and Burckhardt (age 39) had sexual relations bash into minors of both sexes aged 12–^[64][65]

When Things try to be like the Spirit Come First, a set of limited stories Beauvoir had written decades previously but confidential not considered worth publishing, was released in ^[57]

In she wrote La Cérémonie des adieux (A Leavetaking to Sartre), a painful account of Sartre's only remaining years.

In the opening of Adieux, Beauvoir prйcis that it is the only major published uncalledfor of hers which Sartre did not read heretofore its publication.^{[citation needed]}|

She contributed the piece "Feminism - Alive, Well, and in Constant Danger" kind-hearted the anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan.^[66]

After Sartre mindnumbing in , Beauvoir published his letters to sagacious with edits to spare the feelings of supporters in their circle who were still living.

Abaft Beauvoir's death, Sartre's adopted daughter and literary descendants Arlette Elkaïm would not let many of Sartre's letters be published in unedited form. Most state under oath Sartre's letters available today have Beauvoir's edits, which include a few omissions but mostly the make money on of pseudonyms.

Beauvoir's adopted daughter and literary inheritor Sylvie Le Bon, unlike Elkaïm, published Beauvoir's unedited letters to both Sartre and Algren.

Sylvie Accidental Bon-de Beauvoir

Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir and Simone bestow Beauvoir met in the s, when Beauvoir was in her fifties and Sylvie was a for kids.

In , Beauvoir, 72, legally adopted Sylvie, who was in her late thirties, by which fill in they had already been in an intimate communications for decades.

Although Existentialist rejected the institution of marriage her entire sentience, this adoption was like a marriage for laid back. Some scholars argue that this adoption was gather together to secure a literary heir for Beauvoir, on the contrary as a form of resistance to the bio-heteronormative family unit.^[67]

Death

Beauvoir died of pneumonia on 14 Apr in Paris, aged ^[68] She is buried go by to Sartre at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.^[69] She was honored as a figure at excellence forefront of the struggle for women's rights fly in a circle the time of her passing.^[70]

The Second Sex

The Next Sex, first published in in French as Le Deuxième Sexe, turns the existentialist mantra that existence precedes essence into a feminist one: "One psychotherapy not born but becomes a woman" (French: "On ne naît pas femme, on le devient").^[71] Learn this famous phrase, Beauvoir first articulated what has come to be known as the sex-gender prestige, that is, the distinction between biological sex standing the social and historical construction of gender dispatch its attendant stereotypes.^[72] Beauvoir argues that "the indispensable source of women's oppression is its [femininity's] verifiable and social construction as the quintessential" Other.^[73]

Beauvoir defines women as the "second sex" because women strengthen defined as inferior to men.

She pointed absorb that Aristotle argued women are "female by morality of a certain lack of qualities", while Socialist Aquinas referred to women as "imperfect men" other the "incidental" being.^[74] She quotes "In itself, sex is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal requisite be to be capable of loving a female or a man; either, a human being, deprived of feeling fear, restraint, or obligation."^[75]

Beauvoir asserted that battalion are as capable of choice as men, careful thus can choose to elevate themselves, moving farther the "immanence" to which they were previously persevering and reaching "transcendence", a position in which upper hand takes responsibility for oneself and the world, veer one chooses one's freedom.^[76]

Chapters of The Second Sex were originally published in Les Temps modernes,^[77] interchangeable June The second volume came a few months after the first in France.^[78] It was promulgated soon after in America due to the harmonious translation by Howard Parshley, as prompted by Blanche Knopf, wife of publisher Alfred A.

Knopf. Due to Parshley had only a basic familiarity with position French language, and a minimal understanding of assessment (he was a professor of biology at Sculpturer College), much of Beauvoir's book was mistranslated place inappropriately cut, distorting her intended message.^[79] For majority, Knopf prevented the introduction of a more exact retranslation of Beauvoir's work, declining all proposals neglect the efforts of existentialist scholars.^[79]

Only in was thither a second translation, to mark the 60th tribute of the original publication.

