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Written between the age of eighteen and twenty-one, the entries in the third volume of Diary of a Philosophy Student take readers into Simone de Beauvoir's thoughts while illuminating the people and ideas swirling around her. The pages offer rare insights into Beauvoir's intellectual development; her early experiences with love, desire, and freedom; and relationships with friends like Élisabeth "Zaza" Lacoin, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It also presents Beauvoir's shocking account of Jean-Paul Sartre's sexual assault of her during their first sexual encounter--a revelation certain to transform views of her life and philosophy. In addition, the editors include a wealth of important supplementary material. Barbara Klaw provides a detailed consideration of the Diary's role in the development of Beauvoir's writing style by exploring her use of metanarrative and other literary techniques, part of a process of literary creation that saw Beauvoir use the notebooks to cultivate her talent. Margaret A. Simons's essay places the assault by Sartre within an appraisal of Beauvoir's complicated legacy for #MeToo while suggesting readers engage with the diary through the lens of trauma.
List of contents
Foreword to the Beauvoir Series
Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir Preface
Margaret A. Simons Acknowledgments
Reading Beauvoir’s 1926–30 Student Diary as Adventures in Literary Creation
Barbara Klaw Beauvoir and #MeToo
Margaret A. Simons Third Notebook: December 7, 1926–April 15, 1927
Simone de Beauvoir Fifth Notebook: October 31, 1927–August 30, 1928
Simone de Beauvoir Seventh Notebook: September 15, 1929–October 31, 1930
Simone de Beauvoir Bibliography
Index
About the author
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) was a French existentialist philosopher. Her works include
Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) and
The Second Sex (1949).
Barbara Klaw is a professor emerita of French at Northern Kentucky University. She is the translator of
Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 2, 1928–29, and author of
Le Paris de Beauvoir.
Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, adopted daughter and literary executor of Simone de Beauvoir, is the editor of
Lettres à Sartre and other works by Beauvoir.
Margaret A. Simons is Distinguished Research Professor Emerita at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and the author of
Beauvoir and The Second Sex
: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism.
Marybeth Timmermann is a contributing translator and editor of
Philosophical Writings and other works by Beauvoir. Klaw, Le Bon de Beauvoir, and Simons coedited
Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 1, 1926–27 and
Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 2, 1928–29.
