“the great philosophers are Descartes, Hegel, etc. Sartre, in my opinion, will be among them. But not I.” 247
- Beauvoir Beauvoir herself encouraged the downplaying of her philosophical contributions claiming that she was not a philosopher but a writer.248 And scholars readily followed suit. It is often forgotten that Beauvoir came in second in the national exam in philosophy for École Supérieure in 1928, placing just behind Simone Weil and in front of Merleau-Ponty, and the following year was granted second in 243 LW 233, LE 442. 244 Lawrence, 1993, 2147. 245 Lawrence, 1993, 2148. 246 Lundgren-Gothlin, 1996, 133. 247 Simons, 1999, 11. 248 Simons, 1999, 10.
her aggregation in a controversial decision that gave Sartre first place249. That Beauvoir encouraged, at best, such forgetfulness and at worst, the denigration of her academic accomplishments is
perplexing. Was Beauvoir simply being modest? Was this an example of her playing the role of a Sartreuse? Was she bowing to the social conventions of her time?
A common response to Beauvoir’s claim to be a writer and not a philosopher is to consider this to be a lie that Beauvoir told in order to allow herself the necessary freedom to think and write as she wished.250 Those who advocate this interpretation of Beauvoir’s self-description emphasize the context in which she wrote. As a woman writer, Beauvoir would be granted greater social acceptance than as a woman philosopher. A woman writer in the 1930s and 40s, would not have been considered an anomaly. She would find a place within a tradition that included other great French women of letters including George Sand251 and Madame de Stael.252
Given this precedence, commentators including Fullbrook and Fullbrook have suggested that Beauvoir’s claim to be a writer rather than a philosopher was a strategic decision on her part.253 To be considered a woman writer in France would allow her greater freedom to work and to publish than she would be granted if she characterized herself otherwise. Indeed, even her fiction was carefully scrutinized. The introductory chapters of She Came to Stay were not published for the depiction of female masturbation found therein was deemed to be too explicit.254
If she were to be challenged as a woman writer, as a woman philosopher, she would be all the more suspect. Who would take her seriously? Beauvoir was only the sixth woman in French history to
249 Bair, 1990, 145 – 146.
250 Moi, 1994; Bair 1990. For a more detailed discussion of this issue see Gothlin, 2001, 42.
251 Beauvoir admired George Sand for not only pursuing political issues, in particular the liberation of women
and improving the living conditions of the working class, but who as well Beauvoir with a model of someone who attempted to achieve philosophical and political goals through literature. See Francis and Gontier, 1987, 33d.
252 See Moi, 1994, 272.
253 See Fullbrook and Fullbrook, 1998.
receive her aggregation in philosophy. Her predecessors in the field are unknown in the history of philosophy. There is, of course, Madame Mercier, Beauvoir’s own teacher, who was an important influence on Beauvoir’s choice of pursuing a career in philosophy. But Madame Mercier taught philosophy in a girls’ lycée255. Rather than being ignored as a philosopher, Beauvoir characterized herself as a writer in order to secure a path to publication.
While there is certainly much merit in considering the social context in which Beauvoir lived in order to explain not only what she wrote, but how she wrote256, to focus solely on this explanation would be to overlook her philosophical commitments. For her to disallow herself to be a philosopher out of fear of retribution or of being ostracized is inconsistent with her head-on confrontation with many other conventions of her time. Her decision to study philosophy in the 1920s, her
unconventional relationship with Sartre in the 1930s, and her discussion of the role of women in 1949, all make evident the need to recognize that there were other motives informing this claim. Moreover, in her diaries she herself notes that it is her goal to “make a philosopher” out of herself.257
To gain a better understanding of Beauvoir’s claim to be a writer not a philosopher, it is necessary to look at her account of philosophy. In other words, it is necessary to regard Beauvoir’s claim to not be a philosopher as a critique of a particular philosophical tradition. Beauvoir notes that
A philosopher is someone like Spinoza, Hegel or like Sartre: someone who builds a great system, and not simply someone who loves philosophy, or can teach it, who can understand it, and who can use it in says, etc., but it is someone who truly constructs a
philosophy.258
255 Indeed Beauvoir herself would be the first woman allowed to teach in a boys’ lycée. She was appointed to
Henri IV in 1939.
256 That is, the means and the methods she employed. 257 DPS 289, CJ 379.
Such system building she describes as “a concerted delirium” that required philosophers to give their “insights the value of universal keys.”259 She has no interest in building such systems. She rejects that model of philosophy that focused on abstract discussion of esoteric topics of interest only to other philosophers. She makes clear that she is not going to create any kind of philosophical system. It is not that such systemizing had no role or place in academe. Indeed, Beauvoir admires those she classifies as philosophers in this case. However while there is a place and role for such
philosophizing, she notes it need not be the whole of the intellectual tradition. She will opt for a different project. She will “use philosophy.”260
For Beauvoir, philosophy should be neither abstruse nor arcane. To philosophize was to embed oneself in the world, in its contexts and confusions, not for the purpose of the explanation or the vilification of precepts or concepts but rather for the elucidation of the complexities and
challenges of lived experience. Perhaps nowhere did she better achieve this goal, than in her first novel, She Came to Stay.