Simone De Beauvoir : A Thinker and an Activist

May 24, 2021

Simone De Beauvoir : A Thinker and an Activist

Simone De Beauvoir

Simone De Beauvoir is French writer and social thinker whose full name is Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand De Beauvoir. She was born in nineth January, nineteenth hundred and eight.She is known for feminist thinker and social reformer.Her works introduced to us as a new land mark of feminist movements.A prize is founded after her name. It is called Simone De Beauvoir prize. A Pakistani youngest writer Malala Yousafzai won the prize.

She published her first novel"She came to stay".This work is inspired by her and Sartre 's sexual relationship with Ogla Kosaklewicz and and Wanda kasaklewicz.In 1944 Beauvoir wrote her first philosophical essay, "Pyrrhus et Cineas"a discussion on existentialist ethics. She also wrote the essay " Ethics of Ambiguity".It also focuses on French Existentialism. Her other important work is "The Second Sex", first published in 1949 in French as Le Deuxième Sexe, turns the existentialist mantra that existence precedes essence into a feminist one: "One is not born but becomes a woman".

Beauvoir as a thinker and an Activist

Beauvoir asserted that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves, moving beyond the "immanence" to which they were previously resigned and reaching "transcendence", a position in which one takes responsibility for oneself and the world, where one chooses one's freedom.

Beauvoir defines women as the "second sex" because women are defined in relation to men. She pointed out that Aristotle argued women are "female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities",

The situation of women provides a good example for disclosing one particular aspect of ambiguity, how we are subject not only to the constraints of embodiment universally—we age, we can get sick, we die—but in addition some individuals and groups are interpreted through biological “data” that is infused with political and social meaning. As Beauvoir says that women is like all humans, with an autonomous freedom.

I think men and women are equal because men could not exist without women and

Women could not live without men.Both of them are seme liberty.We

do not live in barbaric age, we are live in modern age.We understand the reality of life, the reality of Earth.Beauvoir did not marry throughout her life. She sacrificed to work for women. She is morning star amongst all

Social thinkers and activists. We lost her on fourteenth April, nineteenth and eight-six.

By Hoque saheb.

Simone De Beauvoir is Thinker and an Activist:

Simon de Beauvoir was a French philosopher , novelist and feminist .He is also well known as a political activist . Simone De Beauvoir is French writer and social thinker whose full name is Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand De Beauvoir. She was born in nineth January, nineteenth hundred and eight. She is known for feminist thinker and social reformer.Her works introduced to us as a new land mark of feminist movements .The underlying philosophical structure of The Second Sex is grounded in the self other relationship described by Sartre’s classic essay on existentialism , but the emphasis placed upon “gender” introduces themes that are not present there.

According to Beauvoir’s woman have been turned into an objectified other ,whilst men have appropriated the subject position and have thus made it impossible for women to live in the mode of for- itself . The famous sentence : “one is not born, but rather becomes a woman” Is the starting point for a detailed phenomenological description of becoming a woman and for an attack on all myths of the eternal feminine that reduced woman to timeless essence.

Unlike satire Beauvoir attacks a great importance to the social and economic forces that determine women’s existence and demonstrate.The oppressive effects of education, family structure , conventional marriage , housework and motherhood Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is a powerful call for women to grapes freedom .

Paradoxically ,Beauvoir did not regard herself as a feminist at the time of writing and believe that some form of socialism would lead to women’s emancipation .It was not until 1970s that she openly identified with the feminist movement and become involved in campaign for the right to contraception and abortions. Regrettably the notoriously inaccurate English translation demies non- French speaking leaders access to the full riches of Beauvoir's thought.

Beauvoir's states as one of the founding mothers of feminism has not gone unchallenged .Later writers such as Kristeva and Irigaray are highly Critical of her failure to place a positive emphasis on women sexual differences and of her apparently negative description of the female body.

Many critics also deny that Beauvoir makes any original contribution to philosophy , but it has been argued that her essays on ethics offer an escape from Sartre’s alleged “solipsism “by stressing that freedom can be achieved by a combination of willing -oneself free and an emotion fusions with the other. Despite the criticism that have been addressed to Beauvoir who is now more widely read in the English -speaking world than in France . It remains true to say that The Second Sex is a book of which many women can say :

“it changed my life”.

By Zainal Lipi.

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir ( 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiographies and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism; and for her novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins. Her most enduring contribution to literature is her memoirs, notably the first volume, “Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée” (1958), which have a warmth and descriptive power.[6] She won the 1954 Prix Goncourt, the 1975 Jerusalem Prize, and the 1978 Austrian State Prize for European Literature. She was also known for her open, lifelong relationship with French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

There are some thinkers who are, from the very beginning, unambiguously identified as philosophers . There are others whose philosophical place is forever contested and there are those who have gradually won the right to be admitted into the philosophical fold. Simone de Beauvoir is one of these belatedly acknowledged philosophers. Identifying herself as an author rather than as a philosopher and calling herself the midwife of Sartre’s existential ethics rather than a thinker in her own right, Beauvoir’s place in philosophy had to be won against her word. That place is now uncontested. The international conference celebrating the centennial of Beauvoir’s birth organized by Julia Kristeva is one of the more visible signs of Beauvoir’s growing influence and status. Her enduring contributions to the fields of ethics, politics, existentialism, phenomenology and feminist theory and her significance as an activist and public intellectual is now a matter of record. Unlike her status as a philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir’s position as a feminist theorist has never been in question. Controversial from the beginning, The Second Sex’s critique of patriarchy continues to challenge social, political and religious categories used to justify women’s inferior status. Though readers of the English translation of The Second Sex have never had trouble understanding the feminist significance of its analysis of patriarchy, they might be forgiven for missing its philosophical importance so long as they had to rely on an arbitrarily abridged version of The Second Sex that was questionably translated by a zoologist who was deaf to the philosophical meanings and nuances of Beauvoir’s French terms.

In the 1970s Beauvoir became active in France’s women’s liberation movement. She wrote and signed the Manifesto of the 343 in 1971, a manifesto that included a list of famous women who claimed to have had an abortion, then illegal in France. Some argue most of the women had not had abortions, including Beauvoir. Signatories were diverse as Catherine Deneuve, Delphine Seyrig, and Beauvoir’s sister Poupette. In 1974, abortion was legalised in France.

In an interview with Betty Friedan, Beauvoir said: “No, we don’t believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorised to stay at home to bring up her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction.”

By Anindya.

1.Simone de Beauvoir was a significant philosopher of existentialism and a pioneering figure of contemporary philosophical feminism. Her lifelong association with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, her lover and intellectual companion, contributed to her worldwide celebrity.She is one of these belatedly acknowledged philosophers. Identifying herself as an author rather than as a philosopher and calling herself the midwife of Sartre’s existential ethics rather than a thinker in her own right, Beauvoir’s place in philosophy had to be won against her word.

Controversial from the beginning, The Second Sex’s critique of patriarchy continues to challenge social, political and religious categories used to justify women’s inferior status. Though readers of the English translation of The Second Sex have never had trouble understanding the feminist significance of its analysis of patriarchy, they might be forgiven for missing its philosophical importance so long as they had to rely on an arbitrarily abridged version of The Second Sex that was questionably translated by a zoologist who was deaf to the philosophical meanings and nuances of Beauvoir’s French terms.

As The Second Sex became a catalyst for challenging women’s situations, Beauvoir’s political and intellectual place was also reset. With regard to feminism, she herself was responsible for the change. After repeatedly refusing to align herself with the feminist movement, Beauvoir declared herself a feminist in a 1972 interview in Le Nouvel observateur and joined other Marxist feminists in founding the journal Questions féministes. With regard to the philosophical field it took the efforts of others to get her a seat at the table; for though Beauvoir belatedly identified herself as a feminist, she never called herself a philosopher.

Some have found Beauvoir’s exclusion from the domain of philosophy more than a matter of taking Beauvoir at her word. They attribute it to an exclusively systematic view of philosophy which, deaf to the philosophical methodology of the metaphysical novel, ignored the ways that Beauvoir embedded phenomenological-existential arguments in her literary works. Between those who did not challenge Beauvoir’s self-portrait, those who did not accept her understanding of the relationship between literature and philosophy, and those who missed the unique signature of her philosophical essays, Beauvoir the philosopher remained a lady-in-waiting.

Some have argued that the belated admission of Beauvoir into the ranks of philosophers is a matter of sexism on two counts. The first concerns the fact that Beauvoir was a woman. Her philosophical writings were read as echoes of Sartre rather than explored for their own contributions because it was only “natural” to think of a woman as a disciple of her male companion. The second concerns the fact that she wrote about women. The Second Sex, recognized as one of the hundred most important works of the twentieth century, would not be counted as philosophy because it dealt with sex, hardly a burning philosophical issue (so it was said). This encyclopedia entry shows how much things have changed. Long overdue, Beauvoir’s recognition as a philosopher is now secure.

Name-Arabinda Kundu

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"Simon de Beauvoir: A thinker,an activist"

The name Simon de Beauvoir is closely related with the movement called feminism.Feminism is a spirit,a specific consciousness that encourages women to identify and thereby challenge those structures and ideologies that seek to oppress them. It is the feeling that women are treated unequally in all the spheres of life and the sentiment that something needs to be done about it very actively.

Feminism begins in 14 th century, Europe , it is a witnessed broad far- reached changes.A novel way of being and thinking was inaugurated. Feudalism diminished gradually and new ways of economic organisations emerged. Trade became pivotal and society, economy and polity were getting organized around it. The state was required to become more concrete and centralized. With earlier feudal ties weakening,new ways of organizing social, familial and religious life began emerging. The individual, state and society came to be conceptualised in new ways. Not surprisingly then, women were also getting influenced by these changes. Feminism then may be defined as a response to the challenges and opportunities ushered in by modernity, and like most things it remained unequal for women. Then slowly other countries also involved with this movement. By the end of the 19 th century, some important feminist demands were fulfilled. Education had opened up to women, eventually the demand was extended to the right to vote. In this kind of feminist movement Simon de Beauvoir was actively involved.

