144-404: Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir ( UK : / d ə ˈ b oʊ v w ɑːr / , US : / d ə b oʊ ˈ v w ɑːr / ; French: [simɔn də bovwaʁ] ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist , and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered one at
288-674: A Dominican Friar . Weil met the French Catholic author Gustave Thibon who owned a farm in the Ardéche region where Weil would later work the grape harvest. Thibon later edited some of her work, helping to draw attention to her spiritually related thought in the English speaking world. Weil encouraged her parents to buy a farm in the Ardèche where they could sustain themselves and work but Weil's family thought it safer to plan to move to America. Weil
432-565: A West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands. The resident population at this time was generally speaking Common Brittonic —the insular variety of Continental Celtic , which was influenced by the Roman occupation. This group of languages ( Welsh , Cornish , Cumbric ) cohabited alongside English into
576-399: A 1975 interview with Betty Friedan if she would support a minimum wage for women who do housework, Beauvoir answered: "No, we don’t believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It
720-549: A century as Received Pronunciation (RP). However, due to language evolution and changing social trends, some linguists argue that RP is losing prestige or has been replaced by another accent, one that the linguist Geoff Lindsey for instance calls Standard Southern British English. Others suggest that more regionally-oriented standard accents are emerging in England. Even in Scotland and Northern Ireland, RP exerts little influence in
864-545: A couple for the next 51 years, until his death in 1980. After they were confronted by her father, Sartre asked her to marry him on a provisional basis. One day while they were sitting on a bench outside the Louvre, he said, "Let's sign a two-year lease". Though Beauvoir wrote, "Marriage was impossible. I had no dowry", scholars point out that her ideal relationships described in The Second Sex and elsewhere bore little resemblance to
1008-467: A covert agent. Older biographies suggest Weil made no further progress in achieving her desire to return to France as an agent—she was limited to desk work in London analyzing reports from resistance movements, although this did give her time to write one of her largest and best known works: The Need for Roots . During this time Weil would also write Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations and Note on
1152-420: A damned position, not because of original sin , but because to be created at all they must be what God is not; in other words, they must be inherently "unholy" in some sense. This idea fits more broadly into apophatic theology . This notion of creation is a cornerstone of her theodicy , for if creation is conceived this way—as necessarily entailing evil —then there is no problem of the entrance of evil into
1296-467: A deranged girl, published in English under the title A Disgraceful Affair ) that, while a student at Lycée Molière, she was sexually exploited by her teacher Beauvoir, who was in her 30s. Sartre and Beauvoir both groomed and sexually abused Lamblin. Bianca wrote her Mémoires in response to the posthumous 1990 publication of Jean-Paul Sartre's Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres: 1926-1963 (Letters to Castor and other friends), in which she noted that she
1440-466: A feminist in 1972 in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur . In 2018, the manuscript pages of Le Deuxième Sexe were published. Beauvoir published her first novel She Came to Stay in 1943. It has been assumed that it is inspired by her and Sartre's sexual relationship with Olga Kosakiewicz and Wanda Kosakiewicz . Olga was one of her students in the Rouen secondary school where Beauvoir taught during
1584-412: A feminist one: "One is not born but becomes a woman" (French: "On ne naît pas femme, on le devient"). With this famous phrase, Beauvoir first articulated what has come to be known as the sex-gender distinction , that is, the distinction between biological sex and the social and historical construction of gender and its attendant stereotypes. Beauvoir argues that "the fundamental source of women's oppression
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#17328986560341728-621: A form of resistance to the bio-heteronormative family unit. Beauvoir died of pneumonia on 14 April 1986 in Paris, aged 78. She is buried next to Sartre at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. She was honored as a figure at the forefront of the struggle for women's rights around the time of her passing. The Second Sex , first published in 1949 in French as Le Deuxième Sexe , turns the existentialist mantra that existence precedes essence into
1872-501: A greater movement, normally [əʊ], [əʉ] or [əɨ]. Dropping a morphological grammatical number , in collective nouns , is stronger in British English than North American English. This is to treat them as plural when once grammatically singular, a perceived natural number prevails, especially when applying to institutional nouns and groups of people. The noun 'police', for example, undergoes this treatment: Police are investigating
2016-406: A lesser class or social status and often discounted or considered of a low intelligence. Another contribution to the standardisation of British English was the introduction of the printing press to England in the mid-15th century. In doing so, William Caxton enabled a common language and spelling to be dispersed among the entirety of England at a much faster rate. Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of
2160-427: A living for herself. She first worked with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Claude Lévi-Strauss , when all three completed their practice teaching requirements at the same secondary school. Although not officially enrolled, she sat in on courses at the École Normale Supérieure in preparation for the agrégation in philosophy, a highly competitive postgraduate examination that serves as a national ranking of students. It
2304-564: A lower quality of attention. In 1942, Weil travelled to the United States with her family. She had been reluctant to leave France, but agreed to do so as she wanted to see her parents to safety and knew they would not leave without her. She was also encouraged by the fact that it would be relatively easy for her to reach Britain from the United States, where she could join the French Resistance . She had hopes of being sent back to France as
2448-500: A machine-like existence where they could not consider real thought or rebellion with Weil stating "thought flies from affliction as promptly and irresistibly as an animal flees from death". Weil found this force too inhumane stating "affliction constrains a man to ask continually 'why' - the question to which there is essentially no reply" and nothing in the world can rob us of the power to say 'I' except for extreme affliction". According to her, only some souls are capable of experiencing
2592-566: A matter of action based in truth and that truth must be based in something (something lived or experienced). This led Weil to leave Le Puy to work in factories and experience the repetitive machine like work began her definition of le malheur (affliction) with workers reduced to a machine-like existence where they could not consider rebellion. Weil never formally joined the French Communist Party , and in her twenties she became increasingly critical of Marxism. According to Pétrement, she
2736-427: A novella-length autobiography, A Very Easy Death , covering the time she spent visiting her aging mother, who was dying of cancer. The novella brings up questions of ethical concerns with truth-telling in doctor-patient relationships. Her 1970 long essay La Vieillesse ( The Coming of Age ) is a rare instance of an intellectual meditation on the decline and solitude all humans experience if they do not die before about
