Editing Simone de Beauvoir (section)

==== Jean-Paul Sartre ====
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.<ref name="auto" /> She later changed her mind, and in October 1929, [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] and Beauvoir became a couple for the next 51 years, until his death in 1980.<ref>Seymour-Jones 2008, back cover.</ref> 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".<ref>Bair, p. 155-7</ref> 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 the marriage standards of the day.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ward |first1=Julie K. |title=Reciprocity and Friendship in Beauvoir's Thought |journal=Hypatia |date=November 1999 |volume=14 |issue=4 |pages=36–49 |doi=10.1111/j.1527-2001.1999.tb01251.x|s2cid=146561354 }}</ref>
<blockquote>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 is a bad one.<ref>{{Cite news|title=A talk with Simone de Beauvoir |date=2 June 1974 |last=Moorehead |first=Caroline |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/06/02/archives/a-talk-with-simone-de-beauvoirr-marriage-is-an-alienating.html |access-date=30 August 2023}}</ref>
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Instead, she and Sartre entered into a lifelong "soul partnership", which was sexual but not exclusive, nor did it involve living together.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/10/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety |location=London |work=The Guardian  | first=Lisa | last=Appignanesi | title=Our relationship was the greatest achievement of my life | date=10 June 2005}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Schneir">{{cite book |author=Schneir, Miriam |url=https://archive.org/details/feminisminourtim0000unse/page/5 |title=Feminism in Our Time |publisher=Vintage Books |year=1994 |isbn=0-679-74508-4 |page=[https://archive.org/details/feminisminourtim0000unse/page/5 5]}}</ref> Unfortunately, Beauvoir's prominent open relationships at times overshadowed her substantial academic reputation. A scholar who was lecturing with her<ref>Beauvoir, ''The Prime of Life,'' p. 363.</ref> chastised their "distinguished [Harvard] audience [because] every question asked about Sartre concerned his work, while all those asked about Beauvoir concerned her personal life."<ref>Thurman, Judith. Introduction to ''The Second Sex'', 2009.</ref>

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".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kirkpatrick|first=Kate|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1097366004|title=Becoming Beauvoir: A Life|date=22 August 2019|isbn=978-1-350-04717-4|location=London|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic|oclc=1097366004}}</ref> However, recent studies of Beauvoir's work focus on influences other than Sartre, including [[G. W. F. Hegel|Hegel]] and Leibniz.<ref name="SEP-Bergoffen-2010" /> The [[Neo-Hegelianism|Neo-Hegelian]] revival led by [[Alexandre Kojève]] and [[Jean Hyppolite]] in the 1930s inspired a whole generation of French thinkers, including Sartre, to discover Hegel's ''[[Phenomenology of Spirit]]''.<ref>Ursula Tidd, ''Simone de Beauvoir'', Psychology Press, p. 19.</ref><ref>Nancy Bauer, ''Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophy, and Feminism'', Columbia University Press, 2012, p. 86.</ref>  However, Beauvoir, reading Hegel in German during the war, produced an original critique of his dialectic of consciousness.