Two brilliant philosophers, feminists, free spirits, who have never been married and had no children, capable of mutual respect, free sexual relations and intellectual conversations. Inspiring.
“We were two of a kind, and our relationship would endure as long as we did: but it could not make up entirely for the fleeting riches to be had from encounters with different people.” - Simone de Beauvoir, on her relationship with Sartre. Thank you for sharing this video.
@DJ Barrett because that's what happens in real life out of the philosophy of some degenerate lowlife ugly French story teller. People get hurt. Emotions are violated.
@DJ Barrett I think the chief concern that could arise from such a lifestyle is that treating sexual intimacy with such casualness runs the risk of seeing humans as disposable pleasures rather than meaningful pursuits. Sure, sex is fun, and there is a kind of fulfillment from meeting and engaging with different people. But to stay with one person intimately, and build something, face life's challenges together, that takes strong will and character. There's more of a chance that you will see the other person as an end in his or herself, not just a means to excitement that comes cheap.
Haha! C'est super intéressant de voir la dynamique qu'ils avaient en action de voir comment De Beauvoir sauta sur l'occasion de se faire entendre et la réaction de Sartre de simplement la laisser s'exprimer. Quel utilisation simple et directe du mot reproduction en relation à la question d'avoir des enfants, ça me donne l'impression qu'ils avaient tous deux un certain sens de l'humour.
They are legends indeed. I often feel conflicted on how here they mention living their relationship "unfortunately, at the expense of others". What they thought about the age of consent and the affairs they had with underage teenagers is always very confusing given how consistent they were with everything else.
They had "affairs", but Epstein and Gishlane "abused". Is this doublespeak or do we just create stories around the actions of others? To some we are heroes to others we are demons.
@@daithiocinnsealach1982 I think I you are right and I simply used "affair" as a euphemism. At least one of the underage teens tried to kill herself ...it was just as bad as it gets!
What were they doing during WW2? Resistance? No. The anti-bourgeois were becoming bourgeois. Vladimir Jankelevich, french philosopher and war resistant was not tender with Sartre. He questioned Jean-Paul Sartre's attitude during the war: "There was certainly a complex in Sartre, who came from I do not know where, which meant that he did nothing during the war. Simone de Beauvoir said: "For us who did not want to consent to the triumph of the Reich and who did not dare to expect its defeat, it was such an ambiguous period that the very memory I kept of it was blurred." Sartre's engagement after the war was a kind of sickly compensation, a remorse, a search for danger that he had not wanted to run during the war . He invested everything in the post-war period, putting himself in danger - which were no longer dangerous, it did not replace, and he felt it. Braving the cops during a demonstration is good, it's better than nothing, but when you were Sartre's age, the age to do your duty during the war, why did you wait? But Simone de Beauvoir said it, she tells how, at the time of the Liberation, Sartre walked through the barricades to see how it was going, but he continued to do nothing, he represented the Flies, les Mouches. "There were very young people in the Resistance," continues the philosopher, "and people who did not have the culture of Jean-Paul Sartre [...]. They had understood what Jean-Paul Sartre had not understood. " Michel Onfray, french philosopher who studied philosophy in the 1970s was captivated by Sartre's charms. The trendy thing was to adopt the positions of Sartre and his associates in a sometimes violent ideological debate - against the unfashionable Camus. Onfray was in his 20s in the '70s. Did he too "fall" into that trap? "Of course, during that period I preferred Sartre, because I was a victim of the legend the Sartre-Simone de Beauvoir couple created around themselves. They pursued publicity. Beauvoir wrote the memoir that was published by the publisher I admired at the time (Gallimard ), but Beauvoir lied, censored and hid many things. I believed what I read, because at the age of 20 you don't yet have the critical vision that enables you to discern the human comedy. While they lived, Sartre and Beauvoir made sure to check every line published about them. Only after their death, the publication of books of their letters, biographies and testimonies began to reveal the deceptions and lies they had spread: Sartre didn't escape from the stalag as he had written, but rather was released thanks to the intervention of Drieu La Rochelle, a writer known as a collaborator with the Nazis; Sartre was not active in the Resistance, but rather in 1941 and also in 1944 wrote and published in the collaborators' newspaper Comoedia. "That newspaper also named him 'Writer of the year' in 1943. Sartre himself asked the paper's director to help Simone de Beauvoir get accepted to work at the Petain government's station Radio Vichy, and indeed she worked there in 1944. I didn't know all these facts when I was 20 years old." In Onfray's opinion, Sartre conducted himself throughout his life like a student: "He thought and wrote like a student at the school of higher education he attended. In his book 'The Words,' he writes that he was interested in only one thing: a place in the history of literature. His life was opportunistic and cynical, and he did everything he could to achieve his goal."
