A Dangerous Liaison: A Revelatory New Biography of Simone Debeauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre

By the end of this book, I am unable to understand why Carole Seymour-Jones can say that she still respects De Beauvoir and Sartre. Of course, I do not believe that philosophers and intellectuals (hereafter P & I) are necessarily an elite group to whom we should look for guidance. The sordid lives of the like of DeBeauvoir, Sartre, Norman Mailer, etc., only confirm my skepticism. De Beauvoir and Sartre were very famous, but so are Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and I respect the latter to the extent that they do good works. I am inclined to think that actually De Beauvoir, via her book The Second Sex is more important to society at large than Sartre. Otherwise, I wonder whether most P & I really affect our lives. Certainly Rousseau had an enormous effect on his times, and John Locke and Edmund Burke affected the political structure of the United States. The rediscovery of Greek philosophy in toto moved Western culture towards rationalism, but it was a mixed bag: for several centuries, Plato and Aristotle were simply a new orthodoxy that could not be questioned. To say that Sartre, or anyone else, influenced other P & I is to tell me that someone had a great influence on styles of skate boarding, a sport I don't follow or participate it. I don't mean to be negative, either to P & I or skateboarders, they are entitled to their subcultures, I just don't feel obliged to reverence them. So having warned the reader of my jaded perspective, I began this book which focuses on more on the lives than the works of De Beauvoir and Sartre (here after dB & S). The works are not neglected, but they are used more as insight into their interior lives, and roman à clef pieces that presented in coded form thoughts and events that dB & S did not care to admit to outright. Carole Seymour-Jones (hereafter CSJ) finds dB & S frequently lacking in moral fiber, exploitive and hypocritical. The lifelong pact between the two had ugly consequences, often for other people. The pair were extremely fond of seducing their under-age students. Not for the first time, De Beauvoir is considered to have been something of a procuress for Sartre, although CSJ tells us that she also enjoyed the students, both male and female, for herself. Apparently, the sexual relationship between db & S didn't last for long, and De Beauvoir eased the resulting tensions by finding other sexual partners for Sartre. Many of the girls turned out to be rather hapless women, and Sartre (to give him that much credit), did support them. One wonders, therefore, whether dB & S destroyed these young creatures, or whether they found the already helpless to be easier targets. Sartre preferred virgins; apparently rather disinterested in sex per se, he viewed it as an exertion of power and a bolstering of ego. One of the odd, hypocritical results was that while these people claimed to believe in free love, the polyamorous throng was in fact roiled by jealousy and revenge. I