France has lengthy been identified for the cultural prominence it grants to its philosophers. Even so, such prominence doesn’t merely come to each French thinker, and a few have needed to work tirelessly certainly to attain it. Take Simone de Beauvoir, who most powerfully introduced her arrival on the mental scene with Le Deuxième Sexe and its well-known declaration, “On ne naît pas femme, on le devient.” These phrases stay well-known at present, 36 years after their writer’s loss of life, and their implications in regards to the nature of womanhood nonetheless kind the mental foundation for a lot of observers of the female situation, in France and elsewhere.
Le Deuxième Sexe was first revealed in English in 1953, as The Second Intercourse. By that time de Beauvoir had already traveled extensively in america (and even written a guide, America Day by Day, in regards to the expertise), however her readership in that nation had solely simply begun to develop. An avowed feminist, she would by means of the next a long time grow to be a an increasing number of oft-referenced determine amongst American writers and readers who sought to use that label to themselves as nicely.
One such feminist was the psychologist Dorothy Tennov, who’s greatest remembered for coining the time period limerence. A number of years earlier than she did that, she traveled to France to conduct an interview with de Beauvoir — and certainly “in her Paris condo, supplied the TV crew was all-female.”
Aired on public tv station WNED in 1976, this wide-ranging dialog has Beauvoir laying out her views on a number of topics, from abortion to homosexuality to feminism itself. “What do you assume ladies really feel most about feminism?” Tennov asks. “They’re jealous of the ladies who aren’t simply the form of servant and the slaves and objects — they’re themselves,” de Beauvoir says. “They concern to really feel an infériorité in regard with the ladies who work outdoors, and who do as they need and who’re free. And possibly they’re afraid of the liberty which is made potential for them, as a result of freedom is one thing very valuable, however in a approach a bit fearful, since you don’t know precisely what to do with it.” Right here we see one cause de Beauvoir’s work has endured: she understood that man’s concern of freedom can be girl’s.
Associated content material:
An Animated Introduction to the Feminist Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir
The Which means of Life In accordance with Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir’s Philosophy on Discovering Which means in Previous Age
Lovers and Philosophers — Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir Collectively in 1967
Simone de Beauvoir Tells Studs Terkel How She Turned an Mental and a Feminist (1960)
Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and tradition. His tasks embrace the Substack publication Books on Cities, the guide The Stateless Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Century Los Angeles and the video collection The Metropolis in Cinema. Observe him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Fb.
