Faire is the Heaven: Action and Utopia in Simone de Beauvoir’s Pyrrhus et Cinéas

Abstract

This article argues that Simone de Beauvoir’s early essay Pyrrhus et Cinéas (1944) can be read as an articulation of a critically utopian ethics. It suggests that the ontology of action developed in Pyrrhus et Cinéas is an early case of Beauvoir’s critical engagement with Hegel and, in particular, the Kojèvian reading popular among her existentialist contemporaries. Unlike Kojève, whose Marxist reading of Hegel suggested that he was theorising a teleological model of History, Beauvoir develops a critique of utopian models of History wherein freedom is an ultimate finality, arguing instead that freedom is to be found in action, and thus must be persistently renewed. This article closes by suggesting that the existential ethics Beauvoir develops from this model of freedom implies an account of utopia which is critical of orthodox socialist philosophies of history.