The Existential Phenomenology of Simone de Beauvoir (Contributions to Phenomenology, 43)

While earlier research considered Simone de Beauvoir in the perspectives of Existentialism or Feminism, this work is the first to emphasize her reflective and descriptive approach and the full range of issues she addresses. There are valuable chapters and sections that are historical and/or comparative, but most of the contents of this work critically examine Beauvoir's views on old age (whereon she is the first phenomenologist to work), biology, gender, ethics, ethnicity (where she is among the first), and politics (again among the first). Besides their systematic as well as historical significance, these chapters show her philosophy as on a par with those of Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre in quality, richness and distinctiveness of problematics, and the penetration of her insight into collective as well as individual human life within the socio-historical world. Front Matter....Pages i-vii Introduction....Pages 1-15 The Beginnings of Beauvoir’s Existential Phenomenology....Pages 17-39 Simone de Beauvoir’s Existential Phenomenology and Philosophy of History in Le deuxième sexe ....Pages 41-51 Beauvoir and Plato: The Clinic and the Cave....Pages 53-65 A Saraband of Imagery: The Uses of Biological Science in Le deuxième sexe ....Pages 67-84 The Body as a Basis for Being: Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty....Pages 85-106 For the Time Being: Simone de Beauvoir’s Representation of Temporality....Pages 107-126 The Lived Experience of Doubling: Simone de Beauvoir’s Phenomenology of Old Age....Pages 127-147 Phenomenology and the Ethical Bases of Pluralism: Arendt and Beauvoir on Race in the United States....Pages 149-174 Beauvoir as Situated Subject: The Ambiguities of Life in World War II France....Pages 175-185 Between the Ethical and the Political: The Difference of Ambiguity....Pages 187-203 Back Matter....Pages 205-267