Sartre had to stay alive to promote revolutionary ideas. He had to stand up against the jackals of international capitalist neoliberalist patriarchy, who are the worst Nazis. It was braver for him NOT to take risks.
If the idea of "lived experienced" holds the highest priority, the whole essence of discussion in any topic becomes a waste of time. With respect to this particular issue on Gender, the so calles lived experience differs between men and women. So, does it mean men and women can never understand each other and the whole idea of men's rights or women's rights is pointless? A psychologist need not suffer from trauma to help a patient with PTSD. A male gynecologist has a better understanding on premenstrual syndrome and menopause than a common women. Hence, I believe any criticism or contradiction to someone's statement should come from the basis of a deeper understanding of the subject rather than a superificial judgement on gender.
Seems so, yes, although many feminists would emotionally claim they totally understand the "lived experience of man" and throw some typical stereotypes, misconcentions and myths to supposedly prove they do. Men could and do the same. Its annoying that her thinking basicly leads to segregation, since if men and women can't possibly understand each other - they should conduct their business separately as much as possible. Entrenching this even further, taking away the opportunity to understand even further away. I believe these statements were and are pretty detrimental to the cause of actual equality.
To quote Spengler: "When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard “having children” as a question of pro’s and con’s, the great turning point has come. For Nature knows nothing of pro and con…. When reasons have to be put forward at all in a question of life, life itself has become questionable."
This is a large statement. It quickly becomes an absurd discussion. If we were to respond to the "concrete" points he made there, that is. What I heard there is: "Questioning having children [is questionable / unnatural / makes no sense]." Then, that must necessarily go both ways: NOT questioning it is the same. But that is not "the great turning point", right? So it sounds like Spengler is interested in the status quo. Fine. It's not for everyone though.
@@MRSoefeldt If questioning it is unnatural, why must not questioning it be the same? I think that what is being conveyed is that the conception and birth of children is possibly the most naturally 'flowing' and visceral experience a human can have. When we interrupt that with practical considerations, then the 'great turning point has come.
@@BiGAAAAAAAAAALLLLL Otherwise you must make an impossible distinction. How could it possibly be true that either [questioning is natural - while not questioning is unnatural] or [questioning is unnatural - while not questioning is natural]? Both are natural, but even saying that sounds irrelevant, because everything is natural. I'm emphazising that since neither is unnatural, there is nothing "wrong" with a great turning point; there is nothing "wrong" with life "having become" questionable. The implication that there IS something wrong with that, which seems to be Spengler's point, would, ironically, also be irrelevant. In other words, what is he trying to achieve with that statement other than to defend having children "because it's natural"? Like no, if you don't want children, don't have them! It's a garbage romantic quote that some get seduced and distracted by. It gives "the people" something intellectual to worry and gossip about: "Oh no, we're doomed... the great turning point!" ... "Uh-ooh, the human species has duped itself!" ... "What do you think is going to happen in 100 years from now on? Will we all DIEE?!" and some such irrelevant chit-chat. That's all the quote does. I doubt it inspires anyone. I doubt it resonates with anyone. It's just spoken for the sake of blah blah blah.
@@MRSoefeldt I agree 100%. Also his concept of nature is childish. Human behavior is also nature, and questioning things is natural, so there is not contradiction with nature, only a more complex game. Romantic bullshit for sure.
The translation is quite misleading; they don’t talk to each other via “you”, “vous” in French is a non-gendered politeness form used as “sir” or “madame”. Simone de Beauvoir even refers to her partner by his family name, “Sartre”. They are talking to each other as if they were strangers.
@@PaleoalexPicturesLtd Yes, and so did Jacques Chirac with his wife Bernadette; the thing is those were actually upper-class arranged marriages, and these people weren't together due to love. Thus I'm surprised to see that Sartre and De Beauvoir maintain these artistocratic/high bourgeois customs, considering both their political leanings and the fact nobody forced them into a couple. Talking this way to one's partner is a typical "remnant of the past" that Soviets fought against, I would have suspected Sartre and De Beauvoir to abandon such practices too.