2880-575: A painful account of Sartre's last years. In the opening of Adieux , Beauvoir notes that it is the only major published work of hers which Sartre did not read before its publication.| She contributed the piece "Feminism - Alive, Well, and in Constant Danger" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology , edited by Robin Morgan . After Sartre died in 1980, Beauvoir published his letters to her with edits to spare
3024-429: A perfect world. Nor does the presence of evil constitute a limitation of God's omnipotence under Weil's notion; according to her, evil is present not because God could not create a perfect world, but because the act of "creation" in its very essence implies the impossibility of perfection. However, this explanation of the essentiality of evil does not imply that humans are simply, originally, and continually doomed; on
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#17328986560343168-419: A pessimistic account of the limits of both capitalism and socialism . The work however uses a Marxist method of analysis paying attention to oppression, critiquing Weil's own position as an intellectual, advances manual labor, and advances theory and practice. Leon Trotsky himself personally responded to several of her articles, attacking both her ideas and her as a person. However, according to Pétrement, he
3312-501: A play based on Algren, Beauvoir, and Sartre's triangular relationship. The play was stage read in 1999 in Chicago. Beauvoir also wrote a four-volume autobiography, consisting of Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter , The Prime of Life , Force of Circumstance (sometimes published in two volumes in English translation: After the War and Hard Times ), and All Said and Done . In 1964 Beauvoir published
3456-406: A plethora of proposals though she was frustrated by feeling she was too safe and not doing enough to address the suffering. De Gaulle rejected her plans and forces were not willing to send her back to France to join the resistance more directly. The rigorous work routine she assumed soon took a heavy toll. Weil was found slumped on the floor of her apartment, emaciated and exhausted. In 1943, Weil
3600-492: A political journal that Sartre founded along with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others. Beauvoir used Les Temps Modernes to promote her own work and explore her ideas on a small scale before fashioning essays and books. Beauvoir remained an editor until her death. However, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty had a longstanding feud, which led Merleau-Ponty to leave Les Temps modernes . Beauvoir sided with Sartre and ceased to associate with Merleau-Ponty. In Beauvoir's later years, she hosted
3744-599: A process called T-glottalisation . National media, being based in London, have seen the glottal stop spreading more widely than it once was in word endings, not being heard as "no [ʔ] " and bottle of water being heard as "bo [ʔ] le of wa [ʔ] er". It is still stigmatised when used at the beginning and central positions, such as later , while often has all but regained /t/ . Other consonants subject to this usage in Cockney English are p , as in pa [ʔ] er and k as in ba [ʔ] er. In most areas of England and Wales, outside
3888-511: A regional accent or dialect. However, about 2% of Britons speak with an accent called Received Pronunciation (also called "the King's English", "Oxford English" and " BBC English" ), that is essentially region-less. It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period. It is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners. In
4032-539: A second translation, to mark the 60th anniversary of the original publication. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier produced the first integral translation in 2010, reinstating a third of the original work. In the chapter "Woman: Myth and Reality" of The Second Sex , Beauvoir argued that men had made women the "Other" in society by the application of a false aura of "mystery" around them. She argued that men used this as an excuse not to understand women or their problems and not to help them, and that this stereotyping
4176-585: A young Weil sent her share of sugar and chocolate to soldiers fighting at the front. When Weil was 10 she joined striking workers chanting L'Internationale marching on the street below her apartment. When visiting a resort with her family and learning of the wages of the workers she encouraged the workers to unionize. From her childhood home, Weil acquired an obsession with cleanliness; in her later life she would sometimes speak of her "disgustingness" and think that others would see her this way, even though in her youth she had been considered highly attractive. Weil
4320-446: Is a bad one. Instead, she and Sartre entered into a lifelong "soul partnership", which was sexual but not exclusive, nor did it involve living together. She chose never to marry and never had children. This gave her the time to advance her education and engage in political causes, write and teach, and take lovers. Unfortunately, Beauvoir's prominent open relationships at times overshadowed her substantial academic reputation. A scholar who
4464-444: Is a way of forcing women in a certain direction", further stating that motherhood "should be a choice, and not a result of conditioning”. In about 1976, Beauvoir and Sylvie Le Bon made a trip to New York City in the United States to visit Kate Millett on her farm. In 1977, Beauvoir signed a petition along with other French intellectuals that supported the freeing of three arrested paedophiles . The petition explicitly addresses
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4608-725: Is also due to London-centric influences. Examples of R-dropping are car and sugar , where the R is not pronounced. British dialects differ on the extent of diphthongisation of long vowels, with southern varieties extensively turning them into diphthongs, and with northern dialects normally preserving many of them. As a comparison, North American varieties could be said to be in-between. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are usually preserved, and in several areas also /oː/ and /eː/, as in go and say (unlike other varieties of English, that change them to [oʊ] and [eɪ] respectively). Some areas go as far as not diphthongising medieval /iː/ and /uː/, that give rise to modern /aɪ/ and /aʊ/; that is, for example, in
4752-439: Is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation." Beauvoir asserted that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves, moving beyond the " immanence " to which they were previously resigned and reaching " transcendence ", a position in which one takes responsibility for oneself and
4896-459: Is based on British English, but has more influence from American English , often grouped together due to their close proximity. British English, for example, is the closest English to Indian English, but Indian English has extra vocabulary and some English words are assigned different meanings. Simone Weil Simone Adolphine Weil ( / ˈ v eɪ / VAY ; French: [simɔn adɔlfin vɛj] ; 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943)
5040-465: Is conceived as utter fullness, a perfect being, no creature can exist except where God is not. Thus, creation occurred only when God withdrew in part. This idea mirrors tzimtzum , a central notion in the Jewish Kabbalah creation narrative. This is, for Weil, an original kenosis ("emptiness") preceding the corrective kenosis of Christ's incarnation . Thus, according to her, humans are born in
5184-719: Is included in style guides issued by various publishers including The Times newspaper, the Oxford University Press and the Cambridge University Press . The Oxford University Press guidelines were originally drafted as a single broadsheet page by Horace Henry Hart, and were at the time (1893) the first guide of their type in English; they were gradually expanded and eventually published, first as Hart's Rules , and in 2002 as part of The Oxford Manual of Style . Comparable in authority and stature to The Chicago Manual of Style for published American English ,
