Genre and void: looking back at Sartre and Beauvoir

Developing a reading of some of Beauvoir's and Sartre's most influential writings in philosophy, Max Deutscher explores contemporary philosophy in the light of the phenomenological tradition within which "Being and Nothingness" and "The Second Sex" occurred as striking events operating on the border of the modern and the post-modern. Deutscher traces the shifts of genre that produce their gendered philosophies, and responds in terms of contemporary experience to the mood and the arguments of their works. Drawing upon the writings of two contemporary critics in particular - Michele Le DÅuff and Luce Irigaray - Deutscher reworks this part of philosophy's history in order to advance thinking in contemporary philosophy, generate renewed philosophical reflection on consciousness, freedom and one's relation to others, and to return a look still cast in our direction from an earlier time.