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Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir Books

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The Second Sex

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La vieillesse

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The Mandarins

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Inseparable

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Prime of Life

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She Came to Stay

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“ولكن عندما عدت إلى البيت، انهار حزن ورعب الأيام الماضية فوق كتفي بكل ثقله. فقد كان بداخلي أنا أيضا سرطانا ينهش داخلي-الندم. "لا تدعوهم يجرون لها العملية". ولم أمنع أي شىء. كثيرا ما كانت لا مبالاة أقارب المرضي الذين يقاسون عذاب الاحتضار تثير سخطي. "لو كان الأمر بيدي، لقتلته". وفي أول اختبار استسلمت: تنكرت لقيمي بعد أن غلبتني اخلاقيات المجتمع. "لا،" أخبرني سارتر. "غلبك الفكر العلمي: وقد كان ذلك قاتلا". وبالفعل قد كان. فكل منا يدور في رُحى الأطباء مجبرا، مغلوبا أمام تشخيصاتهم وتنبوءاتهم وقراراتهم. يصبح المريض ملكا خاصا بهم: أيمكنك الهروب به منهم؟ في تلك الأربعاء، لم يكن هناك سوى خياران: إجراء العملية أو القتل الرحيم.”

DeathDyingSickness And Diseases
Book:A Very Easy Death
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“In particular those who are condemned to stagnation are often pronounced happy on the pretext that happiness consists in being at rest. This notion we reject, for our perspective is that of existentialist ethics. Every subject plays his part as such specifically through exploits or projects that serve as a mode of transcendence; he achieves liberty only through a continual reaching out towards other liberties. There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future. Every time transcendence falls back into immanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence into the ‘en-sois’ – the brutish life of subjection to given conditions – and of liberty into constraint and contingence. This downfall represents a moral fault if the subject consents to it; if it is inflicted upon him, it spells frustration and oppression. In both cases it is an absolute evil. Every individual concerned to justify his existence feels that his existence involves an undefined need to transcend himself, to engage in freely chosen projects.”

PhilosophyLiberty
Book:The Second Sex
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“Women’s actions have never been more than symbolic agitation; they have won only what men have been willing to concede to them; they have taken nothing; they have received.5 It is that they lack the concrete means to organize themselves into a unit that could posit itself in opposition. They have no past, no history, no religion of their own; and unlike the proletariat, they have no solidarity of labor or interests; they even lack their own space that makes communities of American blacks, the Jews in ghettos, or the workers in Saint-Denis or Renault factories. They live dispersed among men, tied by homes, work, economic interests, and social conditions to certain men—fathers or husbands—more closely than to other women. As bourgeois women, they are in solidarity with bourgeois men and not with women proletarians; as white women, they are in solidarity with white men and not with black women.”

WomenSecond Sex
Book:The Second Sex
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“At the present time there still exist many doctrines which choose to leave in the shadow certain troubling aspects of a too complex situation. But their attempt to lie to us is in vain. Cowardice does not pay. Those reasonable metaphysics, those consoling ethics with which they would like to entice us only accentuate the disorder from which we suffer.”

EthicsIdeologyDelusionAmbiguitySelf Deception
Book:The Ethics of Ambiguity
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“It has never been very easy for me to live, though I am always very happy—maybe because I want so much to be happy. I like so much to live and I hate the idea of dying one day. And then I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life, I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, and to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish... You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”

LifeHappinessSuccessWorkAmbivalenceLust For LifeHobbysOverburdening
Book:A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren
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“Yet I loathe the thought of annihilating myself quite as much now as I ever did. I think with sadness of all the books I’ve read, all the places I’ve seen, all the knowledge I’ve amassed and that will be no more. All the music, all the paintings, all the culture, so many places: and suddenly nothing. ... If it had at least enriched the earth; if it had given birth to… what? A hill? A rocket? But no. Nothing will have taken place. I can still see the hedge of hazel trees flurried by the wind and the promises with which I fed my beating heart while I stood gazing at the gold-mine at my feet: a whole life to live. The promises have all been kept. And yet, turning an incredulous gaze towards that young and credulous girl, I realise with stupor how much I was gypped.”

LifePhilosophyDeathCultureKnowledgeHumanExperiencePhilosopherMeaningExistentialismNihilism
Book:Force of circumstance
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“The moment you acknowledge my conscience, you know that I acknowledge one in you, too. That makes all the difference.’ ‘Perhaps,’ said Françoise . . . ‘In short, that is friendship. Each renounces individual self-importance. But what if either refuses to renounce it?’ ‘In that case, friendship is impossible,’ said Pierre. Xavière never renounced any part of herself. No matter how high she placed one, even if it amounted to worship, one remained an object to her.”

FriendshipConsciousnessRelationshipRecognitionSubjectivity
Book:She Came to Stay
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“Men’s economic privilege, their social value, the prestige of marriage, the usefulness of masculine support—all these encourage women to ardently want to please men. They are on the whole still in a state of serfdom. It follows that woman knows and chooses herself not as she exists for herself but as man defines her. She thus has to be described first as men dream of her since her being-for-men is one of the essential factors of her concrete condition.”

