WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.160 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we're taking 00:00:02.160 --> 00:00:05.599 on a, well, a truly formidable figure. We've 00:00:05.599 --> 00:00:08.000 got a whole stack of material here, biographies, 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:10.580 her own foundational texts, letters, and our 00:00:10.580 --> 00:00:12.919 mission is to distill it all for you. We're plunging 00:00:12.919 --> 00:00:15.140 into the life, the work, and the intellectual 00:00:15.140 --> 00:00:17.899 fortress of Simone de Beauvoir. And she's not 00:00:17.899 --> 00:00:20.429 an easy subject to pin down, is she? Born in 00:00:20.429 --> 00:00:23.710 1908, died in 1986, a French existentialist, 00:00:23.730 --> 00:00:26.850 philosopher, novelist, social theorist. The list 00:00:26.850 --> 00:00:29.309 goes on. It really does. And the sources, you 00:00:29.309 --> 00:00:31.910 know, they paint this picture of a person defined 00:00:31.910 --> 00:00:34.710 by radical freedom, incredible intellectual rigor, 00:00:34.810 --> 00:00:37.929 but also a lot of controversy. Oh, immense controversy, 00:00:38.030 --> 00:00:40.909 both in her public life and her very private 00:00:40.909 --> 00:00:43.109 life. So that's our goal today. We're going to 00:00:43.109 --> 00:00:45.250 crank it beyond the cliches, unpack all that 00:00:45.250 --> 00:00:47.869 complexity. We want to synthesize her huge intellectual 00:00:47.869 --> 00:00:51.109 contributions, dig into her unconventional partnerships, 00:00:51.490 --> 00:00:53.789 and really measure the legacy of her most famous 00:00:53.789 --> 00:00:56.049 work, The Second Sex. And I think the first thing 00:00:56.049 --> 00:00:59.509 to get your head around is the paradox of her 00:00:59.509 --> 00:01:01.850 own identity. What do you mean by that? Well, 00:01:01.929 --> 00:01:04.510 Beauvoir herself didn't identify as a philosopher. 00:01:04.890 --> 00:01:08.189 Not really. She saw herself as a writer, an intellectual. 00:01:09.229 --> 00:01:11.430 And, you know, for most of her life, and even 00:01:11.430 --> 00:01:16.349 when she died in 86, they didn't really see her 00:01:16.349 --> 00:01:18.269 as a top -tier philosopher either. Seriously? 00:01:18.569 --> 00:01:21.269 They saw her as what, Sartre's companion? Pretty 00:01:21.269 --> 00:01:23.569 much. Sartre's companion may be a very skilled 00:01:23.569 --> 00:01:26.569 essayist, but not, you know, a capital -P philosopher 00:01:26.569 --> 00:01:28.870 in her own right. That just seems like a massive 00:01:28.870 --> 00:01:31.750 historical oversight, given her impact. It was. 00:01:31.790 --> 00:01:34.069 It absolutely was. But I think history has sort 00:01:34.069 --> 00:01:36.530 of corrected that. Her influence now, especially 00:01:36.530 --> 00:01:38.549 on existential phenomenology and, of course, 00:01:38.569 --> 00:01:41.650 on feminist theory, it's seen as maybe even more 00:01:41.650 --> 00:01:43.969 enduring than some of the famous men she studied 00:01:43.969 --> 00:01:46.069 with. Okay, so if we had to place her intellectually, 00:01:46.430 --> 00:01:48.989 where does she fit? She's firmly in the camp 00:01:48.989 --> 00:01:52.150 of continental philosophy. Existentialism, obviously. 00:01:52.430 --> 00:01:54.909 Yeah. Existential phenomenology. And then later 00:01:54.909 --> 00:01:56.590 in her life, she moved more towards a kind of 00:01:56.590 --> 00:01:59.629 Western Marxism as she got more focused on the, 00:01:59.709 --> 00:02:02.500 uh... the economic side of oppression. But the 00:02:02.500 --> 00:02:04.739 one thing you can't separate her from, the thing 00:02:04.739 --> 00:02:07.659 that defines her legacy, is her pioneering work 00:02:07.659 --> 00:02:11.039 in feminist philosophy. I mean, the name Simone 00:02:11.039 --> 00:02:13.219 de Beauvoir is basically synonymous with the 00:02:13.219 --> 00:02:15.860 second sex. Absolutely. And the second sex deserves 00:02:15.860 --> 00:02:18.520 all the attention it gets. It really does. But 00:02:18.520 --> 00:02:20.800 it's so important to remember the sheer weight 00:02:20.800 --> 00:02:23.479 of her other contributions. Her work on ethics, 00:02:23.659 --> 00:02:25.699 for instance. The ethics of ambiguity. Exactly. 00:02:25.719 --> 00:02:27.879 And feminist ethics. This wasn't just, you know, 00:02:27.900 --> 00:02:30.639 dusty academic stuff. Her books were public events. 00:02:31.240 --> 00:02:34.900 She won the Prix Goncourt in 1954. That's France's 00:02:34.900 --> 00:02:38.139 highest literary award for novel The Mandarins. 00:02:38.259 --> 00:02:41.180 Wow. And she also got the Jerusalem Prize in 00:02:41.180 --> 00:02:43.439 75 and the Austrian State Prize for European 00:02:43.439 --> 00:02:46.280 Literature in 78. So she was a major public intellectual 00:02:46.280 --> 00:02:48.520 recognized at the highest levels. Which just 00:02:48.520 --> 00:02:51.699 makes you wonder, how did this woman, born into 00:02:51.699 --> 00:02:54.599 the rigid Parisian upper middle class, become 00:02:54.599 --> 00:02:57.979 this radical, award -winning, atheist intellectual 00:02:57.979 --> 00:03:01.289 who basically defined existential feminism? Well, 00:03:01.349 --> 00:03:02.729 to understand that, you have to go right back 00:03:02.729 --> 00:03:06.469 to the beginning. To her childhood. So, Simone 00:03:06.469 --> 00:03:09.469 Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, born 00:03:09.469 --> 00:03:12.310 in Paris in 1908. Her family sounds like the 00:03:12.310 --> 00:03:14.469 absolute picture of the French bourgeoisie of 00:03:14.469 --> 00:03:17.409 that time. It really was. Her father, Georges, 00:03:17.550 --> 00:03:19.770 was a lawyer who secretly wanted to be an actor. 