The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities - Paperback

by Debra Bergoffen (Author)

Challenges Beauvoir's self-portrait and argues that she was a philosopher in her own right.

The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities sees Beauvoir as engaged in a three-way conversation with Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir took up the legacies of the modern and phenomenological philosophical traditions. Unlike them, however, she attended to the phenomenological implications of the sexed body, pursued the idea of ambiguity and developed the philosophical category of the erotic.

This book reads Beauvoir as speaking in two philosophical voices; a familiar existential voice and an unfamiliar voice that speaks of the other, generosity, the gift and the ethical possibilities of the erotic event.

Author Biography

Debra B. Bergoffen is Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at George Mason University. She coedited Continental and Postmodern Perspectives in the Philosophy of Science.