-
Beauvoir, Ontology, and Womenis Human Rights
- Hypatia
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 14, Number 4, Fall 1999
- pp. 145-162
- 10.1353/hyp.2005.0031
- Article
- Additional Information
Simone de Beauvoir offers an important contribution to discourse on universal human rights. Her descriptive ontology of persons as free, interdependent, and sit-uated 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.