00:03:19.949 --> 00:03:22.830 Her mother, Françoise, was from a wealthy banking 00:03:22.830 --> 00:03:26.189 family, very devoutly Catholic. And Simone had 00:03:26.189 --> 00:03:28.639 one younger sister, Helene. And the sources say 00:03:28.639 --> 00:03:30.800 her father was a huge influence on her early 00:03:30.800 --> 00:03:33.039 intellectual development. Oh, pivotal. He was 00:03:33.039 --> 00:03:34.900 apparently incredibly proud of how smart she 00:03:34.900 --> 00:03:37.400 was, always encouraging her studies. There's 00:03:37.400 --> 00:03:39.360 this famous quote, and you can just feel the 00:03:39.360 --> 00:03:42.120 gender bias of the era dripping off it. He used 00:03:42.120 --> 00:03:48.460 to boast, Wow. That one quote just sets up the 00:03:48.460 --> 00:03:50.319 entire paradox she'd spent her life fighting, 00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:52.919 doesn't it? The idea that being brilliant is 00:03:52.919 --> 00:03:55.460 somehow inherently masculine, even when it's 00:03:55.460 --> 00:03:57.879 happening in a woman's mind. Precisely. And that 00:03:57.879 --> 00:04:00.500 encouragement, it gave her the ambition, but 00:04:00.500 --> 00:04:03.699 then her world kind of fell apart. After World 00:04:03.699 --> 00:04:05.879 War I, the family lost a huge chunk of their 00:04:05.879 --> 00:04:07.979 fortune. And that crisis, ironically, is what 00:04:07.979 --> 00:04:10.360 set her free. It was her great liberation. It 00:04:10.360 --> 00:04:12.939 really was. Her mother insisted on keeping up 00:04:12.939 --> 00:04:15.560 appearances. So Simone stayed in this prestigious 00:04:15.560 --> 00:04:18.620 convent school. But the big change was the dowry. 00:04:18.740 --> 00:04:21.339 It was gone. Which in that time in class was 00:04:21.339 --> 00:04:23.899 a disaster for a young woman's marriage prospects. 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:27.319 A complete disaster. But Beauvoir, she saw it 00:04:27.319 --> 00:04:29.939 as an opportunity. She knew she had to work for 00:04:29.939 --> 00:04:32.240 a living now. And for her, that wasn't a punishment. 00:04:32.360 --> 00:04:35.939 It was the path to economic independence, which 00:04:35.939 --> 00:04:39.620 she saw as the only way to be truly free. So 00:04:39.620 --> 00:04:42.019 a social failure becomes the catalyst for her 00:04:42.019 --> 00:04:44.839 own intellectual success. And this was all happening 00:04:44.839 --> 00:04:47.279 while she was having this intense internal philosophical 00:04:47.279 --> 00:04:50.060 battle. She was raised Catholic. You know, she 00:04:50.060 --> 00:04:52.439 even wanted to be a nun at one point. But then 00:04:52.439 --> 00:04:54.699 around age 14, she just started questioning her 00:04:54.699 --> 00:04:56.879 faith. And when she let go, she really let go. 00:04:57.000 --> 00:04:59.060 Completely. She became a committed atheist for 00:04:59.060 --> 00:05:01.139 the rest of her life. And if you read her first 00:05:01.139 --> 00:05:03.519 autobiography, Memoirs of a Beautiful Daughter, 00:05:03.680 --> 00:05:06.079 she says her whole youth felt like a kind of 00:05:06.079 --> 00:05:08.970 endless disputation. A dispute between... between 00:05:08.970 --> 00:05:11.949 her parents' worldviews. Her father on one side 00:05:11.949 --> 00:05:14.569 with his sort of secular, cynical, almost pagan 00:05:14.569 --> 00:05:17.610 ethical standards, and her mother on the other 00:05:17.610 --> 00:05:21.189 with her rigidly moral conventionalism rooted 00:05:21.189 --> 00:05:23.029 in the church. And she couldn't reconcile the 00:05:23.029 --> 00:05:26.550 two. No. She said that conflict, that disequilibrium, 00:05:26.569 --> 00:05:28.589 was the main reason why I became an intellectual. 00:05:29.310 --> 00:05:32.430 She had to invent a new system for herself, a 00:05:32.430 --> 00:05:34.569 way to live where you're constantly making choices 00:05:34.569 --> 00:05:37.670 instead of following rules. And she had this... 00:05:38.540 --> 00:05:40.839 This really biting critique of faith, didn't 00:05:40.839 --> 00:05:42.480 she? Something about it being an evasion. Yes. 00:05:42.639 --> 00:05:45.620 She said, faith allows an evasion of those difficulties 00:05:45.620 --> 00:05:48.699 which the atheist confronts honestly. It's not 00:05:48.699 --> 00:05:50.939 just a rejection of God. It's a critique of any 00:05:50.939 --> 00:05:53.300 system that gives you easy answers. Which totally 00:05:53.300 --> 00:05:55.879 explains her drive. And that drive led to just, 00:05:55.939 --> 00:05:59.259 I mean, spectacular academic success. It really 00:05:59.259 --> 00:06:01.600 did. In the late 1920s, she's studying math, 00:06:01.699 --> 00:06:03.920 literature, languages, and crucially, she starts 00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:06.220 auditing courses at the École Normale Supérieure 00:06:06.220 --> 00:06:08.850 to prep for the aggregation. And we should probably 00:06:08.850 --> 00:06:11.629 explain what the aggregation is. It's not just 00:06:11.629 --> 00:06:15.850 a final exam. It's this incredibly brutal, nationwide 00:06:15.850 --> 00:06:19.029 competitive exam for the top teaching jobs in 00:06:19.029 --> 00:06:21.629 France. It's a trial by fire. It demands total 00:06:21.629 --> 00:06:24.250 mastery. And it was while she was studying for 00:06:24.250 --> 00:06:26.790 this that she met that whole circle. Jean -Paul 00:06:26.790 --> 00:06:30.129 Sartre, Paul Nizan, René Mahou. Right. And Mahou 00:06:30.129 --> 00:06:32.470 gave her the nickname Caster, which is French 00:06:32.470 --> 00:06:35.870 for beaver. Because her surname, Beauvoir, sounded 00:06:35.870 --> 00:06:37.990 a bit like the English word beaver. And because 00:06:37.990 --> 00:06:40.209 she was such a hard worker, I suppose, the name 00:06:40.209 --> 00:06:43.209 stuck. So 1929's the big year. She writes her 00:06:43.209 --> 00:06:46.110 thesis on Leibniz. But the real moment is the 00:06:46.110 --> 00:06:48.430 aggregation exam. And the results. I mean, they 00:06:48.430 --> 00:06:50.189 just speak for themselves. Sartre came in first. 