The allegation that Sartre had sexual relations with Lamblin when she was 17 years old is baseless. It comes from a book Lamblin wrote which was published in 1993. They couldn’t respond to the allegation because they were both dead by 1993. Sartre died in 1980, while de Beauvoir died in 1986. I think it’s suspicious that Lamblin only came forward with this allegation, along with others, after they both died. Lamblin also baselessly claimed that Sartre’s letters which were published as written to a person named “Lousie Verdine” were actually written to her. As for Sorokin, Lamblin didn’t make the claim that she was less than 18 years of age when she and Sartre had sexual relations i. Here are the two times Sorokine is mentioned in the book: 1-) “The Beaver’s [de Beauvoir’s] life and the life she made me lead were very complicated, because she divided her time among Olga Kosakievicz, Nathalie Sorokine - also a student from Lycee Moliere, in the class after mine - and me.” 2-) (An excerpt from a letter Lamblin claimed de Beauvoir wrote) “She’ll never ask a question about, for example, my real feeh ings for Kos., or my relations with Sorokine.” Simone de Beauvoir’s insincerity here is clear: each time I asked her about her friends she dodged the question. And I had no reason to ask her about Kosakievicz or Sorokine, my direct rivals, only to hear her lies.”
and women can't share the "lived experience" of men, which might dramatically change. In her context there was absolutely no need to point that out, but that was long ago.
Men and women think EXACTLY the same way. Its just women think as an oppressed and men think as privileged. If the situation was reverse women would think the same way men would. Women are not deity of some kind.
Elle dit vrai " elle se suffisait". Dans le livre de Gilbert Joseph (une si douce occupation, Simone de Besuvoir et Jean-Paul Sartre 1940 - 1944. Page 123 " elle n'aimait pas les enfants, donc elle ne se laissait pas exploiter par l'homme.
I always had a problem with the term "lived experience." You should be able to present your case with empirically verifiable evidence that is accessible to everyone. Otherwise, you're really no different than mystics who claim to possess special knowledge about the divine.
i was watching the video and was like, cool, i've got a chance to watch an interview with renowned thinkers of the past century. but then i made an obvious mistake of scrolling through the comments. when will we ever learn
So let me get this straight, she was ok with the power struggle when she had control of the power. Interesting. I feel sorry for the people who genuinely cannot see the compium in her answers. Not to mention she misrepresented a lot of facts and selected only those which suited her.
Beauvoir makes two assumptions: 1. True understanding is first hand experience 2. Women have feelings that men do not. I think I take issue with both of these statements. The first implies that we cannot understand one another. Or perhaps only a type can understand its own type. I shouldn't have to explain how dangerous of a sentiment this is. The second implies that the varying shades of emotion are not universal. This doesn't sound right; how else can words like indignant, pensive, somber, irascible, ponderous, mournful, bitter, etc. exist if they do not describe states of mind accessible to all? If we do not have similar experiences and emotions, then we would not be able to communicate. These words would be meaningless. To give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she's referring to nuanced and specific emotions that don't have names (which are probably just mixtures of recognizable emotions). But even then, how can you claim those specific emotions are shared by women as a whole, and yet haven't been given a name, haven't been abstracted into a concept that can be communicated and therefore understood by others? Unlikely in my estimation. And again, dangerous.
She's a product of her time. With social media and publicly accessible sociology, psychology, neurology, and other relevant fields of study, I am confident that "lived experience" is now a worthless term.
@@DaKoopaKing I also think what she means is that no matter how much you study something from an academic or “outside” perspective (removed from context of being in time as the event happens) does not give one more credibility than someone directly involved and experiencing it every moment of their lives. There’s a huge difference there that I think she was pointing to as opposed to some natural/biological limitations of either gender determining their capacity for understanding.
In the context of De Beauvoir's work and philosophy, her comments make more sense. The Second Sex, being an existentialist work, was massively concerned with detailing and unspooling the life-experiences of women. There are chapters that analyze the childhood of girls, their psychosexual development, the internal contradictions that come about in the mind as a woman enters adulthood, and so on. This was done with the purpose of decoding what exactly "womanhood", as a social role, consisted of. I do not believe that De Beauvoir thinks that women are *essentially* different from men, at least not in such a way that they organically and innately cannot experience the same basic emotions. Rather, what she's referring to here are those sentiments rendered by the unique social institutions and mores that are *imposed upon* women. Perhaps you can say that men have, at certain points in their lives, been made to feel alterity or subservience comparable to the subjects of De Beauvoir's work. But I think she would say (and I would agree) that these are at best only analogous feelings, and not truly the same - that the experience of "womanhood" is phenomenal and can be known candidly only through living it.
