Beauvoir’s philosophical apprenticeship was shaped by intellectual humility before Merleau-Ponty

Evidence

In their first summer after becoming friends, they were much thrown on each other’s company, as other students were away from Paris for the holidays. They went for walks, first in the gardens of the École normale supérieure — an ‘awe-inspiring place’ for Beauvoir — and later in the Luxembourg Gardens, where they would sit ‘beside the statue of some queen or other’ and talk philosophy. Notwithstanding the fact that she had overtaken him in the exams, she found it natural to take on the role of philosophical novice beside him. In fact, she sometimes won their debates, almost by accident, but more often she was left happily exclaiming, ‘I know nothing, nothing. I not only have no answer to give, but I haven’t even found a satisfactory way of propounding the questions.’ — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 370

Categorization

• CANDY: The image of philosophy students in the Luxembourg Gardens ‘beside the statue of some queen or other’ is a light, tweetable slice of intellectual-history charm.
• XREF: connects to: Beauvoir may have steered Merleau-Ponty toward the body-subject concept — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 119; Beauvoir extended Merleau-Ponty by recognizing masculinity as a gendered situation too — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 119; Linking Beauvoir to Merleau-Ponty became a scholarly way to erase Sartre — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 62 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Beauvoir may have steered Merleau-Ponty toward the body-subject concept #complicates (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 119
• Beauvoir extended Merleau-Ponty by recognizing masculinity as a gendered situation too #expands (0.72) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 119