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Beauvoir, Ontology, and Women's Human Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Gail E. Linsenbard
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Abstract

Simone de Beauvoir offers an important contribution to discourse on universal human rights. Her descriptive ontology of persons as free, interdependent, and situated in a world that offers resistance brings the discussion of human rights to a new level that also converges with some African perspectives. I claim that Beauvoir is able to defend universal human rights and, moreover, justify moral action against human rights abuses by showing the existential priority of ontological freedom.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 14 , Issue 4: Special Issue: The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir , Fall 1999 , pp. 145 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by Hypatia, Inc.

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