00:06:50.250 --> 00:06:52.930 She came in second. At just 21 years old, she 00:06:52.930 --> 00:06:54.910 was the youngest person ever to pass the philosophy 00:06:54.910 --> 00:06:57.509 aggregation. And that did it. That secured her 00:06:57.509 --> 00:06:59.490 economic independence. It gave her the salary, 00:06:59.509 --> 00:07:01.509 the freedom she'd been fighting for. Exactly. 00:07:01.769 --> 00:07:03.949 She taught in high schools the laissez system 00:07:03.949 --> 00:07:06.649 for years until she could finally support herself 00:07:06.649 --> 00:07:10.029 just from her writing in 1943. So by 1929, she's 00:07:10.029 --> 00:07:13.259 got it all lining up. Financial stability. this 00:07:13.259 --> 00:07:16.019 incredible intellectual reputation, and she's 00:07:16.019 --> 00:07:18.180 in this lifelong relationship with Jean -Paul 00:07:18.180 --> 00:07:20.860 Sartre. A relationship that is probably the most 00:07:20.860 --> 00:07:23.120 famous non -marriage in intellectual history. 00:07:23.199 --> 00:07:26.079 It lasted 50 years, right up until he died in 00:07:26.079 --> 00:07:29.160 1980. And it started unconventionally from day 00:07:29.160 --> 00:07:31.759 one. Completely. Sartre was immediately fascinated 00:07:31.759 --> 00:07:34.819 by her mind. He even proposed marriage, but in 00:07:34.819 --> 00:07:37.279 this sort of tentative way, suggesting a two 00:07:37.279 --> 00:07:39.279 -year lease. A two -year lease on a marriage. 00:07:39.930 --> 00:07:42.509 And she turned him down flat. She did. And her 00:07:42.509 --> 00:07:45.310 reasons were deeply philosophical. She saw marriage 00:07:45.310 --> 00:07:48.310 as a very alienating institution. She thought 00:07:48.310 --> 00:07:50.269 it was dangerous for both people, but especially 00:07:50.269 --> 00:07:52.730 for women. What specifically did she object to? 00:07:52.949 --> 00:07:55.470 The whole concept of conjugal rights. The idea 00:07:55.470 --> 00:07:58.069 that the institution gave a man legal and sexual 00:07:58.069 --> 00:08:01.250 access to a woman's body. To her, it reduced 00:08:01.250 --> 00:08:03.670 a woman to property and would have just completely 00:08:03.670 --> 00:08:05.629 negated the independence she'd fought so hard 00:08:05.629 --> 00:08:07.930 for. So instead of marriage, they create this 00:08:07.930 --> 00:08:10.879 thing they call a soul partnership. It was their 00:08:10.879 --> 00:08:13.480 primary emotional and sexual relationship, but 00:08:13.480 --> 00:08:15.740 it was non -exclusive and they never lived together. 00:08:15.959 --> 00:08:18.139 Which gave her this radical freedom. She had 00:08:18.139 --> 00:08:20.540 the intellectual partner she needed, but also 00:08:20.540 --> 00:08:23.639 the time and space to write, to travel, to take 00:08:23.639 --> 00:08:26.720 other lovers. And to think. It allowed both of 00:08:26.720 --> 00:08:28.839 them to have this incredible freedom. Now their 00:08:28.839 --> 00:08:32.159 intellectual relationship, it's always been debated, 00:08:32.220 --> 00:08:34.840 hasn't it? Was she just his follower, his best 00:08:34.840 --> 00:08:37.340 editor, or was she a genuine influence on his 00:08:37.340 --> 00:08:40.159 thinking? History often tried to put her in that 00:08:40.159 --> 00:08:43.299 secondary role, but more recent scholarship, 00:08:43.500 --> 00:08:45.799 looking at their early letters and notes, shows 00:08:45.799 --> 00:08:48.139 how deeply grounded she was in philosophy on 00:08:48.139 --> 00:08:50.299 her own terms. She was reading Hegel and Leibniz 00:08:50.299 --> 00:08:53.179 before Sartre was, and some sources say she developed 00:08:53.179 --> 00:08:55.639 her own original critique of Hegel's master -slave 00:08:55.639 --> 00:08:58.000 dialectic. So they were true intellectual equals. 00:08:58.279 --> 00:09:00.120 They were. They always read each other's work 00:09:00.120 --> 00:09:02.320 before publication, gave each other feedback. 00:09:02.759 --> 00:09:05.379 The lines between their ideas were often, you 00:09:05.379 --> 00:09:08.159 know, intentionally blurry. Outside of Sartre, 00:09:08.279 --> 00:09:10.940 her other big famous relationship was with the 00:09:10.940 --> 00:09:13.820 American writer Nelson Algren. Yes. She met him 00:09:13.820 --> 00:09:17.860 in Chicago in 1947. She was on this four -month 00:09:17.860 --> 00:09:20.340 tour of the U .S., which she wrote about in her 00:09:20.340 --> 00:09:22.759 book America Day by Day. And that was a very 00:09:22.759 --> 00:09:24.629 different kind of relationship, wasn't it? It 00:09:24.629 --> 00:09:27.490 seems so. It was very intense, very passionate, 00:09:27.549 --> 00:09:30.509 but also very long distance. In her letters to 00:09:30.509 --> 00:09:33.049 him, she called him my beloved husband. And, 00:09:33.169 --> 00:09:35.110 you know, decades later, she was buried wearing 00:09:35.110 --> 00:09:37.409 a silver ring he'd given her. But this is where 00:09:37.409 --> 00:09:39.970 her philosophy of radical openness really clashes 00:09:39.970 --> 00:09:42.090 with, you know, personal feelings. Yeah. Because 00:09:42.090 --> 00:09:44.169 she used that relationship in her work. She did. 00:09:44.610 --> 00:09:46.669 Algren was the model for the character Louis 00:09:46.669 --> 00:09:49.429 Brogan in her novel The Mandarins. The novel 00:09:49.429 --> 00:09:51.929 that won the Prix Goncourt. Right. And while 00:09:51.929 --> 00:09:54.389 it was a huge literary success, it was a personal 00:09:54.389 --> 00:09:57.470 disaster for their relationship. Algren was reportedly 00:09:57.470 --> 00:10:01.509 just devastated. He was outraged by how frankly 00:10:01.509 --> 00:10:03.629 she described their sexual life in the novel 00:10:03.629 --> 00:10:06.009 and later in her autobiographies. He felt totally 00:10:06.009 --> 00:10:07.970 betrayed. It really highlights this constant 00:10:07.970 --> 00:10:10.009 tension in her life, doesn't it? This absolute 00:10:10.009 --> 00:10:13.470 commitment to authenticity, but then the collateral 00:10:13.470 --> 00:10:15.570 damage it could cause to people she cared about. 