5328-403: Is its [femininity's] historical and social construction as the quintessential" Other. Beauvoir defines women as the "second sex" because women are defined as inferior to men. She pointed out that Aristotle argued women are "female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities", while Thomas Aquinas referred to women as "imperfect men" and the "incidental" being. She quotes "In itself, homosexuality
5472-436: Is perhaps the most accessible entry into French existentialism . In the essay, Beauvoir clears up some inconsistencies that many, Sartre included, have found in major existentialist works such as Being and Nothingness . In The Ethics of Ambiguity , Beauvoir confronts the existentialist dilemma of absolute freedom vs. the constraints of circumstance. At the end of World War II, Beauvoir and Sartre edited Les Temps Modernes ,
5616-400: Is said to have created a "family atmosphere". She also took weekly visits to Saint-Étienne to teach workers French literature , believing literature could be a tool for revolution and give workers ownership over their heritage and revolution. Weil began to feel her work was too narrow and elite telling her students it was an error to "reason in place of finding out" and that philosophy was
5760-565: Is the main reason why I became an intellectual." Beauvoir pursued post-secondary education after completing her high school years at Cours Desir [ fr ] . After passing baccalaureate exams in mathematics and philosophy at the age of seventeen in 1925, she studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique de Paris and literature/languages at the Institut Sainte-Marie [ fr ] . She then studied philosophy at
5904-609: Is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England , or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout the British Isles taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English , Welsh English , and Northern Irish English . Tom McArthur in
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6048-530: The Chambers Dictionary , and the Collins Dictionary record actual usage rather than attempting to prescribe it. In addition, vocabulary and usage change with time; words are freely borrowed from other languages and other varieties of English, and neologisms are frequent. For historical reasons dating back to the rise of London in the ninth century, the form of language spoken in London and
6192-637: The East Midlands became standard English within the Court, and ultimately became the basis for generally accepted use in the law, government, literature and education in Britain. The standardisation of British English is thought to be from both dialect levelling and a thought of social superiority. Speaking in the Standard dialect created class distinctions; those who did not speak the standard English would be considered of
6336-794: The German annexation of Alsace–Lorraine , and Salomea "Selma" Reinherz (1879–1965), who was born into a Jewish family in Rostov-on-Don and raised in Belgium . According to Osmo Pekonen , "the family name Weil came to be when many Levis in the Napoleonic era changed their names this way, by anagram." Weil was a healthy baby for her first six months but then suffered a severe attack of appendicitis ; thereafter, she struggled with poor health throughout her life. Weil's parents were fairly affluent and raised their children in an attentive and supportive atmosphere. She
6480-678: The Lycée Molière (Paris) [ fr ] (1936–39). During the trial of Robert Brasillach Beauvoir was among a small number of prominent intellectuals advocating for his execution for 'intellectual crimes'. She defended this decision in her 1946 essay "An Eye for an Eye". Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre met during her college years. Intrigued by her determination as an educator, he intended to make their relationship romantic. However, she had no interest in doing so. She later changed her mind, and in October 1929, Jean-Paul Sartre and Beauvoir became
6624-512: The Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961 , 1969 and 1973 . However, Beauvoir generated controversy when she briefly lost her teaching job after being accused of sexually abusing some of her students. She and her long-time lover, Jean-Paul Sartre , along with numerous other French intellectuals, campaigned for the release of people convicted of child sex offenses and signed a petition which advocated
6768-631: The Oxford Guide to World English acknowledges that British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions [with] the word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity". Variations exist in formal (both written and spoken) English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland, north-east England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and occasionally Yorkshire , whereas
6912-484: The Royal Spanish Academy with Spanish. Standard British English differs notably in certain vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation features from standard American English and certain other standard English varieties around the world. British and American spelling also differ in minor ways. The accent, or pronunciation system, of standard British English, based in southeastern England, has been known for over
7056-486: The Scots language or Scottish Gaelic ). Each group includes a range of dialects, some markedly different from others. The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages. Around the middle of the 15th century, there were points where within the 5 major dialects there were almost 500 ways to spell the word though . Following its last major survey of English Dialects (1949–1950),
7200-501: The Sorbonne and after completing her degree in 1928, wrote her Diplôme d'Études Supérieures Spécialisées [ fr ] (roughly equivalent to an M.A. thesis) on Leibniz for Léon Brunschvicg (the topic was "Le concept chez Leibniz" ["The Concept in Leibniz"]). Her studies of political philosophy through university influenced her to start thinking of societal concerns. Beauvoir
7344-608: The Spanish Civil War to join the Republican faction . She identified as an anarchist , and sought out the anti-fascist commander Julián Gorkin , asking to be sent on a mission as a covert agent to rescue the prisoner Joaquín Maurín . Gorkin refused, saying Weil would be sacrificing herself for nothing since it was highly unlikely that she could pass as a Spaniard. Weil replied that she had "every right" to sacrifice herself if she chose, but after arguing for more than an hour, she
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#17328986560347488-560: The University of Leeds has started work on a new project. In May 2007 the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded a grant to Leeds to study British regional dialects. The team are sifting through a large collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by the "Voices project" run by the BBC , in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout
7632-601: The West Country and other near-by counties of the UK, the consonant R is not pronounced if not followed by a vowel, lengthening the preceding vowel instead. This phenomenon is known as non-rhoticity . In these same areas, a tendency exists to insert an R between a word ending in a vowel and a next word beginning with a vowel. This is called the intrusive R . It could be understood as a merger, in that words that once ended in an R and words that did not are no longer treated differently. This
7776-525: The trade union movement, taking the side of the anarchists known as the Durruti Column in the Spanish Civil War , and spending more than a year working as a labourer, mostly in car factories, so that she could better understand the working class . Weil became increasingly religious and inclined towards mysticism as her life progressed. She wrote throughout her life, although most of her writings did not attract much attention until after her death. In
