ABSTRACT
To appreciate the distinctiveness of Beauvoir’s contribution to existential phenomenology, and to prepare the philosophical ground for our study of The Second Sex, in this chapter we consider her two philosophical essays published in the 1940s: Pyrrhus et Cinéas (1944) (currently being translated) and The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947). We will also look briefly at two essays, written in the 1950s, in which Beauvoir explores the relationship between the ethical and the erotic, ‘Must we burn Sade?’ (1951-1952) and ‘Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita syndrome’ (1959).
