Simone de Beauvoir Her Life and Philosophy

marks all right well believe it or not through pure coincidence tonight is in fact uh the 101st birthday of Simone de Beauvoir so it seems to me to be quite fitting that we're doing her this evening I need to get one of those little Flyers thank you okay this I've had a hard time I do with all of them but particularly with Simone uh to Buffalo she is a most impressive human being a very impressive woman but just unbelievable and the just a sketch of her education so I gave a lot on her education so I wasn't sure what to cut but if you take a look at what she had done and notice this is by the time she is 21 when this little sketch wraps up so she got her um Baccalaureate in mathematics and philosophy in 1925. um then she got certificates in French literature in Latin and then began her study of philosophy and she studied philosophy at the sore bone which is sort of a third rate University in France now guess where I'm the finest stunt educational institutions in the world I mean the cervonis is all world all the time um the war passes exams for a history of philosophy General philosophy Greek and logic and then ethics sociology and psychology she writes her the equivalent of a dissertation on leibniz and then begins studying for the oral exams um and and she graduates at the age of chance and all that by the time she's 21. um and she takes second place in the oral exams amongst everybody who's taking them that includes people like Marilu Ponte Jean nizan and Jean Paul sart so we're talking world-class competition um even though she had never gone to the special school that you go to to prepare for the exam she just sort of sat in on lectures you know and crammed on the weekends uh and and one reason sharp did so he failed the first time he took the exam he took first the second time but one reason he did so well the second time through is because he was studying with her right so it turns out that was a and he's four or five years older I forget now I think five years older uh has been at the special school to prepare for ...