Sex and Philosophy

Edward Fullbrook is a Research Fellow in Economics at the University of the West of England, UK. Together with his late wife, Kate Fullbrook, he is the co-author of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend (Basic Books, 1994) and Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Introduction (Polity, 1997). Kate Fullbrook was Professor of English at the University of the West of England until her death in 2003. Together with her husband, Edward Fullbrook, she co-authored Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend (Basic Books, 1994) and Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Introduction (Polity, 1997).

• Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I: Sartre and Beauvoir; 1. Final Exams; 2. Courtship and Union; 3. Carousing; 4. Would-be Authors; 5. More Carousing; 6. The Family Jewels; 7. The 'Lost' Letters; Part II: Sartre or Beauvoir?; 8. A 'Preposterous' Thesis; 9. Two Beginnings, One Philosophy; 10. Whose Ethics?; 11. The Absence of Beauvoir; 12. Beauvoir in the Intellectual Marketplace; Part III: Beauvoir and Beauvoir; 13. Gender and Method; 14. Gender and Ethics; 15. The Second Sex; 16. The Second Sex and the Genre Trap; Bibliography: Jean-Paul Sartre; Bibliography: Simone de Beauvoir.

Other biographers may challenge the standard account of Beauvoir and Sartre's sexual relationship, but only Edward and Kate Fullbrook pose as radical a challenge to the standard account of their philosophical relationship, arguing that Beauvoir, rather than Sartre, originated much of the philosophy they shared. Their new book strengthens their case with some interesting new material, including a discussion of Beauvoir's and Sartre's work on the phenomenon of absence.