@@Halloweensmasher Well said, and well studied. However, I was commenting on the definition and function of 'understanding." Of course knowing what pain feels like and extrapolating it to a simulation of a broken bone is at best analogous to actually breaking the bone...but the question arises, what is the value of this supposedly true and candid experience? What do we do with this fact? Alright, "'womanhood; is phenomenal and can be know candidly only though living it," fine, granted. But so is my personal experience in life. My experience is unique to me. All the individual details and their sequence that make up my life are mine and mine alone. And the same can be said of yours. I could therefore say that you will never "know candidly" my experience because you will never be me. So now what! Does that mean you can never understand me? I don't like this line of reasoning because it gives us an excuse to shun the universals of the human condition and is therefore divisive. It encourages the in-group out-group distinction. And that's just animal tribalism, and I think we're better than that. "Women, you are distinct from men. Men will never experience what you experience. Men will never understand what you understand. Therefore, we should stand in solidarity with one another, united against a common enemy." I know this a satirical representation, but I don't think I'm far off the mark. I think this is what lurks beneath. Whenever anything is said "purely intellectually," I'm impelled to play the psychologist and look to the motive behind the sentiment. I don't think humans can ever be "purely intellectual." Like how tears begrudgingly crop up in Katharine Hepburn's eyes although she claims to desire to see Peter O'Toole speak sweetly to his new lover in "The Lion in Winter," "...purely intellectually, to see whether my fantasy aligns with reality..." So, in summation, as someone who admittedly hasn't read a lick of Beauvoir, I think she's full of it, and her ideas are dangerous. Behold how she cuts off her interlocutors. Behold her agitation. Whatever is the source of that behavior is where we should really look to see what she's up to.
@@GoldLibrary Really liked your comment but I must respectfully disagree with your last claim. Indeed, lived experience is something we all have , which is something that can not be shared, hence De Beauvoir is correct. That said I would think it is not what she claims that is dangerous but rather what those who want to exploit this claim to divide us that pose the real danger.
It never ceases to amaze me how feminists can try to lecture men about how men don't understand women's "lived experiences", while simultaneously minimizing and outright ignoring men describing their own lived experiences, and trying to lecture men about what men's lived experiences are despite being women. Sartre is trying to use reason to justify his points, while Beauvoir is simply making emotional appeals.
you think when they were fighting he was not emotional ?:) or when he was getting into arguments with his buddies? are you aware that your hate count as an emotion too? pretty sure they are both highly emotional ppl and they fight like cats and dogs over unimportant matters.
I find that Feminists have ideological minds. Anyone with a counter argument is wrong and not worth listening to. They generally hold a one-way monologue. Any disagreement is met with phrases like 'you're not ready for learning'. Their ends justify their means so lying and pivoting on some reference at anytime is fair play. Facing them with cognitive dissonance by pointing out their self-contradiction results in them storming off. Rationalising counts for nothing other than, at best, 'you''re playing with words'. Their communication is centred around emotive terminology which has to be learned to communicate back (difficult for me) otherwise they glaze over. It's a fascinating subject. I learned a lot from Gustave le bon "The Crowd - Study of the Popular Mind", and outdoor public speaking.
A toad of a man and a domineering woman both believing they have outplayed their own human existence with intellectual pretension. A miserable relationship indeed.
So ,according to Beauvoir, men cant understand the "lived experience of women", but women can understand the same of men and demand equality? It sound to me she is, perhaps not comprehending that herself, is making an argument against equality with that statement. At best. At worst, she is maing an argument for segregation or more segregation.
@@bobbie3713 and this has to with the "lived experience" what exactly? What if the "lived experience" says the sexes are not biologically equal and thus cannot be subject to the exact same equal laws without major negative consequences to everyone? You see this argument all around.
@@adityaoza8562 Because any group can claim literally whatever as the "lived experience of me", and since the "other side" is apparently too dumb to understand the experience of another, it can be used to fuel any demand. It basicly a non-argument, it has nothing to with equality, in fact it was, is and will be used against equality. Example: Men will claim they need to serve in the armed forces while women don't (in most countries) and thus demand more rights for themselves (so how the pre-feminist world operated if stripped down to a very basic level). Or demand women undergo the exact same service (which would be dumb biologically).
These were two deeply flawed and damaged people. You should at least consider their perspectives on life, but hold them and their ideology to no higher regard than anyone else.
