Simone de Beauvoir — "Self-consciousness is not a matter of being aware of oneself, but of being aware…"
Self-consciousness is not a matter of being aware of oneself, but of being aware of oneself as a being-in-the-world.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"I choose to be free, and not to be an object."
"If you want to be happy, you must be free."
"I was made for another planet altogether. I mistook the way."
"There is an odd kind of pleasure in not being able to understand anything, in being completely at sea."
"The 'eternal feminine' is a concept invented by men to perpetuate the myth of woman as the 'Other'."
About Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
French existentialist philosopher whose The Second Sex (1949) is the foundational text of modern feminist theory. Closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre (lifetime partner and existentialist co-founder) and Albert Camus (existentialist contemporary in Paris). For an intellectual contrast, see Camille Paglia, American cultural critic and Sexual Personae author — Paglia argues for biological-essentialist roots of gender that Beauvoir's social-construction view — 'one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman' — explicitly rejects. The two are the cleanest constructed-vs-essentialist poles in feminist theory.
The standard scholarly entry points to Simone de Beauvoir's work: Toril Moi (Duke, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor) — Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman (1994); Margaret A. Simons (Southern Illinois University, Emerita) — Beauvoir and The Second Sex (1999); Kate Kirkpatrick (Oxford, Regent's Park College) — Becoming Beauvoir: A Life (2019). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Simone de Beauvoir.