Marie de Gournay and Simone de Beauvoir: notes about memory and history

Abstract

The practice of evoking the names of women, mythical or real characters, in philosophical discourses that deal with female emancipation serves two main purposes: i. to rescue the memory of women, with the purpose of reconstructing the history of philosophy and refuting the arguments unfavorable to women; ii. to exemplify the concepts discussed in the text with the action or thought of other women, many of them forgotten in the history of philosophy. The study of similarities and differences in the way which women's names are mobilized produces new reflections on memory and the history of philosophy. This article investigates these issues in two texts, one from the 17th century, Égalité des hommes et des femmes, written by Marie de Gournay; and the other from the 20th century, the chapter entitled History of the work The second sex of Simone de Beauvoir.