Margaret A. Simons is a professor of philosophical studies at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and also the founding editor (1986–1990) of Hypatia, a scholarly feminist philosophy journal. Almost obsessively, Simons has devoted her life-long career to the study of de Beauvoir’s works and has published extensively: Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir (Pennsylvania University Press, 1995), Beauvoir and the Second Sex: Feminism, Race and the Origins of Existentialism (Rowman and Littlefield Pub. Inc., 2001), The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir (Indiana University Press, 2006).

Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophical Writings is part of “The Beauvoir Series,” edited by Simons herself and Sylvie Le Bon, de Beauvoir’s adopted daughter. It is a projected seven-volume series that will include the following: Diary of a Philosophy Student, Volume I: 1926–27; Wartime Diary; Literary Writings; Writings in Journalism, Politics, and Philosophy; Feminist Writings; and Diary of a Philosophy Student, Volume II: 1928–30. The first volume, Philosophical Writings, inaugurates Simons’s crusade to disprove notions that de Beauvoir was simply “Sartre’s girlfriend” (de Beauvoir herself refused to identify herself as a philosopher), and to prove that she developed an original, feminist theoretical system that North American academics have frequently misinterpreted and subsequently overlooked. This misinterpretation, as the publishers note, is due largely to the lack of translations (or bad translations, for that matter), as was the case with The Second Sex (1949). Indeed, let us remember that for most Anglophone speakers, access to European theory and philosophy depends heavily on the quality of translations. In this context, Simons’s effort to reintroduce de Beauvoir’s ideas to Anglophone audiences constitutes a praiseworthy feminist political manoeuvre.

In Philosophical Writings Simons establishes “the seeds” of de Beauvoir’s existentialist thought to prove that she in fact influenced Sartre. Having spent two decades trying to establish a place for de Beauvoir in the academic canon of North American philosophy, one can see why this particular volume is dear to Simons. The essays range from “Analysis of Bernard’s Introduction,” in which a sixteen-year-old de Beauvoir rigorously challenges the scientific notion of a division between the subject and object in epistemology, to “An Existentialist Look at Americans” and “What is Existentialism?” in which a thirty-year-old de Beauvoir declares her adherence to existentialist philosophy.

In the introduction to “Two Unpublished Chapters of ‘She Came to Stay,’” Edward Fullbrook convincingly argues that the prejudice against de Beauvoir does not simply stem from problems of translation. Cultural differences – particularly the prejudice of ‘continental philosophy’ against the problem-oriented philosophy of de Beauvoir and the privileging of system-oriented philosophies like Sartres’s – may work against her recognition as a philosopher: “[de] Beauvoir the philosopher had been erased from existence” (34). In addition, deductive systems that derive from apparently universal truths are still privileged in North America over systems that work inductively, like phenomenology and existentialism. Comparing similar elements in both unpublished chapters (which constitute a different beginning of the novel), with the novel’s final version, Fullbrook convincingly argues that de Beauvoir was using literature as a means to convey certain philosophical ideas. Although he invites us to read her writings as philosophical texts, these two unpublished chapters were my favorites from the volume because they were extremely pleasurable to read:

De Beauvoir’s phenomenological-existentialist thinking also unfolds beautifully in "Pyrrhus and Cinéas" (1944), never before edited in English and introduced cleverly by Debra Bergoffen, professor of philosophy and women’s studies and director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center at George Mason University in Virginia. This text, as Bergoffen points out, should be read not as an incomplete version of de Beauvoir’s thinking, but as a self-contained product that responds to the political situation and the academic debates that were happening during the Second World War. The text also flows nicely and it speaks to matters that are relevant today: the fundamentals of our action; the issue of ethics in the absence of universal truths and upon the assumption of the paradoxical finitude and incompleteness of every project; and the relation between our freedom as individuals and our responsibility towards others.

The chapters “A Review of the Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty,” introduced by senior feminist scholar Sara Heinämaa, “Moral Idealism and Political Realism,” introduced by Sonia Kruks, and “Existentialism and Popular Wisdom,” introduced by Eleanore Holveck, are three articles that these scholars see as complementary to the reading of “The Ethics of Ambiguity” and “The Blood of Others.” They develop the notions of ethics, subjectivity as embodiment, and violence and the necessary ambiguity of human life. Other chapters in the volume include: “Jean Paul Sartre,” a short text for a magazine-commissioned article; “An Eye for an Eye,” a reaction to the trial and execution of the French collaborationist Robert Brasillach; “Literature and Metaphysics,” de Beauvoir’s exploration of the relationship between her two loves; and the “Introduction to an Ethics of Ambiguity.”

For both the erudite reader familiarized with the philosophical debates on existentialism and the emergent feminist scholar, this volume may be considered a valuable contribution and an informative and enjoyable read about de Beauvoir’s original philosophical thinking on political action and ethics, as well as her emerging views on sexism and racism as shaped by existentialism.