Hello! Today, I would like to start of my speech with a quote from Goodreads.com,
which is an online information site that
provides quotes by notable writers.
According to Goodreads, Simone de
Beauvoir stated, "One is not born,
but rather becomes a woman".
This quote is significant because it
highlights Beauvoir's feminist views and
progressive legacy which we will discuss
today. Our topic today is Simone de
Beauvoir, and I'll be informing you all
today about her life and her legacy.
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, which is a scholarly site
that provides research of philosophy and
related disciplines, Simone de Beauvoir
did not call herself a philosopher even
though she had a very strong impact on
both modern and feminist philosophy.
She broke grounds for feminist thought,
which is important since feminism is
needed everywhere where decisions are made. I am not a philosopher, but I am a
feminist. A feminist is someone who does
not see sex, gender, sexual orientation,
race, or any differing factor in terms of
difference in equality. We see everyone
equally and that was one of the goals of
Simone de Beauvoir. According to The
FamousPeople, which is an online
information site dedicated to finding
information on notable people, Beauvoir's
childhood and early life was dominated
by her persistence to become educated in
the field of philosophy. Her adulthood
included her teaching and later her
writing career, and her legacy included
her major feminist writing pieces and
her progressive philosophy on marriage
and partnership. Our first main point
today is Beauvoir's childhood and early
life was dominated by her persistence to become educated. According
to the Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, which is a peer-reviewed
academic resource, Simone de Beauvoir's
father provided her with carefully
edited selections of literature and
encouraged her to read and write from an
early age. Beauvoir intensely instructed
her younger sister to also become
educated. And, Beauvoir
really wanted to become a teacher and a
writer from an early age, and vigorously pursued her studies. According
to the Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy she's actually one of very
few women at that time to obtain a
degree and numerous educational
certificates. She passed her secondary educational
exams in both math and philosophy in
1925. And, at 21 years of age
Beauvoir was the youngest person ever to
pass the competitive exam in civil
service in philosophy and she became the
youngest teacher in France to become a
teacher in philosophy. Through her
strive for obtaining a good education
Beauvoir began her teaching career
after obtaining her own. Her adulthood
included her teaching and later her
writing career. According to the Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, she began
teaching in 1931 where she started
exploring the problem of intellectual's
academic and political engagement of her
time. In the French city of Rouen, she was
reprimanded for her frank critique of
women's condition in that city. After a
parental lawsuit against her for
corrupting one of her female students,
she was dismissed from teaching.
According to the Internet Encyclopedia
of Philosophy,
she began writing activist pieces on
politics and feminism after her
dismissal from teaching. According to the
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
she wrote Pyrrhus et Cinéas  in 1944 which was regarding human existence and of the
human being. And, she wrote the Ethics of Uncertainty in 1947, which was a
continuation of Pyrrhus et Cinéas. Her
writing legacy became her fundamental
significance in her life and she was
actually one of the founders of the (modern)
feminist movement. Her legacy included
her major feminist pieces and her
progressive philosophy on marriage and
partnership. According to TheFamous
People, The Second Sex is still
Beauvoir's finest philosophical piece,
since it discusses female exploitation
and also liberation. She argued that the
self requires otherness in order to
identify itself as a subject; thus, the concept
of otherness is essential in the
constitution of self as a body. She
examined how the fundamentally unequal
arrangement of gender roles in France
developed as well as the processes,
behaviors and expectations that tend to
sustain those gender influences.
According to TheFamousPeople, she never
married, but she maintained a lifelong
friendship and partnership with another
philosopher, Jean Paul Satre. She never
entertained the idea of marriage and she
rather wanted to live the life of an
intellectual. Their romantic relationship
was extremely progressive as John Paul
Sartre saw her as an intellectual equal.
Today, I spoke to all about how Simone de
Beauvoir's childhood, her adulthood, and
legacy shaped our world. Beauvoir's childhood and early life was dominated by her
persistence become educated, her
adulthood included her teaching and her
writing career, and her legacy included
her major feminist pieces and her
progressive philosophy on both marriage
and partnership. According to TheFamous
People, Simone de Beauvoir stated "Change your life today. Don't gamble
the future, act now, without delay." And that's important because as students we have to
decide on our futures and we have to be
the change makers for tomorrow. Thank you.
