Simone de Beauvoir
Existentialist · Europe · 1908 to 1986
French philosopher who applied the idea that we are free to ethics, and to how society shapes women's lives.
What it is
Simone de Beauvoir (1908 to 1986) was a French philosopher, novelist and feminist, a major figure of existentialism, who wrote The Second Sex and The Ethics of Ambiguity and held that one is not born but becomes a woman. She is best known for her trailblazing work in feminist philosophy, but her contributions to existentialism and phenomenology run through all her writing, from novels to essays on ethics and old age.
She was born in Paris on 9 January 1908 and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. She lived and worked alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others of the existentialist circle, and she was a co-editor of the leftist journal Les Temps Modernes. She was often regarded as a follower of Sartre, a view that later readers have challenged. She died in 1986.
The main ideas
- One becomes a woman. In The Second Sex (1949) she wrote what became her most famous line: one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. The book is an attack on the subordination of women.
- An ethics of ambiguity. In The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) she developed an existentialist ethics. It starts from the fact that human beings are free and also bound to a situation and to other people.
- Freedom and the Other. Her thought is about freedom and about our relations with others, and she explored them in fiction as well as in philosophy.
- Philosophy in novels. Her first philosophical novel, She Came to Stay (1943), and her later novel The Mandarins (1954), about left-wing intellectuals, carry philosophical themes through stories.
- Old age. In The Coming of Age (1970) she turned to old age and its social meaning.
What it looks like in practice
Picture someone who has been told all their life what a person like them should be and want. Beauvoir's line invites them to ask which of these expectations came from outside and which they would choose themselves, and to see that becoming who one is happens over a life and in a society. This is an illustration of the idea, not a passage from her books.
Books and moments
- She Came to Stay (1943) is her first philosophical novel.
- The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) sets out her existentialist ethics.
- The Second Sex (1949) is her best-known book.
- The Mandarins (1954) is a novel about left-wing intellectuals.
- The Coming of Age (1970) is her study of old age.
Questions and criticism
- Whose ideas? She was often regarded as a follower of Sartre. It is fair to ask how much of her thought was her own, and her books are the evidence to weigh.
- Is a woman made or born? Her famous line puts the weight on becoming. Readers still debate what that leaves of nature, body and choice.
- Philosopher or novelist? She wrote both, and it is fair to ask whether her fiction counts as philosophy.
Close neighbours
The pages on Sartre and on Merleau-Ponty cover two of the thinkers she worked beside, and the page on existentialism describes the movement they shared.
Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 9 October 2026. The sources are listed below.
Where to start reading
Books by Simone de Beauvoir or about them, from the easiest way in to the harder ones.
Covers belong to their publishers and are shown so you can recognise the book.
Philosophies they belong to or are close to
Who they connect to
Influenced
- Judith Butler · She took up Beauvoir's line that one is not born, but becomes, a woman.
Influenced by
- G. W. F. Hegel · Beauvoir used Hegel's idea of the self needing another to describe women as the Other.
- Mary Wollstonecraft · Beauvoir's account of how women are made and not born has an ancestor in Wollstonecraft's argument. (scholars disagree about this link)
Runs parallel to
- Jean-Paul Sartre · They worked in close exchange, while Beauvoir developed her own ethics of ambiguity.
- Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz · Both saw women's confinement as a matter of social arrangement and not of nature. (scholars disagree about this link)
Other Existentialist thinkers
- Søren Kierkegaard · 1813 to 1855
- Miguel de Unamuno · 1864 to 1936
- Karl Jaspers · 1883 to 1969
- Gabriel Marcel · 1889 to 1973
- Jean-Paul Sartre · 1905 to 1980
Sources we used
- Simone de Beauvoir · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 9 October 2026
- Beauvoir, Simone de · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 9 October 2026