Simone de Beauvoir was one of the ‘Big original’ thinkers and major French authors of the mid-20th century. Books and writing were her lifelong passion and vocation. She was enthralled with life through her personal existential meaning as a writer.  A true ground-breaker, she left a massive legacy. Her memoirs, novels, and her famous The Second Sex show one's existential situational freedom to choose in everyday life situations. We pay close attention to her forgotten work about ageing - Coming of Age – she matters in a digital era of mass generated thinking - she valued considered thought!

DELIVERY MODE

• Face-to-Face

SUGGESTED READING

• Memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir
• Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, 1959
• The Prime of Life, 1962
• A Very Easy Death, 1964
• Force of Circumstance, 1965
• Coming of Age, 1970
• All Said and Done, 1974
• What is Existentialism? Simone de Beauvoir, Great ideas, 2023, Penguin Random House, ISBN 9780241475232

COURSE OUTLINE

An interactive talk about one of the most original thinkers of the 20th Century who left an outstanding legacy of original thinking in her massive memoirs and other works. She is more than the writer of The Second Sex, she took Western society to task in her massive tome on ageing - Coming of Age. We will look at features of her adventurous life; several big features of her colossal body of work; readings and discussion of selected breathtaking passages and focus on her as a philosophical writer in both her memoirs, novels and her revelations about ageing to value the human Other. We consider how for Simone, death challenges our existence but makes life meaningful.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

1. Acquire a fresh perspective about one of the memorable and poorly valued Big thinkers and writers of the Twentieth Century
2. Draw their own views about Simone's ideas about existential living
3. Make their own informed views about Simone's ideas about life death and ageing well
4. Recognise her body-of-writings extends beyond the trail-blazing best-seller The Second Sex