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Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986)

The Second Sex begins with a question that had somehow never been asked in quite that way: what is a woman? Beauvoir's answer shook the foundations of how gender was understood. She argued that femininity is a construction, not a fate. She lived as she wrote: refusing conventional roles, maintaining a complex partnership with Sartre, publishing fiction and philosophy that insisted on women's full humanity. She didn't start feminism, but she gave it a philosophical language.

Concepts

agency, alienation, authenticity, conformity, freedom, loneliness, love, meaning, oppression, praxis, solidarity

Quotes (7)

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” — The Second Sex (1949)
“To will oneself free is also to will others free.” — The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
“The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one ...” — The Second Sex (1949)
“Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.” — All Said and Done (1972)
“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to...” — The Prime of Life (1960)
“The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the...” — The Second Sex (1949)
“To catch a glimmer of oneself in the other — this is the deepest joy the huma...” — The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)