Simone de Beauvoir
1908-1986 · Existentialism · Renowned
Beauvoir was a French existentialist whose The Second Sex, published in 1949, founded modern feminist philosophy. 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,' she wrote there, separating the body you are born with from the role a culture trains you into. She traced how women get cast as the other against whom man defines himself. Real freedom, she held, depends on the freedom of everyone else.
Signature
The position Beauvoir is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Polity
- leans Liberalism
- Ethics Basis
- Relational
Positions on the 11 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Individualism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Universals
- leans Nominalism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- strongly leans Changing (100 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Constructed (25 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Multiplicity (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Immanence (25 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Polity
- leans Liberalism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ethics
- mildly leans Means (67 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- War
- mildly leans Pacifism (31 on a 0–100 scale from Pacifism to Militarism)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (25 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
- Allegiance
- leans Global (75 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
9 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Beauvoir refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Freedom
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Genealogical
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Pragmatic Test
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Relational
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Radical Freedom / Social Determinism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Self-Sovereignty / Collective Will
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Social Construction
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Other
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Annihilation / Living Memory
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Evaluative Judgment
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Socially Constructed / Existence Precedes Essence
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?