Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir

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.

• Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Erotic as a Philosophical Category 2. The Necessity of Violence, The Gift of Generosity: Pyrrhus at Cinéas 3. Contesting Intentional Anxieties: The Ethics of Ambiguity 4. Perversions: "Must We Burn Sade?" 5. Risking: An Ethic of the Erotic: The Second Sex 6. Erotic Generosities Epilogue Bibliography Index

"…Bergoffen carefully begins to tease from Beauvoir's work an 'ethic of generosity' and a celebration—absent in Sartre—of the joys of giving and of sustaining human bonds." — Feminist Studies"Debra Bergoffen's exceptionally fine Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir marks an altogether new stage of sophistication in the analysis of Beauvoir's philosophy … indispensable for any serious student of Beauvoir." — Hypatia"Bergoffen's book overturns tradition by reading Simone de Beauvoir on her own terms, rather than as a footnote to exclusively male philosophy. Combining incisive explorations of Beauvoir's concepts of the erotic, of generosity, and of her crucial distinction between the two moments of intentionality, this study offers a profoundly original account of Beauvoir's ethics. Lucidly written, boldly conceived, The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities establishes Bergoffen's as a major voice in the current, radical assessment of Beauvoir as a philosopher." — Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook, authors of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre: The Remaking of the Twentieth-Century Legend"The author reads Beauvoir as a philosopher in her own right, 'out from under Sartre's shadow,' and that reading is meticulous and dazzling in its originality. Bergoffen has transformed my understanding of Beauvoir's philosophy. The book's greatest achievement is locating Beauvoir's philosophy within the Husserlean phenomenological tradition and defining her original contribution to that tradition. It's wonderful! I love the discussions of Bataille, Lacan, and Irigaray—Bergoffen unites French philosophical traditions that have too long been seen as independent of one another." — Margaret A. Simons, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville