Simone de Beauvoir: biography of this philosopher
Simone de Beauvoir is one of the great minds of the 20th century. Great thinker, novelist and, although she did not recognize it, feminist, her fight for women’s rights has meant a before and after to achieve gender equality.
His way of being and seeing human relationships was a scandal at the time, especially considering the kind of relationship he had with another great philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre.
If you want to know more about the prolific intellectual life of this author and also about her interesting personal life, read on to see a short biography of Simone de Beauvoir , with which we will know her life and work.
- Related article: “Types of feminism and their different currents of thought”
Biography of Simone de Beauvoir
Next we will see the most remarkable vital events of Simone de Beauvoir, among them the great historical figures she was able to meet and her relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre.
1. First years
Her full name is Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir , born on January 9, 1908 in Paris, France, in a bourgeois family of the French capital. From the early years of the young Simone de Beauvoir, there were two tendencies in her family that pushed her to go to extremes.
On the one hand, her mother was a devout Catholic, while her father was an atheist, and he invited the young woman to expand her vision and knowledge of the world through reading. It is perhaps for this reason that de Beauvoir’s childhood is deeply marked by an exalted faith in God, wanting to be a major nun. But, when she reaches 14 years old, she abandons these beliefs definitively, assuring that God simply does not exist .
The young woman was always an excellent student, and in fact her father encouraged her to continue her studies. One of the phrases that her father used to say to her, and which perhaps contributed to her thinking about the differences between men and women when she grew up, was “Simone thinks like a man”, understanding that he saw her as intelligent as a man, according to the sexist perspective that clearly prevailed at that time.
2. Academic training
Around the age of 16, Simone de Beauvoir decides that she will study to become a teacher . This could not have been possible if the family had not gone through financial problems, which meant that they could not offer a good dowry to marry off their daughters and choose to have them study whatever they wanted.
After passing his baccalaureate exams in mathematics in 1925, de Beauvoir enrolled at the Institut Catholique in Paris. This combined, in addition, with studies of literature and languages at the Lycée Saint-Marie. He would later study philosophy at the Sorbonne , finishing his studies in 1928 and presenting his thesis on Leibniz.
At that time, Simone de Beauvoir was the ninth woman to obtain a degree offered by the Sorbonne, because until very recently in France it had not been possible for women to study higher education.
Years later, she took the exams to become a teacher in France (agrégation) and decided to attend the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris as an auditor. It was during this time that she had the opportunity to meet some of the great French thinkers of the 20th century, such as Paul Nizan, René Maheu and, most notably, Jean-Paul Sartre .
At the end of the agrégation tests, Sartre was in first place, while de Beauvoir was in second place, becoming at the age of 21 the youngest person to have passed that test.
3. Times of war
From the time she obtained the agrégation in 1929 until 1943, Simone de Beauvoir devoted herself to teaching in secondary education . She taught in high schools in several French cities, including Marseilles, Rouen and Paris. It was also from 1929 onwards that Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre became a couple.
In 1943 she decided to abandon her work as a teacher and focus on writing, publishing her first novel, L’invitée that same year. At that time, Paris had been taken over by the Nazis and de Beauvoir devoted himself to reflecting on the responsibility of intellectuals in times of war , as set out in his book Le Sang des Autres .
It was also during the years of the German occupation that he wrote his only play, Les bouches inutiles , which was performed in 1945 at the Théâtre des Carrefours in Paris.
In 1944, together with other intellectuals such as Sartre, Raymond Aron, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Albert Ollivier and Jean Paulhan, he founded the magazine Les temps modernes , with an ideology close to that of the communist party and a publication in which existential thought was disseminated.
4. End of the War and Philosophical Maturity
After the end of the occupation he began to publish his first philosophical essays , which would not go unnoticed. In 1947 he holds several conferences in the United States in which he spreads his philosophy. This was also the year in which he published his probably best known book: Le deuxième sexe , known in Spanish as El segundo sexo . The publication of this work was very controversial, even for the France of that time, a country which was considered tolerant and very secular with respect to its neighbours Spain and the United Kingdom.
In the 1950s, he made several trips both inside and outside his native country, including to countries under communist rule such as China and Cuba, and met with Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara .
5. Sartre’s last years and death
Although of marked Marxist ideology, de Beauvoir always defended human rights against his political vision, signing a manifesto against the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Despite being a French citizen, was very critical of the French administration in Africa , defending Algeria’s independence. She considered that colonialism was just another way in which the oppression of the strongest towards the weakest is presented.
