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

"Cleary's How to Be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment explores Simone de Beauvoir's ideas of existential authenticity and applies them to life today...The book sits at the intersection of biography, philosophy, and self-help, yet it transcends all three...Cleary successfully fuses philosophical analysis, personal insight, and cultural commentary...Cleary's blend of contemporary, personal, and philosophical analysis parallels much of Beauvoir's own work...Both works center lived experience, including aging, parenting, and marriage...Cleary integrates race and racism into her analysis throughout the book...She quotes, among others, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, and Koa Beck...Some of these women critiqued Beauvoir's white feminism...Cleary's How to Be Authentic is fresh, new, and prescient...She explores the COVID-19 pandemic, including vaccinations, hashtag activism, the murder of George Floyd and the global response, social media generally, and modern workplace struggles, all through the lens of Beauvoir's philosophy."

"Contrary to its popular characterization, existentialism has never been a philosophy of darkness and despair...Its preoccupation with death is better understood as the background that enables a passionate embrace of life...As in her previous books Existentialism and Romantic Love and How To Live a Good Life, philosopher Cleary investigates existentialism as part of a long tradition of individual empowerment...Centered around the life and writings of Beauvoir, Cleary's latest offers life advice so practical that at times it can be difficult to tell the philosophical from the common-sensical...What Cleary and Beauvoir ask us to do is, first, acknowledge facticity—that is, the givens of our life (where and when we were born, and so on)—and, second, exercise our freedom to take responsibility for everything else: who we are and what we do...The challenges lie in the application of this framework...Some of the most moving passages in the book involve the author assessing her own life in these terms.e to me, or I'll forget important points, or I'll just sound stupid...How refreshing to read a philosopher who achieves such vulnerability...Critical readers may object to Cleary's overly broad conception of facticity and her superhero-strong sense of agency, but if they are wise, they will note these objections and then proceed to the business of taking good advice where they find it...An informative book that inspires readers toward their authentic selves."

"The ideas of French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir ground the advice in this thoughtful guide by philosopher Cleary...To be authentic as de Beauvoir understood it, Cleary suggests, one must 'create our essence through our choices' and think critically about 'mystifications,' or the common cultural narratives that shape how people view and interpret the world...Cleary updates de Beauvoir's critique of instant gratification for the digital era, lambasting 'fast fashion, slot machines, [and] social media feeds' for providing fleeting satisfaction that leads to enduring discontentment, and she urges readers to instead 'take control of our own projects so that we can be free to create our own happiness'...References to Lizzo and The Good Place help make de Beauvoir's jargon-heavy philosophy accessible to lay readers, but some of Cleary's colloquialisms might elicit some groans...This lucid introduction to de Beauvoir and existentialism has some worthwhile insights."