Simone de Beauvoir was born as Simone Lucie-Ernestine-Marie-Bartrand de Beauvoir on January 9, 1908 in Paris, France. She attended Sorbonne for an education and in 1929 passed agregation in philosophy. From 1931 to 1943, Simone was a teacher, but in 1943, started her true writing career.
Most of Simone's works included her opinions of existentialism, the belief in individuality and freedom of individuality, as well as her feministic beliefs. In 1943, Simone wrote She Came to Stay, illustrating how the human conscience treats other consciences as opponents and what society's meaning was. She also wrote The Blood of Others in 1944.
The Mandarins appeared in 1954, winning the Prix Gancourt, a type of award. This book talked about leaving personal status in exchange for political activism. In 1964 came A Very Easy Death, dealing with the issue of aging and society's attitude towards the elderly.
Simone also wrote a couple autobiographies, the most famous ones being Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter in 1958 and All Said and Done in 1972. In her autobiographical works, Simone usually put her own life in the time period that she lived in and saw how things worked out.
Probably one of Simone's most famous works was an essay called "The Second Sex". This dealt with the abolition of what Simone called the "eternal feminine", equality between the male and female sexes, and woman's role in society. This became a true classic of feminist literature.
Through her own writings, Simone de Beauvoir became a forerunner of the feminist movement and was an advocate of existentialism. She also co-created a monthly review called Le Temps modernas with a close personal friend. Simone died on April 14, 1986 in Paris, France at 76 years old.
Love her. I could read her and Sartre all day.
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.
I just finished reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Barbery, whose philosophy is somewhat similar to de Beauvoir's, especially this part, which really stuck out for me as a great summation of existentialism (although I'm not quite sure whether Barbery meant it that way, but I am pretty sure she was influenced by Sartre);
All of phenomenology is founded on this certainty: our reflective consciousness, the sign of our ontological dignity, is the only entity we have that is worth studying, for it saves us from biological determinism.
Happy Mothers's Day!
- MamaMandee
on Sep. 25, 2012 at 4:25 PM