Simone de Beauvoir — "The greatest challenge in life is to find your own path."
The greatest challenge in life is to find your own path.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"I am a woman with a mind and a body, and I use both."
"The greatest scandal of the world is the one we are all guilty of: the fact that we are born."
"The word 'love' has by now been so debased and perverted that it has become almost impossible to use it without a sense of shame."
"To love is to will the other's freedom."
"If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you'll be a better person."
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.