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I first encountered the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in college and, like many others, found myself enthralled with philosophical work that emphasized the significance of everyday life and stressed how personal freedom and responsibility are always on the line. Further, even though I only understood small sections of Sartre's Being and Nothingness, I was glad to find his ideas expressed in thought-provoking plays and novels such as No Exit and Nausea. In turn, these works encouraged me to study the work of his colleagues--Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus.
Years later a friend recomended that I read Hazel Rowley's Tete-a-Tete, a biography that tracks the origin and development of the relationship between Sartre and de Beauvior. I'm glad that I took his advice, for I took much away from the book.
I learned of the events and people that shaped the development of Sartre's ideas and, more importantly, discovered that he and de-Beauvoir continually read and critiqued each other's work and otherwise encouraged one another to ruthlessly pursue the truth. This relationship was grounded in a pact to live life freely by questioning social conventions as well as the personal excuses that infringe upon one's choices. It is a joy to see how these two remained committed to this cause as they graduate from college, get published, become famous, develop political affiliations, and so on.
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Second, I learned of the intricacies of the Sartre-de Beauvoir relationship. They decide that their relationship is authentic; however, in order to avoid limiting one another's freedom, they decide to have "contingent" relationships with others and to remain open and honest with each other about them. The reader learns of Sartre's desire to seduce young women and realizes that there is a pattern at work: seduction often leads to financial and emotional dependence. Rowley shows that these early relationships devastated de Beauvoir, for she found herself competing with others for Sartre's attention.
This difficulty highlights an important problem for Existentialist ethics. Existentialism holds that human beings are free beings that can make choices, determine the course of their lives and often shirk this responsibility by making excuses for their inability to do so. However, as the Sartre-de Beauvoir relationship shows, the problem is that fully developing one's freedom often entails limiting that of others. Of course, de Beauvoir accepted Sartre's conditions and met them until his death; however, this meant that she had to give up the hope of having him to herself. This problem becomes clearer when we consider the plight of Sartre's dependents: they are awed by his fame and influence, they learn of one another (to one degree or another), they are jealous of de Beauvior, and they are temporarily placated by the lies he tells concerning his time spent with the other women. Indeed, Sartre has pursued his freedom, but in doing so has infringed upon that of others by manipulating and deceiving them. De Beauvoir is also guilty of this, for the "fiction" that she writes is based on her relationships with Sartre, friends, familiy, and lovers and in most instances she does not refrain from publicizing private information. In doing so she assumes that her agreement with Sartre to "tell each other everything" can be generalized without taking the privacy of others fully into account.
With this said, I think it is important to remember that it is hasty to dismiss Sartre's or de Beauvoir's work because of their personal shortcomings -- not only because such shortcomings should not influence our evaluation of their ideas, but also because to do so would be to ignore the gifts that these two writers gave to the art world, to academia, to politics, and so on. Indeed, Rowley leads the reader to consider the possibility of Existentialist ethics and, more specifically, to reflect on the scope of one's responsibility not only to the self, but to others.
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