7920-660: The working class . In 1915, when she was only six years old, she refused sugar in solidarity with the troops entrenched along the Western Front . In 1919, at 10 years of age, she declared herself a Bolshevik . In her late teens, she became involved in the workers' movement. She wrote political tracts, marched in demonstrations and advocated workers' rights. At this time, she was a Marxist , pacifist and trade unionist . While teaching in Le Puy , she became involved in local political activity, supporting local striking workers underpaid by
8064-472: The 'Affaire de Versailles', where three adult men, Dejager (age 45), Gallien (age 43), and Burckhardt (age 39) had sexual relations with minors of both sexes aged 12–13. When Things of the Spirit Come First , a set of short stories Beauvoir had written decades previously but had not considered worth publishing, was released in 1980. In 1981 she wrote La Cérémonie des adieux ( A Farewell to Sartre ),
8208-514: The 1930s inspired a whole generation of French thinkers, including Sartre, to discover Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit . However, Beauvoir, reading Hegel in German during the war, produced an original critique of his dialectic of consciousness. Beauvoir was bisexual , and her relationships with young women were controversial. French author Bianca Lamblin (originally Bianca Bienenfeld) wrote in her book Mémoires d'une jeune fille dérangée (Memoirs of
8352-575: The 1950s and '60s, her work became famous in continental Europe and throughout the English-speaking world . Her thought has continued to be the subject of extensive scholarship across a wide range of fields. The mathematician André Weil was her brother. Weil was born in her parents' apartment in Paris on 3 February 1909, the daughter of Bernard Weil (1872–1955), a medical doctor from an agnostic Alsatian Jewish background, who moved to Paris after
8496-434: The 1960s, when Beauvoir was in her fifties and Sylvie was a teenager. In 1980, Beauvoir, 72, legally adopted Sylvie, who was in her late thirties, by which point they had already been in an intimate relationship for decades. Although Beauvoir rejected the institution of marriage her entire life, this adoption was like a marriage for her. Some scholars argue that this adoption was not to secure a literary heir for Beauvoir, but as
8640-603: The 21st century. RP, while long established as the standard English accent around the globe due to the spread of the British Empire , is distinct from the standard English pronunciation in some parts of the world; most prominently, RP notably contrasts with standard North American accents. In the 21st century, dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary , the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English ,
8784-532: The Benedictine Solesmes Abbey and while suffering from headaches she found pure joy in Gregorian chant that she felt the "possibility of living divine love in the midst of affliction". She was attracted to Catholicism , but declined to be baptized at that time, preferring to remain outside due to "the love of those things that are outside Christianity". While deeply religious, Weil was skeptical of
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#17328986560348928-477: The Church and dogma as an institution stating "I have not the slightest love for the Church in the strict sense of the word" and was appalled by the concept of Anathema Sit as she refused to separate herself from unbelievers. Weil felt that humility is incompatible with belonging to a social group "chosen by God" no matter if that group is a nation or a Church. Weil did not limit her curiosity to Christianity. She
9072-487: The City Council. Weil joined protest marches with them and even shared wine with them facing criticism from local elites and facing an antisemitic attack in a local paper. When the school director called Weil in for questioning, students and coworkers rallied behind her and ultimately the city council raised the pay of the workers. Weil often held classes outdoors, often refused to share grades with school leadership, and
9216-816: The English Language (1755) was a large step in the English-language spelling reform , where the purification of language focused on standardising both speech and spelling. By the early 20th century, British authors had produced numerous books intended as guides to English grammar and usage, a few of which achieved sufficient acclaim to have remained in print for long periods and to have been reissued in new editions after some decades. These include, most notably of all, Fowler's Modern English Usage and The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers . Detailed guidance on many aspects of writing British English for publication
9360-407: The French language, and a minimal understanding of philosophy (he was a professor of biology at Smith College ), much of Beauvoir's book was mistranslated or inappropriately cut, distorting her intended message. For years, Knopf prevented the introduction of a more accurate retranslation of Beauvoir's work, declining all proposals despite the efforts of existentialist scholars. Only in 2009 was there
9504-626: The General Suppression of Political Parties. Yet there is now evidence that Weil was recruited by the Special Operations Executive , with a view to sending her back to France as a clandestine wireless operator. In May 1943, preparations were underway to send her to Thame Park in Oxfordshire for training, but the plan was cancelled soon after, as her failing health became known. Weil wrote furiously during this period sending
9648-595: The Germanic schwein ) is the animal in the field bred by the occupied Anglo-Saxons and pork (like the French porc ) is the animal at the table eaten by the occupying Normans. Another example is the Anglo-Saxon cu meaning cow, and the French bœuf meaning beef. Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English;
9792-588: The National Book Award for The Man with the Golden Arm in 1950, and in 1954, Beauvoir won France's most prestigious literary prize for The Mandarins , in which Algren is the character Lewis Brogan. Algren vociferously objected to their intimacy becoming public. Years after they separated, she was buried wearing his gift of a silver ring. When Beauvoir visited Algren in Chicago, Art Shay took well-known nude and portrait photos of Beauvoir. Shay also wrote
9936-891: The Oxford Manual is a fairly exhaustive standard for published British English that writers can turn to in the absence of specific guidance from their publishing house. British English is the basis of, and very similar to, Commonwealth English . Commonwealth English is English as spoken and written in the Commonwealth countries , though often with some local variation. This includes English spoken in Australia , Malta , New Zealand , Nigeria , and South Africa . It also includes South Asian English used in South Asia, in English varieties in Southeast Asia , and in parts of Africa. Canadian English
10080-701: The South East, there are significantly different accents; the Cockney accent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from Received Pronunciation (RP). Cockney rhyming slang can be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand, although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated. Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors. Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades: it has some features of RP and some of Cockney. Immigrants to
10224-537: The UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country and particularly to London. Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 125 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's schoolchildren. Notably Multicultural London English , a sociolect that emerged in the late 20th century spoken mainly by young, working-class people in multicultural parts of London . Since