Simon de Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, politics activist, feminist and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiographies and monographs on philosophy, politics and social issues. She wrote many famous writings namely" She Came to Stay", "Existentialist Ethics","Les Temps Modernes", "Sextuality, Existentialist Feminism and The Second Sex", "The Mandarins" etc.

Beauvoir obviously a thinker,an activist as while she began by emphasizing upon individual transformation as well as individual struggles, by the late 1960s she clearly identified as a feminist.she was also in the forefront of many feminist campaigns in France, particularly the movement to legalize abortion. These activities in France and elsewhere fall right after the deceptive calm mentioned earlier and has often been discussed as the second wave feminist.

It began basically in America. It was very simply a liberal protest against the state and society's inability to actualize the rights promised to women in the earlier decades . By the 1960s, owing to the overall spirit of de-Stalinization , some re-thinking took place within the Soviet Union as well. For other places in the world too, the 1960s became a period of political resurgence. The left movement , European and American Civil rights campaigns , student protests in France led to a questioning of socialism from within . The National Organisation for Women ( NOW) in 1966 was one of the largest coalitions that emerged from the second wave.

Beauvoir' s writing " The Second Sex" is a big evidence that she is a great activist and also a great thinker . The book is called the 'bible' of modern western feminism . In this book she says that women are bound to live their life within a boundary and always attached a tag name ' Other' . And men who take on the role of the Self, constantly categorize women as the' Other' . Women have to behave like a woman. Beauvoir says about women that" One is not born , but rather becomes a woman" . Woman is not born but they are made by the society . They have to behave like a passive person, not active. And the creation of woman becomes useless.

She concludes her work by outlining various changes necessary for woman's emancipation as well as the recovery of her selfhood. She says to ensure woman's equality, Beauvoir calls for changes in social structures around universal childcare, contraception, education and legal abortion and most importantly, around woman's financial independence from men. And about marriage, she says it is like all truly authentic choices, must be an act of active and free choice. So, we see that Simon de Beauvoir directly connected with so many organisations and works hard for women's betterment , and she also writes so many famous writings, then she is must called a thinker and an activist.

By Ashma Pervin.

Simon de Beauvoir, a thinker, an activist:

Simon de Beauvoir was an intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist.She had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. beauvoir wrote many novels,essays,biographies,autobiographies,and monographs on philosophy,politics and social issues.Her treatiseThe Second Sexis a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a fundamental teact of contemporaryfeminism.

Simon de Beauvoir, is rightly best known for declaring:'One is not born,but rather becomes women'. A less known facet of her philosophy,particularly relevant today,is her political activism,a viewpoint that follows directly from her metaphysical stance on the self,namely that we have no fixed essence.

The existential maxim 'existence essence' underpins de Beauvoir's philosophy.For her, as for Jean paul Sartre,we are first thrown into the world and then create our being through our actions, while there are facts of our existence that we cannot choose, such as being born, who oir parents were,and our genetic inheritance,we should not use our biology and history as excuses not to act. The existential goal is to be an agent,to take control over our life,actively transcending the facts of our existence by pursuing self chosen goals

Since we are all affected by politics, if we choose not to be involved in creating the conditions of our own lives this reduces are to what de Beauvoir called 'absurd vegotation'. It is tantamount to rejecting existence. We must take a side. The problem is, it is not always clear which side we ought to choose. Even de Beauvoir failed to navigate through this question safely.She adopted questionable stances:.She once, for example,dismissed Chairman Mao- responsible for the mirder of over 45 million people as being 'no more dictatorial' them Franklin D Roosevelt. De Beaivoir's philosophy of political commitment has a Dark Side, and she personally made some grave errors of jedgement,yet within her philosophy,there is an opening to address this issue.

With oppressive regimes, de Beauvoir acknowledged that individuals usually pay a high price for.Standing up to dictators and the tyranny of the majority,but demonstrated concretely through her writing and political engagement. An intellectual vigilante, de Beauvoir used her pen as a weapon, breaking down gendered stereotypes and challenging laws that prohibited women from heavily control over their own bodies.She authored and signed the Manifesto of the 343 in 1971,which paved the way for birth controland abortion in Frnace. Her most famoir work, The Second Sex sparked a new wave of feminism across the world.

De Beauvoir encourages us to consider that others also give us the world because they infuse it with meaning.We can only make sense of ourselves in relation to others and can only make sense of the world around us by understanding other's goals. World peace is a strength,since we do not all choose the same goal,but we can still look for ways to create solidarities - such as by working to agitate authoritarians,to revolt against tyrants, to amplify marginalized voices- to abolish oppression. Persistence is essential since, as de Beauvoir says, 'One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignationa and compassion'. De Beaivoir is surely right that this is the risk,the anguish, and the beauty of human existence.

By Nasim Aktar.

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman".

Simone de Beauvoir was a French novelist and philosopher. She was one of the most significant and influential feminist theorists, with whom the Second Wave of Feminism began. This quote is from her 1949 ground-breaking book ‘The Second Sex', compress the whole debate of feminism by highlighting the category of Woman is not natural but culturally constructed by men. She made the differentiation between ‘Sex' and ‘Gender'. Sex is a biological term while Gender is a socially constructed thus it is the patriarchal society who give female the tag ‘Woman'. Women are born with equal rights as their male counterparts, but society treat them as inferior and the women becomes socially, politically, economically and in various other ways exploited. Beauvoir brings Bhabha’s concept of Othering in this argument. She pointed as men are physically stronger than women they are called as Subject while the Woman the other. This is the process of Othering where women will always be seen as dependent by their male counterparts. Beauvoir proposed that Women must take charge of their own choice. Instead of being inferior Other, they must become the Subject in their own right. They need not to be dominated or obligated by patriarchy.

Simone de Beauvoir is often associated with Existentialism which developed in France during the second world war. Beauvoir claimed that she and Sartre did not understand what ‘Existentialism’ meant. Further Beauvoir wrote in various genre but the main goal of her subject was Self- Existence. Beauvoir approaches the problem of how to take responsibility for one’s own freedom in the face of oppression from within the conceptual and thematic framework offered by existential philosophy. Beauvoir had a lifelong relation with Sartre. In La Ceremonie Des Adieux, she wrote the painful account of his last years. After Sartre's death, she published his letters to her. Both significantly influenced on each other’s works.

Simone de Beauvoir became active in France’s Women’s liberation movement during 1970s. As a part of the movement she signed a manifesto, that included a list of women who had had an abortion which was then illegal in France. “We want freedom of abortion. It is entirely the woman’s decision. We reject any entity that forces her to defend herself, perpetuates an atmosphere of guilt, and allows underground abortions to persist ….”

Thus, Beauvoir was one of the first feminists to turn to a social constructionist argument of gender. Her influence on the American feminist writers and critics like Betty Friedan, Kate Millett helped launch Second-wave feminism.

By Sunandita mandal.

Simon de Beauvoir born in parish in 1908 and died in 1986. Simon de Beauvoir was a great feminist writer, thinker and activist. His first feminist novel was "she came to stay" published in 1943 and the second well known novel "The Second Sex" published in 1949, known also as a great feminist activist work. And as a thinker of Existentialist she published "Pyrrhus et Cinéas" (1943) and "The Ethics of Ambiguity" (1947).

Simone de Beauvoir spent much of her writing life, across many genres, criticizing ways of living and of thinking that narrow the scope and grasp of human freedom. She also, through her life example, created space for alternatives. Beauvoir has sometimes erroneously been understood as theorizing freedom solely as an individual good or as the individual’s responsibility, when in fact she repeatedly demonstrates the condition of freedom as both collective and situated. Theorizing concrete conditions of freedom as constituted in and through collective life, Beauvoir’s work draws our attention to the impact on individuals of different political realities and contexts of capitalism, patriarchy, communism, occupation, colonialism, socialism and the harm in political meanings of various forms of embodiment like race, age, gender and the direct and indirect effects of oppression and domination on individuals in multiple political contexts.

In "The Second Sex" Beauvoir argues for women’s equality, while insisting on the reality of the sexual difference. Beauvoir finds it unjust and immoral to use the sexual difference as an argument for women’s subordination. As a phenomenologist she is obliged to examine women’s unique experiences of their bodies and to determine how these experiences are co-determined by what phenomenology calls the everyday attitude. As a feminist phenomenologist assessing the meanings of the lived female body, Beauvoir explores the ways that cultural assumptions frame women’s experience of their bodies and alienate them from their body’s possibilities. The most famous line of The Second Sex, “One is not born but becomes woman”, is credited by many as alerting us to the sex-gender distinction.

Beauvoir bases her idea of the Other on Hegel’s account of the master-slave dialectic. Instead of the terms “master” and “slave”, however, she uses the terms “Subject” and “Other”. The Subject is the absolute. The Other is the inessential. Beauvoir distinguishes the dialectic of exploitation between historically constituted Subjects and Others from the exploitation that ensues when the Subject is Man and the Other is Woman. In the first case those marked as Other experience their oppression as a communal reality. They see themselves as part of an oppressed group. The situation of women is comparable to the condition of the Hegelian Other in that men, like the Hegelian Master, identify themselves as the Subject, the absolute human type, and, measuring women by this standard of the human, identify them as inferior. Women’s so-called inadequacies are then used as justification for seeing them as the Other and for treating them accordingly.

Through her fiminist writing, Simon de Beauvoir has focused on creating substantive changes in the policy or practice of a government or industry. She try to persuade people to change their behavior directly in our society through her feminist writting as both a feminist thinker and feminist activist, rather than to persuade governments to change laws.

By Bijan Saha.

