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A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir
Laura Hengehold (Edited by), Nancy Bauer (Edited by)
9781119415343, Wiley
Paperback / softback, published 25 August 2025
560 pages
25.2 x 17.8 x 3 cm, 0.953 kg
The Companion examines Beauvoir’s rich intellectual life from a variety of angles—including literary, historical, and anthropological perspectives—and situates her in relation to her forbears and contemporaries in the philosophical canon. Essays in each of four thematic sections reveal the breadth and acuity of her insight, from the significance of The Second Sex and her work on the metaphysics of gender to her plentiful contributions in ethics and political philosophy. Later chapters trace the relationship between Beauvoir’s philosophical and literary work and open up her scholarship to global issues, questions of race, and the legacy of colonialism and sexism. The volume concludes by considering her impact on contemporary feminist thought writ large, and features pioneering work from a new generation of Beauvoir scholars. Ambitious and unprecedented in scope, A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir is an accessible and interdisciplinary resource for students, teachers, and researchers across the humanities and social sciences.
Winner of the 2018 Choice award for Outstanding Academic Title!
The work of Simone de Beauvoir has endured and flowered in the last two decades, thanks primarily to the lasting influence of The Second Sex on the rise of academic discussions of gender, sexuality, and old age. Now, in this new Companion dedicated to her life and writings, an international assembly of prominent scholars, essayists, and leading interpreters reflect upon the range of Beauvoir’s contribution to philosophy as one of the great authors, thinkers, and public intellectuals of the twentieth century.
Notes on Contributors ix Acknowledgements xvii Introduction 1 Part I Re‐reading The Second Sex 13 A. Reception and Scholarship 13 1 Beauvoir’s Transdisciplinarity: From Philosophy to Gender Theory 15 2 The Intellectual and Social Context of The Second Sex 28 3 “The Limits of the Abject.” The Reception of Le Deuxième Sexe in 1949 37 4 Simone de Beauvoir and the Race/Gender Analogy in The Second Sex Revisited 47 5 Two English Translations of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex 59 B. Central Themes 71 6 Beauvoir and the Biological Body 73 7 Becoming Bodies 87 8 The Drama of Independence: Narcissism, Childhood, and the Family Complexes 99 9 The Second Sexuality: Training in the Work of Simone de Beauvoir and Michel Foucault 111 10 Beauvoir and the Ambiguities of Motherhood 122 11 Laboring with Beauvoir: In Search of the Embodied Subject in Childbirth 134 12 Simone de Beauvoir on Motherhood and Destiny 146 13 Love – According to Simone de Beauvoir 160 14 Why is Woman the Other? 174 Part II Beauvoir’s Intellectual Engagements 185 15 Beauvoir and Hegel 187 16 Simone de Beauvoir’s Relation to Hegel’s Absolute 198 17 Beauvoir and Merleau‐Ponty 211 18 Beauvoir and Merleau‐Ponty on Freedom and Authenticity 224 19 Beauvoir and the Marxism Question 236 20 Beauvoir Between Structuralism and “Aleatory Materialism” 249 21 Unweaving the Threads of Influence: Beauvoir and Sartre 260 Part III Beyond the Second Sex 271 A. Beauvoir’s Ethics and Political Philosophy 271 22 “Pyrrhus and Cineas”: The Conditions of a Meaningful Life 273 23 Separation and Queer Connection in The Ethics of Ambiguity 286 24 Simone de Beauvoir on Violence and Politics 299 25 Why Rape? Lessons from The Second Sex 311 26 Simone de Beauvoir, Women’s Oppression and Existential Freedom 325 27 Beauvoir as Literary Writer 341 28 Simone de Beauvoir and the Dialectic of Desire in L’Invitée 356 29 The Failure of Female Identity in Simone de Beauvoir’s Fiction 367 30 The Power of Literature: Simone de Beauvoir’s Les Mandarins and the Metaphysical Novel 379 C. Beauvoir’s Scope: Memory, History, and Age 391 31 Beauvoir, Philosophy, and Autobiography 393 32 Witnessing Self, Witnessing Other in Beauvoir’s Life Writings 406 33 Simone de Beauvoir: Women and Philosophy of History 418 34 The Postwar World According to Beauvoir 429 35 Afterlives: Beauvoir’s Old Age and the Intersections of The Second Sex 438 Part IV Beauvoir and Contemporary Feminism 449 36 Race After Beauvoir 451 37 Who Is the Subject of The Second Sex? Life, Science, and Transmasculine Embodiment in Beauvoir’s Chapter on Biology 463 38 Misunderstanding in Paris 478 39 Beauvoir’s Legacy to the Quartiers: The Changing Face of French Feminism 489 40 Second Languaging The Second Sex, Its Conceptual Genius: A Translingual Contemporization of “On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.” 500 Index 514
Laura Hengehold
Stella Sandford
Sandra Reineke
Ingrid Galster
Kathryn T. Gines
Emily R. Grosholz
Ruth Groenhout
Emily Anne Parker
Emily Zakin
Mary Beth Mader
Alison Stone
Sara Cohen Shabot
Nancy Bauer
Tove Pettersen
Tanella Boni
Kimberly Hutchings
Zeynep Direk
Jennifer McWeeny
William Wilkerson
Sonia Kruks
Eva D. Bahovec
Christine Daigle
Kristana Arp
Laura Hengehold
Lori J. Marso
Debra Bergoffen
Patricia Hill Collins
B. Beauvoir and the Art of Philosophical Fiction 339
Meryl Altman
Anne van Leeuwen
Shannon M. Mussett
Sally J. Scholz
Margaret A. Simons
Ursula Tidd
Michel Kail
William McBride
Penelope Deutscher
Shannon Sullivan
A. Alexander Antonopoulos
Karen Vintges
Diane Perpich
Kyoo Lee
Subject Areas: Philosophy [HP]