10368-564: The United Kingdom , as well as within the countries themselves. The major divisions are normally classified as English English (or English as spoken in England (which is itself broadly grouped into Southern English , West Country , East and West Midlands English and Northern English ), Northern Irish English (in Northern Ireland), Welsh English (not to be confused with the Welsh language ), and Scottish English (not to be confused with
10512-606: The United States and China and published essays and fiction rigorously, especially throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Her 1955 travels in China were the basis of her 1957 travelogue The Long March , in which she praised the efforts of the Chinese communists to emancipate women . She published several volumes of short stories, including The Woman Destroyed , which, like some of her other later work, deals with aging. She lived with Claude Lanzmann from 1952 to 1959, but perhaps her most famous lover
10656-458: The West Scottish accent. Phonological features characteristic of British English revolve around the pronunciation of the letter R, as well as the dental plosive T and some diphthongs specific to this dialect. Once regarded as a Cockney feature, in a number of forms of spoken British English, /t/ has become commonly realised as a glottal stop [ʔ] when it is in the intervocalic position, in
10800-602: The abolition of age of consent laws in France . Beauvoir was born on 9 January 1908, into a bourgeois Parisian family in the 6th arrondissement . Her parents were Georges Bertrand de Beauvoir, a lawyer who once aspired to be an actor, and Françoise Beauvoir (née Brasseur), a wealthy banker's daughter and devout Catholic . Simone had a sister, Hélène , who was born two years later, on June 6, 1910. The family struggled to maintain their bourgeois status after losing much of their fortune shortly after World War I , and Françoise insisted
10944-410: The adjective little is predominant elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described by the term British English . The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken and so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to
11088-470: The age of 60. In the 1970s Beauvoir became active in France's women's liberation movement . She wrote and signed the Manifesto of the 343 in 1971, a manifesto that included a list of famous women who claimed to have had an abortion, then illegal in France. Signatories were diverse as Catherine Deneuve , Delphine Seyrig , and Beauvoir's sister Hélène. In 1974, abortion was legalized in France. When asked in
11232-514: The atheist confronts honestly. And to crown all, the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself." From 1929 through 1943, Beauvoir taught at the lycée level until she could support herself solely on the earnings of her writings. She taught at the Lycée Montgrand [ fr ] ( Marseille ), the Lycée Jeanne-d'Arc (Rouen) [ fr ] , and
11376-481: The award of the grant in 2007, Leeds University stated: that they were "very pleased"—and indeed, "well chuffed"—at receiving their generous grant. He could, of course, have been "bostin" if he had come from the Black Country , or if he was a Scouser he would have been well "made up" over so many spondoolicks, because as a Geordie might say, £460,000 is a "canny load of chink". Most people in Britain speak with
11520-520: The book is dedicated. Algren was outraged by the frank way Beauvoir described their sexual experiences in both The Mandarins and her autobiographies. Algren vented his outrage when reviewing American translations of Beauvoir's work. Much material bearing on this episode in Beauvoir's life, including her love letters to Algren, entered the public domain only after her death. British English British English (abbreviations: BrE , en-GB , and BE )
11664-429: The contrary, Weil claims that "evil is the form which God's mercy takes in this world". Weil believed that evil, and its consequent affliction, serve the role of driving humans towards God, writing, "The extreme affliction which overtakes human beings does not create human misery, it merely reveals it." Weil developed the concept of "affliction" ( French : malheur ) while working in factories with workers reduced to
11808-576: The country, to recuperate in Assisi . About a month after her departure, Weil's unit was nearly wiped out at an engagement in Perdiguera in October 1936, with every woman in the group being killed. During her stay in the Aragon front, Weil sent some chronicles to the French publication Le Libertaire , and on returning to Paris, she continued to write essays on labour , on management , war , and peace . Weil
11952-613: The country. The BBC Voices project also collected hundreds of news articles about how the British speak English from swearing through to items on language schools. This information will also be collated and analysed by Johnson's team both for content and for where it was reported. "Perhaps the most remarkable finding in the Voices study is that the English language is as diverse as ever, despite our increased mobility and constant exposure to other accents and dialects through TV and radio". When discussing
12096-427: The disadvantaged. From her late teenage years, Weil would generally disguise her "fragile beauty" by adopting a masculine appearance, hardly ever using makeup and often wearing men's clothes. Both Weil's parents referred to her as “our son number two,” at the request of Weil, and in letters to her parents while a student, she used the masculine form of French participles and signed her name the masculine "Simon". Weil
12240-429: The early 1930s. She grew fond of Olga. Sartre tried to pursue Olga but she rejected him, so he began a relationship with her sister Wanda. Upon his death, Sartre was still supporting Wanda. He also supported Olga for years, until she met and married Jacques-Laurent Bost , a lover of Beauvoir. However, the main thrust of the novel is philosophical, a scene in which to situate Beauvoir's abiding philosophical pre-occupation –
12384-450: The eighth woman to pass the agrégation solidified her economic independence and furthered her feminist ideology. Writing of her youth in Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, she said: "...my father's individualism and pagan ethical standards were in complete contrast to the rigidly moral conventionalism of my mother's teaching. This disequilibrium, which made my life a kind of endless disputation,
12528-497: The exam for the certificate of "General Philosophy and Logic" with Simone de Beauvoir finishing second. In 1931 Weil earned her DES ( diplôme d'études supérieures [ fr ] , roughly equivalent to an M.A. ), with a thesis titled, "Science et perception dans Descartes" ("Science and Perception in Descartes"). She received her agrégation that same year. She often became involved in political action out of sympathy with
12672-547: The feelings of people in their circle who were still living. After Beauvoir's death, Sartre's adopted daughter and literary heir Arlette Elkaïm would not let many of Sartre's letters be published in unedited form. Most of Sartre's letters available today have Beauvoir's edits, which include a few omissions but mostly the use of pseudonyms. Beauvoir's adopted daughter and literary heir Sylvie Le Bon , unlike Elkaïm, published Beauvoir's unedited letters to both Sartre and Algren. Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir and Simone de Beauvoir met in
12816-446: The feminist movement, especially the French women's liberation movement, and her beliefs in women's economic independence and equal education, Beauvoir was initially reluctant to call herself a feminist. However, after observing the resurgence of the feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Beauvoir stated she no longer believed a socialist revolution to be enough to bring about women's liberation. She publicly declared herself
12960-509: The first of three pivotal religious experiences: being moved by the beauty of villagers singing hymns in a procession she stumbled across while on holiday to Portugal (in Póvoa de Varzim ). Weil the later wrote "the conviction was suddenly borne in upon her that Christianity is pre-eminently the religion of slaves, that slaves cannot help belonging to it, and she among others." While in Assisi during
