Beauvoir’s situated account of freedom moved Sartre beyond his earlier absolutism

Evidence

In an article published in 1981, “Beauvoir and Sartre: Th e Question of Infl uence,” Margaret Simons opens up the question to the eff ect that Beauvoir may have contributed to the formation of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. In the interviews she conducted with Beauvoir, she was concerned with many things, including trying to get Beauvoir to admit to having been infl uential for Sartre. Simons’s work has been crucial in launching the question, and the interviews, as well as her many essays on the question, vividly fl eshed out the problem. … Sonia Kruks and Debra Bergoff en have also tackled important aspects of the Beauvoir–Sartre philosophical relationship. In “Simone de Beauvoir: Teaching Sartre about Freedom” (as well as in her contribution to this volume), Kruks has demonstrated how Beauvoir’s and Sartre’s views on this key existentialist concept diverged and how it was Beauvoir’s own original dealings with freedom as situated and socially interdependent that led Sartre to depart from his earlier view of freedom as absolute to one that was more workable in his works of the 1950s and, more particularly, in the Critique of Dialectical Reason published in 1960. … For her part, Bergoff en has explored the look and bad faith and how they are used very diff erently by Beauvoir and Sartre. In her article “Th e Look as Bad Faith,” she discusses how Beauvoir’s particular emphasis on the look allows her to devise an ethics of generosity. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 46

If it seems that she is somewhat successful in bringing Sartre to open up his stringent conception of absolute freedom to consider the more important role of situation, she is not, however, as successful in exerting infl uence in relation to embodiment. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 89

Categorization

• XREF: The influence-direction debate in this chapter connects directly to the reader’s stated project of historiographical revision on Beauvoir-Sartre authorship; Kruks’s causal claim about freedom parallels other influence-reversal arguments this scholarship surveys. — connects to: Sartrean freedom requires facticity, not its absence — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 508; Sartre’s late thought shifted from individual freedom toward political commitment — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 853; Beauvoir’s ethical freedom departs from Sartre’s ontological freedom to make morality possible — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 610 (+15 more)
• SEED: The claim that Beauvoir’s ‘situated and socially interdependent’ freedom redirected Sartre from 1960’s Critique onward is a ready-made essay thesis on philosophical influence attribution in twentieth-century French thought.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 46; Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 89

Broader Connections

• Beauvoir’s ethical freedom departs from Sartre’s ontological freedom to make morality possible #expands (0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 610