00:10:15.929 --> 00:10:18.750 Exactly. And that leads us directly to the most 00:10:18.750 --> 00:10:21.590 controversial part of her personal ethics, her 00:10:21.590 --> 00:10:23.870 relationships with her students. This is the 00:10:23.870 --> 00:10:26.370 really difficult stuff to talk about. We know 00:10:26.370 --> 00:10:29.110 she was bisexual, but these relationships crossed 00:10:29.110 --> 00:10:31.980 a serious line. They did. And this is where the 00:10:31.980 --> 00:10:34.580 gossip and controversy really intensified. It 00:10:34.580 --> 00:10:37.159 wasn't just about unconventional partnerships 00:10:37.159 --> 00:10:40.120 anymore. It was about documented exploitation. 00:10:40.360 --> 00:10:42.980 And it led to a major public scandal for her 00:10:42.980 --> 00:10:46.360 in 1943. That's right. Her teaching license was 00:10:46.360 --> 00:10:48.519 actually revoked after she was formally charged 00:10:48.519 --> 00:10:51.600 with debauching a minor. And this was in relation 00:10:51.600 --> 00:10:54.259 to her 17 -year -old student, Natalie Sorokin. 00:10:54.509 --> 00:10:57.629 Yes. The license was eventually reinstated, but 00:10:57.629 --> 00:11:00.590 the damage was done. And the allegations, well, 00:11:00.710 --> 00:11:02.509 they go much deeper when you read the accounts 00:11:02.509 --> 00:11:04.830 of another student, Bianca Lamblin. Lamblin wrote 00:11:04.830 --> 00:11:06.830 a memoir about this much later, right? She did. 00:11:06.909 --> 00:11:09.309 In it, she alleged that Beauvoir began grooming 00:11:09.309 --> 00:11:11.570 and sexually exploiting her when she was just 00:11:11.570 --> 00:11:14.629 16. She claims it turned into this exploitative 00:11:14.629 --> 00:11:17.610 three -way relationship, a menage a trois, with 00:11:17.610 --> 00:11:20.549 Sartre that lasted for years. That's a staggering 00:11:20.549 --> 00:11:23.610 accusation of an abuse of power. What made Lamlin 00:11:23.610 --> 00:11:26.049 finally come forward with that story? It was 00:11:26.049 --> 00:11:28.429 after Sarch's letters were published posthumously. 00:11:28.690 --> 00:11:31.049 She discovered that he'd written about her, using 00:11:31.049 --> 00:11:33.629 a pseudonym. And reading his detached clinical 00:11:33.629 --> 00:11:36.429 descriptions of what she had experienced, she 00:11:36.429 --> 00:11:39.210 said she felt nauseated and disgusted. And it 00:11:39.210 --> 00:11:42.940 wasn't just her. No, both Lamblin and Sorkin 00:11:42.940 --> 00:11:47.000 and another student named Olga Kosakivich. They 00:11:47.000 --> 00:11:48.840 all later said that their relationships with 00:11:48.840 --> 00:11:51.919 Beauvoir had caused them serious, lasting psychological 00:11:51.919 --> 00:11:54.960 harm. It's a profound contradiction, isn't it? 00:11:54.980 --> 00:11:56.519 Here's this philosopher who's about to write 00:11:56.519 --> 00:11:59.379 a masterpiece about freedom and the ethical need 00:11:59.379 --> 00:12:01.820 to will the freedom of others. While at the same 00:12:01.820 --> 00:12:05.000 time, she's engaging in these incredibly unequal, 00:12:05.019 --> 00:12:07.120 damaging relationships that are built on her 00:12:07.120 --> 00:12:09.759 own power and authority. You can't understand. 00:12:09.840 --> 00:12:11.799 the whole person without grappling with that 00:12:11.799 --> 00:12:13.919 tension. Right. So let's talk about how she translated 00:12:13.919 --> 00:12:16.440 her philosophy into public action. This idea 00:12:16.440 --> 00:12:18.879 of being an engaged intellectual. The key vehicle 00:12:18.879 --> 00:12:21.059 for that was the journal they founded, Les Temps 00:12:21.059 --> 00:12:24.299 Modernes, or Modern Times. She started it in 00:12:24.299 --> 00:12:28.100 1945 with Sarch and Maurice Merleau -Ponty. It 00:12:28.100 --> 00:12:30.340 was meant to be the intellectual engine of post 00:12:30.340 --> 00:12:32.340 -war France. They're not just an academic journal. 00:12:32.679 --> 00:12:35.279 A political one. Absolutely. Sartre wrote this 00:12:35.279 --> 00:12:38.000 famous preface for the first issue laying out 00:12:38.000 --> 00:12:40.279 their mission. He called it engaged literature. 00:12:40.659 --> 00:12:42.820 He basically said writers have a responsibility 00:12:42.820 --> 00:12:45.860 to act in the world. He even attacked Flaubert 00:12:45.860 --> 00:12:48.100 for not writing a single line to protest the 00:12:48.100 --> 00:12:50.279 violence after the Paris Commune. So the idea 00:12:50.279 --> 00:12:52.679 was to take a side. Exactly. The journal's mission 00:12:52.679 --> 00:12:56.039 was to influence the society we live in. And 00:12:56.039 --> 00:12:58.480 Beauvoir was central to this. She was an editor 00:12:58.480 --> 00:13:01.799 until she died. And she used its pages as a sort 00:13:01.799 --> 00:13:04.309 of laboratory to test out her own ideas before 00:13:04.309 --> 00:13:06.710 they became books. And her first real philosophical 00:13:06.710 --> 00:13:10.210 essay came out around this time, in 1944. Yes, 00:13:10.429 --> 00:13:12.929 Pyrrhus et Sineas. It's a fascinating piece, 00:13:13.090 --> 00:13:15.129 written as a dialogue, where she starts to explore 00:13:15.129 --> 00:13:18.289 these questions of ethical action. When is violence 00:13:18.289 --> 00:13:20.690 justified? What does it mean to act meaningfully? 