13104-574: The full depth of affliction—the same souls that are also most able to experience spiritual joy. Weil's notion of affliction is a sort of "suffering plus" which transcends both body and mind, a physical and mental anguish that scourges the very soul. The better we are able to conceive of the fullness of joy, the purer and more intense will be our suffering in affliction and our compassion for others. ... Suffering and enjoyment as sources of knowledge. The serpent offered knowledge to Adam and Eve. The sirens offered knowledge to Ulysses. These stories teach that
13248-453: The idea of two different morphemes, one that causes the double negation, and one that is used for the point or the verb. Standard English in the United Kingdom, as in other English-speaking nations, is widely enforced in schools and by social norms for formal contexts but not by any singular authority; for instance, there is no institution equivalent to the Académie française with French or
13392-516: The journal's editorial meetings in her flat and contributed more than Sartre, whom she often had to force to offer his opinions. Published in 1954, The Mandarins won France's highest literary prize, the Prix Goncourt . It is a roman à clef set after the end of World War II and follows the personal lives of philosophers and friends among Sartre's and Beauvoir's intimate circle, including her relationship with American writer Nelson Algren , to whom
13536-472: The laboring masses to their death, but which does not possess any content". Weil felt oppression was not limited to any particular division of labor but flows from la puissance or power which affects all people. In 1932, Weil visited Germany to help Marxist activists who were at the time considered to be the strongest and best organised communists in Western Europe, but Weil considered them no match for
13680-461: The larger part of his "Canticle of Brother Sun". Below the town in the valley is the ugliest church in the entire environs: the massive baroque basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels, finished in the seventeenth century and rebuilt in the nineteenth century, which houses a rare treasure: a tiny Romanesque chapel that stood in the days of Saint Francis—the "Little Portion" where he would gather his brethren. It
13824-511: The last southern Midlands accent to use the broad "a" in words like bath or grass (i.e. barth or grarss ). Conversely crass or plastic use a slender "a". A few miles northwest in Leicestershire the slender "a" becomes more widespread generally. In the town of Corby , five miles (8 km) north, one can find Corbyite which, unlike the Kettering accent, is largely influenced by
13968-508: The later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and with a huge vocabulary . Dialects and accents vary amongst the four countries of
14112-646: The marriage standards of the day. I think marriage is a very alienating institution, for men as well as for women. I think it's a very dangerous institution—dangerous for men, who find themselves trapped, saddled with a wife and children to support; dangerous for women, who aren't financially independent and end up by depending on men who can throw them out when they are 40; and very dangerous for children, because their parents vent all their frustrations and mutual hatred on them. The very words 'conjugal rights' are dreadful. Any institution which solders one person to another, obliging people to sleep together who no longer want to
14256-452: The mass internal migration to Northamptonshire in the 1940s and given its position between several major accent regions, it has become a source of various accent developments. In Northampton the older accent has been influenced by overspill Londoners. There is an accent known locally as the Kettering accent, which is a transitional accent between the East Midlands and East Anglian . It is
14400-454: The military draft. For these reasons she was called the "Red Virgin", and even "The Martian" by her mentor. Weil gained a reputation for her strict devotion to ethics, with classmates referring to her as the " categorical imperative in skirts". Officials at the school were outraged by her indifference to clothing, her refusal to participate in their traditions, and her ignoring a rule banning women from smoking with male students, for which she
14544-458: The modern period, but due to their remoteness from the Germanic languages , influence on English was notably limited . However, the degree of influence remains debated, and it has recently been argued that its grammatical influence accounts for the substantial innovations noted between English and the other West Germanic languages. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting
14688-447: The personnel of the sanatorium at which Simone Weil was treated, Pétrement affirms that Weil asked for food on different occasions while she was hospitalized and even ate a little bit a few days before her death; according to her, it was, in fact, Weil's poor health condition that eventually made her unable to eat. Weil's first English biographer, Richard Rees , offers several possible explanations for her death, citing her compassion for
14832-426: The relationship between the self and the other. In the novel, set just before the outbreak of World War II , Beauvoir creates one character from the complex relationships of Olga and Wanda. The fictionalised versions of Beauvoir and Sartre have a ménage à trois with the young woman. The novel also delves into Beauvoir and Sartre's complex relationship and how it was affected by the ménage à trois. She Came to Stay
14976-575: The risky work of delivering the Cahiers du témoignage, a resistance paper. The resistance group of which Weil was part was infiltrated by informants and Weil was questioned by the police. When the police threatened to jail her “with the whores” if she did not give them information, Weil stated she would welcome the invitation to be jailed. Weil was ultimately never arrested. Marseilles is also where Weil would soon develop significant religious relationships, receiving spiritual direction from Joseph-Marie Perrin,
15120-401: The spoken language. Globally, countries that are former British colonies or members of the Commonwealth tend to follow British English, as is the case for English used by European Union institutions. In China, both British English and American English are taught. The UK government actively teaches and promotes English around the world and operates in over 200 countries . English is
15264-480: The spring of 1937, Weil experienced a religious ecstasy in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli —the same church in which Saint Francis of Assisi had prayed. She was led to pray for the first time in her life as Lawrence S. Cunningham relates: Below the town is the beautiful church and convent of San Damiano where Saint Clare once lived. Near that spot is the place purported to be where Saint Francis composed
15408-436: The suffering of her countrymen in occupied France and her love for and close imitation of Christ. Rees sums up by saying: "As for her death, whatever explanation one may give of it will amount in the end to saying that she died of love." Absence is the key image for her metaphysics , cosmology , cosmogony , and theodicy . She believed that God created by an act of self-delimitation—in other words, she argued that because God
15552-587: The theft of work tools worth £500 from a van at the Sprucefield park and ride car park in Lisburn. A football team can be treated likewise: Arsenal have lost just one of 20 home Premier League matches against Manchester City. This tendency can be observed in texts produced already in the 19th century. For example, Jane Austen , a British author, writes in Chapter 4 of Pride and Prejudice , published in 1813: All
