Simone de Beauvoir: A Feminist Thinker for Our Times

Hypatia 14 (4):133 - 144 (1999)
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Abstract

For many, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has only historic significance. The aim of this article is to show on the contrary that Beauvoir's philosophy already contains all the elements of contemporary feminism-so much so that it can be taken as its paradigm. Beauvoir's ideas about the self are extremely relevant today. Feminist themes such as the logic of "equality and difference" and identity are interwoven in her thinking in ways that can offer solutions to what seem to be insurmountable dilemmas in modern feminism. The attack on all kinds of essentialism can be reconciled with feminist identity-politics when the latter presents itself as "arts of living."

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Karen Vintges
University of Amsterdam

Citations of this work

Practicing politics with Foucault and Kant: Toward a critical life.Dianna Taylor - 2003 - Philosophy and Social Criticism 29 (3):259-280.
Re-reading the second sex's 'simone de beauvoir'.Tom Grimwood - 2008 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (1):197 – 213.

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References found in this work

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Ian Hacking.
Sources of the self: the making of the modern identity.Charles Taylor - 1989 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Being and nothingness.Jean-Paul Sartre - 1956 - Avenel, N.J.: Random House.

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