Simone de Beauvoir idézet
Simone de Beauvoir
Születési dátum: 9. január 1908
Halál dátuma: 14. április 1986
Más nevek: Simone De Beauvoirová
Simone de Beauvoir francia írónő, filozófus. A 20. század második felének egyik népszerű, meghatározó feminista, egzisztencialista gondolkodója. Nagy hatással volt a második világháború után megerősödött fogyasztói, jóléti társadalomban felnövő ifjúságára. Legismertebb könyve, A második nem részletes elemzése a nők elnyomásának, a feminizmus egyik alapműve, és a feminizmus második hullámának elindítója. Irodalmi tevékenysége is említésre méltó, több regény és esszé szerzője.
Művek
Idézetek Simone de Beauvoir
„Kevés emberi élmény tárja fel megragadóbban az emberi sors kétértelműségét, mint a szexuális tapasztalat, melynek során egyszerre s együtt érzi magát testnek és léleknek, szubjektumnak és Másiknak. Az ebből fakadó konfliktus a nő esetében szükségszerűen élesebb, mint a férfinál, mert kezdetben kénytelen tárgyként megragadni önmagát, s nehezen leli fel szilárd autonómiáját a gyönyörben: ehhez előbb vissza kell hódítania szabad és transzcendens szubjektuma elvesztett méltóságát, de úgy, hogy egyidejűleg vállalja és betöltse a sorsot, melyre teste rendeli. Ez nehéz és kockázatos vállalkozás, sokszor kudarcba is fullad. De a nőt éppen helyzetének ellentmondásossága óvja meg az önáltatás csapdáitól, melyekbe a férfi oly gyakran beleesik, mert tévútra csábítják az agresszív szerepéből fakadó látszatelőnyök s az orgazmus önelégült magánya: nem mindig vállalja testét, s ezért nem is azonosul maradéktalanul vele. A nő önismerete mélyebb és autentikusabb.“
— Simone de Beauvoir, könyv A második nem
A második nem, Budapest, Gondolat, 1969.
„Egy szokás már-már társaság – mint ahogy egy ember társasága is gyakran csak egy megszokás.“
Simone de Beauvoir: A kor hatalma, Magvető, Bp., 1965. 119. p.
„To "catch" a husband is an art; to "hold" him is a job.“
— Simone de Beauvoir, könyv A második nem
Bk. 2, part 5, Ch. 1: The Married Woman, p. 468
Forrás: The Second Sex (1949)
„She was ready to deny the existence of space and time rather than admit that love might not be eternal.“
— Simone de Beauvoir, könyv The Mandarins
Forrás: The Mandarins
„I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.“
— Simone de Beauvoir, könyv La Vieillesse
Pt. 2, Ch. 2: Time, activity, history, p. 412
The Coming of Age (1970)
Forrás: La Vieillesse
„One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.“
— Simone de Beauvoir, könyv A második nem
On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.
Bk. 2, Pt.. 4, Ch. 1: Childhood, p. 267
Forrás: The Second Sex (1949)
„In the original helplessness from which man surges up, nothing is useful, nothing is useless.“
— Simone de Beauvoir, könyv The Ethics of Ambiguity
Part I : Ambiguity and Freedom
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Kontextus: The failure described in Being and Nothingness is definitive, but it is also ambiguous. Man, Sartre tells us, is “a being who makes himself a lack of being in order that there might be being.” That means, first of all, that his passion is not inflicted upon him from without. He chooses it. It is his very being and, as such, does not imply the idea of unhappiness. If this choice is considered as useless, it is because there exists no absolute value before the passion of man, outside of it, in relation to which one might distinguish the useless from the useful. The word “useful” has not yet received a meaning on the level of description where Being and Nothingness is situated. It can be defined only in the human world established by man’s projects and the ends he sets up. In the original helplessness from which man surges up, nothing is useful, nothing is useless. It must therefore be understood that the passion to which man has acquiesced finds no external justification. No outside appeal, no objective necessity permits of its being called useful. It has no reason to will itself. But this does not mean that it can not justify itself, that it can not give itself reasons for being that it does not have. And indeed Sartre tells us that man makes himself this lack of being in order that there might be being. The term in order that clearly indicates an intentionality. It is not in vain that man nullifies being. Thanks to him, being is disclosed and he desires this disclosure. There is an original type of attachment to being which is not the relationship “wanting to be” but rather “wanting to disclose being.” Now, here there is not failure, but rather success.
