Simone de Beauvoir: The Basics

Simone de Beauvoir: The Basics provides an accessible introduction to the life, work and ground-breaking ideas of author, philosopher, and feminist Simone de Beauvoir.

The book offers readers ＂the basics＂ of Beauvoir, affording new and continuing readers a guide to her works and ideas. The book examines main developments in her life, the social and political events and efforts, as well as intellectual figures who influenced her thinking. Readers will be introduced to her existentialist ethics of freedom and her preoccupation with situations of oppression, covering her more widely read philosophical texts like The Second Sex and The Ethics of Ambiguity, as well as her lesser-known texts like A Very Easy Death and Les Belles Images.

Simone de Beauvoir: The Basics offers an energetic introduction to Beauvoir that encourages readers to study her further and that will inspire them to think with Beauvoir in their own lives, and is of value to those studying Beauvoir’s work for the first time and those looking for a supplement to their general knowledge of Beauvoir.

Megan Burke is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Sonoma State University and has published extensively on Beauvoir in venues such as Feminist Theory, Hypatia, and Simone de Beauvoir Studies.