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Simone de Beauvoir

French existentialist philosopher, novelist and essayist whose analysis of how women are constituted as the 'Other' made The Second Sex a founding text of…

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Also known as Beauvoir, Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

1908 – 1986 · Paris

Traditions: Continental

Schools: Existentialism

French existentialist philosopher, novelist and essayist whose analysis of how women are constituted as the 'Other' made The Second Sex a founding text of modern feminist philosophy. She also developed an existentialist ethics of freedom and reciprocity.

Key ideas

  • One becomes a woman rather than being born one
  • Woman as constructed as the Other to man
  • Freedom requires willing the freedom of others
  • Ambiguity of the human condition as subject and object

Major works

  • Pyrrhus and Cineas (1944)
  • The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
  • The Second Sex (1949)
  • The Mandarins (1954)

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