Simone de Beauvoir — "The individual is not a fixed entity, but a process of self-creation."
The individual is not a fixed entity, but a process of self-creation.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"I don't know if I'm a good writer, but I'm a good woman."
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
"The most marvelous thing about the world is that it is a world of possibility; and the most wondrous fact about man is that he is a possibility."
"The female is a female only in relation to the male. Otherwise, she is an incomplete human being."
"When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men."
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.