15696-542: The then up-and-coming fascists. When she returned to France, her political friends there dismissed her fears, thinking Germany would continue to be controlled by the centrists or by those to the left. After Hitler rose to power in 1933, Weil spent much of her time trying to help German communists fleeing his regime. Weil would sometimes publish articles about social and economic issues, including "Oppression and Liberty," as well as numerous short articles for trade union journals. This work criticised popular Marxist thought and gave
15840-430: The time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory . Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiographies, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was best known for her "trailblazing work in feminist philosophy", The Second Sex (1949), a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism . She
15984-403: The traditional accent of Newcastle upon Tyne , 'out' will sound as 'oot', and in parts of Scotland and North-West England, 'my' will be pronounced as 'me'. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are diphthongised to [ɪi] and [ʊu] respectively (or, more technically, [ʏʉ], with a raised tongue), so that ee and oo in feed and food are pronounced with a movement. The diphthong [oʊ] is also pronounced with
16128-431: The two daughters be sent to a prestigious convent school. Beauvoir was intellectually precocious, fueled by her father's encouragement; he reportedly would boast, "Simone thinks like a man!" Because of her family's straitened circumstances, she could no longer rely on her dowry , and like other middle-class girls of her age, her marriage opportunities were put at risk. She took this opportunity to take steps towards earning
16272-733: The varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon , eventually came to dominate. The original Old English was then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first was by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who settled in parts of Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries; the second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman . These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it
16416-432: The victims of the war. Others think that Weil's self-starvation occurred after her study of Arthur Schopenhauer . In his chapters on Christian saintly asceticism and salvation, Schopenhauer had described self-starvation as a preferred method of self-denial. However, Simone Pétrement, one of Weil's first and most significant biographers, regards the coroner's report as simply mistaken. Basing her opinion on letters written by
16560-442: The visibly Christian ones to deliver me into Christ's hands as his captive. I think I might even say more. Nevertheless, Weil was opposed to religious syncretism , claiming that it effaced the particularity of the individual traditions: Each religion is alone true, that is to say, that at the moment we are thinking of it we must bring as much attention to bear on it as if there were nothing else ... A "synthesis" of religion implies
16704-538: The working class. In 1935, she began teaching in Bourges and started Entre Nous , a journal that was produced and authored by factory workers. Weil donated most of her income to political causes and charitable endeavours. Weil participated in the 1936 Paris factory occupations and planned on returning to factory work In 1936 but became focused on the Spanish Civil War. Despite her professed pacifism , she travelled to
16848-560: The world are good and agreeable in your eyes. However, in Chapter 16, the grammatical number is used. The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence. Some dialects of British English use negative concords, also known as double negatives . Rather than changing a word or using a positive, words like nobody, not, nothing, and never would be used in the same sentence. While this does not occur in Standard English, it does occur in non-standard dialects. The double negation follows
16992-560: The world, where one chooses one's freedom. Chapters of The Second Sex were originally published in Les Temps modernes , in June 1949. The second volume came a few months after the first in France. It was published soon after in America due to the quick translation by Howard Parshley , as prompted by Blanche Knopf , wife of publisher Alfred A. Knopf . Because Parshley had only a basic familiarity with
17136-454: Was American author Nelson Algren . Beauvoir met Algren in Chicago in 1947, while she was on a four-month "exploration" trip of the United States using various means of transport: automobile, train, and Greyhound . She kept a detailed diary of the trip, which was published in France in 1948 with the title America Day by Day . She wrote to him across the Atlantic as "my beloved husband." Algren won
17280-439: Was a French philosopher , mystic , and political activist . Since 1995, more than 5,000 scholarly works have been published about her, including close analyses and readings of her work. After her graduation from formal education, Weil became a teacher. She taught intermittently throughout the 1930s, taking several breaks because of poor health and in order to devote herself to political activism . Such work saw her assisting in
17424-594: Was a precocious student and was proficient in Ancient Greek by age 12. She later learned Sanskrit so that she could read the Bhagavad Gita in the original. As a teenager, Weil studied at the Lycée Henri IV under the tutelage of her admired teacher Émile Chartier , more commonly known as "Alain". Weil attracted much attention at the Lycée Henri IV with her radical opinions and actions such as organising against
17568-408: Was also known for her novels, the most famous of which were She Came to Stay (1943) and The Mandarins (1954). Her most enduring contribution to literature are her memoirs, notably the first volume, Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée (1958). She received the 1954 Prix Goncourt , the 1975 Jerusalem Prize , and the 1978 Austrian State Prize for European Literature . She was also nominated for
17712-432: Was always done in societies by the group higher in the hierarchy to the group lower in the hierarchy. She wrote that a similar kind of oppression by hierarchy also happened in other categories of identity, such as race, class, and religion, but she claimed that it was nowhere more true than with gender in which men stereotyped women and used it as an excuse to organize society into a patriarchy . Despite her contributions to
17856-489: Was born into a secular household and raised in "complete agnosticism". As a teenager, she considered the existence of God for herself and decided nothing could be known either way. In her Spiritual Autobiography , however, Weil records that she always had a Christian outlook, taking to heart from her earliest childhood the idea of loving one's neighbour. Weil was attracted to the Christian faith beginning in 1935, when she had
18000-464: Was diagnosed with tuberculosis and instructed to rest and eat well. However, she refused special treatment because of her long-standing political idealism and her detachment from material things. Instead, she limited her intake to what she believed residents of German-occupied France ate. She most likely ate even less, as she refused on most occasions. It is possible that she was baptized during this period. Her condition quickly deteriorated, and she
18144-458: Was distressed by the Republican killings in eastern Spain, particularly when a fifteen-year-old Falangist was executed after he had been taken prisoner and Durruti had spent an hour trying to persuade him to change his political position before giving him until the next day to decide. Weil was deeply concerned by the intoxication of war where humans learn they can kill without punishment stating "I
18288-561: Was followed by many others, including The Blood of Others , which explores the nature of individual responsibility, telling a love story between two young French students participating in the Resistance in World War II. In 1944, Beauvoir wrote her first philosophical essay, Pyrrhus et Cinéas , a discussion on existentialist ethics. She continued her exploration of existentialism through her second essay The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947); it
