Simone de Beauvoir
January 9, 1908 – April 14, 1986
Also known as: Le Castor
Simone de Beauvoir was a French writer, thinker, philosopher, feminist and existentialist. Her name is still associated with her contribution to women's emancipation efforts, feminist and social theory and a free-thinking way of life.
Simone de Beauvoir's literary work is strongly influenced by philosophical foundations, as well as existentialist impulses, the study of the position of women in French society, and her own experiences. The author often projected her own life experiences, opinions and attitudes into her works, which are characterized as so-called engaged literature (a genre on the border between philosophy and fiction), which, together with her rational thinking and objective realistic view of the world, created a unique combination of the content of the works. The main theme of her essayistic, philosophical and fictional works is the morality of society with regard to the position of women, general emancipation and social justice. After her death, she became even more famous than during her lifetime, after 1986 she was called the "mother of feminism".
The Catholic Church included her books The Second Sex (Le Deuxième sexe) and The Mandarins (Les Mandarins) in the Index of Banned Books in 1956.
She caused a social stir in 1941 when she was suspended as a teacher after an affair with a seventeen-year-old student. In 1977, together with other personalities such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Jacques Rancière, Jean-François Lyotard and others, she signed a petition for the abolition of several articles of the law on age limits for sexual intercourse and the decriminalization of all consensual relationships between adults and minors under the age of fifteen.
In 1971, she wrote and signed the Manifesto 343 Slut together with other famous women (e.g. Catherine Deneuve), in which the signatories endorsed the completion of the then illegal abortion.