Sartre and De Beauvoir: How the mighty have fallen...

Ah the power of simple conversations ! Overwhelmed by a week of
collecting and organizing seemingly random data from my labwork,I
finally finished a draft of my article for submission and was looking
forward to completely clearing science out of my mind at least for the
week-end. Unfortunately (or fortunately as it turned out) we had a
social gathering at my boss's place to celebrate a labmate 's wedding.
I was dreading more talk about science but to my surprise, the evening
went into a totally different direction and we conversed well into
midnight about political activism, arts and existentialism. Enjoyable
night overall if you add the fact that the red wine was excellent (
probably one of the reason why the conversation was flowing freely :-) ).
Scientists venting about politics, arts or philosophy are quite
humourous akin to women's take on football: refreshing and sometimes
very insightful :-) ( that was a harmess jab at all the feminists reading ).
8 hours after hearing my boss explaining how arts would always define
human existence better than any political achievement, my mother phones me at home
and drops casually that she is finishing a book on Simone de Beauvoir.
Not a surprise, because gender equality is at the center of her work and she
had the chance to meet the author of the book in person. However,
I am surprised because my week-end was suddenly invaded by French Existentialism when
I was expecting College Basketball ! ( Go Purdue University !) I had to
expand my very little knowledge of the legendary Sartre/Beauvoir
couple that shaped the mind of the 60's and google away.
What I found would not please the fan in my mother. There is plenty of
critics or followers of course but this article about their
relationship desacralizes a bit of the aura that Sartre and Beauvoir
carried. To summarize, De Beauvoir and Sartre engaged more often than
not into a menage a trois with a young female apprentice. There were 2 problems
however.First, although De Beauvoir was open about her bisexuality, it seems
that she was surrendering more than embracing in the affairs that
Sartre were engaging their relation into.Although she had affair of her
own, it seemed that she was yearning more than anything to have Sarte
all for her own. This is a bit of a dissappointment for the absolute
icon of modern feminism. Second, they openly despised the 3rd wheel in their adult games.
Granted, not many could attain their intellectual prowess, but their
superior intellect should have directed them away from comtempt for other human beings
and their use of as pawns. ( What is it that is so difficult about the
proper use of superior powers anyway? see US foreign policy,
Sartre mind games and every other bully in junior high school)
This article may contain inaccuracy and if so,please let me know.
However, the "New Yorker" is usually quite thorough
about fact findings. I just hope someone can give it a proper rebuttal so
that my mother won't hate me :).

Tags: existentialism, feminism, philosophy, beauvoir, sartre, menage,

Tags: bisexuality