Simone de Beauvoir Quotes
To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Translated by Bernard Frechtman, Philosophical Library, 1948, p. 24.
It was Spinoza’s insistence that man should be free and use reason rather than faith and not to adhere to authority that got him excommunicated by the Jews, The Catholics and the Muslims, the only such man in history. Authority per se was evil if it was listened to.
The great fallacy of course is who decides what is right. What is noteworthy is that this political and philosophical view of liberty still exists in much of the world today. There is no need for rights or constitutions to protect people if they do things that are “right”. It is only when we do something that the authorities or the majority think is “wrong” that we need the protection of rights and constitutions.
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.
