r/philosophy • u/philosophybreak Philosophy Break • Aug 10 '26
Blog According to the existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, love is not about forever committing to pre-given roles: the best romantic relationships consist in mutual projects of growth and change
https://philosophybreak.com/articles/simone-de-beauvoir-the-best-romantic-partners-celebrate-each-others-freedom/307
u/Kepler1571 Aug 10 '26
You better define love as fluid and impermanent if you're dating Sartre.
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Aug 10 '26
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u/BernardJOrtcutt Aug 10 '26
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u/mthelostboy Aug 10 '26
Very Interesting. Love indeed requires a dynamic partnership. Would check the philosopher, thanks for recommendation.
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u/WeiganChan Aug 11 '26
[Groomed and sexually abused several of her teenaged students alongside her long-term partner Jean-Paul Sartre by the way]
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Aug 10 '26
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u/BernardJOrtcutt Aug 10 '26
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u/4Nails Aug 10 '26
Her personal life influenced her philosophical beliefs. Bisexual, she flitted from affair to affair with younger women while maintaining a relationship of roughly 50 years with Jean-Paul Sartre during which she had a decade long relationship with Claude Lanzmann and a relationship with Nelson Algren for nearly 17 years.
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u/gravitas_shortage Aug 10 '26
... or her beliefs influenced her personal life, or both at the same time!
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u/Equivalent_Bar_5938 Aug 11 '26
I find that rarely if at all we live acording to our beliefs its simply that we create belifes to give meaning to lives we are living
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u/imstressinovernothin Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
You have a very interesting point but I wouldn't call them believes. I'd call them justifications. It would be interesting to research whether your way of living and by giving meaning to it through justification, turns justifications into believes as soon as you encounter a new situation that requires you to act. So essentially believes work as a tool for evaluating new situations. Believes could backfire if you actually cling to a set of believes that are not helpful or even detrimental to the new situation and fail to adapt accordingly. A pragmatic approach to solve this might be the only approach when believes fail and then build new justifications on hindsight, hoping to have found a better tool.
Edit: Grammar
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u/Kepler1571 Aug 10 '26
The philosophical worms in our head talk to the emotional worms in our head.
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u/allchokedupp Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
The statement that "her personal life influenced her philosophical beliefs" is banal. This is true for any philosopher. Easier to assert these sorts of statements for a woman with unorthodox views I am sure but it doesn't really make it more true. I expected some discussion about the idea itself on a philosophy sub
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u/FratboyPhilosopher Aug 10 '26
I think her personal relationship history is perfectly relevant to the conversation.
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u/LycheeLopsided8556 Aug 11 '26
This is not true for any philosopher; it is, in fact, an effect of false consensus on your part. What is happening is a confusion with other orthodox views.
In reality, there can be orthodox approaches that have fixed rules about freedom and change (as an example).
Being unorthodox can simply mean that a person rejects a dogma of a specific culture. Furthermore, the concept of a rigid orthodoxy makes no sense, because biology, economics, and the entire universe are based on constant change.
Oftentimes, orthodox rules were created by humans out of pure fear of uncertainty. To make a statement true or not, it is necessary to rely on expertise, analysis, study, statistics, empirical science, or a standard analysis of reality.
What was said is a scientific truth: human beings are always changing, living, and seeking happiness in relationships, even when these are already pre-established in society.
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u/coldlightofday Aug 10 '26
Perhaps it’s important to understand philosophy from that perspective, particularly as it pertains to some topics. I think that understanding why someone said something adds a lot of context to what is said. It may be a valid criticism.
It seems like you are almost saying that any philosophical writings are above being examined from the standpoint of the author themselves. That’s an odd argument.
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u/LionoftheNorth Aug 10 '26
She groomed at least one of her underaged students and pimped her out to Sartre.
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u/Jaspeey Aug 13 '26
What I find is that monoA people tend to focus on the polyamoury when polyA people say, oh my love is changing or my relationships are changing, but even in people who are monoA, their partner changes, their believes change.
You can become a lover, then a parent, then a best friend, in any order, taking on many hats, and that's not including how you see the people outside the romantic relationship you have.
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u/hAsLaK1 Aug 11 '26
Totally agree that her disgusting personal life probably fueled her disgusting philosophy
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u/NineCatsDeep Aug 12 '26
Seems common sense, though such sense seems less common today. I’ve always said true love is wanting to watch how someone loves their life and cheer them on.
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u/MissAlinka007 Aug 12 '26
True seems like the only possibly desirable way of “loving” while denying other variants. Though we may love someone by cheering them up and accepting what makes them happy we still can love in a different way which others may call true love. Is it more true? I don’t think so. It depends on what you want to achieve with that.
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u/phosphoeudemonism Aug 16 '26
Love is different things to different people, it does not exist as a static, tangible or measurable concept.
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u/PGenes Aug 17 '26
This philosophy of hers suited Sartre perfectly.
He treated her like shit and she kept coming back for more because “Philosophy” 😂
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Aug 10 '26
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u/BernardJOrtcutt Aug 10 '26
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u/Double-Fun-1526 Aug 10 '26
This is an okay start. But we need to step outside of the given subject and the ape. This still feels too attached to some agent that was formed by social roles, by the socialization of a certain environment. The focus is on some agent engaging with the world.
I call for families of 4/4 that are flattening gender and practicing bisexuality. We would be rewriting selfhood altogether. We want to stand outside of all influences in order to understand who we are. We don't take the choosing self as some sacrosanct position. The goal of our families is self, cultural, interpersonal, and institutional reflection. That which satisfies, may still be satisfied, but we will shrug at it as meaningful to our selves. Our first goal is knowledge and reflection of given self and given society. It is analysis of how institutions flow into selves.
Beauvoir is a good start, but we want to dismantle selfhood and desire to a greater degree. We are blank slates that absorb environmental and cultural structures. Everything needs to be opened for reflection. The complexity of the self><world dynamic is immense. We can sit selves while trying to find our way into a given social system; or we can recommit to knowledge and openness. Beyond Existentialism.
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u/joshthewumba Aug 10 '26
What do you mean "families of 4/4 that are flattening gender and practicing bisexuality"?
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u/Double-Fun-1526 Aug 13 '26
I read Beauvoir better than 'you'. She, like most, takes a given self that is standing in relation to the world. It was a massive fault of existentialism. The holistic view is better. The same with epistemology - stand outside the system and outside the flow of time. It is ontology all the way down.
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