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Editorial

What Simone Said

by Anja Steinbauer

Simone Lucie-Ernestine-Marie-Bertrand de Beauvoir, first daughter of a good bourgeois family, was born a hundred years ago, on 9 January 1908. She died on 14 April 1986 one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century – a woman, an existentialist and a hell of a philosopher.

But, we must ask together with de Beauvoir: What is a woman? What is an existentialist? What is a philosopher? And do any of these shoes really fit her without aches and blisters?

There seems to be very little doubt that Simone de Beauvoir was a woman. However, according to her this is by no means a straightforward category. On the level of gender rather than biological sex, the label ‘woman’ is attributed to an artificial construct, i.

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