Simone de Beauvoir — "The meaning of life is not to be found in some transcendent realm, but in our co…"
The meaning of life is not to be found in some transcendent realm, but in our concrete existence.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth was undoubtedly at the bottom of my search for an autonomous existence."
"The world is not a collection of things, but a collection of relationships."
"Marriage is a scandalous institution."
"No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society must be changed so that women can earn their living and children are cared for by appropriate services."
"To live is to challenge oneself."
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.