Simone de Beauvoir: biography of this philosopher.

A review of the life of this French thinker so influential in feminism.

Simone de Beauvoir is one of the great minds of the 20th century. Great thinker, novelist and, although she did not recognize it, feminist, her fight for women's rights has meant a before and after to achieve gender equality.

Her way of being and seeing human relationships was a scandal at the time, especially considering the kind of relationship she had with another great philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre.

If you want to know more about the prolific intellectual life of this author and, also about her interesting personal life, read on to see a brief biography of Simone de Beauvoirto learn more about her life and work.

Simone de Beauvoir's Biography

The following are the most important events in Simone de Beauvoir's life, including the great historical figures she met and her relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre.

1. Early years

Her full name is Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de BeauvoirShe was born on January 9, 1908 in Paris, France, in a bourgeois family of the French capital. Already from the early years of the young Simone de Beauvoir, in her family there were two tendencies that pushed her to the extremes.

On the one hand, her mother was a devout Catholic, while her father was an atheist, and invited the young girl to expand her vision and knowledge of the world through reading. It is perhaps for this reason that de Beauvoir's childhood is deeply marked by an exalted faith in God, and she wanted to become a nun when she grew up. But, at the age of 14, she definitively abandons these beliefs, asserting that God simply does not exist..

The young girl was always an excellent student, and in fact her father encouraged her to continue her studies. One of the phrases that her father used to say to her, and that perhaps contributed to her growing up thinking about the differences between men and women, was "Simone thinks like a man", meaning that he saw her as intelligent as a man, according to the sexist perspective clearly predominant at that time.

2. Academic training

Around the age of 16, Simone de Beauvoir decided to study to become a teacher. decided to study to become a teacher. This would not have been possible if the family had not had financial problems, which meant that they could not offer a good dowry to marry off their daughters and opted for them to study whatever they wanted.

After passing her baccalaureate exams in mathematics in 1925, de Beauvoir enrolled at the Institut Catholique in Paris. He also combined this with studies of literature and languages at the Saint-Marie Institute. Later, he would study philosophy at the Sorbonne, finishing his studies in 1928 and presenting his thesis on Leibniz.finishing her studies in 1928 and presenting her thesis on Leibniz.

At that time, Simone de Beauvoir was the ninth woman to obtain a degree offered by the Sorbonne, because until very recently in France it had not been possible for women to study higher education.

Years later she sat the exams to become a teacher in France (agrégation) and decided to attend the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris as an auditor. It was during this time that she had the opportunity to to meet some of the great French thinkers of the 20th century, such as Paul Nizan, René Maheu and, most notably, Jean-Paul Sartre..

At the end of the agrégation tests, Sartre came in first place, while de Beauvoir came in second, becoming at the age of 21 the youngest person to have managed to pass the exam.

3. War times

From the time she obtained her agrégation in 1929 until 1943, Simone de Beauvoir dedicated herself to teaching in secondary education.. She taught in high schools in several French cities, including Marseille, Rouen and Paris. It was also in 1929 that Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre became a couple.

In 1943 she decided to leave her job as a teacher and focus on writing, publishing her first novel that same year, L'invitée. At that time Paris had been taken over by the Nazis and de Beauvoir dedicated herself to reflecting on the responsibility of intellectuals in wartimein his book Le Sang des Autres.

It was also during the years of the German occupation that he wrote his only dramatic work, Les bouches inutileswhich would be performed in 1945 at the Théâtre des Carrefours in Paris.

In 1944, together with other intellectuals such as Sartre, Raymond Aron, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Albert Ollivier and Jean Paulhan, he founded the review Les temps modernesof ideology close to that of the communist party and a publication in which existential thought was disseminated.

4. End of the war and philosophical maturity

After the end of the occupation, he began to publish his first philosophical essays, which would not go unnoticed.which would not go unnoticed. In 1947 he held several conferences in the United States in which he spreads his philosophy. It was also that year that he published probably his best known book: Le deuxième sexeknown in English as The second sex. The publication of this work was very controversial, even for France at the time, a country that was considered tolerant and very secular with respect to its neighbors Spain and the United Kingdom.

In the 1950s she made several trips both inside and outside her native country, including to countries under communist regimes such as China and Cuba, meeting with Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara..

5. Sartre's last years and death

Although of marked Marxist ideology, de Beauvoir always defended human rights against her political vision, signing a manifesto against the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Despite being a French citizen, she was very critical of the French administration in Africa, defending the independence of Algeria.She defended the independence of Algeria. She considered colonialism to be nothing more than another form of oppression of the strongest against the weakest.

