More truths than birthdays

Today he would be 115 years old and perhaps he would not like to continue in this world. Nothing to do with a horror of old age or the fear of death. He wrote a lot on both topics and his thoughts, so committed and close, always flew much further. “The dead are dead,” can be read in one of his novels—; for them there are no problems; but we, the living, after this night of partying, are going to wake up, and then, what will we do to live? And in another of his texts he seems to answer: “They said you had to start over, that you always start over, that you can’t do anything else.” He did not believe in it, it is evident. He thought that it was not enough to know the truth, it was also necessary to make it heard. And in that sense, perhaps he would like to continue here. To listen to how, after a century, those timid and terrified whispers, today have become voices that shout truths louder and louder.

She was the first. The 20th century was barely beginning, when Simone de Beauvoir—registered in Paris as Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir—was already convinced that there was no such thing as a transcendental force, a destiny, that determined the individual. Much less women.

Coming from a bourgeois family —fifi, elitist, aspirational and studied or however it seems to you, dear reader— it is said that, from her early years, the young Simone had to reconcile and expose herself to two tendencies that pushed her to border on extremes. : His mother was a devout Catholic and his father was an atheist, so he decided to catch a vision by reading and studying. And it was like that, with a childhood deeply marked by an exalted faith in God and a father who told her that she “thought like a man”, she decided to bet on acquiring the greatest possible knowledge.

After passing the mathematics baccalaureate exams in 1925, Simone enrolled at the Catholic Institute in Paris, combining it with literature and language courses at the Saint-Marie Institute. Later, she would study philosophy at the Sorbonne and would graduate with honors presenting a thesis on Leibniz. Thus, her desire to be a nun disappeared definitively and, assuring that God simply does not exist, she began to build the path that would lead her to be considered a great thinker, a remarkable novelist, a brilliant essayist, a key figure in the feminist movement, and a pioneer in the fight for rights. women’s rights and gender equality. In short, she is one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.

With the desire to be a teacher, Simone decided to attend the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris as an auditor, where she met personalities such as Paul Nizan, René Maheu and Jean-Paul Sartre, who was her partner for more than 50 years. From 1929 to 1943, Simone de Beauvoir dedicated herself to teaching. She later devoted all her time to writing and, between literature and essays, she published notable works. Many of them combining fiction with deep thought. With plots and themes dedicated to reflecting on women in an ontological (what is a woman?), existentialist (what does it mean to be a woman?) and even phenomenological (what does the experience of being a woman? ) way, without ever losing focus. thread of his characters.

In all of her writings appears the premise that we are all free and, therefore, fully responsible for our actions and —even worse and to the scandal of many— that “being a woman” was not an essence or destiny, but rather a cultural, historical construction. and social, which raised everyone’s eyebrows, especially when he pointed out that “the women’s problem” had always been a men’s problem, adding that the men’s problem was simpler, more rocky and more terrifying, because it had It has to do with women, with other men, the world in general, space in particular, and, above all, with the desire for power. The scandal was huge. (And look, dear reader, he did not say it as I just wrote it, but with academic support, good literature and philosophical neatness).

Author of one of the most subversive and important books in contemporary culture: “The Second Sex”, Simone de Beauvoir shouts many truths in paragraphs like the following:

“The woman isolated in her home, does not actively confront other women, she spontaneously considers herself as a singular case; she always hopes that fate and men make an exception in her favor; (…), believes in the illuminations that descend on her; she easily admits that they are sent to her by God or by some dark spirit of the world; of some misfortunes and accidents, she calmly thinks: “That won’t happen to me”; and conversely, she imagines that “there will be an exception with me” (…) they have taught her to overestimate the value of her smile and she has forgotten that all women smile. It is not that she considers herself more extraordinary than her neighbor: it is that she does not compare; For the same reason, it is rare that her experience inflicts a conviction on her: she suffers one failure, after another (…) but she does not manage to solidly build a “counter universe” where she can challenge the men.”