SOURCE: "The Second Sex: From Marxism to Radical Feminism," in Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, edited by Margaret A. Simons, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995, pp. 243-62.

In the following essay, Simons explores elements of Marxist, socialist, and psychoanalytic theory in Beauvoir's feminist philosophy. According to Simons, "Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, laid the theoretical foundations for a radical feminist movement of the future and defined a feminist political philosophy of lasting importance."

Despite the acknowledgment by radical feminist theorists of the women's liberation movement in the 1960s that Simone de Beauvoir provided a model for their theorizing, The Second Sex (1949) has yet to find a secure place in the history of political philosophy. The feminist philosopher Alison Jaggar, for example, whose pioneering work defined the categories of feminist political philosophy (i.e., liberal, socialist, and radical feminism), does not include a discussion of The Second Sex in...