To become Beauvoir: beyond ad feminam arguments

Abstract

KIRKPATRICK, Kate. Simone de Beauvoir: uma vida. São Paulo: Planeta do Brasil, 2020.

In this intelligent biography, the English philosopher Kate Kirkpatrick retraces in historical perspective the existential trajectory through which Beauvoir “became” Beauvoir. The book follows how the French thinker turned her own “personality-in-the-world” into a deliberate project, which had to face a series of “ad feminam” resistances stemming from her sociocultural setting. Based on a keen reading of the diaries Beauvoir kept during her times as a student, which were published only in 2008, Kirkpatrick throws new light on the intellectual evolution of the French thinker. When transitioning from her youth into her mature and old ages, the biography never loses sight of Beauvoir’s complex engagement with her social-historical circumstances. This combination of biographical analysis with an exercise in cultural history proves especially fruitful in dealing with the troubled reception of The second sex and Beauvoir’s creative responses to such reception. Furthermore, Kirkpatrick’s book explores the philosophical, literary and ethico-political density of Beauvoir’s oeuvre, a density which other biographies often eschew in favor of a focus on the philosopher’s affective life. Finally, the respect Kirkpatrick affords to the complexity and nuance of Beauvoir’s thought evinces the error of a sexist reputational logic that portrays her work as derivative and parasitic upon Jean-Paul Sartre’s, and thus insists in denying her intellectual independence and originality.