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Denemeler - Pyrrhus ile Cineas
Simone de Beauvoir okurlarımızın çok yakından tanıdığı ve sevdiği dünyaca ünlü bir yazar. "Kadın", "Konuk Kız", "Bir Genç Kızın Anıları" ve "Kadınlığımın Hikayesi" kitaplarından sonra şimdi de yazarın çok tanınmış bir başka eserini yayımlıyoruz. "Denemeler" Beauvoir'in felsefe ile edebiyatı başarıyla kaynaştıran ve övgüyle karşılanan bir eseridir. İçinde kişioğlunun durumu, başkalarıyla olan ilişkileri, eyleminin sınırları, varoluşunun koşulları ile özgürlük, bağlanma, mutluluk, tanrı, ahlak, çevre, sonsuzluk, insanlık, v.b. sorunlar ele alınmıştır.
(Tanıtım Yazısından)
(Tanıtım Yazısından)
139 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1944
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622 people want to read
About the author
Simone de Beauvoir
424 books11.6k followersWorks of Simone de Beauvoir, French writer, existentialist, and feminist, include
The Second Sex
in 1949 and
The Coming of Age
, a study in 1970 of views of different cultures on the old.
Simone de Beauvoir, an author and philosopher, wrote novels, monographs, political and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. People now best know She Came to Stay and The Mandarins , her metaphysical novels. Her treatise, a foundational contemporary tract, of 1949 detailed analysis of oppression of women.
Simone de Beauvoir, an author and philosopher, wrote novels, monographs, political and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. People now best know She Came to Stay and The Mandarins , her metaphysical novels. Her treatise, a foundational contemporary tract, of 1949 detailed analysis of oppression of women.
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September 8, 2014[This book has been translated into English with the title Pyrrhus and Cineas.]
In his Life of Pyrrhus, Plutarch tells us how Pyrrhus' advisor, Cineas, in order to dissuade him from an overly ambitious plan (the conquest of Italy), asked Pyrrhus, "Then what will you do?" "Then I will take Sicily." "And then?" "Recover Macedonia." "And then?" Then Pyrrhus smiled upon him and said: "We shall be much at ease, and we'll drink great flagons of wine, my good man, every day, and we'll gladden one another's hearts with confidential talks." Cineas responded, "Then what stands in our way now if we want to drink flagons of wine and while away the time with one another? Surely this privilege is ours already, and we have at hand, without taking any trouble, those things to which we hope to attain by bloodshed and great toils and perils, after doing much harm to others and suffering much ourselves."
Pyrrhus was troubled, but not dissuaded by this argument. It seems that Plutarch believed that Cineas was the wiser man here. In her first philosophical publication, Pyrrhus et Cinéas (1944), Simone de Beauvoir explains that from the then newly minted standpoint of French Existentialism (F.E.) Pyrrhus was the wiser - he just lacked imagination.
Of course, that would be a conclusion of fairly limited import, except that de Beauvoir emphasizes that (1) humankind's situation requires each individual to choose freely his/her values, goals and projects and to carry them out (the alternatives are very bad from the point of view of F.E. - some background to F.E. is provided in my recent review of de Beauvoir's Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté ), that therefore, at every completed step, the question "And then?" poses itself; Cineas' suggestion that "we may as well pack it in now and take it easy" is existential anathema. Indeed, de Beauvoir takes the matter further and explains why, in fact, (2) one can take Cineas' question as a query about the limits of Man and his projects. Where do we draw the line? When do we decide we have done enough and/or are enough?(*)
Lest you underrate the significance of these questions, consider two well known philosophical positions landing at opposite poles of the question "What are the limits of Man?" For the solipsist, his own consciousness is absolutely everything - nothing exists outside of it; everything is "his." For the stoic, nothing is "his" except his own will to make decisions; only a portion of his own interiority is "his" and all the rest lies on the other side of the line, including his own body. In other words, the question "what are the limits of Man and his projects?" is not merely a question of practicality, of contingency, of energy and fortitude - it is a philosophical question on which no consensus has been reached.
For the French Existentialists, what belongs to each human is their freedom to make choices, to formulate values, goals and projects. The project is "his" until he completes it, at which point it leaves his possession. She further writes:
Il n'existe aucun point privilégié du monde dont il puisse dire 'c'est moi' avec sécurité; il est constitutivement orienté vers autre chose que lui-même; il n'est soi que par relation avec autre chose que soi.
(There is no privileged point in the world of which he could say with certainty "It's me"; he is constitutively oriented towards something else besides himself; he isn't himself except by relation to something other than himself.)
So, in de Beauvoir's existentialist ethics that which enhances this particular kind of freedom for as many persons as possible is Good; she argues here as well as in Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté that the enhancement of others' freedom enhances one's own.
For de Beauvoir, Man is the constantly restless being, always turned towards the future, formulating goals and projects, carrying them out successfully or not, and then doing it again from that new contingent position. Coming to rest, renouncing all new goals and projects - these are betrayals of that which makes humankind humankind. Pyrrhus gets her vote, not Cineas.
As in Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté, de Beauvoir is working out ethical consequences of the metaphysical arguments Jean-Paul Sartre made in his L’Etre et le Néant (1943).(**) Metaphysics is foundation, but ethics - how does one live life, make choices, etc. in a manner that goes beyond following whim or merely conforming to the "crowd"? - is at least as important. On the side, as it were, de Beauvoir discusses various other ethical questions which I won't go into.