00:13:20.730 --> 00:13:23.730 But the big one. The central statement of her 00:13:23.730 --> 00:13:26.850 existentialist ethics is the ethics of ambiguity 00:13:26.850 --> 00:13:30.710 from 1947. That's the one. In it, she argues 00:13:30.710 --> 00:13:33.190 that existentialism is the philosophy for our 00:13:33.190 --> 00:13:35.590 time because it's the only one that takes seriously 00:13:35.590 --> 00:13:38.289 the collapse of religious certainty. It starts 00:13:38.289 --> 00:13:41.149 from Dostoevsky's famous challenge. If God is 00:13:41.149 --> 00:13:44.110 dead, then all things are lawful. So if there 00:13:44.110 --> 00:13:46.929 are no pre -made rules, how do you build an ethical 00:13:46.929 --> 00:13:49.690 system from scratch? She says you start by confronting 00:13:49.690 --> 00:13:52.840 what she calls bad faith. This is the tendency 00:13:52.840 --> 00:13:55.279 we all have to run away from our own freedom. 00:13:55.399 --> 00:13:57.679 We pretend we don't have a choice. She has different 00:13:57.679 --> 00:13:59.460 categories for this, right? The serious man. 00:13:59.580 --> 00:14:02.100 The serious man, yes. He's the person who denies 00:14:02.100 --> 00:14:04.059 his freedom by saying, well, the rules are just 00:14:04.059 --> 00:14:07.220 the rules. He bows down to some external authority, 00:14:07.399 --> 00:14:10.120 the state, the church, his boss, to avoid taking 00:14:10.120 --> 00:14:12.740 personal responsibility for his choices. He hides 00:14:12.740 --> 00:14:15.049 in the system. Precisely. And then you have the 00:14:15.049 --> 00:14:17.370 nihilist who sees that there's no preordained 00:14:17.370 --> 00:14:19.250 meaning and just concludes that nothing matters 00:14:19.250 --> 00:14:21.590 at all. So why bother? Both are a flight from 00:14:21.590 --> 00:14:25.450 freedom. So the only truly moral or authentic 00:14:25.450 --> 00:14:29.429 way to live is to embrace that ambiguity, to 00:14:29.429 --> 00:14:31.970 accept that we are both fact and freedom at the 00:14:31.970 --> 00:14:34.950 same time. Yes. And this is her core ethical 00:14:34.950 --> 00:14:37.950 insight. The truly authentic person realizes 00:14:37.950 --> 00:14:40.389 that their own freedom depends on the freedom 00:14:40.389 --> 00:14:43.190 of others. You can't be free by oppressing someone 00:14:43.190 --> 00:14:45.610 else. Because their projects, their choices, 00:14:45.649 --> 00:14:48.169 interfere with yours. Exactly. She put it perfectly. 00:14:48.429 --> 00:14:51.450 No project can be defined except by its interference 00:14:51.450 --> 00:14:54.889 with other projects. My freedom to act is only 00:14:54.889 --> 00:14:57.210 meaningful in a world where you are also free 00:14:57.210 --> 00:15:00.409 to act. If I enslave you, I diminish the very 00:15:00.409 --> 00:15:03.049 meaning of my own freedom. It's a radical call 00:15:03.049 --> 00:15:05.820 for mutual responsibility. It wasn't just abstract 00:15:05.820 --> 00:15:07.899 theory for her. She applied it in some really 00:15:07.899 --> 00:15:10.059 high -stakes, difficult political situations. 00:15:10.279 --> 00:15:12.700 Very much so. After the war, during the trials 00:15:12.700 --> 00:15:14.519 of collaborators, there was the case of Robert 00:15:14.519 --> 00:15:16.899 Brossilock. He was a prominent writer who had 00:15:16.899 --> 00:15:18.879 supported fascism and genocide. And Beauvoir 00:15:18.879 --> 00:15:21.659 argued for his execution. She did. It was controversial, 00:15:21.879 --> 00:15:24.419 but she defended it in an essay called An Eye 00:15:24.419 --> 00:15:28.000 for an Eye. She argued that because he used his 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:30.259 freedom as a writer to call for oppression and 00:15:30.259 --> 00:15:33.200 death, he was guilty of intellectual crimes that 00:15:33.200 --> 00:15:36.740 had real lethal consequences. It's a really stark 00:15:36.740 --> 00:15:38.679 application of her ethics of responsibility. 00:15:39.120 --> 00:15:41.679 That intensity, that direct application of philosophy 00:15:41.679 --> 00:15:45.399 to life, it all culminates in her 1949 masterpiece, 00:15:45.860 --> 00:15:48.940 The Second Sex. This is it. This is where existentialism 00:15:48.940 --> 00:15:51.350 and feminism fused together to create something 00:15:51.350 --> 00:15:53.909 totally new. It's the intellectual blueprint 00:15:53.909 --> 00:15:56.389 for what would become second wave feminism. And 00:15:56.389 --> 00:15:58.750 it all starts with that core existentialist idea. 00:15:59.610 --> 00:16:02.070 Existence precedes essence. She just takes that 00:16:02.070 --> 00:16:04.230 and applies it directly to gender. And in doing 00:16:04.230 --> 00:16:06.570 so, she produces probably the single most revolutionary 00:16:06.570 --> 00:16:09.370 sentence in 20th century feminist thought. One 00:16:09.370 --> 00:16:11.889 is not born, but becomes a woman. On n 'est pas 00:16:11.889 --> 00:16:14.840 femme, on le devient. It's so famous now, but 00:16:14.840 --> 00:16:17.139 what made it so explosive at the time? Because 00:16:17.139 --> 00:16:19.500 it drew this clean, sharp line between biological 00:16:19.500 --> 00:16:23.179 sex and socially constructed gender. Before Beauvoir, 00:16:23.279 --> 00:16:25.340 the assumption was that your anatomy was your 00:16:25.340 --> 00:16:27.779 destiny. Biology determined your personality, 00:16:28.080 --> 00:16:30.700 your role, your essence. And she just said no? 00:16:31.080 --> 00:16:33.639 She said, no, the biological facts of being female 00:16:33.639 --> 00:16:36.440 exist, sure. But everything we associate with 00:16:36.440 --> 00:16:39.259 womanhood, the stereotypes, the behaviors, the 00:16:39.259 --> 00:16:41.440 limitations, that's all historical and social 00:16:41.440 --> 00:16:43.360 construction. It's something that is taught, 00:16:43.480 --> 00:16:46.240 enforced, and conditioned from birth. And this 00:16:46.240 --> 00:16:48.940 conditioning, she argued, forces women into a 00:16:48.940 --> 00:16:52.009 state she called Imminence. Exactly. Imminence. 