Book reviews: Beauvoir and Sartre

"Questions of influence between French existentialists Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre are difficult to sort out, especially in light of their lifelong partnership, which aggravates attempts to resolve once and for all the source of origination for their many shared ideas. However, in recent years, as the issue of influence has come to the scholarly arena with striking persistence, much progress has been made by those determined to bring clarity to the matter. Most notable among these efforts is perhaps the recent collection of essays edited by Christine Daigle and Jacob Golomb, Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of Influence. In the 14 contributions to this collection, which are widely differing in approach and emphasis, we find a common theme developing out of the whole: Beauvoir and Sartre, both independently and together, have offered to contemporary thought a unique, even if incomplete conception of an existential ethics." —Philosophical Forum

"As a whole, this is a solid, philosophically rich and challenging collection of essays. All of them contribute something to a greater understanding of the complexity of intellectual influence." —Sartre Studies International