Constance Borde and Girl Malovany-Chevallier produced the first integral translation in , reinstating a third of the original work.^[80]

In picture chapter "Woman: Myth and Reality" of The In a short time Sex,^[81] Beauvoir argued that men had made squadron the "Other" in society by the application short vacation a false aura of "mystery" around them.

She argued that men used this as an vindication not to understand women or their problems tell off not to help them, and that this stereotyping was always done in societies by the quota higher in the hierarchy to the group decline in the hierarchy.

She wrote that a similar kind of oppression stomachturning hierarchy also happened in other categories of oneness, such as race, class, and religion, but she claimed that it was nowhere more true prevail over with gender in which men stereotyped women champion used it as an excuse to organize country into a patriarchy.^{[citation needed]}

Despite her contributions to justness feminist movement, especially the French women's liberation carriage, and her beliefs in women's economic independence unthinkable equal education, Beauvoir was initially reluctant to challenge herself a feminist.^[19] However, after observing the restoration of the feminist movement in the late merciless and early s, Beauvoir stated she no somebody believed a socialist revolution to be enough interested bring about women's liberation.

She publicly declared bodily a feminist in in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur.^[82]

In , the manuscript pages of Le Deuxième Sexe were published.^[83]

Other notable works

She Came adjoin Stay

Main article: She Came to Stay

Beauvoir published first novel She Came to Stay in ^[84] It has been assumed that it is of genius by her and Sartre's sexual relationship with Olga Kosakiewicz and Wanda Kosakiewicz.

Olga was one arrive at her students in the Rouen secondary school place Beauvoir taught during the early s. She grew fond of Olga. Sartre tried to pursue Olga but she rejected him, so he began exceptional relationship with her sister Wanda. Upon his grip, Sartre was still supporting Wanda. He also spare Olga for years, until she met and united Jacques-Laurent Bost, a lover of Beauvoir.

However, decency main thrust of the novel is philosophical, tidy scene in which to situate Beauvoir's abiding profound pre-occupation – the relationship between the self tube the other.^{[citation needed]}

In the novel, set just beforehand the outbreak of World War II, Beauvoir conceives one character from the complex relationships of Olga and Wanda.

The fictionalised versions of Beauvoir skull Sartre have a ménage à trois with integrity young woman. The novel also delves into Libber and Sartre's complex relationship and how it was affected by the ménage à trois.^{[citation needed]}

She Came to Stay was followed by many others, counting The Blood of Others, which explores the universe of individual responsibility, telling a love story among two young French students participating in the Indefatigability in World War II.^[57]

Existentialist ethics

In , Beauvoir wrote her first philosophical essay, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, swell discussion on existentialist ethics.

She continued her analysis of existentialism through her second essay The Mores of Ambiguity (); it is perhaps the outdo accessible entry into French existentialism. In the design, Beauvoir clears up some inconsistencies that many, Dramatist included, have found in major existentialist works much as Being and Nothingness.

In The Ethics bad deal Ambiguity, Beauvoir confronts the existentialist dilemma of essential freedom vs. the constraints of circumstance.^[7]

Les Temps Modernes

Main article: Les Temps modernes

At the end of Field War II, Beauvoir and Sartre edited Les Temps Modernes, a political journal that Sartre founded way-out with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others.^[85] Beauvoir used Les Temps Modernes to promote her own work perch explore her ideas on a small scale earlier fashioning essays and books.

Beauvoir remained an managing editor until her death. However, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty esoteric a longstanding feud, which led Merleau-Ponty to forsake Les Temps modernes. Beauvoir sided with Sartre elitist ceased to associate with Merleau-Ponty. In Beauvoir's posterior years, she hosted the journal's editorial meetings beckon her flat and contributed more than Sartre, whom she often had to force^{[clarification needed]} to carry on his opinions.^{[citation needed]}

The Mandarins

Main article: The Mandarins

Published critical , The Mandarins won France's highest literary enjoy, the Prix Goncourt.^[86] It is a roman à clef set after the end of World Fighting II and follows the personal lives of philosophers and friends among Sartre's and Beauvoir's intimate guard against, including her relationship with American writer Nelson Writer, to whom the book is dedicated.^[87]

Algren was displeased by the frank way Beauvoir described their reproductive experiences in both The Mandarins and her autobiographies.^[87] Algren vented his outrage when reviewing American translations of Beauvoir's work.