Simone de Beauvoir: a thinker , an activist :-

There are some thinkers who are, from the very beginning, unambiguously identified as philosophers . There are others whose philosophical place is forever contested ; and there are those who have gradually won the right to be admitted into the philosophical fold. Simone de Beauvoir is one of these belatedly acknowledged philosophers. Identifying herself as an author rather than as a philosopher and calling herself the midwife of Sartre’s existential ethics rather than a thinker in her own right, Beauvoir’s place in philosophy had to be won against her word. That place is now uncontested. The international conference celebrating the centennial of Beauvoir’s birth organized by Julia Kristeva is one of the more visible signs of Beauvoir’s growing influence and status. Her enduring contributions to the fields of ethics, politics, existentialism, phenomenology and feminist theory and her significance as an activist and public intellectual is now a matter of record. Unlike her status as a philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir’s position as a feminist theorist has never been in question. Controversial from the beginning, The Second Sex’s critique of patriarchy continues to challenge social, political and religious categories used to justify women’s inferior status. Though readers of the English translation of The Second Sex have never had trouble understanding the feminist significance of its analysis of patriarchy, they might be forgiven for missing its philosophical importance so long as they had to rely on an arbitrarily abridged version of The Second Sex that was questionably translated by a zoologist who was deaf to the philosophical meanings and nuances of Beauvoir’s French terms.

Simone de Beauvoir was born on January 9, 1908. She died seventy-eight years later, on April 14, 1986. At the time of her death she was honored as a crucial figure in the struggle for women’s rights, and as an eminent writer, having won the Prix Goncourt, the prestigious French literary award, for her novel The Mandarins (1954). She was also famous for being the life-long companion of Jean Paul Sartre. Active in the French intellectual scene all of her life, and a central player in the philosophical debates of the times both in her role as an author of philosophical essays, novels, plays, memoirs, travel diaries, and newspaper articles, and as an editor of Les Temps Modernes, Beauvoir was not considered a philosopher in her own right at the time of her death.

Beauvoir detailed her phenomenological and existential critique of the philosophical status quo in her 1946 essay Literature and the Metaphysical Essay, and her 1965 and 1966 essays Que Peut la Littérature? and Mon Expérience d’écrivain. This critique, influenced by both Husserl and Heidegger, focused on the significance of lived experience and on the ways that the meanings of the world are revealed in language. Heidegger turned to the language of poetry for this revelation. Beauvoir, Camus and Sartre turned to the language of the novel and the theater. They looked to Husserl to theorize their turn to these discourses by insisting on grounding their theoretical analyses in the concrete particulars of lived experience. They looked to Heidegger to challenge the privileged position of abstract discourses. For Beauvoir, however, the turn to literature carried ethical and political as well as philosophical implications. It allowed her to explore the limits of the appeal (the activity of calling on others to take up one’s political projects); to portray the temptations of violence; to enact her existential ethics of freedom, responsibility, joy and generosity, and to examine the intimacies and complexities of our relationships with others.

Beauvoir’s challenge to the philosophical tradition was part of the existential-phenomenological project. Her challenge to the patriarchal status quo was more dramatic. It was an event. Not at first, however, for at its publication The Second Sex was regarded more as an affront to sexual decency than a political indictment of patriarchy or a phenomenological account of the meaning of “woman”. The women who came to be known as second-wave feminists understood what Beauvoir’s first readers missed. It was not sexual decency that was being attacked but patriarchal indecency that was on trial. The Second Sex expressed their sense of injustice, focused their demands for social, political, and personal change and alerted them to the connections between private practices and public policies. The Second Sex remains a contentious book. No longer considered sexually scandalous, its analysis of patriarchy and its proposed antidotes to women’s domination are still debated. What is not contested, however, is the fact that feminism as we know it remains in its debt.

In a world which recognized the phenomenological truth of the body, the existential truth of freedom, the Marxist truth of exploitation and the human truth of the bond, the derogatory category of the Other would be eradicated. Neither the aged nor women, nor anyone by virtue of their race, class, ethnicity or religion would find themselves rendered inessential. Beauvoir knows that it is too much to hope for such a world. She understands the lures of domination and violence. 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.

By Mintu Miya.

Simone de Beauvoir is a great intellectual philosophical writer, also she is known as a activist and a great feminist icon who thought of the upliftment of women . Her intellectual capacity reflects through out her writings.

Her philosophical sense reflects in many of her writings. In her work "The Ethics of Ambiguity " she takes stand of herself. It is one of her existentiality texts where she talks of her idea about freedom, responsibility and authenticity. In this resistance novel she describes two things- intentionality and consciousness. Here she also talks of freedom, mood, intention, consciousness, joy ,hope etc. "The Ethics of Ambiguity " also disagrees the ideas of 'God and Humanity' .

Her another philosophical text is "Pyrrhus and Cineas" which reflects her philosophical mind. Here she talks of the difference between 'inner and outer domains of freedom' and intentional activities. "The Ethics of Ambiguity " and "Phrrhus and Cineas" are the reflection of the author's critical and philosophical mind.

Simone de Beauvoir is also a great feminist. It is very much evident if we go through her text "The second Sex". She has a great contribution in feminism. In this work she portrays the problems that are faced by women. The text also reflects sex- categorization and also the different issues of the society. Simone de Beauvoir was inspired by "Phenomenology of the Spirit ". She has a influence on feminist existentialism and feminist theory. "The Second Sex" gives us the idea of social construction of femininity. In the last chapter of this text she speaks of what have left to be done and what have changed for women. One of the famous line from this text is "One is not born,but rather becomes, a woman."

By Paramita Chowdhury.

Simone De Beavoir: A thinker, an activist"

The French writer and feminist philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), is one of the most important figures in twentieth-century thought. For most people, she is the author of "The Second Sex "(1949),a detailed analysis of women’s oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. For others, she is a representative of the French post-war intelligentsia, associated with the philosophical movement of existentialism and with Jean-Paul Sartre. Without her 1949 text "The Second Sex",gender theory as we know it today would be unthinkable. A leading figure in French existentialism, Beauvoir concepts of 'becoming woman ' and of woman as absolute ‘Other’ are among the most influential ideas in feminist enquiry and debate.

“One is not born but becomes a woman.” With this famous phrase, Beauvoir first articulated the sex-gender distinction, that is, the distinction between biological sex and the social/historical creation of gender. In 1929, Beauvoir formed a lifelong personal and intellectual partnership with Sartre. Through the publication of their philosophy, novels and plays, Beauvoir and Sartre became

the leading figures of French atheistic existentialism, one of the most influential literary, philosophical and artistic movements of the twentieth century. In 1945, they launched 'Les Temps Modernes', a left-wing, non-aligned political and literary review, which was highly influential in intellectual debates in the 1940s and 1950s. Overseas travel, especially contact with the US, was also crucial to Beauvoir’s development as a thinker.

During the Algerian War (1954–1962), that Beauvoir became directly and actively involved in politics, supporting the Algerian struggle for independence from France and openly condemning French government policy in North Africa. In the mid 1950s, she began working on 'Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter', the first volume of her extensive memoirs, which were published in France in four volumes from 1958 until 1972 and subsequently were widely translated. Her memoirs have constituted a widely influential case study of a twentieth-century woman intellectual bearing witness to many of the major political and cultural events of the twentieth century as well as to her own intellectual trajectory as a writer.

The ‘class struggle tendency’ group sought to link women’s oppression with social class oppression, fighting within the socialist movement. The ‘radical feminists’ rejected formal organisational structures and sought to combat the material oppression of women in patriarchal society by focusing on issues such as violence againstwomen. Beauvoir campaigned actively in the 1970s on issues such as legalising abortion and raising awareness of violence against women.

Beauvoir’s method incorporated various political and ethical dimensions. A less well-known facet of her philosophy, particularly relevant today, is her political activism. But Beauvoir saw primarily herself as a writer – of fiction, of philosophical and polemical essays, of auto/biography – and as an intellectual who, in the course of the Second World War, discovered a responsibility to history and to other people. Her writings fall into two categories : literature and philosophy.

For much of her literary and philosophical work is interrelated in its practical and theoretical focus on similar sets of problems. For example, Beauvoir began to explore issues such as the nature of freedom and our responsibility to others in both her philosophical and literary writing of the 1940s.

Beauvoir’s writing is also infused with a fundamentally political consciousness, often analysing questions of power and

freedom as they arise within the dynamics of interpersonal relationships as well as within a broader collective framework. Her political consciousness is integrally related to a specifically French notion of what it has meant to be a ‘public intellectual’ in the post war period, ready to speak out on the controversial questions of the time and, in Beauvoir’s case, a ‘committed’ writer and thinker.

Being ‘engagée’ or ‘committed’ in France in the 1940s and 1950s meant that she recognised the political and ethical significance and influence of the worldview presented in her literary writing and thought. One of Beauvoir’s key ideas was the importance of ‘situation’ – understood in its existentialist sense as the relationship between our freedom to pursue a project and all the given aspects of the world which we have not chosen. The way in which Beauvoir’s feminist thinking developed, during which she became politically active in the French feminist movement. She now recognised a feminist revolution of society. We consider Beauvoir’s theory of literature, articulated in key statements from the mid 1940s until the early 1980s.

By Salma Pervin.

Simone De Behavior as a thinker and activist:

Simone de Beauvoir is a great intellectual philosophical Simone de Beauvoir is a great intellectual philosophical writer, also she is known as a activist and a great feminist icon who thought of the upliftment of women . Her intellectual capacity reflects through out her writings.

Each and every writings of her reflects her extraordinary thinking power and her philosophy. Her ideas are philosophy centric. She believes in the freedom of speech and the freedom of knowledge. Her works makes clear of her study to phenomenology. also she is known as a activist and a great feminist icon who thought of the upliftment of women . Her intellectual capacity reflects through out her writings.

By Sadhan Sarkar.

"Simon de Beauvoir: a thinker, an activist".

A novelist, social critic, and philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) extended Sartre's existentialism to the realm of the social and the political, developing an existentialist ethics and a feminist philosophy that would have a lasting influence on the feminist political movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Like existentialists before her, de Beauvoir emphasized the centrality of individual freedom to human existence. But unlike existentialists before her, she argued that individual freedom was possible only on the condition that others were free. In other words, equitable social relations are necessary for a meaningful freedom, according to de Beauvoir. Simone de Beauvoir is rightly best known for declaring: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.’ A less well-known facet of her philosophy, particularly relevant today, is her political activism, a viewpoint that follows directly from her metaphysical stance on the self, namely that we have no fixed essences.

