Thinkers Timeline

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was a French philosopher, novelist, and feminist thinker. She was born in Paris and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, where she came second in the national philosophy examination, beaten only by Jean-Paul Sartre, who became her lifelong intellectual partner and companion. She spent most of her adult life in Paris, writing philosophy, fiction, essays, and memoirs. Her most important philosophical work is The Second Sex, published in 1949, which is one of the founding texts of modern feminist philosophy. In it she argued that women are not born inferior but are made to be subordinate through social processes, cultural norms, and internalised beliefs. She was a committed political activist throughout her life, supporting Algerian independence, signing a petition supporting the right to abortion in France at a time when this was dangerous to do, and consistently speaking out on behalf of those without power. She lived by her philosophy: her own life, including her refusal to marry and her insistence on her independence as a thinker, was a demonstration of what she argued was possible.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a French philosopher, political activist, and mystic. She was born in Paris into a secular Jewish family of considerable intellectual distinction — her brother André became one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century. She was educated at the École Normale Supérieure, where she studied alongside Simone de Beauvoir, graduating first in her class. She taught philosophy in several provincial schools but was also committed to a different kind of knowing: she worked for a year in a Renault car factory to experience industrial labour from the inside, went to the front during the Spanish Civil War, and worked as an agricultural labourer. She developed a profound mystical Christian spirituality while remaining outside the institutional church. She died in 1943 at the age of thirty-four in England, where she had gone to work for the Free French government in exile. The immediate cause of her death was tuberculosis, but she had refused to eat more than the ration allowed to people in occupied France. She left behind an extraordinary body of writing, much of it published posthumously, covering philosophy, theology, political theory, labour, affliction, and attention.

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher and historian. He was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. He was born on 15 October 1926 in Poitiers, France, into a middle-class family. His father was a surgeon. He was expected to follow his father into medicine but chose philosophy instead. This caused serious tension at home. As a young man, he struggled with depression and attempted suicide at least once while a student. He studied at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure in Paris in the late 1940s, where his classmates included future major thinkers like Louis Althusser. After university, he worked in Sweden, Poland, Germany, and Tunisia before returning to France. He completed his doctorate in 1961. The thesis, published as Madness and Civilization, was the first of his major books. He held teaching positions at several French universities and in 1970 was elected to the Collège de France, the most prestigious academic institution in France. His yearly lectures there, now published in full, drew large audiences. He wrote a series of major books including The Order of Things (1966), Discipline and Punish (1975), and the three volumes of The History of Sexuality (1976-1984). He was openly gay in a time when this was still unusual for a public intellectual. He was politically active, involved in campaigns around prison reform, gay rights, and opposition to French immigration policy. He died of AIDS on 25 June 1984 in Paris, aged 57. He was one of the first major public figures to die of the disease.

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher. He is best known for a way of reading texts called deconstruction. He was born on 15 July 1930 in El-Biar, a small town near Algiers, in what was then French Algeria. His family was Sephardic Jewish. They had lived in Algeria for many generations. French was the language spoken at home. In 1942, when Derrida was twelve, his life changed. The Vichy government in France had passed anti-Jewish laws. These laws reached Algeria too. On the first day of school that year, he was told he could not come back. He was sent away because he was Jewish. He did not attend school for a whole year. He later said this moment marked him for life. After the war, he returned to school. He read hungrily. He discovered Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Sartre. In 1949 he moved to Paris. After two tries, he got into the École Normale Supérieure in 1952. This is France's top university for philosophy. He met great teachers and students there. He also met his future wife, Marguerite. He published his first major books in 1967. There were three of them in one year: Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena. These books made him famous, first in France and then around the world. He taught in Paris and at many universities in the United States. He wrote more than forty books in total. He died on 9 October 2004 of pancreatic cancer, aged 74.