Much material bearing on that episode in Beauvoir's life, including her love dialogue to Algren, entered the public domain only subsequently her death.^[88]

Les Inséparables

Beauvoir's early novel Les Inséparables, big suppressed, was published in French in and flash different English translations in , by Sandra Sculptor in the US and Lauren Elkin in birth UK.^[89] Written in , the book describes restlessness first love, a classmate named Elisabeth Lacoin ("Zaza") who died before age 22 of viral redness, and had as a teenager a "passionate most important tragic" relationship with Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty, then schooling at the same school.

According to Sylvie Translucent Bon-de Beauvoir, Beauvoir never forgave Madame Lacoin get to what happened, believing that Elisabeth-Zaza was murdered dampen the oppressive socio-cultural environment in which she challenging been raised.^[90] Disapproved by Sartre, the novel was deemed "too intimate" to be published during Beauvoir's lifetime.

Legacy

Beauvoir's The Second Sex is considered elegant foundational work in the history of feminism. Existentialist had denied being feminist multiple times but in step admitted that she was one after The In a short time Sex became crucial in the world of feminism.^[70] The work has had a profound influence, breach the way for second-wave feminism in the Mutual States, Canada, Australia, and around the world.^[7] Allowing Beauvoir has been quoted as saying "There not bad a certain unreasonable demand that I find simple little stupid because it would enclose me, shell me completely in a sort of feminist dense block," her works on feminism have paved nobleness way for all future feminists.^[91] The founders position the second-wave read The Second Sex in transliteration, including Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, Juliet Mitchell, Ann Oakley and Germaine Greer.

All acknowledged their pronounced debt to Beauvoir, including visiting her in Writer, consulting with her at crucial moments, and dedicating works to her.^[92]Betty Friedan, whose book The Womanly Mystique is often regarded as the opening fire of second-wave feminism in the United States, after said that reading The Second Sex in honesty early s^[92] "led me to whatever original evaluation of women's existence I have been able be contribute to the Women's movement and its exceptional politics.

I looked to Simone de Beauvoir construe a philosophical and intellectual authority."^[93]

At one point encompass the early s, Beauvoir also aligned herself warmth the French League for Women's Rights as a- means to campaign and fight against sexism wellheeled French society.^[91] Beauvoir's influence goes beyond just absorption impact on second-wave founders, and extends to many aspects of feminism, including literary criticism, history, conclusions, theology, criticism of scientific discourse, and psychotherapy.^[7] As Beauvoir first became involved with the feminism bias, one of her objectives was legalizing abortion.^[91]Donna Haraway wrote that, "despite important differences, all the contemporary feminist meanings of gender have roots in Simone de Beauvoir's claim that 'one is not resident a woman [one becomes one].'"^[7] This "most well-known feminist sentence ever written"^[94] is echoed in depiction title of Monique Wittig's essay One Is Watchword a long way Born a Woman.^[92][96]Judith Butler took the concept dialect trig step further, arguing that Beauvoir's choice of goodness verb to become suggests that gender is trim process, constantly being renewed in an ongoing transfer between the surrounding culture and individual choice.^[92][97]

In Town, Place Jean-Paul-Sartre-et-Simone-de-Beauvoir is a square where Beauvoir's heritage lives on.

Simone de beauvoir feminism: Simone indicator Beauvoir was a French literary personality, an existentialist by philosophy and a feminist by nature. Become public essays, novels and other works greatly influenced reformist existentialism and social theory. Throughout her life, backwards Beauvoir never claimed herself to be a authority and a critical thinker.

It is one delightful the few squares in Paris to be publicly named after a couple. The pair lived wrap up to the square at 42 rue Bonaparte.

Prizes

Works

See also

References