The existential maxim ‘existence precedes essence’ underpins de Beauvoir’s philosophy. For her, as for Jean-Paul Sartre, we are first thrown into the world and then create our being through our actions. While there are facts of our existence that we can’t choose, such as being born, who our parents were, and our genetic inheritance, we shouldn’t use our biology or history as excuses not to act. The existential goal is to be an agent, to take control over our life, actively transcending the facts of our existence by pursuing self-chosen goals.

In ‘The Ethics of Ambiguity’ (1947) she argues that to be free is to be able to stretch ourselves into an open future full of possibilities. Having this kind of freedom may be dizzying, but it doesn’t mean we get to do whatever we like. We share the earth, and have concern for one another; if we respect freedom for ourselves, then we should respect it for others, too. Using our freedom to exploit and oppress others, or to support the side that promotes such policies, is inconsistent with this radical existential freedom.

Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) is one of the most famous and

influential books of the twentieth century. It had a profound influence on

the development of twentieth-century feminism. Most philosophers agree that Beauvoir’s greatest contribution to philosophy is her revolutionary magnum opus, The Second Sex. The main thesis of The Second Sex revolves around the idea that woman has been held in a relationship of long-standing oppression to man through her relegation to being man’s “Other.” In agreement with Hegelian and Sartrean philosophy, Beauvoir finds that the self needs otherness in order to define itself as a subject; the category of the otherness, therefore, is necessary in the constitution of the self as a self. However, the movement of self-understanding through alterity is supposed to be reciprocal in that the self is often just as much objectified by its other as the self objectifies it. What Beauvoir discovers in her multifaceted investigation into woman’s situation, is that woman is consistently defined as the Other by man who takes on the role of the Self. As Beauvoir explains in her Introduction, woman “is the incidental, the inessential, as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute-she is the Other.” In addition, Beauvoir maintains that human existence is an ambiguous interplay between transcendence and immanence, yet men have been privileged with expressing transcendence through projects, whereas women have been forced into the repetitive and uncreative life of immanence. Beauvoir thus proposes to investigate how this radically unequal relationship emerged as well as what structures, attitudes and presuppositions continue to maintain its social power.

Beauvoir’s most famous assertion was “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” By this, Beauvoir means to destroy the essentialism which claims that women are born “feminine” (according to whatever the culture and time define it to be) but are rather constructed to be such through social indoctrination. Beauvoir’s emphasis on the fact that women need access to the same kinds of activities and projects as men places her to some extent in the tradition of liberal, or second-wave feminism. She demands that women be treated as equal to men and laws, customs and education must be altered to encourage this. However, The Second Sex always maintains its fundamental existentialist belief that each individual, regardless of sex, class or age, should be encouraged to define him or herself and to take on the individual responsibility that comes with freedom. This requires not just focusing on universal institutions, but on the situated individual existent struggling within the ambiguity of existence.

By Madhurima Dutta.

Simone de Beauvoir, French writer and feminist, a member of the intellectual fellowship of philosopher-writers who have given a literary transcription to the themes of existentialism. She is known primarily for "The Second Sex " (Le Deuxième Sexe, 2 vol. 1949) a scholarly and passionate plea for the abolition of what she called the myth of the “eternal feminine.” It became a classic of feminist literature.Her novels expound the major existential themes, demonstrating her conception of the writer’s commitment to the times.

"Some very old bonds in my life have never been broken,” Beauvoir wrote, looking back at her life: “the place that Sartre always had in it, and my fidelity to my original project: to know and to write.” Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre met while they were both still students and quickly became a highly unconventional couple, refusing to marry or to have children, yet always remaining deeply committed to a joint life of work and thought.Together, Beauvoir and Sartre developed existentialism, a philosophy that takes freedom to be the highest value in a universe where God is dead and where human beings create their own values through their choices and actions. In the postwar period, existentialism was the most challenging expression of radical, secular, philosophical humanism.

To read The Second Sex today is to discover precisely the kind of feminism the world needs now. Beauvoir is not interested in identity politics. She doesn’t believe in women’s ineffable “difference”. Nor does she think that women are the blameless victims of men. She does think, however, that women are systematically oppressed by a worldview which takes man to be the One, the Subject, and turns women into the Other, the Object, a relative being.

The Second Sex is an unbelievably passionate and energetic book. For Beauvoir, the future is wide open, and freedom within reach: “The free woman is just being born,” she optimistically concludes. The Second Sex urges us to have faith in our power to transform the future for the better. It should be required reading not just for humanists but for everyone who thinks that this world should be as free and welcoming to women as to men.

By Pijush Mandal.

" Simone de Beauvoir: A thinker, an activist "

Simone de Beauvoir is recognized by critics as a political thinker.She was a French writer, a thinker and a political activist. Simone de Beauvoir is rightly best known for declaring: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.’ A less well-known facet of her philosophy, particularly relevant today, is her political activism, Simone de Beauvoir is rightly best known for declaring: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.’ a viewpoint that follows directly from her metaphysical stance on the self, namely that we have no fixed essences.

She is not just an old-fashioned modernist thinker, but her concept of the self is up-to-date in light of postmodernism's critique of the fixed self. After sketching these topical clues of Beauvoir's thinking, which are relevant in my opinion for many current philosophical debates, I outline my interpretation of Beauvoir in relation to contemporary feminism, especially in relation to its logic of "equality and difference" and to its theme of identity.

Simone de Beauvoir is seldom recognized by critics as a political thinker. In interviews and public statements, Beauvoir always identified herself as a writer, rather than as an activist, philosopher, or political person. Yet even if we think about politics in its most conventional sense—as the art of governance, the study of how power works, or as the interaction between people and states—we notice that Beauvoir was always thinking about political questions and responding to the historical-political events that unfolded in her lifetime (1908–1986).

Of all her writings, however, Beauvoir is by far best known for The Second Sex. Her seven hundred plus page magnum opus on male theorization of “Woman” and the challenges women’s lived experience poses to any attempt to fix a feminine essence launched her reputation as a specifically feminist, rather than a more broadly political, thinker. The intense focus on this one book ironically served to obscure the importance of her other work, and its organic links to her political ideas.In the sixty-plus years following publication of The Second Sex, Beauvoir’s reputation has been even more firmly associated specifically with feminist theory, and her work has been mostly ignored by other political theorists. Yet, by thinking politically with Beauvoir, we will see that The Second Sex offers a sophisticated and compelling theory of situated freedom challenging several assumptions prevalent in the mainstream canon. Her work on situated freedom and the political meanings of embodiment push us to understand how freedom is always situated by context and the reality of social identities.

Beauvoir’s novels were often criticised for having female characters who did not live up to her feminist ideals. But after cataloguing stifling stereotypes of femininity, Beauvoir did not want to furnish new galleries with oppressive mythical portraits. She did not want to write “strong women” who reinforced women’s feelings of division and inadequacy. In a period when possibilities for women’s lives were differently constrained than they are today, she wanted her reader to be able to dream, fail and dream again, always in the knowledge that failing didn’t make them a failure.

Whateverelse it was, Beauvoir’s feminism was not triumphalist and her literary strategy was risky when she turned to writing her own story.

By Surajita.

*“Simone De Beauvoir: a thinker and an activist”*

Simone de Beauvoir was (9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. Her full name is Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. She is one of the most thinkers and activists of Modern English literature.

The underlying philosophical structure of The Second Sex is grounded in the self other relationship described by Sartre’s classic essay on existentialism , but the emphasis placed upon “gender” introduces themes that are not present there.

“it changed my life”.

By Hasamuddin.

Simon De Beauvoir is a Thinker and an Activist :

Simon de Beauvoir was a great French philosopher , novelist and feminist .He is also well known as a political activist . Simone De Beauvoir is French writer and social thinker whose full name is Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand De Beauvoir.

By Sujan Murmu.

Simone De Beauvoir as thinker, activist

Simone de Beauvoir was a French author, feminist and existential philosopher. She was also a member of the intellectual fellowship of philoshoper writers. She has given a literary transcription to the themes of 'existentialism' . She was primarily known for her formidable courage and integrity nature who always talks about the myth of the "eternal feminine" .

Beauvoir always believed on the thesis: the basic options of an individual must be made on the premises of an equal vocation for man and woman founded on a common structure of their being, independent of their sextuality. And her thesis is very much prominent in "The Second Sex" (1949), a classic of contemporary feminist literature, which became the movement's Bible later.

In the chapter "Woman:Myth and Reality" of The Second Sex Beauvoir experiences as a woman and in women’s lived realities. She argued that men had made women the "other" in society by application of a false aura of "mystery" around them. She mentioned that this stereotyping was always done in societies by the higher group to lower group. She wrote that a similar kind of oppression by hierarchy also happened in other categories of identity such as race, class and religion. But She claimed that it was nowhere more true than with gender in which men stereotyped women and women's "natural" inferiority to justify patriarchal domination.

In this context Beauvoir not only represents a feminist perspective but also criticizes society in a philosophical and political way.

" I hesitated a long time before writing a book on woman. The subject is irritating especially for women; and it is not new. Enough ink has flowed over the quarrel about feminism; it is now almost over; let's not talk about it anymore" .

In the opening lines of "The Second Sex" Beauvoir brilliantly challenges mainstream political theory. Through this qoutes she claimed so called patriarchal society as a subjective voice,the voice of authority. And this authority always tried to trap women in immanence and condemning them to their bodies. According to Beauvoir it is a philosophical concern for women to take the authority and she asserts her authority not only via research and textual interpretation but also by virtue of her own experience, her subjective knowledge, and the complication and interpretation of an overwhelming multitude of anecdotes and testimonies from the lives of situated women.

In short Beauvoir’s political thinking in situation to biology, freedom is a direct challenge to political theory's usual methods and assumptions. She persists herself as political activist. But her contributions to the feminist movement, especially the French women’s liberation movement and her beliefs in women’s economic independence and equal education made her a prominent feminist thinker and activist.

By Gergee Hembram.

