In her splendid introduction to this new edition, Judith Thurman notes that Blanche Knopf, wife of Beauvoir’s American publisher, heard about the book on a scouting trip to France and was under the impression that it was a highbrow sex manual. Knopf asked for a reader’s report from a retired zoologist, Howard M. Parshley, who was then commissioned to do the translation. Knopf’s husband urged Parshley to condense it significantly, noting that Beauvoir seemed to suffer from “verbal diarrhea.” Parshley complied, providing the necessary Imodium by cutting 15 percent of the original 972 pages. And so it was this truncated text, translated by a scientist with a college undergraduate’s knowledge of French, that ushered two generations of women into the universe of feminist thought, inspiring pivotal later books like Betty Friedan’s “Feminine Mystique” and Kate Millett’s “Sexual Politics.”

via Book Review Preview – Book Review – The Second Sex – By Simone de Beauvoir – NYTimes.com.

The rest

Philosophy Now is a popular magazine aimed at the general educated public, though also widely read by philosophy students and academics. Articles should therefore be lively, legantly-written and comprehensible to beginners in philosophy. In fact, articles should preferably be vetted for accessibility by an intelligent non-philosopher before being sent in for consideration. They should be between 1,000 and 3,500 words long.

We would need finished articles by the end of June but would prefer to hear in advance from anyone interested in contributing.

The issue editor will be my colleague Dr Anja Steinbauer, and she will be assessing all contributions to decide on publication. She is keen to focus mainly on de Beauvoir as a philosopher rather than as a literary figure.

We’d like to publish an introductory article on de Beauvoir’s philosophy as well as 3 – 4 pieces on specific aspects of her thought. Obviously we’d like to publish something about “The Second Sex”, either in the intro article or as one of the stand-alone pieces. Ideally we’d like to have a whole article devoted to “The Ethics of Ambiguity”. We welcome any good suggestions for other articles on de Beauvoir as well.

We would also welcome any brief, colourful de Beauvoir annecdotes or stories!

Best wishes,
Rick Lewis

Editor, Philosophy Now

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REPRESENTATION AND POIESIS: THE IMAGINATION IN THE LATER HEIDEGGER — John W M Krummel
           
HEIDEGGER'S ETYMOLOGICAL METHOD: DISCOVERING BEING BY RECOVERING THE RICHNESS OF THE WORD — Matthew King

THOUGHTS IN POTENTIALITY: PROVISIONAL REFLECTIONS ON AGAMBEN'S UNDERSTANDING OF POTENTIALITY AND ITS RELEVANCE FOR THEOLOGY AND POLITICS — Alberto Bertozzi.       

A CRITIQUE OF SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR'S EXISTENTIAL ETHICS — Matthew Braddock

TWO NOTIONS OF OBJECTIFICATION — Iddo Landau.

COMMITTED PERCEPTION: MERLEAU-PONTY, CARROLL, AND IRANIAN CINEMA — Farhang Erfani

ON GIVING HEGEL HIS DUE: THE "END OF HISTORY" AND THE HEGELIAN ROOTS OF POSTMODERN THOUGHT — Jere O'Neill Surber

INNOCENCE, PERVERSION, AND ABU GHRAIB — Kelly Oliver

"OURS IS NOT A TERRIBLE SITUATION" — Alain Badiou, Simon Critchley

From the publisher:

The Universal proposes a radically new philosophical system that moves from ontology to ethics. Drawing on the work of De Beauvoir, Sartre, and Le Doeuff, among others, and addressing a range of topics from the Asian sex trade to late capitalism, quantum gravity, and Merleau-Ponty’s views on cinema, Dorothea Olkowski stretches the mathematical, political, epistemological, and aesthetic limits of continental philosophy and introduces a new perspective on political structures.

Straddling a course between formalism and conventionalism, Olkowski develops the concept of an ontological unconscious that arises from our “sensible” relation to the world-the information we absorb and emit that affects our encounters with the environment and others. In this “realm of the senses,” or the field of vulnerability defined by our experience with pleasure and pain, Olkowski is able to rethink the space-time relations put forth by Irigaray’s notion of the “interval,” Bergson’s “recollection,” Merleau-Ponty’s idea of the “flesh,” and Deleuze’s “plane of immanence.”

This aesthetic sense is shared by all humankind and nonhuman entities in the organic and inorganic world. The sensible universal can be applied to categories of pure and practical reason; experiential binaries of male-female and subject-object; and issues of autonomy, moral laws, and the regulation of perception.

About the Author: Dorothea Olkowski is professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Her publications include Gilles Deleuze and the Ruin of Representation and, with Constantin Boundas, Gilles Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy. She has also edited books on Merleau-Ponty and on French feminism.

Since her death in 1986 and the publication of her letters and diaries in 1990, interest in the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir has never been greater. In this engaging and timely volume, Margaret A. Simons and an international group of philosophers present 16 essays that reveal Beauvoir as one of the century's most important and influential thinkers. As they set Beauvoir's work into dialogue with Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Foucault, Levinas, and others, these essays consider questions such as Beauvoir's philosophical relationship with Sartre; her ethic of the erotic; her views on marriage, motherhood, and female friendship; and her interpretations of oppression and liberation. This book discusses the full range of Beauvoir's work, including The Second Sex, her unpublished diaries, autobiographical writings, novels, and philosophical essays, and broadens the scope and interpretive context of her unique philosophy.

Contributors are Nancy Bauer, Debra Bergoffen, Suzanne Laba Cataldi, Edward Fullbrook, Eva Gothlin, Sara Heinämaa, Laura Hengehold, Stacy Keltner, Michèle Le Doeuff, Ann Murphy, Shannon M. Mussett, Margaret A. Simons, Ursula Tidd, Andrea Veltman, Karen Vintges, Julie Ward, Gail Weiss.