„It is not in vain that man nullifies being. Thanks to him, being is disclosed and he desires this disclosure. There is an original type of attachment to being which is not the relationship “wanting to be” but rather “wanting to disclose being.” Now, here there is not failure, but rather success.“
— Simone de Beauvoir, könyv The Ethics of Ambiguity
Part I : Ambiguity and Freedom
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Kontextus: The failure described in Being and Nothingness is definitive, but it is also ambiguous. Man, Sartre tells us, is “a being who makes himself a lack of being in order that there might be being.” That means, first of all, that his passion is not inflicted upon him from without. He chooses it. It is his very being and, as such, does not imply the idea of unhappiness. If this choice is considered as useless, it is because there exists no absolute value before the passion of man, outside of it, in relation to which one might distinguish the useless from the useful. The word “useful” has not yet received a meaning on the level of description where Being and Nothingness is situated. It can be defined only in the human world established by man’s projects and the ends he sets up. In the original helplessness from which man surges up, nothing is useful, nothing is useless. It must therefore be understood that the passion to which man has acquiesced finds no external justification. No outside appeal, no objective necessity permits of its being called useful. It has no reason to will itself. But this does not mean that it can not justify itself, that it can not give itself reasons for being that it does not have. And indeed Sartre tells us that man makes himself this lack of being in order that there might be being. The term in order that clearly indicates an intentionality. It is not in vain that man nullifies being. Thanks to him, being is disclosed and he desires this disclosure. There is an original type of attachment to being which is not the relationship “wanting to be” but rather “wanting to disclose being.” Now, here there is not failure, but rather success.
„A conquest of this kind is never finished; the contingency remains, and, so that he may assert his will, man is even obliged to stir up in the world the outrage he does not want.“
— Simone de Beauvoir, könyv The Ethics of Ambiguity
Conclusion
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Kontextus: A conquest of this kind is never finished; the contingency remains, and, so that he may assert his will, man is even obliged to stir up in the world the outrage he does not want. But this element of failure is a very condition of his life; one can never dream of eliminating it without immediately dreaming of death. This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite.
„We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.“
— Simone de Beauvoir, könyv The Ethics of Ambiguity
Pt. III : The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/ambiguity/ch03.htm#s2, Ch. 1 : The Aesthetic Attitude
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Kontextus: We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible. There have been war, plague, scandal, and treason, and there is no way of our preventing their having taken place; the executioner became an executioner and the victim underwent his fate as a victim without us; all that we can do is to reveal it, to integrate it into the human heritage, to raise it to the dignity of the aesthetic existence which bears within itself its finality; but first this history had to occur: it occurred as scandal, revolt, crime, or sacrifice, and we were able to try to save it only because it first offered us a form. Today must also exist before being confirmed in its existence: its destination in such a way that everything about it already seemed justified and that there was no more of it to reject, then there would also be nothing to say about it, for no form would take shape in it; it is revealed only through rejection, desire, hate and love. In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men. But at the heart of his existence he finds the exigency which is common to all men; he must first will freedom within himself and universally; he must try to conquer it: in the light of this project situations are graded and reasons for acting are made manifest.
„It is nonsense to assert that revelry, vice, ecstasy, passion, would become impossible if man and woman were equal in concrete matters“
— Simone de Beauvoir, könyv A második nem
The Second Sex (1949)
Kontextus: 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.
„This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite.“
— Simone de Beauvoir, könyv The Ethics of Ambiguity
Conclusion
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Kontextus: A conquest of this kind is never finished; the contingency remains, and, so that he may assert his will, man is even obliged to stir up in the world the outrage he does not want. But this element of failure is a very condition of his life; one can never dream of eliminating it without immediately dreaming of death. This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite.