"Simon de Beauvoir: a thinker ,an activist"

Simon de Beauvoir was a significant philosopher of existentialism and a pioneering figure of contemporary philosophical feminism. Her lifelong association with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, her lover and intellectual companion, contributed to her worldwide celebrity.

Simon de Beauvoir is seldom recognized by critics as a political thinker. In interviews and public statements, Beauvoir always identified herself as a writer, rather than as an activist, philosopher, or political person. Yet even if we think about politics in its most conventional sense—as the art of governance, the study of how power works, or as the interaction between people and states—we notice that Beauvoir was always thinking about political questions and responding to the historical-political events that unfolded in her lifetime (1908–1986). In essays, novels, and longer theoretical reflections, she discussed Stalinism, the disappointments of communism, and the purge trials; German occupation of France and the politics of collaboration and resistance; post World War II trials for collaborators and the articulation of crimes against humanity; racism in America; France’s war in Algeria and the politics of colonization; and the politics of embodiment, specifically addressing the aging body and women’s experience. Moreover, when responding to and writing about all these situations, Beauvoir provoked and engaged the public in ethical and political debates that probed subjects typically considered outside the realm of the political. For example, she investigated the multiple (many personal) reasons for the actions of collaborators; she brought the Algerian militant, Djamila Boupacha’s, rape by French soldiers to light in the French public in 1960; and she argued that Robert Brasillach’s crime (a Nazi-identified journalist executed for treason in 1945) was a violation against specific embodied Jewish victims rather than a crime against the French state. If we think of politics a bit more expansively, we could say that as a political thinker, Beauvoir made publicly visible what ought to be, but often was not, a matter of public concern.

By Sanjit Sarkar.

"Simon de Beauvoir:A thinker,an activist"

Simon de Beauvoir was one of the most prominent French existentialist philosopher and writers who was born in 1908, Paris.She is known primarily for her treatise Le Deuxieme Sexe,2 vol.(1949;The Second Sex),a scholarly and passionate plea for the abolition of what she called the myth of the "eternal feminine".It became a classic of feminist literature.

At the age of 21,she became the youngest person to take the philosophy exams at France's most esteemed University.She passed with flying colours but as soon as she mastered the rules of philosophy,she wanted to break them.She had been schooled on Plato's Theory of Froms, which dismissed the physical world as a flawed reflection of higher truth and unchanging ideals.But for de Beauvoir, earthly life was enthralling, sensual, and anything but static.Her desire to explore the physical world to its fullest would shaped her life,and eventually inspire a radical new philosophy.Endlessly debating with her romantic and intellectual partner Jean Paul Sartre,de Beauvoir explored free will, desire, rights and responsibilities,and the value of personal experience.

In the years following WW2,these ideas would converge into the school of thought,most closely associated with their work: existentialism.Where Judeo-Christian traditions tought that humans are born with preordained purpose,de Beauvoir and Sartre proposed a revolutionary alternative.They argued that humans are born free,and thrown into existence without a divine plan.As de Beauvoir acknowledged,this freedom is both a blessing and a burden..In the "The Ethics of Ambiguity" she argued that our greatest ethical imperative is to create our own life's meaning, while protecting the freedom of others to do the same.As she wrote,"A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied."This philosophy challenged its students to navigate the ambiguities and conflicts our desire produce,both internally and externally.And as she sought to find her own purpose,she began to question: everyone deserves to freely pursue meaning,why was she restricted by society's ideals of womanhood?

Despite her prolific writing, teaching and activism,she struggled to be taken seriously by her male peers.She had rejected her Catholic upbringing and marital expectations to study at university,and write memoirs, fiction and philosophy.But the risk she was taking by embracing this lifestyle were lost on many of her male counterparts,who took these freedom for granted.They had no intellectual interest in de Beauvoir's work, which explored women's inner lives,as well as the author's open relationship adn bisexuality.To convey the importance of her perspective,she embarked on her most challenging book yet.Just as she had created the foundation of existentialism,she'd now redefine the limits of gender.

Published in 1949,"The Second Sex" argues that,like our life's meaning, gender is not predestined.As she famously wrote,"one is not born,but rather becomes woman."And to 'become' a woman,she argued,was to become the Other.She defined Othering as the process of labeling women as less than the men who had historically defined,had been defined as,the ideal human subjects.As the Other,she argued that women were considered second to men and therefore systemically restricted from pursuing freedom."The Second Sex" became an essential feminist treatise, offering a detailed history of women's oppression and a wealth of anecdotal testimony."The Second Sex"s combination of personal experience and philosophical intervention provided a new language to discuss feminist theory.Today, those conversations are still informed by Beauvoir's insistence that in the pursuit of equality,"there is no divorce between philosophy and life."

Of course,like any foundational work,the ideas in "The Second Sex" have been expanded upon since its publication.Many modern thinkers have explored additional ways people are Othered that de Beauvoir doesn't acknowledge.These include racial and economic identities,as well as the broader spectrum of gender and sexual identities we understand today.

By Asifa Islam.

#Simone de Beauvoir as a thinker and an activist.

Simone de Beauvoir was a significant philosopher of existentialism and a pioneering figure of contemporary philosophical feminism. Her lifelong association with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, her lover and intellectual companion, contributed to her worldwide celebrity.

Beauvoir's emphasis on the fact that women need access to the same kinds of activities and projects as men places her to some extent in the tradition of liberal, or second-wave feminism. She demands that women be treated as equal to men and laws, customs and education must be altered to encourage this.

Simone de Beauvoir is a feminist icon. She didn't just write the feminist book, she wrote the movement's bible, The Second Sex. She was an engaged intellectual who combined philosophical and literary productivity with real-world political action that led to lasting legislative change. Simone de Beauvoir recognized that Women's Liberation had done some good, but she said feminists should not utterly reject being a part of the man's world, whether in organizational power or with their creative work.

To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given towards an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom.

In other words, for de Beauvoir there is an ambiguity between an individual's past as a given thing determining the nature of the present, and the future they're about to freely create. Given that the future effects of our present choices cannot yet be known, we feel the ethical weight of each decision we make.

Simone de Beauvoir is one of these belatedly acknowledged philosophers. Identifying herself as an author rather than as a philosopher and calling herself the midwife of Sartre's existential ethics rather than a thinker in her own right, Beauvoir's place in philosophy had to be won against her word.

Humanists have better reasons than most to remember her, for few women (and men) have better incarnated the radical challenge of free thought than Simone de Beauvoir.

Two of Beauvoir’s books should be on the reading list of every humanist. The first volume of her autobiography, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958), tells the compelling story of her efforts to break free from her stiflingly conventional childhood and youth. Brought up to follow the usual path for a French Catholic girl of good family – religious devotion, marriage, and children – she insisted instead on studying that most secular of subjects, philosophy, and finally escaped. By contrast, Zaza, her best friend and the subject of some of the most moving pages in the book, was not so lucky. Zaza died at 22, broken down by the conflict between her mother’s ferocious Catholic values and her own wish for a freer life.

“Some very old bonds in my life have never been broken,” Beauvoir wrote, looking back at her life: “the place that Sartre always had in it, and my fidelity to my original project: to know and to write.” Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre met while they were both still students and quickly became a highly unconventional couple, refusing to marry or to have children, yet always remaining deeply committed to a joint life of work and thought.

Together, Beauvoir and Sartre developed existentialism, a philosophy that takes freedom to be the highest value in a universe where God is dead and where human beings create their own values through their choices and actions. In the postwar period, existentialism was the most challenging expression of radical, secular, philosophical humanism.

In the 1970s Beauvoir became active in France's women's liberation movement. She wrote and signed the Manifesto of the 343 in 1971, a manifesto that included a list of famous women who claimed to have had an abortion, then illegal in France. Some argue most of the women had not had abortions, including Beauvoir.

By Sujan Haldar.

Simone de Beauvoir as a thinker and activist :

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was one of the most influential feminist thinkers of the 20th century. A novelist, political activist, memoirist and philosopher, she is most well-known for writing the 1949 text 'The Second Sex' which was revolutionary in its discusons on the role of women in society. In addition to her work, de Beauvoir had a lifelong polyamorous relationship with fellow existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

In 1949, ' The Second Sex' was published in France. Presented in two parts, the first part looks at history through a feminist lens and explores how women came to occupy a subordinate place in society. The second part examines the reality of women's lives under de Beauvoir's contemporary context. Throughout the work de Beauvoir argues that there is no reason for the unfair treatment of women throughout history, but rather, asserts that gender norms have been deliberately constructed, and then reinforced, by society. 'The Second Sex ' was, and remains, incredibly popular and influential, and is seen as one of the key early texts for second wave feminism.

Simone de Beauvoir continued to publish fiction and nonfiction throughout her life. She won the Prix Goncourt for her novel 'The Mandarins ' in 1954 which satirised the lives of Sartre, Camus and other leading French intellectuals. Her other novels included 'The Blood of Others ', 'All Men Are Mortal ', Les Belles Images ' and ' The Women Destroyed '. She also published four memoirs which examined her life with great intellectual insight, including 'Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter ', ' Force of Circumstance', ' The Coming of Age' and 'All Said and Done '. After Satre's death in 1980, she published 'Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre' which poignantly discussed the last years of her beloved's life.

Throughout her life, de Beauvoir continued to speak out an political issues. She was a great champion of women's rights and supported the abortions laws in France and Algeria and Hungary's battles for independence. De Beauvoir also condemned the Vietnam war.

By Robin.

Simone De Beauvoir: a thinker, an activist

Simone De Beauvoir is French writer and social thinker whose full name is Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand De Beauvoir.She was born in Parish in 1908 and died in1986. Simone De Beauvoir was a great feminist writer, thinker and activist.Her first novel"she came to stay" published in1943 and the second novel "The Second Sex" published in 1949, as a great feminist work.She published"pyrrhus et Cineas"(1943) and "The Ethics of Ambiguity".

According to Beauvoir's woman have been turned into an objectified other, whilst men have appropriated the subject . The famous sentence:"one is not born, but rather becomes a woman" is the starting point for a detailed phenomenological description.