18432-540: Was generally highly affectionate, but she almost always avoided any form of physical contact, even with female friends. Weil's mother stated that her daughter much preferred boys to girls, and that she always did her best to teach her daughter what she believed were masculine virtues. According to her friend and biographer, Simone Pétrement, Weil decided early in life that she would need to adopt masculine qualities and sacrifice opportunities for love affairs in order to fully pursue her vocation to improve social conditions for
18576-525: Was horrified, but not surprised by the war crimes. I felt the possibility of doing the same - and it's precisely because I felt I had that potential that I was horrified." After the rise of Nazi Germany Weil renounced pacifism. Weil stated that, "non-violence is good only if it's effective," and she became committed to fighting the Nazi regime, even if it required force. After German attacks on France, Weil left Paris with her family and fled to Marseilles. Weil began
18720-438: Was in that tiny chapel that the great mystic Simone Weil first felt compelled to kneel down and pray. Weil had a third, more powerful, revelation a year later while reciting George Herbert 's poem Love III , after which "Christ himself came down and took possession of me", and, from 1938 on, her writings became more mystical and spiritual , while retaining their focus on social and political issues. In 1938 Weil visited
18864-541: Was influenced by some of Weil's thought. In 1933, Weil was dismissed from a teaching job in Auxerre and transferred to Roanne . Weil participated in the French general strike of 1933, called to protest against unemployment and wage cuts. The following year, she took a 12-month leave of absence from her teaching position to work incognito as a labourer in two factories, one owned by Alstom and one by Renault , believing that this experience would allow her to connect with
19008-547: Was interested in other religious traditions—especially the Greek and Egyptian mysteries ; Hinduism (especially the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita ); and Mahayana Buddhism . She believed that all these and other traditions contained elements of genuine revelation, writing: Greece, Egypt, ancient India, the beauty of the world, the pure and authentic reflection of this beauty in art and science...these things have done as much as
19152-656: Was lecturing with her chastised their "distinguished [Harvard] audience [because] every question asked about Sartre concerned his work, while all those asked about Beauvoir concerned her personal life." Sartre and Beauvoir always read each other's work. Debate continues about the extent to which they influenced each other in their existentialist works, such as Sartre's Being and Nothingness and Beauvoir's She Came to Stay and "Phenomenology and Intent". However, recent studies of Beauvoir's work focus on influences other than Sartre, including Hegel and Leibniz. The Neo-Hegelian revival led by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite in
19296-580: Was moved to a sanatorium at Grosvenor Hall in Ashford, Kent . After a lifetime of battling illness and frailty, Weil died in August 1943 from cardiac failure at the age of 34. The coroner's report said that "the deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed". The exact cause of her death remains a subject of debate. Some claim that her refusal to eat came from her desire to express some form of solidarity toward
19440-422: Was never a truly mixed language in the strictest sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication). The more idiomatic, concrete and descriptive English is, the more it is from Anglo-Saxon origins. The more intellectual and abstract English is, the more it contains Latin and French influences, e.g. swine (like
19584-443: Was one of the first to identify a new form of oppression not anticipated by Marx, where élite bureaucrats could make life just as miserable for ordinary people as did the most exploitative capitalists. Weil critiqued Marxist theorists stating "they themselves have never been cogs in the machinery of factory". Weil also doubted aspects of revolution stating revolution is a word for "which you kill, for which you die, for which you send
19728-496: Was raised in a Catholic household. In her youth, she was sent to convent schools. She was deeply religious as a child, at one point intending to become a nun. At age 14, Beauvoir questioned her faith as she saw many changes in the world after witnessing tragedies throughout her life. Consequently, she abandoned her faith in her early teens and remained an atheist for the rest of her life. To explain her atheist beliefs, Beauvoir stated, "Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which
19872-405: Was referred to by the pseudonym Louise Védrine. In 1943, Beauvoir was suspended again from her teaching position when she was accused of seducing her 17-year-old lycée pupil Natalie Sorokine in 1939. Sorokine's parents laid formal charges against Beauvoir for debauching a minor (the age of consent in France at the time was 13 until 1945, when it became 15) and Beauvoir's licence to teach in France
20016-489: Was revoked, although it was subsequently reinstated. Beauvoir described in La Force de l'âge ( The Prime of Life ) a relationship of simple friendship with Nathalie Sorokine (in the book referred to as "Lise Oblanoff"). Natalie Sorokine, along with Bianca Lamblin and Olga Kosakiewicz , later stated that their relationships with de Beauvoir damaged them psychologically. Beauvoir wrote popular travel diaries about time spent in
20160-414: Was suspended. At ENS, Weil briefly met Simone de Beauvoir , and their meeting led to disagreement. Weil stated that, "one thing alone mattered in the world today: the revolution that would feed all people on earth," with a young Beauvoir replying that the point of life was to find meaning, not happiness. Weil cut her off, stating that, "it's easy to see you've never gone hungry". Weil finished first in
20304-549: Was the younger of her parents' two children. Her brother was mathematician André Weil (1906–1998), with whom she would always enjoy a close relationship. Weil was distressed by her father having to leave home for several years after being drafted to serve in the First World War . Eva Fogelman , Robert Coles and several other scholars believe that this experience may have contributed to the exceptionally strong altruism which Weil displayed throughout her life. For example,
20448-453: Was to shoot with her rifle at a bomber during an air raid; in a second raid, she tried to operate the group's heavy machine gun , but her comrades prevented her, as they thought it would be best for someone less clumsy and near-sighted to use the weapon. After being with the group for a few weeks, she burnt herself over a cooking fire. She was forced to leave the unit, and was met by her parents who had followed her to Spain. They helped her leave
20592-494: Was unable to convince Gorkin to give her the assignment. Instead she joined the anarchist Durruti Column of the French-speaking Sébastien Faure Century , which specialised in high-risk "commando"-style engagements. As she was extremely nearsighted, Weil was a very poor shot, and her comrades tried to avoid taking her on missions, though she did sometimes insist. Her only direct participation in combat
20736-477: Was while studying for it that she met École Normale students Jean-Paul Sartre , Paul Nizan , and René Maheu (who gave her the lasting nickname " Castor ", or "beaver"). The jury for the agrégation narrowly awarded Sartre first place instead of Beauvoir, who placed second and, at age 21, was the youngest person ever to pass the exam. Additionally, Beauvoir finished an exam for the certificate of "General Philosophy and Logic" second to Simone Weil . Her success as
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