I agree. Anyone who seems to claim that they have answers to whether there is any sort of deeper meaning behind human existence probably should be mistrusted.
@@BrazilianImperialist I do agree with you Padoru. I find meaningful things in my own life, for myself, and I think that's where it plobly ends for anyone!
Well to start with sarte got beauvoir to pressure or groom young girls she taught to sleep with him and other partners they both had never got full commitment from either since their primary loyalty was to each other and the strange pact they forged between them.
Eu não vou discutir. É uma questão judaica e ninguém mais foi convidado. Eu não discuto filosofia semita fora do meu círculo. Você não entende guerra desde a raiz e quer opinar de orelhudo, sem passar pelo método ou estudá-lo. Quer fácil. Agradeça que mastigam tudo para você, em sua ignorância. Por mim, já teriam chamado o exército para executar metidos a besta. Os que já foram da JDL perderam a paciência já.
For anyone who doesn't understand what they're talking about half way through, they're referring to using people as "third wheels" in threesomes, as though they were little more than playthings. I'm not discounting the worth of everything they said - Sartre seems to make a (rare) good point about gender intersectionality - but it's difficult to see them as anything other than just another lascivious bourgeois power couple.
They stopped to have sex with each other 2 years after they met (Source: Bianca Lamblin "Mémoire d'une jeune fille dérangée"). This is the reality of this "true love". Beauvoir was a "rabatteuse" for Sartre.
??? If you critique a man for being incapable to understand a persons disposition, because they're not a woman. What brings you then in the position to critique a man in their thinking if you're not a man?
This is amazing because I've recently seen some trans activists quoting De Beauvoir to support the idea that gender is entirely constructed, yet, here she is saying women and men think differently and he doesn't share that lived experience. 🤯
Every culture has meanings for what is a man or woman and then labels individuals accordingly. Women experience lives while treated as a woman. So do men and trans people. Or heck, even people of different skin color have different experiences. So therefore I have a different experience and think differently than a person of another gender.
Simone de Beauvoir was a very interesting woman. She really loved a lot other fellow women... Especially underaged ones... She liked them young, very young...
I think at this stage in their life, they lived and saw everything that was to see. They knewt it that death is coming, they saw too much of 20th century. these people never had children because they sacrifice everything for the intellectual writing artists life
Such many say that the two are "brilliant", "titans","legends",etc. but the more I listen to them, the more I feel they are just two confused people, so ordinary, so unimpressive, and frankly often very stupid and plainly wrong. Am I alone? I cannot believe that.
What a narcissist to think that her child would simply become a model of Sartre or de Beauvoir..! Or, perhaps she believed in the primacy of genes. What arrogance to suppose men cannot understand women, or to suppose the contrary that women cannot understand men. But, then again, if we are genetically predetermined to some sort of limit on empathy, then, yes, she would be right. But to claim a lack of empathy by carving out a separate category of human is to play the patriarchal game of division and denial. De Beauvoir's shame.
Don't you think that is because the categories are carved out before hand? Beauvoir certainly did not create them. They are subsumed in both our actions and thoughts. They have historically existed to separate us from our lived experience with each other. So the reason why we cannot understand 'the other' is precisely because we have defined them as such.
@@Marzaries No and No. She carved them. And we continue to carve them. Were they carved before..? I don't care. I'm saying language and categories matter but not as much as the empathy which makes language and categories work. We can also create new categories. In my view, it's the mindful use of language which liberates us from their deterministic side. While empathy may be for 'categories' and they do help. Empathy, if we mean exercising our mirror neurons and brain plasticity, is prior to language. I have seen no studies indicating mirror neurons are gender-specific. Please enlighten me if there are... ;)
@@kingofaikido Well if you care so much about empathy, I suggest you read her philosophy charitably before making judgments, because she has a lot to say about it.
Children DO become their parents to an extent, truth be told, and that's not narcissistic to acknowledge. It's also not a belief. It's entirely practical. Men DO lack the "lived experience" of women, truth be told, so there must be things they can never feel or understand. She points out that Sartre can therefore only ponder the question intellectually, which IS limited, which is a correct statement. Where is the arrogance in that? It seems your comment can only be justified if you reply as if Beauvoir had said "Children become perfect replicas [models] of their parents [and that somehow makes me important]." but she did not say that now, did she?
I am not a feminist and I don't love his 'philosophy' at all. Both our assertions offer no added value to the subject and are therefore worthless per-se. My response, however, does have value in pointing this out.