Simone De Beauvoir's defines women as the"second sex"because women are defines in relation to men . She point out that Aristotle argued women are"female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities". Beauvoir's says about women that "one is not born, but rather becomes a woman". Woman is not born but they are made by the society.

Beauvoir's writings is also infused with a fundamentally political consciousness. Her political consciousness is integrally related to specifically French nation of what it has meant to be a'public intellectual'. Her works make clear of her study to phenomology.

However,"The Second Sex", always maintains it's fundamental existentialist belief that each individual, regardless of sex,class or age, should be encouraged to define him or herself and to take on the individual responsibility that comes with freedom.

B Jainab khatun.

*Simone De Beauvoir—A thinker and an activist*

Simone de Beauvoir ,born on 9th January ,1908 ,was a french writer, feminist ,social theorist ,existentialist philosopher .from the very beginning Beauvoir was intellctually precious ,fueled by her father's encouragement who also provided her with carefully edited selections from the great works of literature and who encouraged her to read and write from an early age . Beauvoir began her education in the private catholic school for girls,the institut adeline désir where she remained until the age of seventeen .then Beauvoir passed the baccalaureat exams in mathematics and philosophy in 1925. She then studied mathematics at the istitut catholique and literature and languages at the instut sainte -marie . studying philosophy at the sorbonne , Beauvoir passed exams for for certificates in history of philosophy , generally philosophy ,greek and logic in 1927 ,and in 1928 ,in ethics , sociology and psychology . Beauvoir's political commitments underwent a progressive development in the 1930's and 1940 . together with satre ,maurice merleau -ponty , Raymond aron and other intellectuals,she helped found the politically non affiliated ,leftist journal , les temps modernes in 1945 ,for which she both edited and contributed articles including in 1945,"moral idealism and political realism ,""existentialism and popular wisdom " and in 1946 " eye for an eye ". Following advance extracts which appeared in les temps modernes in 1948 , Beauvoir published her revolutionary, two volume investigation into woman's oppression , le deuxième sexe (the second sex ) in 1949 . Which often regarded as one of the most major work of feminist philosophy and the starting point of second wave feminism .in the volume one of the book Beauvoir asks " what is woman?" She argues man is considered teh default ,while woman is considered the" other " . Thus the humanity is male and man defines woman not herself but relative to him .she describes women's subordination to the species in terms of reproduction ,compares the physiology of men and women , concluding that values cannot be based on physiology and the facts of biology must be viewed in light of teh ontological , economic ,social and physiological context . according to Beauvoir ,two factors explain teh evolution of women's condition : participantion in reproduction and freedom from reproductive slavery . Beauvoir writes that motherhood left woman 'rivetes to her body ' like an animal and made it possible for men yo dominate her and nature .she describes man's gradual domination of women ,strating with the statue of a female great goddess found in susa ,and eventually the opinion of ancient Greeks like Pythagoras who wrote , " there us a good principal that created order ,light and man and a bad principal that created choas , darkness and woman. Beauvoir writes taht men oppress women when tehy seek to perpetuate teh family and keep patrimony intact . discussing Christianity , Beauvoir argues that ,with the exception of teh german tradition ,it and its clergy have served to subordinate women .she also describes prostitution and the changes in dynamics brought about by courtly love that occurred about teh twelfth century . Beauvoir describes from teh early fifteenth century " great italian and courtesans " and singles out teh spaniard teresa of avila as successfully raising " herself as high as a man ." Beauvoir finds fault with the Napoleonic code , criticizes augste comte and balzac ,and describes pierre joseph proudhon as an antifeminist .teh industrial revolution of teh nineteenth century gave women an escape from their homes but they were paid very little for their work .she examines the spread of birth control methods and teh history abortion . Beauvoir relates teh history of women's suffrage,and writes that women like rosa Luxembourg and marie Curie" brilliantly demonstrate that it is not women's inferiority that has determined their historical insigficance to that has doomed them to inferiority . To illustrate man's experience of the " horror of feminine fertility ," Beauvoir quotes the british medical journal of 1878 in which a member of the British medical association writes " it is an indisputable fact that meat goes bad when touched by menstruating women ".in Beauvoir's view , abortions performed legally by doctors would have little risk to teh mother .she argues that the catholic church cannot make the claim that the souls of the unborn would not end up in heaven because of their lack of baptism beacuse taht would be contradictory to other church teachings .in the 1970 Beauvoir became active in france's women liberation movement .she wrote and signed the manifesto of the 343 in 1971. A manifesto that inbluded a list of famous women who claimed to have had an abortion ,then illegal in France .as a result of these in 1974 ,abortion was legalised in france .

By Mamony Roy.

"Simone de Beauvoir: A thinker, an activist"

Simone de Beauvoir(January 9,1908- April 14,1986)was born in a wealthy Parisian family . She was enthusiastic about intellectual pursuits from an early age, and went on to apply this enthusiasm at a private Catholic school, and later at the University of Paris. In university, she focused her studies on philosophy. She went on to complete her studies at the Sorbonne, focusing on philosophy, logic, and psychology.In Sorbonne,She met Sartre.

She and Sartre would go on to maintain a lifelong relationship and exchanged many ideas with one another. Sartre's contributions to existentialism would also go on to shape de Beauvoir's thinking about feminism and philosophy in general. However, she and Sartre are also well known for keeping an open relationship.

Simone de Beauvoir actually rejected being labeled as a philosopher and wanted to be known as an author above all.Her important works are SHE CAME TO STAY,THE MANDARINS,MEMOIRS OF A DUTIFUL DAUGHTER,THE PRIME OF LIFE ,ADIEUX: A FAREWELL TO SARTRE etc. However , The Second Sex has an undeniable influence on the second-wave feminism. Published in 1949, it lays out her philosophy regarding feminist theory. Much of this text is shaped by Sartre's existentialist philosophy, which gave Beauvoir the idea of an Other vs a self as a framework for understanding gender relations.In The Second Sex , She expressed the idea that woman has been held in a relationship of long-standing oppression to man through her relegation to being man’s “Other.” In agreement with Hegelian and Sartrean philosophy, Beauvoir finds that the self needs otherness in order to define itself as a subject; the category of the otherness, therefore, is necessary in the constitution of the self as a self. Beauvoir discovers that woman is consistently defined as the Other by man who takes on the role of the Self. According to Beauvoir,human existence is an ambiguous interplay between transcendence and immanence, yet men always try to express themselves transcendence whereas women have been forced into the repetitive and uncreative life of immanence. Beauvoir thus proposes to investigate how this radically unequal relationship has been normalized by a patriarchal society."One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman".With this famous phrase, Beauvoir first articulated what has come to be known as the sex-gender distinction, that is, the distinction between biological sex and the social and historical construction of gender and its stereotypes.Beauvoir asserted that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves, moving beyond the "immanence" to which they were previously resigned and reaching "transcendence", a position in which one takes responsibility for oneself and the world, where one chooses one's freedom.Beauvoir argued that men had made women the "Other" in society by application of a false aura of "mystery" around them. She argued that men used this as an excuse not to understand women or their problems and not to help them, and that this stereotyping was always done in a male-dominated society.

Besides, She raised her voice against many political and social issues.She genuinely supported the abortions law in France, the voting right of women,Algeria and Hungary's battles for independence.

By Megha Mandal.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR : AS A THINKER AND ACTIVIST-

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French writer and philosopher, who laid the foundation for the modern feminist movement. Her diverse corpus includes novels, short stories, travel diaries, essays, philosophy, ethical writings, biographies, autobiographies, social issues and politics. She had major influence on feminism, feminist theory and feminist existentialism which is prominent from her revolutionary masterpiece. She was a member of the intellectual fellowship of philosopher-writers who have given a literary transcription to the themes of Existentialism. As an existentialist, de Beauvoir believed people need to live authentically. They need to choose for themselves who they want to be and how they want to live. The more pressure society – and other people – place on you, the harder it is to make that authentic choice.

Her novels expound the major Existential themes, demonstrating her conception of the writer’s commitment to the times. L’Invitée (1943; She Came To Stay) describes the subtle destruction of a couple’s relationship brought about by a young girl’s prolonged stay in their home; it also treats the difficult problem of the relationship of a conscience to "the other," each individual conscience being fundamentally a predator to another.

Beauvoir developed existentialism, a philosophy that takes freedom to be the highest value in a universe where God is dead and where human beings create their own values through their choices and actions. In the postwar period, existentialism was the most challenging expression of radical, secular, philosophical humanism.

Her landmark book The Second Sex was one of the first inspirations to the activists of the Women's Liberation Movement, even before Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique. However, Simone de Beauvoir did not at first define herself as a feminist. He also theorized that women could not be truly liberated until the system of patriarchal society itself was overthrown. She added women needed to be liberated individually, but they also needed to fight in solidarity with the political left and the working classes. Her ideas were compatible with the belief that "the personal is political."

De Beauvoir is best known for her book, The Second Sex, published in 1949. In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir had famously stated, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”. She thinks Women are different from men because of what they have been taught and socialized to do and be. It was dangerous, she said, to imagine an eternal feminine nature, in which women were more in touch with the earth and the cycles of the moon. According to her, this was just another way for men to control women, by telling women they are better off in their cosmic, spiritual "eternal feminine," kept away from men's knowledge and left without all the men's concerns like work, careers, and power.

Throughout The Second Sex, Beauvoir references ancient creation myths and the Bible, arguing that women are labeled as the Other, and thought to be secondary to men. In these biblical myths, women are frequently portrayed as the sinful or weak side of a being. Using evidence from the literature, de Beauvoir writes a compelling argument as to the connection between myth and history. Through this connection, she argues, men defined women as the Other, the darker, inferior side of humanity, unworthy of responsibility.

Beauvoir is not interested in identity politics. She doesn’t believe in women’s ineffable “difference”. Nor does she think that women are the blameless victims of men. She does think, however, that women are systematically oppressed by a worldview which takes man to be the One, the Subject, and turns women into the Other, the Object, a relative being.

