Simone de Beauvoir — "The present is not a potential past; it is the moment of choice and action."
The present is not a potential past; it is the moment of choice and action.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"The word 'love' has by now been so debased and distorted that it is almost impossible to use it."
"To make oneself spiritual, one must make oneself a body."
"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth—and truth rewarded me."
"To be happy, one must be free."
"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
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.