Beauvoir’s philosophy centers on how constraint and freedom shape our becoming

Evidence

Someone else shared Merleau-Ponty’s instinct for the ambiguity and complexity of human experience, and that was Simone de Beauvoir. Besides her work in feminism and fiction, she devoted her philosophical writing to exploring how the two forces of constraint and freedom play themselves out through our lives, as each of us slowly becomes ourselves. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1027

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names constraint-versus-freedom as the core dialectic running through Beauvoir’s philosophy — a useful anchor concept for the reader’s orientation to her project.
• XREF: connects to: Beauvoir grounded existential freedom within gendered historical situations — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 684; Beauvoir distinguishes inborn ontological freedom from willed freedom that facticity can eviscerate — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 643; Beauvoir holds that both sexes are simultaneously passive flesh and active freedom. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 114 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Beauvoir distinguishes inborn ontological freedom from willed freedom that facticity can eviscerate #expands (0.90) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 643