Years later, de Beauvoir, together with Sartre, would formally move away from communism when the Soviet authorities invaded Czechoslovakia .
During the 1960s she continued her travels, going to Japan, Egypt, Israel and the USSR and, already in the following decade, showed her views on such controversial issues as abortion, the Arab-Israeli conflict and women’s rights.
In 1980 Sartre dies, putting an end to their open relationship that had already lasted some 50 years . In honour and remembrance of him, de Beauvoir published the following year La cérémonie des adieux , recounting their relationship over the course of five decades.
Simone de Beauvoir died on April 14, 1986 from pneumonia at the age of 78.
Work and Thought
Simone de Beauvoir’s thought has laid the foundations for the construction of feminism as it is understood today , as well as being a song to individual freedom, both economic and sexual and reproductive.
Below we will briefly look at three texts written by the French philosopher, focusing in particular on the relationship between women and men, both in the more traditional and personal vision of de Beauvoir.
1. L’invitée
L’invitée , in Spanish translated as “The Guest”, is the first novel by Simone de Beauvoir published in 1943. In it she describes her relationship with Sartre and two of her students when she was working in Rouen, the Kosakiewicz sisters, although she changes the names of the characters. In the fiction, Sartre and de Beauvoir even have threesomes with the students.
2. Le deuxième sexe
Le deuxième sexe (1949) turns the most important principle of existentialism, that is, that existence precedes essence, into a feminist slogan : one is not born a woman but becomes a woman.
The author distinguishes between the concepts of sex and gender . On the one hand, sex is something biological, defined by the X and Y chromosomes, while gender is understood as the historical and social construction of what it is to be a man and a woman. De Beauvoir also maintains that the oppression of women is strongly linked to the historical concept of femininity.
The title of the book is already a statement of intent. Simone de Beauvoir refers to women as the second sex because, traditionally, they have been defined in terms of their relationships with men .
Although it may surprise you, de Beauvoir never considered herself a feminist, although feminism has been based on what has been explained in her most remarkable work. The doctrine of de Beauvoir exposed in Le deuxieme sexe , promoting the economic independence of women and the right to receive the same education as men, have been a great contribution to the constitution of feminism.
3. Les mandarins
Les mandarins , published in 1954, has been the work that has managed to win the most important literary award in France, the Prix Goncourt.
In this book, de Beauvoir explains in literary terms her relationship with philosophers close to the author’s environment , and her life with her partner, Sartre, as well as explaining her relationship with Nelson Algren.
Awards and decorations
In 1954 she was awarded the Goncourt Prize for her work Les mandarins . In 1975 she received the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society and in 1978 she received the Austrian Prize for European Literature.
In 1998 an asteroid was named (11385) Beauvoir, followed by asteroid (11384) Sartre. In 2000 a square was opened in Paris in honour of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and in 2006 a small bridge was opened in the same city in honour of de Beauvoir. Since 2008, the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom has been offered .
Personal life
One of the best known aspects of Simone de Beauvoir is that she has had numerous relationships, even when she was paired with Sartre, something that continues to surprise today. While this need not be seen as negative, it has been able to eclipse in part her prolific intellectual production.
The relationship between Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre lasted fifty years. However, both saw each other with other people, maintaining a kind of verbal contract that they renewed every two years, in which they allowed to have an open relationship .
De Beauvoir never intended to get married, nor to become a housewife and have children of her own. This allowed her to focus on her academic training, as well as to devote time to her literary production and philosophy, and to be free to meet anyone she wanted.
It should be said that although his bisexuality was already controversial at a time when sexual diversity was not very well tolerated , the most controversial was the fact that, like Sisyphus of Lesbos, he had relations with some of his students. In fact, one of his students at the Lycée Molière in Paris claimed that she was sexually exploited by Simone de Beauvoir. Because of rumours and comments of this kind, de Beauvoir was suspended from her job in 1943 after being accused, in this case by the mother of a 17-year-old student.
Simone de Beauvoir, along with other great intellectuals of the time, signed a petition to lower the age of sexual consent in France.
Bibliographic references:
- De Beauvoir, S. (1945) La phénoménologie de la perception de Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Les Temps modernes, 2. 363-67
- De Beauvoir, S. (1945) Idéalisme moral et réalisme politique, Les Temps Modernes, 2. 248-68.
- De Beauvoir, S. (1946) Littérature et métaphysique, Les Temps modernes, 7. 1153-63.