Literature and Existentialist Ethics in Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘Moral Period’

Abstract

In one corner of the large territory covered by issues concerning the relations between literature and ethics, there are questions concerning the positions of particular practising authors on this matter. Few would claim that Simone de Beauvoir has unique insights in this area, but her case as such is an outstandingly rich and fascinating one. Within the relatively short period of her career under examination, she wrote — among other things — one play, two novels, a number of ethical works, and an essay on the theory of literature, all of which items are intricately interrelated in a variety of ways. Together they provide an intriguing body of material from which certain questions and certain points about literature and ethics emerge very strongly. One important factor is that we are dealing with a set of formally stated moral views on the one hand, and what we might begin by calling a ‘corresponding’ group of literary works on the other. This is already quite rare, since most ethical theorists do not write novels, and novelists, whatever their personal moral views, do not usually write essays about ethics.