Simone De Beauvoir: Why So Serious?

Existentialism, a philosophical ideology conceptualized by Jean-Paul Sarte, encapsulates most thought processes where “the individual is obliged to make a choice as though he were choosing for all mankind” (Arnold, “Jean-Paul Sarte: Overview). Put simply, Sarte’s concept of existentialism is the thought process by which humans find themselves existing, and the analysis of their existence itself (Tulloch, Sartrian Existentialism). This analysis of existence found itself in many writings during the twentieth century, and acts a driving force in both Bishop’s “In the Waiting Room” and Lispector’s “The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman”.

Sacrificed the truth, beauty and the right to think, happiness and comfort is just indulgent, it is the discomfort brought by the misery, responsibility and the bonding give us the weight of life. The world is full of people who try hard to gain happiness, and we all have at least one time the idea of living in a perfect world, a world without pain, without misery, without getting old and without cancers. We always ignored the importance and the beauty of uncomfortableness, just as a quote in this book said, “Stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand”. After read this book, I started to be more objective at those bad things I used to hate, to understand the significance of art and to be grateful to this imperfect world we are

Although the fundamentals of existentialism can be applied to numerous works throughout history, existentialist thought, which places emphasis on authenticity and the ability to control one’s own growth, largely rose to prominence in the 18th and 19th centuries. Notable among these works are Voltaire’s Candide, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. Although all three texts span dramatically different time periods, the themes of existentialism and free will remain consistent in opposition to the despair and pessimism that life ultimately imposes on us all. According to The Second Sex and Candide, we must work towards our happiness and fundamentally seek it out on our own, while Coates claims in

In addition, Meursault’s sensory experience of life, his physical pleasures and in-the-now perspective, is a demonstration of living life to the fullest. The absurdist must live life passionately, putting all of one’s weight into existence by not wasting time or energy on the ethereal or ephemeral. The fact that Meursault does not want to think about religion, even as he awaits execution, shows how the ideal absurdist would live life: loyal to one’s own being until the end – not to a father in the sky, or to an abstract hope. Meaning of one’s life must come from one’s own creative efforts. Meursault’s indifference to spiritual matters – and even sensory matters that are in the distant past and are therefore unimportant to him – is used to emphasize the passion for the present that Camus decided the absurd hero should have. So it is not so much that Meursault is totally indifferent, he is just indifferent to things outside of the now.

In the novel, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Meursault the protagonist, becomes drawn into a “senseless” murder that has to face the absurdity of life and because of his actions, Meursault is presented as a danger due to his lack of “morality” to society. Meursault who is not able to take control of his life but respond to what life offers him believes in the simplicity of life. He tries to understand the living through logic and objectivity, which ultimately turns futile, as he himself cannot maintain proper control over his thoughts and emotions. From the interactions between Marie, to the murder of the Arab, and the meeting with the Chaplain, Meursault overcomes his indifferent views to form an opinion about what life really means. The central theme presented by Camus is how the threat of mortality becomes a catalyst for understanding the significance of life.

De Beauvoir’s “Woman as Other” lays out an elaborate argument on gender inequality; using the term “other” to establish woman’s alternate, lesser important role throughout her work, the author dissects and examines from its origin the female’s secondary position in society in contrast to man. Indeed, from the beginning of recorded history, the duality of man, by definition, positions woman at the opposing end of the spectrum in relation to her male counterpart. Even by today’s modern and accepting standards, the female suffers under the brand of being the sub-standard half of the duality equation; compared to her male opponent, women are paid lower wages, have fewer and limited expression of rights, achieve lower

In the Neo-classical novel Candide by Voltaire the theme of innocence and experience is prevalent through the protagonist, Candide, especially through his journey of finding the prescription of how to live a useful life in the face of harsh reality. In William Blake’s collection of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience the two characters, tyger and lamb, show how we lose our innocence to gain experience. Although the innocence and experience are paradoxical terms, we can solve the paradox by analyzing these two works.

“We are left alone, without excuse. This is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free” (Sartre 32). Radical freedom and responsibility is the central notion of Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy. However, Sartre himself raises objections about his philosophy, but he overcomes these obvious objections. In this paper I will argue that man creates their own essence through their choices and that our values and choices are important because they allow man to be free and create their own existence. I will first do this by explaining Jean-Paul Sartre’s quote, then by thoroughly stating Sartre’s theory, and then by opposing objections raised against Sartre’s theory.

The basis of De Beauvoir’s principle argument can be found in the first section of part three (The Aesthetic Attitude) when she writes, “every man has to do with other men”. The meaning of human existence cannot simply be

Jean-Paul Sartre is a French philosopher who makes his claims based on a combination of two philosophical traditions – existentialism and phenomenology. Sartre himself is an atheistic existentialist. He summarizes his claims regarding existentialism with three words – anguish, abandonment, and despair (25). In this paper, I will talk about Sartre’s definition of existentialism, its relation to essence, Sartre’s views on the moral choices and how they relate to art.

653. This is the same mindset that Sartre applies to the anti-Semite- the refusal to consider the complexity of the world in favor of a system that provides easy answers to all life’s questions. Only, unlike the anti-Semite, the woman is turning her hatred inward; does she hate herself because she fears freedom or because she feels she is not worthy of it? De Beauvoir seems to believe that fear is the primary cause for this willing dependency. She cites the psychoanalytic view that women’s obsession with love does not comes from a desire for men at all, but from a desire to return to the secure dependency of childhood. This explains the lifelong refuge some women take in infantile (“cute”) behavior and appearance, but psychoanalytic explanations for human behavior have proven to be far less than perfect, and a woman’s self-worth (or, in this case, lack thereof) has far more complex roots than a Freudian theorem.

In “Man Has No Nature,” Jose Ortega argues that man must earn his life metaphysically. Ortega’s strongest argument towards this belief can be seen as the process that one must go through to earn their life. Ortega has the ability to, through only four pages of writing, describe man’s nature and how that seems to effect his choices. In this paper, I will make evident all of Ortega’s evidence that, man must determine what he is and then make him that belief in order to earn his life metaphysically.

To be free is to have the unregulated power to choose one’s own values. For de Beauvoir, freedom is the characteristic with which we are able to describe our existence: “Freedom is the source from which all significations and all values spring. It is the original condition of all justification of existence” (24). Freedom entails a choice of one option over another, and one’s choice cannot be predetermined, lest she be unfree. It follows that the freedom of choice for all values, actions, beliefs, thoughts creates an existence that is indeterminate, ambiguous, and is only justified by assigning meaning using this freedom. It is therefore necessary that an appropriate reaction and critical analysis of a situation take place when exerting one’s own freedom in the world.

In the center Simone de Beauvoir’s understanding of freedom is the understanding that people cannot achieve an authentic existence if they do not help others achieve and understand freedom. For her a person lives in a word full of other people and he or she cannot live his or her life if he/she does not respect the freedom of others. For De Beauvoir freedom is an ambiguity. The ambiguity is the fact that people make their own choices and they them self judge if they are right or wrong. A person can make a decision he thinks is right in the moment but that decision can later on look wrong.

However, even a lost mind as Jean’s is able to awake and apprehend the most brutal violation of his gist - the hypocritic affectation of own identity. Unfortunately, it happened too late and he was unable to recover properly as his attempt of murder depicts. This fiction is a warning to us even though it was written one and a half century ago, warning to both society and individuals -- do not deceive and do not get deluded -- you might never be yourself ever