00:16:52.009 --> 00:16:55.490 It means to sort of remain within. It's a state 00:16:55.490 --> 00:16:57.809 of passive being, of being trapped in the domestic 00:16:57.809 --> 00:17:00.950 sphere, defined by biology and repetition, the 00:17:00.950 --> 00:17:03.610 endless cycle of housework, childcare, being 00:17:03.610 --> 00:17:06.250 an object rather than a subject. And the opposite 00:17:06.250 --> 00:17:08.950 of imminence is transcendence. Transcendence 00:17:08.950 --> 00:17:11.230 is what she saw as authentic human existence. 00:17:11.849 --> 00:17:14.569 It's actively choosing your future, taking risks, 00:17:14.829 --> 00:17:17.230 creating projects in the world, writing a book, 00:17:17.369 --> 00:17:20.710 starting a company, leading a movement. And her 00:17:20.710 --> 00:17:23.029 argument was that men are automatically granted 00:17:23.029 --> 00:17:25.509 transcendence, while women have historically 00:17:25.509 --> 00:17:28.970 been confined to imminence. Why? What's the mechanism? 00:17:29.369 --> 00:17:32.109 She argues it's because woman has been constructed 00:17:32.109 --> 00:17:35.849 as the ultimate other. The man is the self, the 00:17:35.849 --> 00:17:39.049 default, the absolute. The woman is defined only 00:17:39.049 --> 00:17:42.130 in relation to him. She is the second sex, the 00:17:42.130 --> 00:17:44.589 incidental, the inessential. And she backed this 00:17:44.589 --> 00:17:47.240 up with centuries of evidence. Oh, yeah. The 00:17:47.240 --> 00:17:49.519 first volume of the book is this massive historical 00:17:49.519 --> 00:17:52.660 deep dive. She quotes Aristotle viewing women 00:17:52.660 --> 00:17:55.660 as a certain lack of qualities, basically a defective 00:17:55.660 --> 00:17:58.079 male. She quotes Thomas Aquinas calling women 00:17:58.079 --> 00:18:01.039 an imperfect man. She showed this wasn't an accident. 00:18:01.119 --> 00:18:03.099 It was a deep -seated philosophical tradition. 00:18:03.319 --> 00:18:05.460 That's what gave the book its power. It wasn't 00:18:05.460 --> 00:18:08.319 just a polemic. It was a scholarly takedown of 00:18:08.319 --> 00:18:10.740 Western thought. Absolutely. Which is why it's 00:18:10.740 --> 00:18:12.660 such a tragedy that the first English translation 00:18:12.660 --> 00:18:15.569 was so, well, so bad. Right. This was done by 00:18:15.569 --> 00:18:17.829 Howard Parsley, who wasn't even a philosopher. 00:18:18.009 --> 00:18:20.509 He was a biology professor. And the publisher, 00:18:20.650 --> 00:18:23.029 Alfred A. Knopf, rushed him. He had, you know, 00:18:23.029 --> 00:18:26.750 pretty basic French. So he cut huge sections 00:18:26.750 --> 00:18:29.109 of the book, nearly a third of the original text. 00:18:29.349 --> 00:18:31.809 He took out the dense philosophical arguments, 00:18:32.089 --> 00:18:34.890 the history, the footnotes that were the entire 00:18:34.890 --> 00:18:38.509 foundation of her argument. So for decades. The 00:18:38.509 --> 00:18:41.470 entire English -speaking world was reading a 00:18:41.470 --> 00:18:44.029 dumbed -down, distorted version of her masterpiece. 00:18:44.390 --> 00:18:46.869 That's right. It hobbled the philosophical reception 00:18:46.869 --> 00:18:49.710 of her work for years. Scholars knew it was bad, 00:18:49.890 --> 00:18:52.670 but Knopf blocked a new translation for a very 00:18:52.670 --> 00:18:55.529 long time. The first complete, accurate English 00:18:55.529 --> 00:18:59.049 version didn't come out until 2010. 2010. That's 00:18:59.049 --> 00:19:00.869 incredible. So the feminist movement was literally 00:19:00.869 --> 00:19:03.849 built on a partial text. In many ways, yes. And 00:19:03.849 --> 00:19:06.109 speaking of feminism... It's interesting that 00:19:06.109 --> 00:19:08.369 Beauvoir herself was reluctant to even call herself 00:19:08.369 --> 00:19:10.970 a feminist at first. She was. Her primary political 00:19:10.970 --> 00:19:13.450 commitment was to socialism. She kind of believed 00:19:13.450 --> 00:19:15.849 that a full -scale class revolution would automatically 00:19:15.849 --> 00:19:18.950 solve the woman problem. She thought feminism 00:19:18.950 --> 00:19:21.109 on its own was a distraction. What changed her 00:19:21.109 --> 00:19:23.640 mind? Just seeing the women's liberation movement 00:19:23.640 --> 00:19:27.200 explode in the late 60s and early 70s, she realized 00:19:27.200 --> 00:19:29.380 that patriarchy was its own system of oppression 00:19:29.380 --> 00:19:33.880 separate from class. So in 1972, she finally 00:19:33.880 --> 00:19:36.700 publicly declared herself a feminist. She said, 00:19:36.700 --> 00:19:38.720 you know, a socialist revolution isn't enough 00:19:38.720 --> 00:19:40.940 on its own. And then she became a very active 00:19:40.940 --> 00:19:43.420 participant. Yeah. especially around abortion 00:19:43.420 --> 00:19:47.019 rights. In 1971, she was one of the main forces 00:19:47.019 --> 00:19:50.400 behind the Manifesto of the 343. It was this 00:19:50.400 --> 00:19:53.839 incredible public statement signed by 343 prominent 00:19:53.839 --> 00:19:56.799 French women, including her, all publicly admitting 00:19:56.799 --> 00:19:59.200 to having had an illegal abortion. Dearing the 00:19:59.200 --> 00:20:01.099 government to prosecute all of them. Exactly. 