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An Unconventional History of Western Philosophy: Conversations Between Men and Women Philosophers (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2009.This is a unique, groundbreaking study in the history of philosophy, combining leading men and women philosophers across 2600 years of Western philosophy, covering key foundational topics, including epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Introductory essays, primary source readings, and commentaries comprise each chapter to offer a rich and accessible introduction to and evaluation of these vital philosophical contributions. A helpful appendix canvasses an extraordinary number of women philosoph…Read more
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Thinking in Action Rethinking the Tradition and and the Turn to New BeginningsDepaul University. 2002.
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23IntroductionIn Margaret A. Simons & Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir (eds.), Wartime Diary, University of Illinois Press. pp. 1-35. 2009.Simone de Beauvoir’s readers who saw a heterosexual ideal in her relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre must have been dismayed by the 1990 French publication of her Journal de guerre (Wartime Diary) and Lettres à Sartre (Letters to Sartre). Discovered after Beauvoir’s death in 1986 and edited for publication by her adopted daughter, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, Beauvoir’s Wartime Diary and Letters to Sartre recount her sexual affairs with several young women. In Deirdre Bair’s authorized biography of…Read more
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34Political Writings (edited book)University of Illinois Press. 2012.New translations tracing decades of Beauvoir's leftist political engagement during the turbulent era of decolonization, from articles exposing conditions in fascist Spain and Portugal in 1945 and hard hitting attacks on right-wing intellectuals in the 1950s, to a 1962 defense of an Algerian freedom fighter, Djamila Boupacha, and a 1975 article calling for the 'two state solution' in Israel. The texts range from a surprising 1952 defense of the misogynistic 18th c. pornographer, the Marquis de Sa…Read more
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12A Question ofInfluenceIn Shannon M. Mussett & William S. Wilkerson (eds.), Beauvoir and Western Thought From Plato to Butler, State University of New York Press. pp. 153. 2012.
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23Philosophical Writings (edited book)University of Illinois Press. 2004.Dating from her years as a philosophy student at the Sorbonne, this is the 1926-27 diary of the teenager who would become the famous French philosopher, author, and feminist, Simone de Beauvoir.
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31Bergson's Influence on Beauvoir's Philosophical MethodologyIn Claudia Card (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, Cambridge University Press. pp. 107-128. 2003.The topic of this chapter, the early philosophical influence of Henri Bergson (1859-1941) on Simone de Beauvoir, may surprise those who remember Beauvoir’s reference to Bergson in her Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter where she denies Bergson’s importance. She writes there of her interests in 1926: “I preferred literature to philosophy, and I would not have been at all pleased if someone had prophesized that I would become a kind of Bergson; I didn’t want to speak with that abstract voice which, whe…Read more
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78Beauvoir and Bergson: A Question of InfluenceIn Shannon M. Mussett & William S. Wilkerson (eds.), Beauvoir and Western Thought From Plato to Butler, State University of New York Press. pp. 153-170. 2012.Simone de Beauvoir’s early enthusiasm for the philosophy of Henri Bergson (1859-1941)—denied in her 1958 autobiography, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter—is a surprising discovery in her 1927 handwritten student diary, as I reported in 1999 and explored at more length in 2003 (Simons 1999; Simons 2003). Discovered by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir after Beauvoir’s death in 1986 and now housed in the Bibliothèque nationale, Beauvoir’s student diary first appeared in print in the 2006 volume, Diary of a Ph…Read more
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32Book review: Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook. Simone de beauvoir: A critical introduction. New York: Polity press/blackwell, 1998 (review)Hypatia 14 (4): 183-186. 1999.
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132Introduction to Beauvoir's "Analysis of Claude Bernard's Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine"In Margaret A. Simons, Marybeth Timmermann & Mary Beth Mader (eds.), Philosophical Writings, University of Illinois Press. pp. 15-22. 2004.In December 1924 when Simone de Beauvoir almost certainly wrote her essay analyzing Claude Bernard's "Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine," a classic text in the philosophy of science, she was a 16 yr old student in a senior-level philosophy class at a private Catholic girls' school. Given the popular conception of existentialism as anti science, Beauvoir's early interest in science, reflected in her baccalaureate successes as well as her paper on Bernard, may be surprising. But h…Read more
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46"The Useless Mouths" and Other Literary Writings (edited book)University of Illinois Press. 2011.The Useless Mouths" and Other Literary Writings brings to English-language readers literary writings--several previously unknown--by Simone de Beauvoir. Culled from sources including various American university collections, the works span decades of Beauvoir's career. Ranging from dramatic works and literary theory to radio broadcasts, they collectively reveal fresh insights into Beauvoir's writing process, personal life, and the honing of her philosophy. The volume begins with a new translatio…Read more
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38Sexism and the Philosophical Canon: On Reading Beauvoir's «The Second Sex»Journal of the History of Ideas 51 (3): 487-504. 1990.
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289Beauvoir's philosophical independence in a dialogue with SartreJournal of Speculative Philosophy 14 (2): 87-103. 2000.
Edwardsville, Illinois, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
Continental Philosophy |