Sartre ranked Beauvoir as more authentic than himself, an assessment beyond mere admiration

Evidence

Th ey were lovers of freedom (amants de la liberté), as one commentator has put it. However, they were not lovers in the usual sense for all the time that they were together, having stopped their sexual relationship rather early. Nonetheless, the bond that held them together was very strong. Th ey needed each other throughout their lives and were always together. Th ey would see each other every day, and if they could not be together, they would write to each other almost every day. Beauvoir was always Sartre’s fi rst reader, fi erce editor, and profound critic. He would trust her judgment entirely. He was also her reader and advisor. And, yes, also her greatest admirer, as his striking confession in his War Diaries attests: “Th e Beaver … is more naturally authentic than me” (WD, 85). In Sartre’s existentialist glossary and hierarchy of types, to be authentic is the highest human level that a person can ever attain or hope to attain. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 33

Categorization

• XREF: The daily-reading, first-editor dynamic bears on the influence-direction question central to this reader’s scholarship on the Beauvoir-Sartre relationship. — connects to: Sartre saw Beauvoir’s amazement as authentic philosophy yet philosophically poor — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 361; Beauvoir placed second to Sartre forever setting their precedence
• DEFINE: Clarifies the primacy of ‘authenticity’ within Sartre’s existentialist hierarchy, grounding why the ‘more naturally authentic’ compliment carries philosophical weight.