【剑桥哲学指南】波伏娃.pdf

panions Online ? Cambridge University Press, 2006claudia cardIntroduction: Beauvoir andthe ambiguity of “ambiguity”in ethicsbackgrounds and basicsDuring the1950s, an era when feminism was at a particularly lowebb, American college students encountered translations of Simonede Beauvoir’sTheSecondSexandTheEthics of Ambiguityin courseson French popularity of these courses was duein no small part to the French existentialists’ addition of sexualityto the philosophical agenda. Jean-Paul Sartre’sBeing and Nothing-nesswasthe centerpiece, and Beauvoir’sTheEthics of Ambiguitywas introduced to show how, contrary to Sartre’s early view, exis-tentialism might indeed provide a ground for SecondSex, however, was presented as though it simply applied Sartre’sphilosophy to women’s situations, a view later to be challenged byfeminist scholarship, as many chapters in panion show indetail. Yet readers were astonished even then by perspectivesTheSecond Sexoffered on female sexuality. Raising ethical and politi-calissues, Beauvoir’sTheSecond plemented AlfredKinsey’s “scandalous” but coldly scientific report on sexual behav-ior in the human female, which appeared in the same year as thepaperback edition of the English translation of Beauvoir’s treatise ’s most widely read philosophical works are stillTheSecondSexandTheEthics of Ambiguity. Buther later workas well isphilosophically deep and often original. It offers mature perspectiveson such topics as torture and old age in addition to new perspectivesonher earlier work. Beauvoir’s total output (still being translated intoEnglish) is prodigious. Thechronology and bibliography in -panion show how highly varied in formher published writings are,panions Online ? Cambridge University Press, panions Online ? Cambridge University Press, 20062 claudia cardranging from letters, diaries, memoirs, and novels to prefaces, bookreviews, philosophical essays and treatises. The scope of her philo-so