Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘Inseparable’ Resonates in Our Times

How many feminists struggle over their intellectual relationship with Simone de Beauvoir‘s works?

The name itself presages that intimidating shadow cast by the French existentialists, those daunting intellectual luminaries of the 20th century. Albert Camus. Jean-Paul Sartre. Maurice Merleau-Ponty. And Simone de Beauvoir, foremost among them. With names such as these, how could they have wound up being anything but great philosophers? One simply doesn’t expect to encounter a grocer named Jean-Paul Sartre.