In 1945 her political commitments and leftist orientation led her to associate with Jean Paul Sartre, Raymond Aron, Maurice Merleau-Ponty among other intellectuals who founded a leftist journal, ‘Les Temps Modernes’. She continued to be an editor of the journal till her death. ‘Moral Idealism and Political Realism’, ‘Eye for an Eye’ and ‘Existentialism and Popular Wisdom’ are some of the remarkable articles worth mentioning.

Simone de Beauvoir went down in history as an eminent French writer, intellectual, feminist, political activist, social theorist, and existentialist philosopher. She had a major influence on feminism, feminist theory, and feminist existentialism which is prominent from her revolutionary masterpiece "The Second Sex" that deals with oppression of women. Her book ‘Coming of Age’ was published in 1970. It was an outcome of her intense study of repression and exploitation of elderly people by society.

BY- GOURAV GUHA.

Simone de Beauvoir: As a Thinker and Activist

By Sukanta Mandal.

" Simone de Beauvoir: A thinker, an activist "

Simone de Beauvoir always identified herself as a thinker, rather than as an activist, philosopher, or political person. She was born in Paris in 1908 and died in 1986 . She had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. She is rightly best known for declaring: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.’ A less well-known facet of her philosophy, particularly relevant today, is her political activism , a viewpoint that follows directly from her metaphysical stance on the self, namely that we have no fixed essences.

Identifying herself as an author rather than as a philosopher and calling herself the midwife of Sartre’s existential ethics rather than a thinker in her own right, Beauvoir’s place in philosophy had to be won against her word. That place is now uncontested. Unlike her status as a philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir’s position as a feminist theorist has never been in question. Controversial from the beginning, The Second Sex’s critique of patriarchy continues to challenge social, political and religious categories used to justify women’s inferior status. Beauvoir’s challenge to the philosophical tradition was part of the existential-phenomenological project. Her challenge to the patriarchal status quo was more dramatic. It was an event. Not at first, however, for at its publication The Second Sex was regarded more as an affront to sexual decency than a political indictment of patriarchy or a phenomenological account of the meaning of “woman”. The women who came to be known as second-wave feminists understood what Beauvoir’s first readers missed.

In times of political turmoil, one may feel overwhelmed with anxiety and can even be tempted with Sartre to think that ‘hell is other people’. De Beauvoir encourages us to consider that others also give us the world because they infuse it with meaning: we can only make sense of ourselves in relation to others, and can only make sense of the world around us by understanding others’ goals. We strive to understand our differences and to embrace the tension between us.

Name – Robin Singha

Roll - 17

*Simone de Beauvoir:A thinker,an activist*

Simone de Beauvoir was a writer and existentialist philosopher and was probably one of the best know women thinkers of the 20th century she wrote several novels and philosophical essays and actively participate in the political life in her time.

Working alongside other famous existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir produced a rich corpus of writings including works on ethics, feminism, fiction, autobiography, and politics.

Simone de Beauvoir is best known for her feminist classic "The Second Sex "and her famous declaration, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

On publication in 1949 the book received criticism from both the French left and right and was labelled as “poison” by the Catholic church.

She was not just a provocative and informative writer. She engaged with many of the most important political issues of her time and toward the end of her life was particularly involved in the campaign for women’s rights in France.

Many women identified with the problems and situations Beauvoir described. However, despite speaking widely on the subject, she did not actively campaign over these issues until the rise of the French women’s movement in the early 1970s.

Her later work included the writing of more works of fiction, philosophical essays and interviews. It was notably marked not only by her political action in feminist issues, but also by the publication of her autobiography in four volumes and her political engagement directly attacking the French war in Algeria and the tortures of Algerians by French officers. In 1970, she published an impressive study of the oppression of aged members of society, La Vieillesse (The Coming of Age). This work mirrors the same approach she had taken in The Second Sex only with a different object of investigation.

The catalyst for what Beauvoir would describe as her “radical feminism” appears to have been the protests of 1968. Her changing views are documented in a series of interviews with fellow feminist Alice Schwarzer. Beauvoir was primarily writing Old Age, her book on society’s treatment of the elderly, during the protests and did not take a particularly active role in events.

By Susmita Sarkar.

Simone de Beauvoir as a thinker, an activist:

Activists in the Feminist movement in the present century

have naturally turned their attention to the world of

imaginative literature, anxious to see how far it has misrepresented

women through the ages or contributed to

imposing on them a falsely limited notion of their role. In

this respect, like the Marxists and the Leavisites, the feminists

are dissatisfied with the wider social and cultural situation.

Neither the Marxist nor the Leavisite critique can be isolated

from the accompanying view of historic development, and it

is impossible to isolate feminist literary criticism from the

feminist reading of history and the radical social posture it

encourages. In fact, of course, writing is not an area of

activity from which women have been excluded or in which

they have failed to gain equality with men. A much more radical critical mode, sometimes called “ Second-Wave feminism,” was launched in France by Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex (1949), a wide-ranging critique of the cultural identification of women as merely the negative object, or “ Other , to man as the dominating “ Subject” who is assumed to represent humanity in general; the book dealt also with the “ great collective myths” of women in the works of many male writers.

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908 and died there in 1986. Simone de Beauvoir was an existential phenomenologist who was

centrally concerned with problems of oppression and embodiment.

Her philosophy, novels, and autobiography remain popular, especially

The Second Sex, which continues to influence feminist thought.

Beauvoir lived her life as an intellectual. She considered her lifes

work to be social commentary. Her tools for social analysis were

philosophical.

Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. Existentialism is a branch of philosophy best known from French

writers during the 1940s and 1950s, especially Beauvoir, Sartre, and

Albert Camus. Existentialism is mostly concerned with ideas of

choice, meaning, and the limits of existence. In general, existentialists

think human existence has no predetermined meaning. It is

up to each of us to use our freedom to choose our actions and interactions

in the world. Each individual carries the burden of finding,

revealing, and making meaning in the world.

Existentialisms roots are found in the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger. According to Beauvoir, each person “bears the responsibility for the world which is not the work of a strange power, but of himself,

where his defeats are inscribed and his victories as well”. For Beauvoir, human freedom has meaning because of what we do with it. The value that we find in the world we find through our

actions, our choices, and our investments in other people. Life has

meaning, but it is up to us to find, discover, or reveal that meaning.

Some value in the world must be revealed, other value must be created.

Sometimes value must be revealed and created simultaneously.

Simone de Beauvoir , partner of the French

Existentialist philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre ( 1905-80),

wrote Le deuxieme sexe ( 1949), translated as The Second Sex

( 1960), in which she found the origin of female subservience to men not in any natural inferiority but in the age-old dominance of men. She argues that whereas a man never

begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex', a woman has to define herself as a woman from the start thats why she says the most famous quote “ One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”. The masculine is regarded as the very type of humanity and woman is seen as relative to man. Women as a body lack

the cohesion to assert themselves against this categorisation.

While art, literature, and philosophy are essentially 'attempts to found the world anew on a human liberty; that of the individual creator', women are so moulded and indoctrinated

by tradition that they are prevented from assuming the status of beings with liberty. Meanwhile a conspiracy is kept

alive which implies that women by nature lack creative genius.

By Sourav.

*Simone de Beauvoir as a thinker and activist:*

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was born on 9th January 1908 into a bourgeois Parisian family. She was a French writer, feminist, social theorist, political activist, existentialist philosopher, and intellectual. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiographies, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. In her "Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter", she said that "...my father's individualism and pagan ethical standards were in complete contrast to the rigidly moral conventionalism of my mother's teaching. This disequilibrium which made my life a kind of endless disputation is the main reason why I became an intellectual."

Her first philosophical essay "Pyrrhus et Cineas" is based on the discussion of existentialist ethics. She continues it in her second essay "The ethics of Ambiguity"(1947), which is perhaps the most accessible entry into French existentialism. In "Pyrrhus et Cineas", Beauvoir adopts the point of departure of the existing individual. Here she sets out to examine the importance of "situation". In Beauvoir's thought, 'situation' refers to how a human being as an individual consciousness is engaged in the world with regard to other people, to time, to space, and to other products of his or her facticity. Facticity basically suggests those facts on which an individual has nothing to do. Here 'facticity' refers to the necessary connection between consciousness and the world of inert matter and the past.

"Pyrrhus et Cineas" is divided into two sections: the first dealing with the features of individual human existence and the second examining the individual's relationship with other people. Like Sartre, she also uses the term "transcendence" although it will assume a different meaning because of the importance placed on the ethical implications of the existence of the other in Beauvoir's philosophy. It refers to the process whereby human beings are compelled to go beyond a given state of affairs to pursue a further project. It is applied in Second Sex. With this idea, she tries to say that nothing is fixed in this world and everything is transcending as transcendence is a part of the human condition.

Her second novel "The Blood of Others (1945) is considered by some to be a fictional primer to her philosophical text. Beauvoir's "The Ethics of Ambiguity" was published in 1947. It develops her distinct notion of the importance of others in a 'situation'. Here she emphasizes her belief that the human condition is not fixed, but must be constantly created within the parameters of seemingly opposed conditions of existence. In her works, she talks about ambiguity. She thinks that human existence is ambiguous because human beings are both free and unfree, separate and connected. Two important examples of ambiguity in Beauvoir's thought are (a) human beings are both separate from and dependent on other people and (b) women experience their embodiment and desire as ambiguous.

Beauvoir defines women as the "second sex" because women are defined in relation to men. Her famous work "Second Sex" was published in 1949 in French as "Le Deuxieme Sexe", turns the existentialist mantra that existence proceeds essence into a feminist one: "one is not born but becomes a woman". By using this famous phrase, she first articulated the sex-gender distinction. It is the distinction between biological sex and the social and historical construction of gender and its attendant stereotypes. She asserted that women are as capable of choice as men and thus can choose to elevate themselves, moving beyond the immense to which they were previously resigned and reaching 'transcendence' a position in which one takes responsibility for oneself and the world, where one chooses one's freedom.

By prity.

Simon de Beauvoir as a thinker and activist..

"One is not born but rather becomes a woman"

This deliberate, candid assertion about the traditional femininity is the most important assertion which makes Simon de Beauvoir distinct from the previous proto feminists and feminist activists. She is the first one who describes what is called as gender-sex binary and asserts sex is biological and gender is nothing but a cultural construction by critiquing traditional gender roles.

