Simone de Beauvoir — "To be authentic, one must be true to oneself."
To be authentic, one must be true to oneself.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it."
"I am a woman, and I exist."
"I am going to die, and I don't know what to do with myself."
"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."
"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."
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.