Beauvoir’s moral-period essays were a verbal exorcism of a collapsing world

Evidence

Among her nonfi ction works, Beauvoir was most critical of the ethicopolitical essays from what she later disparagingly referred to as her “moral period” (PL, 433). Th is period begins with the publication of Pyrrhus et Cinéas, which was written in 1943 shortly aft er Sartre’s Being and Nothingness appeared and with the intent of developing some of the ethical implications of that work, which Sartre had promised but not provided. It includes a group of essays published in 1945 and 1946,3 and culminates with Th e Ethics of Ambiguity (published in 1947). … Beauvoir later explained this tone as her way of responding to the dramatic collapse of her hitherto happy and stable world and to her ensuing sense of “chaos”: “I had as my only recourse this verbal exorcism: an abstract morality” (PL, 433; FA, 626, my translation). … Now she ceased the attempt to “exorcise” those elements of life that are beyond control of the self and instead began to recognize their presence as integral to human existence, her own and others. Th is new recognition profoundly informed her writings from the late 1940s onward. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 474

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies what Beauvoir’s ‘moral period’ essays were and why she wrote them — useful for tracking the chronology of her philosophical development.
• XREF: connects to: Beauvoir’s philosophical standing collapsed dramatically between 1949 and 1986. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 300