Simone de Beauvoir — "The word 'love' has by now been so debased and distorted that it is almost impos…"
The word 'love' has by now been so debased and distorted that it is almost impossible to use it.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"If we are to abolish the slavery of women, the first step is to abolish the family."
"If the feminine issue is so absurd, is because the male's arrogance made it 'a discussion.'"
"I am a woman with a mind and a body, and I use both."
"What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness."
"I know of no other experience more thrilling than to be at the heart of a debate, to be part of the current of ideas."
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.