How to be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment

By Skye C. Cleary

‘Being authentic is not a matter of book learning, but certain books—the best ones—can clear a way for us to live a little more honestly and fully. This is one of them. In How to Be Authentic, Skye Cleary allows Beauvoir to speak to our age and dares us, repeatedly, to become who we are.’

- John Kaag, author of Hiking with Nietzsche

What Simone de Beauvoir can teach us about how to live.

The French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir famously wrote that ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’. Her book The Second Sex went on to lay the groundwork for second-wave feminism and inspire thinkers such as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Kate Millett.

Yet it wasn’t in a gender studies class, but in a business school lecture that Skye Cleary first encountered Beauvoir. Struggling her way out of a finance job and ambivalently paired with a boyfriend sceptical of her ambition, Cleary found a wake up call in Beauvoir’s ideas: about how to live freely in a world full of chains, how to strive for authenticity and how, for women, to live is to rebel. After a decisive pivot, Cleary decided to devote her career to exploring – and living a life inspired by - Beauvoir.

In How to be Authentic, Cleary reveals how Beauvoir’s thought can help us all become more attuned to living purposefully, thoughtfully, and with vitality. Drawing on her own experiences as well as the ideas of other existentially rebellious women thinkers, Cleary explains – in chapters on happiness, friendship and parenting, among others – why Beauvoir’s philosophy remains such a compelling way to think about how to live and love.

Existential philosophy emerged out of a postwar moment of despair and loss of meaning, and we live in similarly troubled – and seemingly unprecedented – times. How to be Authentic ultimately offers a guide to help us navigate the absurdity of being in the world today.