Women in Philosophy: Simone de Beauvoir, Essay Example

All of us earlier or later think about such categories as ethics, culture, moral, freedom, faith and consciousness. That is why all the people can be called philosophers. However not all of us will be considered remarkable philosophers in future. Unfortunately, sometimes even prominent thinkers are not distinguished during their life. Simone de Beauvoir is one of such philosophers. ”This woman had been almost totally excluded from philosophical canon until the 1980s” (Bair). In spite of this fact, Beauvoir can be called one of the most preeminent and talented French philosophers and writers.

Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in a bourgeois family. Her mother was a catholic and tried to bring up her children in a traditional mode. In spite of this, Beauvoir had always rejected religious and cultural wealth and devoted herself to literature and education. Her first education Beauvoir received in Catholic girl’s school. At the age of eighteen she entered the Sorbonne and three years later she passed so called “aggregation” examination. In the university she got acquainted with Jean-Paul Sartre and later became one of his closest and trustworthy friends and critics. After graduating she worked as a philosophy teacher in several schools in Marseille, Rouen and Paris. She also worked as a professor at the Sorbonne.

Talking about the main directions of her philosophical work we can name such areas as ethics, feminism, fiction and politics. One of Beauvoir’s main contributions was the idea of situated freedom. ”Beauvoir maintains the existentialist belief in absolute freedom of choice and the consequent responsibility that such freedom entails, by emphasizing that one’s projects must spring from individual spontaneity and not from an external institution authority or person”( Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).  “If one denies the subjective tension of freedom one is evidently forbidding himself universally to will freedom in an indefinite movement. By virtue of the fact that he refuses to recognize that he is freely establishing the, value of the end he sets up, the serious man makes himself the slave of that end. He forgets that every goal is at the same time a point of departure and that human freedom is the ultimate, the unique end to which man should destine himself” (The Ethics of Ambiguity).  She also stipulates that freedom is not in static, it is developing all the time. Yet, she develops the concept of the appeal-that whenever we perform our freedom we influence the freedom of others. In such a way we are acting against the ethical calls of other people. At the same time we are not able to exist without people around. Otherwise our freedom will be useless and absurd. Our actions are calls to other freedoms. Of course people may choose whether respond to or ignore our impulses. That is why we cannot be sure about future; the success of our projects depends on the extent to which they are adopted by others. This may be frightening, but at the same time it is “a genuine possibility for ethics” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

As a writer she criticizes so called “status quo”. She considers that the ways in which the meanings of the words are revealed in language are really significant. Beauvoir turned to the language of novel and drama. With the help of them she enacts her existential ethic of freedom, responsibility, joy and generosity and examines our relationships with others. One more Beauvoir’s crucial achievement is the investigation in the woman’s situation near the man. In her philosophical works she defines the woman as “the other”. Woman “is the incidental, the inessential, as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute-she is the Other.”(The Second Sex) Beauvoir discusses the existing stereotypes about women and proves that they are not fare, none of them is sufficient to explain women’s definition as man’s other. She also stipulates that “one is not born, but rather becomes a woman” (The Second Sex). Women receive education and develop their knowledge in the same way as men do. Beauvoir destroys the existing myth that women are born “feminine”.

Among her greatest books we can name: “She came to stay” (1943)(a metaphysical novel, consisting of the letters between Sartre and Beauvoir and Beauvoir’s diaries of that period); “Pyrrhus and Cinéas” ( 1944)(first philosophical essay, where Beauvoir stipulates the main ethical problems); The Ethics of Ambiguity(1947)(a novel/where she develops the idea of invulnerable freedom), The Second Sex( feminist novel, where she discusses the role of women in society, “Must we burn Sade”(1951/52) and The Mandarins,(Beauvoir’s most famous and critically acclaimed novel, which won the prestigious French award for literature, the Prix Concourt). Simone de Beauvoir also wrote some short stories (When Things of the Spirit Come First, The woman destroyed (1969)) and one play (Who Shall Die?)(1945).

During all of her life Simone de Beauvoir dreamed of a different world, world without any race, class, sex or ethnicity prejudice, world, where everyone would feel free and comfortable. She knew that it is not easy to achieve such a world. Throughout her career, however, she used philosophical and literary tools to reveal the possibilities of such a world and appealed to us to work for it.

Work Cited

Arp, Kristana. The Bonds of Freedom. Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 2001

Bair, Deirdre. Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography. New York: Summit Books, 1990.

Bauer, Nancy. Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy and Feminism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York:Citadel Press, 1996.

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage Books,   1989.

James Marshall. Simone de Beauvoir, Philosopher of the self. 1 Dec. 2000. 7 May 2009. <http://www.ffst.hr/ENCYCLOPAEDIA/beauvoir.htm>

Moi, Toril. Feminist Theory and Simone de Beauvoir. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990

Simons, Margaret. Beauvoir and the Second Sex: Feminism, Race and the Origins of Existentialism. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Simone de Beauvoir.  17 Aug. 2004. 7 May 2009. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauvoir>

Vintges, Karen. Philosophy as Passion: The Thinking of Simone de Beauvoir. Translated by Anne Lavelle. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.