1908–1986
Simone de Beauvoir
Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) argues that freedom is real and that it is always situated, so an ethics cannot pretend the subject is a pure inventor standing nowhere. The Second Sex (1949) studies woman as a situation made by myth, law, and habit, not as a biological destiny and not as a mere idea. She is essential in this atlas because created meaning, on her account, is not a private hobby and not a release from other people.
Also in the atlas
- Ambiguity
- Situation and freedom
- Women’s oppression
Reading, not a syllabus ranking
- The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) — Freedom, childhood, and the temptation to flee responsibility.
- The Second Sex (1949) — The argument that one is not born, but becomes, a woman, developed across a long study.
Questions for reflection
- How can a project be one’s own if the situation in which it is chosen was not?
Beauvoir complicates both the creation pole and the individual-priority pole. That complication is the reason to read her, not a reason to force her onto one letter.