The Thinking of Simone De Beauvoir
Anne Lavelle (Translator)
190318: i have read several on and by de beauvoir, with the intent of reading much feminismlit and philosophy as if from another country, language, culture- women's worlds are after all often as alien to me as say Indic or Japanese philosophy, and this text is excellent help in reading her work. there is some argument whether what she writes is philosophy, sociology, literature, and here it is clear she is engaged with searching, determining, expressing, her own sort of phenomenology and existentialism, often different than sartre, particularly in her insistence on ethics rather than insurmountable barriers between people...
she is her own woman, not simply sartre's companion, and if we need an example of existential creation of your life, of project immediate, continuous, consistent- she lives it. this work refers to her conflicted upbringing, her proud intellect, her search for an ideal life, and suggests her greatest contribution to existentialism is how she builds a convincing ethical possibility, a place for 'love', a way of compassion, rather than insisting each consciousness is alone and either master or slave... she refuses solipsism, alienation, nihilism, but even as she disagrees with Sartre she continues to insist he is greater than her, that he is 'genius', but such might be the effect of love...