00:20:01.119 --> 00:20:03.880 It was a hugely powerful act of civil disobedience, 00:20:03.880 --> 00:20:06.519 and it worked. Abortion was legalized in France 00:20:06.519 --> 00:20:09.849 in 1974. So even as she got older... Her output 00:20:09.849 --> 00:20:12.509 never really slowed down. She kept writing novels, 00:20:12.750 --> 00:20:15.329 autobiographies, but her focus seemed to shift 00:20:15.329 --> 00:20:18.369 a bit towards aging and death. It did. The Mandarins, 00:20:18.369 --> 00:20:20.369 which we mentioned, came out in 54. But then 00:20:20.369 --> 00:20:23.089 in 1967, you get The Woman Destroyed, which is 00:20:23.089 --> 00:20:25.130 a collection of stories about older women grappling 00:20:25.130 --> 00:20:28.130 with aging and feeling invisible. And her book 00:20:28.130 --> 00:20:31.529 about her mother's death is supposed to be incredibly 00:20:31.529 --> 00:20:36.109 powerful. A very easy death from 1964. It's this 00:20:36.109 --> 00:20:39.490 almost brutally honest yet very moving account 00:20:39.490 --> 00:20:42.369 of her mother dying from cancer. And it was one 00:20:42.369 --> 00:20:45.049 of the first mainstream books to really tackle 00:20:45.049 --> 00:20:47.809 the ethics of end -of -life care, you know, the 00:20:47.809 --> 00:20:49.509 doctor -patient relationship when things are 00:20:49.509 --> 00:20:51.470 terminal. And then there was that novel that 00:20:51.470 --> 00:20:53.920 was only published a few years ago, right? Decades 00:20:53.920 --> 00:20:57.380 after she died. Yes. Les Inseparables. The Inseparables. 00:20:57.400 --> 00:21:00.380 It was published in 2020. It's a novelization 00:21:00.380 --> 00:21:02.900 of her intense, passionate childhood friendship 00:21:02.900 --> 00:21:05.480 and first love with a girl named Elizabeth LeCoin, 00:21:05.619 --> 00:21:08.660 who she called Zaza. And Zaza's death had a huge 00:21:08.660 --> 00:21:11.900 impact on her. A profound impact. Zaza died tragically 00:21:11.900 --> 00:21:13.859 young, but Beauvoir always believed it wasn't 00:21:13.859 --> 00:21:15.599 just the illness that killed her. She blamed 00:21:15.599 --> 00:21:18.000 the oppressive, conventional bourgeois society 00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:20.359 they grew up in for crushing Zaza's spirit and 00:21:20.359 --> 00:21:22.539 her will to live. It's like the origin story 00:21:22.539 --> 00:21:25.160 for her entire rebellion. But her public statements 00:21:25.160 --> 00:21:27.420 in her later life, they could be just as controversial 00:21:27.420 --> 00:21:29.440 as her early life. Absolutely. Especially her 00:21:29.440 --> 00:21:31.839 views on motherhood and housework. This is the 00:21:31.839 --> 00:21:35.579 1975 interview with Betty Frieden, right? It's 00:21:35.579 --> 00:21:37.940 often used to paint Beauvoir as being against 00:21:37.940 --> 00:21:41.319 women's choices. It's a very thorny moment. Friedan 00:21:41.319 --> 00:21:43.000 asked her if housewives should get a minimum 00:21:43.000 --> 00:21:46.359 wage, and Beauvoir's answer was shocking. She 00:21:46.359 --> 00:21:49.119 said, no woman should be authorized to stay at 00:21:49.119 --> 00:21:51.900 home and raise her children. Which sounds incredibly 00:21:51.900 --> 00:21:54.140 authoritarian, coming from the great philosopher 00:21:54.140 --> 00:21:57.140 of freedom. It does, but her reasoning, whether 00:21:57.140 --> 00:21:59.240 you agree with it or not, was philosophically 00:21:59.240 --> 00:22:02.000 consistent. She argued that as long as staying 00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:05.259 home is seen as a valid choice, societal pressure 00:22:05.259 --> 00:22:07.480 and conditioning will force too many women into 00:22:07.480 --> 00:22:09.700 it. She believed you had to remove the choice 00:22:09.700 --> 00:22:12.259 to create the conditions for real freedom from 00:22:12.259 --> 00:22:14.299 that conditioning. It's an extreme position. 00:22:14.619 --> 00:22:17.240 It is, but not nearly as unsettling as the other 00:22:17.240 --> 00:22:20.240 major controversy from her later years. Her signature 00:22:20.240 --> 00:22:23.119 on that 1977 petition. Yeah, this is this is 00:22:23.119 --> 00:22:26.059 really troubling. In 1977, she, along with Foucault, 00:22:26.200 --> 00:22:28.500 Search and a number of other French intellectuals, 00:22:28.500 --> 00:22:30.759 signed a petition to abolish the age of consent 00:22:30.759 --> 00:22:33.480 in France. It was in support of three men who 00:22:33.480 --> 00:22:35.519 had been arrested for sexual relations with minors 00:22:35.519 --> 00:22:38.740 between 12 and 13. It's just it's impossible 00:22:38.740 --> 00:22:41.059 to reconcile that with the philosophy of protecting 00:22:41.059 --> 00:22:43.160 the freedom of others. It really is. It stands 00:22:43.160 --> 00:22:45.440 as this profound and disturbing contradiction 00:22:45.440 --> 00:22:47.720 in her public life and one that's very difficult 00:22:47.720 --> 00:22:50.589 to explain away. A deeply complicated, flawed 00:22:50.589 --> 00:22:53.509 figure right to the end. Her last years were, 00:22:53.609 --> 00:22:55.950 of course, overshadowed by Sartre's decline and 00:22:55.950 --> 00:22:59.430 death in 1980. And she wrote about it in A Farewell 00:22:59.430 --> 00:23:02.670 to Sartre, a very painful, unflinching look at 00:23:02.670 --> 00:23:05.289 his final years. It was the only major work she 00:23:05.289 --> 00:23:07.670 ever published that he didn't read first. A final 00:23:07.670 --> 00:23:10.250 act of intellectual independence, in a way. Perhaps. 00:23:10.329 --> 00:23:12.890 But her final personal act was maybe the most 00:23:12.890 --> 00:23:15.329 rebellious of all. It involved her long -term 00:23:15.329 --> 00:23:18.660 partner, Sylvie Le Bon. Right. In 1980... When 00:23:18.660 --> 00:23:21.799 Beauvoir was 72, she legally adopted Sylvie Le 00:23:21.799 --> 00:23:24.680 Bon, who was in her late 30s at the time. Her 00:23:24.680 --> 00:23:27.160 partner, her companion, became her legal daughter. 00:23:27.339 --> 00:23:29.680 For someone who rejected the institution of marriage 00:23:29.680 --> 00:23:32.519 her entire life, this embrace of a legal institution, 00:23:32.839 --> 00:23:35.099 adoption, is just fascinating. So how do people 00:23:35.099 --> 00:23:37.299 interpret that? Was she giving in to the system? 00:23:37.480 --> 00:23:39.900 The common scholarly interpretation is the exact 00:23:39.900 --> 00:23:42.940 opposite. They see it as a final act of subversion. 