person1908–1986

Simone de Beauvoir

Disciplines:

Summary

French existentialist philosopher and feminist — author of The Second Sex (1949) — partner of Jean-Paul Sartre — whose 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman' is the foundational statement of social constructionist feminism.

Core Contribution

Creates the social constructionist feminist framework — The Second Sex's argument (that women's oppression is not natural but constructed through society's designation of woman as the 'other' to man's 'subject') provided second-wave feminism with its philosophical foundation and the concept of gender as performance with its intellectual precursor.

Key Spikes & Highlights

Passed the agrégation in philosophy higher than Sartre in the same year — the woman who is usually presented as Sartre's intellectual partner outperformed him on France's most competitive philosophy examination; her intellectual standing is often described as derivative of Sartre's and this fact refutes that description directly
Her relationship with Sartre included open affairs by both parties — their correspondence shows that she wrote detailed accounts of her female lovers to Sartre and that the arrangement sometimes hurt her more than him; the 'pact' they described publicly as liberation was more complicated in private

Notable Works & Achievements

The Ethics of Ambiguity

The Second Sex

The Mandarins

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

Historical Influences

Jean-Paul Sartre Hegel Heidegger

Intellectual Lineage

Paris Sorbonne Lycée Molière Existentialist circle

Contemporaries & Peers

Jean-Paul Sartre Albert Camus Claude Lévi-Strauss

Minds Influenced

Second-wave feminism

Intellectual Posterity

The Second Sex 'One is not born but becomes a woman'Social constructionist feminism Second-wave feminism Ethics of Ambiguity

Discussing