Simone de Beauvoir –– A Humanist Thinker

TOVE PETTERSEN is Professor of Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo (UiO), Norway. She specializes in moral philosophy and ethics, especially in the ethics of care and the existential ethics of Simone de Beauvoir. She received her Doctor Artium (equivalent to PhD) in philosophy from the University of Oslo, Norway (UiO), in 2004, with a dissertation on the ethics of care. She completed her Candidatus Philologiae (equivalent to MA) in the history of ideas on postmodern philosophy, and has also studied economics and holds a Candidata Magisteri (equivalent BA) in political science. In 2004–2006, Pettersen was granted a Postdoctoral Fellowship to work on Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics. She has also been the Director of Research at the Ethics Programme, UiO, and has been teaching philosophy at UiO since 1990. In 2012, Pettersen recived a Norwgian award—På Kanten-prisen—for her work in feminist philosophy. Her publications include “Conceptions of Care: Altruism, Feminism, and Mature Care” (2012), “The Ethics of Care: Normative Structures and Empirical Implications (2011), Filosofiens annet kjønn (Philosophy’s second sex) (2011), “Acting for Others: Moral Ontology in Simone de Beauvoir’s Pyrrhus and Cinéas” (2010), Comprehending Care. Problems and Possibilities in The Ethics of Care (2008) and “Freedom and Feminism in Simone de Beauvoir’s Philosophy” (2008). Pettersen has written the introduction to the Norwegian translation of Phyrrhus and Cinéas and The Ethics of Ambiguity (2009), and her articles have been translated into French and Italian. ANNLAUG BJØRSNØS is Professor of French Literature in the Department of Language and Literature at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway, where she has also served for eight years as Vice Dean for Education. Her areas of specialization include surreal- ism, existentialism, and the works of Simone de Beauvoir. Her doctoral thesis, on French surrealism, focusing on the poetic works of Joyce Mansour, was published in 1998. She has published several articles on Beauvoir’s literary and philosophical writings. Besides the feminist perspectives, which Beauvoir and Mansour have in common, the topic of identity construction, from a textual-historical perspective, has been a major area of her research activity. She has also participated in the eighteenth-century research network established by her department and has explored “individuality in literature,” with particular reference to the fictional works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. She started working on Paul Ricoeur some years ago, paying special attention to the relevance of his philosophy to the study of literature.

MARK LETTERI: EDITORIAL FOREWORD
MARGARET A. SIMONS: GUEST FOREWORD
PREFACE
TOVE PETTERSEN AND ANNLAUG BJØRSNØS: INTRODUCTION

Part One: CRITICAL THINKING AND METHODOLOGY
CHRISTINE DAIGLE: Making the Humanities Meaningful: Beauvoir’s Philosophy and Literature of the Appeal
LOUISE RENÉE: Existential Awakening in Simone de Beauvoir’s Les belles images
ERIKA RUONAKOSKI : Interdisciplinarity in The Second Sex: Between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis
STÈVE BESSAC-VAURE: Simone de Beauvoir as Mediator for Foreign Literature in Les Temps Modernes

Part Two: FREEDOM, DEPENDENCE, AND AMBIGUITY
TOVE PETTERSEN: FIVE Existential Humanism and Moral Freedom in Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics
SAMANTHA BANKSTON: Becoming-Ambiguous: Beauvoir, Deleuze, and the Future of the Humanities
GWENDOLYN DOLSKE: Embodiment and Contemplation of Death: A Beauvoirian Analysis

Part Three: LITERATURE AS LABORATORY
JULIANA DE ALBUQUERQUE KATZ: The Relevance of Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethic/Aesthetic Project to the Humanities
ANNLAUG BJØRSNØS: Representing Time: On the Experience of Temporality in The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
BARBARA KLAW: The Relevance of Woolf’s Orlando and Beauvoir’s Tous les hommes sont mortels

WORKS CITED
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
NAME INDEX
SUBJECT INDEX