Simone de Beauvoir: Other
Simone de Beauvoir was French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. Explore interesting quotes on other.
The Second Sex (1949)
Context: It is nonsense to assert that revelry, vice, ecstasy, passion, would become impossible if man and woman were equal in concrete matters; the contradictions that put the flesh in opposition to the spirit, the instant to time, the swoon of immanence to the challenge of transcendence, the absolute of pleasure to the nothingness of forgetting, will never be resolved; in sexuality will always be materialised the tension, the anguish, the joy, the frustration, and the triumph of existence. To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue none the less to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other. The reciprocity of their relations will not do away with the miracles — desire, possession, love, dream, adventure — worked by the division of human beings into two separate categories; and the words that move us — giving, conquering, uniting — will not lose their meaning. On the contrary, when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the 'division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.
Bk. 2, Pt.. 5, Ch. 2: The Mother, p. 522
The Second Sex (1949)
Context: The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength, each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.
As quoted in Successful Aging : A Conference Report (1974) by Eric Pfeiffer, p. 142
Attributed
“Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me”
Source: The Woman Destroyed
Regina
All Men are Mortal (1946)
“Try to stay a man amongst men … There's no other hope for you.”
Marianne to Raimon
All Men are Mortal (1946)
Pt. 2, Ch. 1: The discovery and assumption of old age: the body's experience, p. 288
The Coming of Age (1970)
Une telle morale [la morale existentialiste] est-elle ou non un individualisme? Oui, si l’on entend par là qu’elle accorde à l’individu une valeur absolue et qu’elle reconnaît qu’a lui seul le pouvoir de fonder son existence. Elle est individualisme au sens où les sagesses antiques, la morale chrétienne du salut, l’idéal de la vertu kantienne méritent aussi ce nom ; elle s’oppose aux doctrines totalitaires qui dressent par-delà I’homme le mirage de l’Humanité. Mais elle n’est pas un solipsisme, puisque l’individu ne se définit que par sa relation au monde et aux autres individus, il n’existe qu’en se transcendant et sa liberté ne peut s’accomplir qu’à travers la liberté d’autrui. Il justifie son existence par un mouvement qui, comme elle, jaillit du coeur de lui-même, mais qui aboutit hors de lui.
Cet individualisme ne conduit pas à l’anarchie du bon plaisir. L’homme est libre ; mais il trouve sa loi dans sa liberté même. D’abord il doit assumer sa liberté et non la fuir; il l’assume par un mouvement constructif : on n’existe pas sans faire; et aussi par un mouvement négatif qui refuse l’oppression pour soi et pour autrui.
Conclusion http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/ambiguity/ch04.htm
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Interview by John Gerassi in Society (January-February 1976) http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/1976/interview.htm
General sources
Source: All Men are Mortal (1946), p. 72
“After wars peace, after peace, another war. Every day men are born and others die.”
All Men are Mortal (1946)
“If I had amnesia, I'd be almost like other men. Perhaps I'd even be able to love you.”
Raimon to Regina. p. 17
All Men are Mortal (1946)
“You're unique like all other women.”
Raimon to Regina, p. 55
All Men are Mortal (1946)
The Second Sex (1949)