MenWomenRelationshipsMarriagePrivilegeInferiorityPrestigeSerfdomMen Dream
Author:Simone de Beauvoir
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“Politics always puts forward Ideas: Nation, Empire, Union, Economy, etc. But none of these forms has value in itself; it has it only insofar as it involves concrete individuals. If a nation can assert itself proudly only to the detriment of its members, if a union can be created only to the detriment of those it is trying to unite, the nation or the union must be rejected. We repudiate all idealisms, mysticisms, etcetera which prefer a Form to man himself.”

EthicsExistentialismAutonomy
Book:The Ethics of Ambiguity
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“Art, literature, and philosophy are attempts to found the world anew on a human freedom: that of the creator; to foster such an aim, one must first unequivocally posit oneself as a freedom. The restrictions that education and custom impose on a woman limit her grasp of the universe...Indeed, for one to become a creator, it is not enough to be cultivated, that is, to make going to shows and meeting people part of one's life; culture must be apprehended through the free movement of a transcendence; the spirit with all its riches must project itself in an empty sky that is its to fill; but if a thousand fine bonds tie it to the earth, its surge is broken. The girl today can certainly go out alone, stroll in the Tuileries; but I have already said how hostile the street is: eyes everywhere, hands waiting: if she wanders absentmindedly, her thoughts elsewhere, if she lights a cigarette in a cafe, if she goes to the cinema alone, an unpleasant incident can quickly occur; she must inspire respect by the way she dresses and behaves: this concern rivets her to the ground and self. "Her wings are clipped." At eighteen, T.E. Lawrence went on a grand tour through France by bicycle; a young girl would never be permitted to take on such an adventure...Yet such experiences have an inestimable impact: this is how an individual in the headiness of freedom and discovery learns to look at the entire world as his fief...[The girl] may feel alone within the world: she never stands up in front of it, unique and sovereign.”

FreedomTranscendence
Book:The Second Sex
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“Even today in western countries, among women who have not had in their work an apprenticeship of freedom, there are still many who take shelter in the shadow of men; they adopt without discussion the opinions and values recognized by their husband or their lover, and that allows them to develop childish qualities which are forbidden to adults because they are based on a feeling of irresponsibility”

FreedomFeminismComplicity
Book:The Ethics of Ambiguity
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“He is certainly of an age to die.’ The sadness of the old; their banishment: most of them do not think that this age has yet come for them. I too made use of this cliché, and that when I was referring to my mother. I did not understand that one might sincerely weep for a relative, a grandfather aged seventy and more. If I met a woman of fifty overcome with sadness because she had just lost her mother, I thought her neurotic: we are all mortal; at eighty you are quite old enough to be one of the dead… But it is not true. You do not die from being born, nor from having lived, nor from old age. You die from something. The knowledge that because of her age my mother’s life must soon come to an end did not lessen the horrible surprise: she had sarcoma. Cancer, thrombosis, pneumonia: it is as violent and unforeseen as an engine stopping in the middle of the sky. My mother encouraged one to be optimistic when, crippled with arthritis and dying, she asserted the infinite value of each instant; but her vain tenaciousness also ripped and tore the reassuring curtain of everyday triviality. There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.”

DeathFamilyMemoir
Book:A Very Easy Death
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“La gente no acepta que se le diga sus verdades. Quieren que se crea sus lindas palabras o por lo menos que uno haga como si. Yo soy lúcida soy franca arranco las caretas. La tipeja que susurra: '¿Así que quiere mucho a su hermanito?' y yo con mi vocecita serena 'Lo detesto'. He seguido siendo esa adolescente que dice lo que piensa no hace trampas. Se me partía el corazón escucharlo pontificar y todos esos infelices de rodillas delante de él. Yo aparecía con mis grandes zuecos sus palabras solemnes quedaban desinfladas: el progreso la prosperidad el porvenir del hombre la felicidad de la humanidad la ayuda a los países subdesarrollados la paz del mundo. No soy racista pero me importan un pito los árabes los judíos los negros exactamente como me importan un pito los chinos los rusos los yanquis los franchutes. Me importa un pito la humanidad qué es lo que ella ha hecho por mí me gustaría saberlo. Si son lo bastante estúpidos como para degollarse bombardearse tirarse napalm exterminarse no gastaré mis ojos llorando. Un millón de niños degollados ¿y qué? Los niños nunca son otra cosa que semilla de canallas y así se descongestiona un poco el planeta reconocen que está superpoblado ¿y entonces qué? Si yo fuera la tierra me daría asco toda esa gusanada en mi espalda me la sacudiría. Si todos revientan yo quiero reventar. Los niños no son nada para mí no voy a enternecer por ellos. Mi hija está muerta y me han robado a mi hijo.”

Novel
Book:The Woman Destroyed
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“Stekel quite rightly says: Children are not substitutes for one's disappointed love; they are not substitutes for one's thwarted ideal in life, children are not mere material to fill out an empty existence. Children are a responsibility and an opportunity. Children are the loftiest blossoms upon the tree of untrammelled love . . . They are neither playthings, nor tools for the fulfilment of parental needs or ungratified ambitions. Children are obligations; they should be brought up so as to become happy human beings.”

ChildrenParenthoodStekel
Book:The Second Sex
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