Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:26:26.989Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Love, Ethics, and Authenticity: Beauvoir's Lesson in What It Means to Read

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Abstract

Beauvoir's distinction between romantic and authentic love offers us an opportunity for thinking through the complex relations among philosophy, reading, and love. If we accept her account of romantic love as a flawed, dependent mode of being, and her suggestion that an authentic love—one that engages maturely with the other—is possible, then we might take the risk of thinking of reading in these terms.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barnes, Hazel. 1959. Humanistic existentialism: The literature of philosophy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1947. Eye for eye. Trans. Mary McCarthy, Politics (July–August): 135–36. New translation by Kristana Arp. In Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophical writings, ed. Simons, Margaret A.Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 2004 (originally published as Œil pour œil, Les temps modernes 1 (5), 1946: 813–30).Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1962. The ethics of ambiguity. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Citadel Press (originally published as Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1947).Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1968. Force of circumstance. Trans. R. Howard. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin (originally published as La force des choses I et II. Paris: Gallimard, 1963).Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1974. All said and done. Trans. Patrick O'Brien. London: Deutsch and Weidenfeld and Nicolson (originally published as Tout compte fait. Paris: Gallimard, 1972).Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1984. The woman in love. In The second sex. Trans. H. M. Pashley. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin (originally published as “L'amoureuse.” In Le deuxième sex II. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1949), pp. 652–79.Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1992. The prime of life: The autobiography of Simone de Beauvoir. Trans. Peter Green. New York: Paragon House (originally published as La force de l’âge, Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1960).Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 2006. Simone de Beauvoir: Diary of a philosophy student: Vol. 1, 1926–27, ed. Klaw, Barbara, Beauvoir, Sylvie Le Bon de, and Simons, Margaret A.Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 53224.Google Scholar
Bergoffen, Debra B. 1997. The philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered phenomenologies, erotic generosities. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Boulous Walker, Michelle. 1998. Philosophy and the maternal body: Reading silence. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Boulous Walker, Michelle. 2006. An ethics of reading: Adorno, Levinas and Irigaray. Philosophy Today 50 (2/5): 223–38.Google Scholar
Deutscher, Max. 2003. Genre and void: Looking back at Sartre and Beauvoir. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Diprose, Rosalyn. 1998. Generosity: Between love and desire. Hypatia 13 (1): 120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gothlin, Eva. 1999. Simone de Beauvoir's notions of appeal, desire, and ambiguity and their relationship to Jean‐Paul Sartre's notions of appeal and desire. Hypatia 14 (4): 8395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Linda. 1979. Pain and joy in human relationships: Jean‐Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Philosophy Today 23:338–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heinämaa, Sara. 1996. Woman—nature, product, style? Rethinking the foundations of feminist philosophy of science. In Feminism, science, and the philosophy of science, ed. Nelson, L.H. and Nelson, J.Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 289308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jardine, Alice A. 1986. Death sentences: Writing couples and ideology. In The female body in western culture: Contemporary perspectives, ed. Suleiman, Susan Rubin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp. 8496.Google Scholar
Le Dœuff, Michèle. 1977. Women and philosophy. Radical Philosophy 17:211 (originally published in Le doctrinal de sapience, 1977).Google Scholar
Le Dœuff, Michèle. 1980. Simone de Beauvoir and existentialism. Feminist Studies 6 (2): 277–89 (originally published as Simone de Beauvoir et l'existentialisme. Le Magazine Littéraire, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Dœuff, Michèle. 1989. Long hair, short ideas. In The philosophical imaginary. Trans. Colin Gordon. Stanford: Stanford University Press (originally published in French as L'imaginaire philosophique. Paris: Payot, 1980), pp. 100–28.Google Scholar
Le Dœuff, Michèle. 1991. Hipparchia's choice: An essay concerning women, philosophy, etc. Trans. Trista Selous. Oxford: Basil Blackwell (originally published as L'etude et le rouet. Paris: Les Editions du Seuil, 1989).Google Scholar
Le Dœuff, Michèle. 2006. Engaging with Simone de Beauvoir. Trans. Nancy Bauer. In The philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Critical essays, ed. Simons, Margaret A.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Lundgren‐Gothlin, Eva. 1996. Sex and existence: Simone de Beauvoir's “The Second Sex.” London: Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, Kathryn Pauly. 1986. Romantic love, altruism, and self‐respect: An analysis of Simone de Beauvoir. Hypatia 1 (1): 117–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartre, Jean‐Paul. 1956. Being‐for‐others. In Being and nothingness. Trans. Hazel Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library (originally published as L’être et le néant: Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1943), pp. 221430.Google Scholar
Secomb, Linnell. 1999. Beauvoir's minoritarian philosophy. Hypatia 14 (4): 96113.Google Scholar
Simons, Margaret A. 1998. An appeal to reopen the question of influence. Philosophy Today 42:1724.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simons, Margaret A., ed. 2006. The philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Critical essays. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Simons, Margaret A., and Benjamin, Jessica. 1979. Beauvoir interview. In Beauvoir and the second sex: Feminism, race, and the origins of existentialism, ed. Simons, Margaret A.Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 121.Google Scholar
Singer, Linda. 1985. Interpretation and retrieval: Rereading Beauvoir. Women's Studies International Forum 8 (3): 231–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tidd, Ursula. 1999. The self–other relation in Beauvoir's ethics and autobiography. Hypatia 14 (4): 163–74.Google Scholar
Vintges, Karen. 1996. A place for love. Philosophy as passion: The thinking of Simone de Beauvoir. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 4666.Google Scholar
Walsh, Sylvia. 1998. Feminine devotion and self‐abandonment: Simone de Beauvoir and Søren Kierkegaard on the woman in love. Philosophy Today 42: 3540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ward, Julie K. 1999. Reciprocity and friendship in Beauvoir's thought. Hypatia 14 (4): 3649.Google Scholar