Simone de Beauvoir — "It is in the knowledge of the human heart that we find the true measure of man."
It is in the knowledge of the human heart that we find the true measure of man.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"The female is a female only in relation to the male. Otherwise, she is an incomplete human being."
"The truth is, I don't know what I am doing."
"The human being is a being-for-itself, a being who is always in the process of becoming."
"There is an odd kind of pleasure in not being able to understand anything, in being completely at sea."
"I was made for another planet altogether. I mistook the way."
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.