Simone de Beauvoir on an ageing society

1970

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was a French writer, existentialist philosopher, feminist, and social theorist noted for her feminist work The Second Sex (1949).

In this video de Beauvoir discusses the style and content of her book The Coming of Age (1970). She describes how this book was necessarry in order to adress subjects that were considered taboo. In order to do this successfully she crossed disciplines of history, biology, ethnography and psychology, going some way to explaining the unconventional stlye of her writing. de Beauvoir explains how the role of the elderly in society changes over time and space and how their interactions with society and economy defines how we perceive them.