Why is it that only women are caught up in the dilemma between career and family?
Why is it that only women struggle and entangle between "being themselves" and "having love"?
Even if you've never read The Second Sex, you've probably heard Beauvoir's quote that "women are not born, they are acquired." How did she "become" step by step?
Beauvoir was a French writer, philosopher, and feminist pioneer who was ahead of her time and bravely broke the traditional gender hierarchy in both theory and practice.
She was also controversial, banned, ridiculed, and ridiculed for being too maverick, but she persevered in thinking and writing all her life, being true to herself, and eventually becoming herself and inspiring women all over the world.
Beauvoir's life has become a symbol of the success of generations of women who are no longer satisfied with "realizing their dreams through men's dreams".
This issue of "Yang Lan Reading" interprets a biography - "Becoming Beauvoir".
From this book, it is not difficult to see that Beauvoir's various thoughts and practices on philosophy, self, life, love, and women are of great modern significance.
The world often knows Beauvoir because of her lifelong companion, the French philosopher Sartre. But that perception is not fair.
Beauvoir's magnificent life was far more than just his relationship with Sartre.
At a young age, Beauvoir questioned the male-dominated world and began to think about her feminine identity, struggling between "giving up on herself" and "keeping herself." As an adult, her literary and philosophical works received widespread attention from the academic community; as the founder of Modern Times magazine, she had a deep concern for the fundamental problems of man himself, and has been called the "mother of existential philosophy".
In his diary at the age of 19, Beauvoir told himself:
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Don't be Miss Beauvoir, be yourself. Don't chase the goals imposed on you from the outside, don't blindly follow the established social structure. What works for me is what works for me, and that's it.
This may be the beginning, heralding a long, difficult, but also resolute path of becoming one of its own. How did Beauvoir become her own?
How important "being yourself" is to live a good life is a question that philosophers have been exploring for thousands of years, socrates' motto is "know yourself"; Nietzsche said that the task of being born as a human being is to "be yourself".
Beauvoir offered her philosophical rebuttal: What if, as a woman, you are not allowed to "be yourself"?
"No woman can live her own life 'free from prejudice and prejudice'", this is one of Beauvoir's central points in The Second Sex, and she herself is no exception, her life is a life of repeated struggles and entanglements in prejudice, prejudice and self-assertion, and courageous counterattack.
The biography "Becoming Beauvoir" is based on beauvoir letters, early diaries and other materials exposed in recent years, pulling her out of Sartre's shadow and standing in her own spotlight, presenting us with a more real and three-dimensional female figure.
Of course, narration alone does not completely restore her true life, but as a latecomer, we will find strength as we see Beauvoir's efforts to become herself. Because each of us is trying to find ourselves and become ourselves.
Image from the web
Beauvoir and Sartre engaged in a lifelong practice of open love, which made Beauvoir controversial.
Nowadays, the world has learned to look at Beauvoir's emotional life with an appreciative eye, and perhaps her concept of love can give us some enlightenment.
In "The Second Sex", Beauvoir wrote a chapter on "Women in Love", describing the process of women taking men as the focus of their lives after falling in love, and gradually losing themselves.
They try to see everything in the world through the eyes of their lover, chase the lover's preferences and opinions, feel their own value because they are loved by a man, and when they dedicate themselves, they can feel the meaning of life.
This is also what we now call the "love brain". The thinking of love first seems to be exercising one's own freedom to love a person, but in fact it restricts the other party's freedom to become oneself, and even loses both.
The foundation of love is freedom and respect, not attached, not blindly following, in order to achieve each other.
Beauvoir did not believe in a once and for all option, and she saw her life as a never-ending transformation, as she put it: "There is no such moment in life that is at peace with everything".
If you are faced with a choice and looking for self-consistency, I hope that you will also encounter Beauvoir spiritually.
Give yourself more freedom and space, don't have to be demanding perfection, bravely explore the possibilities of your life, and release your own light.
Yang Lan said
Sweep and follow!
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