Years later, de Beauvoir, together with Sartre, formally distanced themselves from communism after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet authorities. by the Soviet authorities.

During the sixties she continued with her travels, going to Japan, Egypt, Israel and the USSR and, already in the following decade, she showed her opinions on controversial issues such as abortion, the Arab-Israeli conflict and women's rights.

In 1980 Sartre died, putting an end to their open relationship that had already lasted some 50 years.. In honor and memory of him, de Beauvoir published the following year La cérémonie des adieuxrecounting their relationship over five decades.

Simone de Beauvoir died on April 14, 1986 of pneumonia at the age of 78.

Work and thought

The thought of Simone de Beauvoir has laid the foundations for the construction of feminism as it is understood today, as well as a hymn to individual freedom, both economic and sexual and reproductive.It is also a hymn to individual freedom, both economic and sexual and reproductive.

Below we will briefly look at three texts written by the French philosopher, focusing especially on the relationship between women and men, both in the more traditional and personal vision of de Beauvoir.

1. L'invitée

L'invitéeis Simone de Beauvoir's first novel, published in 1943. In it she describes her relationship with Sartre and two of her students when she worked in Rouen, the Kosakiewicz sisters, although changing the names of the characters. In fiction, Sartre and de Beauvoir even have threesomes with the students.

2. The second sex

The second sex (1949) turns the most important principle of existentialism, i.e., that existence precedes essence, into a feminist sloganthat one is not born a woman but becomes a woman.

The author distinguishes between the concepts of sex and gender. On the one hand, sex is something biological, defined by the X and Y chromosomes, while gender is understood as the historical and social construction of what it is to be a man and a woman. De Beauvoir also argues that oppression of women is strongly linked to the historical concept of femininity.

The title of the book is already a statement of intent. Simone de Beauvoir refers to women as the second sex because, traditionally, they have traditionally been defined in terms of their relationships with men..

Although it may come as a surprise, de Beauvoir never considered herself a feminist, although feminism has been based on what is explained in her most outstanding work. The doctrine of de Beauvoir expounded in Le deuxieme sexepromoting women's economic independence and the right to receive the same education as men, have been a great contribution to the constitution of feminism.

3. The Mandarins

Les mandarinspublished in 1954, has been the work that has managed to win France's most important literary award, the Prix Goncourt.

In this book, de Beauvoir explains in a literary key her relationship with philosophers close to the author's environment, and her life with her partner, her partner's wife.She also explains her life with her partner, Sartre, as well as her relationship with Nelson Algren.

Awards and decorations

In 1954 she was awarded the Goncourt Prize for her work Les mandarins. In 1975 she received the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society and in 1978 she received the Austrian Prize for European Literature.

In 1998 an asteroid was named after (11385) Beauvoir, followed by asteroid (11384) Sartre. In 2000, a square was inaugurated in Paris in honor of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, and in 2006 a small bridge was inaugurated in the same city in honor of de Beauvoir. The Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women's Freedom has been awarded since 2008..

Personal life

One of the best known and most striking aspects of Simone de Beauvoir is that she had numerous relationships, even when she was married to Sartre, something that is still surprising to this day. Although this should not be seen as something negative, it may have partly overshadowed her prolific intellectual production.

The relationship between Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre lasted fifty years. However, both saw each other with other people, a sort of verbal contract that they renewed every two years, in which they allowed an open relationship with each other..

De Beauvoir never intended to marry, nor to become a housewife and have children of her own. This allowed her to focus on her academic training, to devote time to her literary production and philosophy, and to be free to see whomever she wished.

It should be said that while her bisexuality was already her bisexuality was already controversial at a time when sexual diversity was not very tolerated, the most controversial thing was her bisexuality.the most controversial was the fact that, like Sisyphus of Lesbos, he had relationships with some of his female students. In fact, one of his students at the Lycée Molière in Paris claimed that she was sexually exploited by Simone de Beauvoir. Because of rumors and comments of this kind, de Beauvoir was suspended from her job in 1943 after also being accused, in this case by the mother of a 17-year-old student.

Simone de Beauvoir, along with other great intellectuals of the time, signed a petition to lower the age of sexual consent in France.

Referencias bibliográficas:

• De Beauvoir, S. (1945) La phénoménologie de la perception de Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Les Temps modernes, 2. 363-67
• De Beauvoir, S. (1945) Moral idealism and political realism, Les Temps Modernes, 2. 248-68.
• De Beauvoir, S. (1946) Littérature et métaphysique, Les Temps modernes, 7. 1153-63.