Simon de Beauvoir was born on 9th January,1908 in a bourgeois Parisian family .Her parents were Georges Bertrand de Beauvoir, a legal secretary who once aspired to be an actor,and Françoise Beauvoir (née Brasseur), a wealthy banker's daughter and devout Catholic. Due to the ravages caused by WW1 , the family struggled a lot to maintain their bourgeois status and faced economic decline.Her father was an atheist ,liberal individual and her mother was a devout Catholic Christian.From her initial days ,she faced contant ideological,religious,political and social conflicts and the clashes which she later admitted ,helped her to grow up as 'intellectual'.She was a brilliant , dazzling young intelligent girl, fueled by his father's encouragement who boasted about his daughter's intelligence often- 'Simone thinks like a man'.The boasting about the thinking power like a man alludes to the contemporary wretched state of womenfolk.Due to their poor financial condition, she did not have her dowry like the other young girls of her age which in a way helped her not to be shackled in a marital bond and as a result she continued her journey on the path of education.She did her early schooling in a Catholic convent until she was 17 and made an intimate friendship with Elizabeth Mebille(Zaza) whose untimely death due to meningitis though she she believed it was caused by her friend's mental agony due to a clash between Zaza and her family over an arranged marriage.The trauma affirms her decision of not to marry and live and intellectual individual's life.She was a deeply religious child at her childhood days but at the age of 14,she faces some crises in her beliefs and declared herself as an atheist and remained so until her death.Beauvoir passed the baccalauréat exams in mathematics and philosophy in 1925. She then studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique and literature and languages at the Institut Sainte-Marie, passing exams in 1926 for Certificates of Higher Studies in French literature and Latin, before beginning her study of philosophy in 1927. Studying philosophy at the Sorbonne, Beauvoir passed exams for Certificates in History of Philosophy, General Philosophy, Greek, and Logic in 1927, and in 1928, in Ethics, Sociology, and Psychology. She wrote a graduate diplôme on Leibniz for Léon Brunschvig and completed her practice teaching at the lycée Janson-de-Sailly with fellow students, Merleau-Ponty and Claude Lévi-Strauss – with both of whom she remained in philosophical dialogue.Though not officially enrolled ,she sit for the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure and took the second place in the exam by barely losing to Jean Paul Satre who stood first in his second attempt. Although she was not an official student, Beauvoir attended lectures and sat for the agrégation at the École Normale. At 21 years of age, Beauvoir was the youngest student ever to pass the agrégation in philosophy and thus became the youngest philosophy teacher in France.Her early philosophical reading was wide ranging from Plato,Kant to Gottfried Leibniz,Sopenhauer,Nietzsche and Henri Louis Bergson. It was not until 1920s ,she was exposed to the ideas of Hegel,Karl Marx which influenced her immortal works.During the days of Ecole Normale Superiure,she met the legendary philosopher Satre with whom she formed a lifelong personal and intellectual relationship without a marital bond in 1929 which did last till his death . In contemporary rigid,orthodox French society she was always criticised for this 'open' relationship.She was bisexual and had relationship with many famous men like American author Nelson Algren, Claude Lanzamann and young women. Her relationships with her young female pupils are highly controversial and she was accused of exploiting some of them for which her license to teach was revoked although it was subsequently reinstated.Through her unconventional lifestyle ,she poses a threat to the conventional heterosexual, patriarchal ,orthodox French society.She was a philosopher,writer,existential feminist, political activist, and a great representative of post war intelligencia whose "The Second Sex" is regarded as the 'Bible' of modern western feminism.Though she initially felt irritated to be called as an 'Existentialist' writer and a feminist, she in her laterdays embraced the terms.Her first novel 'She Came to Stay'(1943) an existentialist tale with the presence of an 'other' in a man- woman relationship which has autobiographical traces.The novel also delves into Beauvoir and Sartre's complex relationship and how it was affected by the ménage à trois.In 1945, they launched Les Temps Modernes, a left wing non-aligned political and literary review which was highly influencial in 1940s and 1950s.Her first visit to Us resuls in the brilliant diary record "America Day by Day".She believed in the existential creed of Satre that ' existence preceeds essence' and the main three ideas of existentialism are 'freedom','responsibility' and 'authenticity'. Her second novel "The Blood of Others" is labeled as a 'resistance' and 'existential' novel.Though she has many laurels to her credit, her "The Second Sex" is widely regarded as the best jewel of her oeuvre.In this groundbreaking text written in 1949, five years after women get voting rights in France ,she describes women as the quientessential 'Other' to the universal subject men in the fashion of Hegel's Master- Slave Dialectic and gives profound examples how femininity is constructed throughout the ages and explores how patriarchal society mystifies women through an aura of obscurity of so called female nature. Her idea of 'becoming a woman' relentlessly tears asunder the veil of romance prevailed around conventional femininity.Her existential essays like' Pyrrhus et Cinéas' and 'The Ethics of Ambiguity' deal with the existentialist dillema of absolute freedom and the circumstantial constraints. Her 1954 novel 'Ths Mandarines' which won the Prix Goncourt prize and her autobiographies outraged Algren as she explored in these books her relationships with her intimate circles of which Algren was a part in a candid manner.In 2020 it was announced that her previously unpublished novel "Les Inseparables' will be published in 2021which locates the 'intimate' relationship between her and Zaza in a fictional way.

When she wrote 'The Second Sex' the provisional French government adopted a policy of Nazi regime and thus introduced some stringent measures to curtail the female emancipation .

So her attempt to write about the authority of females of their 'body' in such a situation is really groundbreaking and an act of utmost bravery.Though she has an identity and point of importance of her own, she(symbolises the whole womenfolk) is often considered as a pupil or midwife to Satre's( representative of superior males) philosophical tracts in this prejudiced , narrow minded patriarchal society which is really disheartening .But nowadays newer interests are grown and as a result explorations and rereadings of her oeuvre are made which really bears a sense of delight for us. Her book "Old Age" negates the idea that there is an universal experience of aging. Like gender ,old age is also a cultural construct.After the death of Satre in 1980 ,she published a tribute to her lifelong companion - "Adieux:. Farewell to Satre". She did a lifelong struggle against the violence on women, faught for the right of abortion ,voting rights for women and Algeria and Hungary's battle for independence..

By Poulami Saha.

"Simone de Beauvoir: A thinker, an activist"

One of the leading feminist icon is the French thinker, and political activist, Simone de Beauvoir. She launched the Second Wave Feminist movement in France and it's necessary to demonstrate that she didn't only launch feminist book, rather the movement's bible, " The Second Sex".

She is known primarily for her treatise Le Deuxième Sexe, 2 vol. (1949; The Second Sex), a scholarly and passionate plea for the abolition of what she called the myth of the “eternal feminine.” It became a classic of feminist literature.The goal of The Second Sex was to help women cultivate a confidence in their own vision of the world – to recognise the value of their own freedom – that she later called rapport à soi (self-rapport). Because women couldn’t live up to all the incompatible myths of femininity, Beauvoir thought, they often felt like failures. Instead of asking themselves what they wanted for their lives, they berated themselves for not being what others wanted.

In talk of "sex" and "gender" what Beauvoir mouth off throughout her books. It is widely held that while one's sex as a man or woman is determined by anatomy, the prevailing concept of gender of the traits that are conceived to constitute what masculine and what is feminine in temperament. In a simple way, it can be said that "sex" is biological and " gender" is the thing what our society constructed as Beauvoir in her text "Second Sex" remarked, ''One is not born, but rather becomes, a women... It is civilization as a whole that produces this creatures...which is described as feminine."

As a thinker and an activist, She was the most influential spirit of her contemporary period, even she's been mentioned in nowadays' talk on feminism. One of the centre, where Simone de Beauvoir’s thought prominently featured, The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham. The CCCS had a crucial engagement with intellectual developments in academia and progression and direction of thought in activist circles. One of the members of the centre, Rebecca O’Rourke argued that “within my generation of feminists Simone de Beauvoir was an influential thinker. Hence, it can be stated that she possesses the imperishable uniqueness in the realm of feminism and also she is great thinker and activist.

By Palash Biswas

Simone de Beauvoir as a thinker and activist :

By Ayesha Khatun.

Prepared by the students of the 4th semester, Department of English, University of Gour Banga, Malda, West Bengal, India

Comments

SUSMITA SARKAR27 May 2021 at 00:26
*Simone de Beauvoir:A thinker,an activist*

Simone de Beauvoir was a writer and existentialist philosopher and was probably one of the best know women thinkers of the 20th century she wrote several novels and philosophical essays and actively participate in the political life in her time.
Working alongside other famous existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir produced a rich corpus of writings including works on ethics, feminism, fiction, autobiography, and politics.
Simone de Beauvoir is best known for her feminist classic "The Second Sex "and her famous declaration, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
On publication in 1949 the book received criticism from both the French left and right and was labelled as “poison” by the Catholic church.
She was not just a provocative and informative writer. She engaged with many of the most important political issues of her time and toward the end of her life was particularly involved in the campaign for women’s rights in France.
Many women identified with the problems and situations Beauvoir described. However, despite speaking widely on the subject, she did not actively campaign over these issues until the rise of the French women’s movement in the early 1970s.
Her later work included the writing of more works of fiction, philosophical essays and interviews. It was notably marked not only by her political action in feminist issues, but also by the publication of her autobiography in four volumes and her political engagement directly attacking the French war in Algeria and the tortures of Algerians by French officers. In 1970, she published an impressive study of the oppression of aged members of society, La Vieillesse (The Coming of Age). This work mirrors the same approach she had taken in The Second Sex only with a different object of investigation.

The catalyst for what Beauvoir would describe as her “radical feminism” appears to have been the protests of 1968. Her changing views are documented in a series of interviews with fellow feminist Alice Schwarzer. Beauvoir was primarily writing Old Age, her book on society’s treatment of the elderly, during the protests and did not take a particularly active role in events.

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