Simone de Beauvoir
Existentialist ethics and feminist philosophy; identity as something made, not given.
Ideas
- Woman as the Other
- Men are treated as the default human and women as the deviation. That asymmetry is what The Second Sex sets out to explain.
- Ambiguity
- We are both free subjects and bodies in a situation. Ethics means accepting both without escaping into either.
- Freedom needs other people's freedom
- Your own freedom is not secured by oppressing others, but only by working for theirs.
In their words
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
“The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed.”
Start with
- The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
- The Second Sex (1949)
- The Mandarins (1954)
- A Very Easy Death (1964)
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