ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the existential philosophies of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre are particularly useful in enriching narratives that support individual freedom within romantic relationships. It outlines Beauvoir's and Sartre's philosophies before addressing who Beauvoir and Sartre were, why they were radical, why their philosophies were radical, and the implications for twenty-first-century narratives concerning love. The chapter addresses Beauvoir's and Sartre's contributions in light of their lives, because they were interested in a philosophy that could be lived, and they wrote copiously about philosophy in their autobiographies, journals, letters and novels based on their lives. To understand Beauvoir and Sartre's philosophies of love, it is useful to look first at the eighteenth-century German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, particularly Hegel's ideas about the subject's encounters with others. In an ambiguous footnote in Being and Nothingness, Sartre alludes to the possibility of overcoming the sadomasochistic cycle of love via 'a radical conversion', but does not discuss it further.