00:23:43.480 --> 00:23:46.619 She used a legal structure designed for the traditional 00:23:46.619 --> 00:23:50.599 bio -heteronormative family and used it to legitimize 00:23:50.599 --> 00:23:53.740 and protect a queer, nontraditional kinship. 00:23:53.869 --> 00:23:56.910 It wasn't a surrender. It was a raid. It was 00:23:56.910 --> 00:23:59.269 her way of securing Sylvie's future and defining 00:23:59.269 --> 00:24:01.509 their relationship on her own terms one last 00:24:01.509 --> 00:24:05.970 time. She died a few years later in 1986. And 00:24:05.970 --> 00:24:08.470 she's buried right next to Sartre. A partnership 00:24:08.470 --> 00:24:10.569 right to the very end. So when you take a step 00:24:10.569 --> 00:24:12.789 back from all the personal chaos, all the controversy, 00:24:13.029 --> 00:24:14.650 and you just look at the intellectual legacy. 00:24:15.339 --> 00:24:17.779 It's undeniable, isn't it? It's profound. The 00:24:17.779 --> 00:24:20.079 second sex literally provided the philosophical 00:24:20.079 --> 00:24:22.660 vocabulary for second wave feminism around the 00:24:22.660 --> 00:24:25.119 world. Pioneers of the movement all said so themselves. 00:24:25.759 --> 00:24:28.279 Betty Friedan said Beauvoir's book led her directly 00:24:28.279 --> 00:24:30.299 to her own analysis in the feminine mystique. 00:24:30.440 --> 00:24:32.819 Kate Millett's sexual politics leans heavily 00:24:32.819 --> 00:24:36.140 on her. The debt is enormous and openly acknowledged. 00:24:36.259 --> 00:24:38.869 Her ideas just reshaped everything. The very 00:24:38.869 --> 00:24:41.109 concept of a sex -gender distinction became the 00:24:41.109 --> 00:24:43.369 starting point for decades of work in sociology, 00:24:43.730 --> 00:24:46.210 history, literary criticism. It all comes back 00:24:46.210 --> 00:24:49.890 to that one sentence. One is not born, but becomes 00:24:49.890 --> 00:24:53.089 a woman. It just keeps inspiring new generations 00:24:53.089 --> 00:24:56.170 of thinkers. Absolutely. Monique Wittig riffed 00:24:56.170 --> 00:24:58.029 on it directly. And then you get someone like 00:24:58.029 --> 00:25:00.549 Judith Butler, who takes that verb to become 00:25:00.549 --> 00:25:03.900 and pushes it. even further. This is Butler's 00:25:03.900 --> 00:25:06.200 theory of performativity. Right. Butler looks 00:25:06.200 --> 00:25:09.799 at to become and says, well, if gender is something 00:25:09.799 --> 00:25:11.799 you're always becoming and never something you 00:25:11.799 --> 00:25:14.119 just are, then it can't be a static thing. It's 00:25:14.119 --> 00:25:16.359 not a noun. It's a verb. It's an incessant and 00:25:16.359 --> 00:25:19.240 repeated action. So gender is this performance 00:25:19.240 --> 00:25:22.200 that we're all constantly doing every day reinforced 00:25:22.200 --> 00:25:24.779 by the culture around us. Exactly. And that whole 00:25:24.779 --> 00:25:26.559 line of thought, which has been so influential, 00:25:26.799 --> 00:25:28.960 it starts right there with Beauvoir applying 00:25:28.960 --> 00:25:31.480 an existentialist framework to the problem of 00:25:31.480 --> 00:25:33.970 gender. It's why she's still so relevant. And 00:25:33.970 --> 00:25:36.369 she's getting the recognition now. There's a 00:25:36.369 --> 00:25:39.009 square in Paris named after both her and Sarch. 00:25:39.369 --> 00:25:41.930 Time magazine named her Woman of the Year for 00:25:41.930 --> 00:25:46.329 1949. Her place is secure. Messy, complicated, 00:25:46.690 --> 00:25:49.869 but absolutely secure. So we've come to the end 00:25:49.869 --> 00:25:52.609 of our deep dive. We've traced Simone de Beauvoir's 00:25:52.609 --> 00:25:54.670 journey from this brilliant, rebellious daughter 00:25:54.670 --> 00:25:56.829 of the bourgeoisie to the architect of modern 00:25:56.829 --> 00:25:59.920 feminism. Her life was this constant, difficult 00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:02.960 synthesis of ideas and actions. A life defined 00:26:02.960 --> 00:26:05.359 by philosophical clarity on the one hand and 00:26:05.359 --> 00:26:08.200 deep personal ambiguity on the other. She showed 00:26:08.200 --> 00:26:10.740 us that living an authentic life is a messy business. 00:26:10.920 --> 00:26:13.339 It requires making hard choices, and sometimes 00:26:13.339 --> 00:26:15.819 those choices create a lot of friction. So as 00:26:15.819 --> 00:26:17.799 always, we want to leave you with a final thought 00:26:17.799 --> 00:26:19.740 to chew on, something that brings all this together. 00:26:20.059 --> 00:26:22.880 It centers on that final tension in her life 00:26:22.880 --> 00:26:26.460 between freedom and institutions. Beauvoir spent 00:26:26.460 --> 00:26:29.220 her entire life fiercely rejecting traditional 00:26:29.220 --> 00:26:32.200 structures like marriage, calling them alienating 00:26:32.200 --> 00:26:34.599 institutions. But then at the very end of her 00:26:34.599 --> 00:26:37.400 life, she used a highly restrictive legal institution 00:26:37.400 --> 00:26:40.519 adoption to formalize her relationship with Sylvie 00:26:40.519 --> 00:26:43.230 Le Bon. So the question for you is this. Given 00:26:43.230 --> 00:26:45.329 that her entire philosophy was about radical 00:26:45.329 --> 00:26:47.670 freedom and authentic choice, was that final 00:26:47.670 --> 00:26:50.549 decision to use the legal system to formalize 00:26:50.549 --> 00:26:53.509 a queer kinship the ultimate application of her 00:26:53.509 --> 00:26:55.950 existential ethics, subverting an institution 00:26:55.950 --> 00:26:58.490 from within, or was it a final contradiction 00:26:58.490 --> 00:27:01.049 of her lifelong opposition to those very constraints? 00:27:01.289 --> 00:27:03.730 That choice, using the system you hate to get 00:27:03.730 --> 00:27:05.809 the freedom you want, it's a fascinating and 00:27:05.809 --> 00:27:08.230 very human problem, isn't it? It is. That's our 00:27:08.230 --> 00:27:09.549 deep dive. We'll see you next time.