Diary of a Philosophy Student

With the foundational feminist thinker as she accepts "the great adventure of being me" "That's when everything started," Simone de Beauvoir wrote in an entry dated July 8, 1929. On that day, her relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre began. This second volume of Beauvoir's Diary of a Philosophy Student takes readers into smoky dorm rooms and inter-war Paris as it continues the feminist philosopher's coming-of-age story. Here are Beauvoir's famous sparring sessions with Sartre in the Luxembourg Gardens--teasing him while stoking her burgeoning intellectual strength. Here also are her friendships and academic challenges, the discovery of important future influences like Barres and Hegel, and her early forays into formulating the problem of the Other. In addition to the diary, the editors provide invaluable supplementary material. A trove of footnotes and endnotes elaborates on virtually every reference made by Beauvoir, offering an atlas of her knowledge and education while at the same time allowing readers to share her intellectual and cultural milieu. Translator and scholar Barbara Klaw also contributes an introduction on reading Beauvoir's diaries as a philosophy of self-help.