Beauvoir concealed her philosophical work to hide Sartre’s borrowings from it.

Evidence

However, as the Fullbrooks have pointed out, the posthumously published correspondence between Sartre and Beauvoir tells a very diff erent story. In a letter dated 17 January 1940, Beauvoir enthuses that she will have at least two hundred and fi ft y pages of draft manuscript to show him when he returns to Paris on leave from the army (LS, 258; LSfr, 2:49). Margaret Simons comments: “Th e evidence from the war diaries and correspondence suggests that Beauvoir lied about her philosophical work in general and her work in She Came to Stay in particular, in order to hide the evidence in Sartre’s War Diary (published in 1983) that he drew upon her novel in formulating his philosophy in Being and Nothingness.” — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 238

Categorization

• QUESTION: Simons’ strong claim that Beauvoir deliberately ‘lied’ deserves scrutiny — does the correspondence actually support deliberate concealment rather than modesty or other motives?
• XREF: Connects to the broader debate over Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical originality overshadowed by Sartre, a central theme in feminist philosophy of the 1980s-90s. — connects to: Beauvoir’s self-deprecating claims helped suppress her philosophical influence — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 36; Beauvoir deliberately concealed cases where she led Sartre intellectually — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 42; Scholars reduce Beauvoir’s existentialism to Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 400