And on the side, as it were, I'd like to point out that this attribute of Man - that once he attains a goal, he is not long satisfied with it and soon longs for something else, and again, and again - this is recognized quite explicitly in Gautama Buddha's teachings. In Buddhism, this attribute is one of the primary sources of pain in this Vale of Tears and is to be strictly exorcised; one cannot even want Nirvana, because that wanting, that desire will block the possibility of attaining Nirvana. For de Beauvoir and Sartre, precisely this attribute is formulated positively and embraced. It is the means by which Man creates meaning and value in a world which is otherwise empty of it.
I wonder if we really have a clue what the hell Man is and what the hell his place is in the world, whatever the hell that is...OK, OK, I'll take a deep one. But it isn't going to stop me from thinking and learning and trying to understand, komme was wolle...
This first philosophical essay of de Beauvoir is significantly less jargon-laden than the later Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté and reaches out much more deliberately to the reader. Granted, there is a good deal of "throwing oneself into the future," and "transcendence" takes a bow again and again,(***) but de Beauvoir takes pains here to explain most of her points with concrete illustrations. I have a feeling she might have taken some flak for that from her peers.
(*) Of course, Cineas' intention was rhetorical, persuasive, not what de Beauvoir makes of it. But just as Camus would do in his essay on Sisyphus, de Beauvoir takes a classical story as a starting point to make an modern philosophical point.
(**) Sartre did not occupy himself much with ethics in the texts published during his lifetime, though there exists a posthumously published Cahiers pour une morale that I want to read in the near future.
(***) In F.E. every time an individual makes a decision and acts upon it to make a change in the world, "transcendence" takes place...
Rating
http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/975...
In his Life of Pyrrhus, Plutarch tells us how Pyrrhus' advisor, Cineas, in order to dissuade him from an overly ambitious plan (the conquest of Italy), asked Pyrrhus, "Then what will you do?" "Then I will take Sicily." "And then?" "Recover Macedonia." "And then?" Then Pyrrhus smiled upon him and said: "We shall be much at ease, and we'll drink great flagons of wine, my good man, every day, and we'll gladden one another's hearts with confidential talks." Cineas responded, "Then what stands in our way now if we want to drink flagons of wine and while away the time with one another? Surely this privilege is ours already, and we have at hand, without taking any trouble, those things to which we hope to attain by bloodshed and great toils and perils, after doing much harm to others and suffering much ourselves."
Pyrrhus was troubled, but not dissuaded by this argument. It seems that Plutarch believed that Cineas was the wiser man here. In her first philosophical publication, Pyrrhus et Cinéas (1944), Simone de Beauvoir explains that from the then newly minted standpoint of French Existentialism (F.E.) Pyrrhus was the wiser - he just lacked imagination.
Of course, that would be a conclusion of fairly limited import, except that de Beauvoir emphasizes that (1) humankind's situation requires each individual to choose freely his/her values, goals and projects and to carry them out (the alternatives are very bad from the point of view of F.E. - some background to F.E. is provided in my recent review of de Beauvoir's Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté ), that therefore, at every completed step, the question "And then?" poses itself; Cineas' suggestion that "we may as well pack it in now and take it easy" is existential anathema. Indeed, de Beauvoir takes the matter further and explains why, in fact, (2) one can take Cineas' question as a query about the limits of Man and his projects. Where do we draw the line? When do we decide we have done enough and/or are enough?(*)
Lest you underrate the significance of these questions, consider two well known philosophical positions landing at opposite poles of the question "What are the limits of Man?" For the solipsist, his own consciousness is absolutely everything - nothing exists outside of it; everything is "his." For the stoic, nothing is "his" except his own will to make decisions; only a portion of his own interiority is "his" and all the rest lies on the other side of the line, including his own body. In other words, the question "what are the limits of Man and his projects?" is not merely a question of practicality, of contingency, of energy and fortitude - it is a philosophical question on which no consensus has been reached.
For the French Existentialists, what belongs to each human is their freedom to make choices, to formulate values, goals and projects. The project is "his" until he completes it, at which point it leaves his possession. She further writes:
Il n'existe aucun point privilégié du monde dont il puisse dire 'c'est moi' avec sécurité; il est constitutivement orienté vers autre chose que lui-même; il n'est soi que par relation avec autre chose que soi.
(There is no privileged point in the world of which he could say with certainty "It's me"; he is constitutively oriented towards something else besides himself; he isn't himself except by relation to something other than himself.)
So, in de Beauvoir's existentialist ethics that which enhances this particular kind of freedom for as many persons as possible is Good; she argues here as well as in Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté that the enhancement of others' freedom enhances one's own.
For de Beauvoir, Man is the constantly restless being, always turned towards the future, formulating goals and projects, carrying them out successfully or not, and then doing it again from that new contingent position. Coming to rest, renouncing all new goals and projects - these are betrayals of that which makes humankind humankind. Pyrrhus gets her vote, not Cineas.
As in Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté, de Beauvoir is working out ethical consequences of the metaphysical arguments Jean-Paul Sartre made in his L’Etre et le Néant (1943).(**) Metaphysics is foundation, but ethics - how does one live life, make choices, etc. in a manner that goes beyond following whim or merely conforming to the "crowd"? - is at least as important. On the side, as it were, de Beauvoir discusses various other ethical questions which I won't go into.
And on the side, as it were, I'd like to point out that this attribute of Man - that once he attains a goal, he is not long satisfied with it and soon longs for something else, and again, and again - this is recognized quite explicitly in Gautama Buddha's teachings. In Buddhism, this attribute is one of the primary sources of pain in this Vale of Tears and is to be strictly exorcised; one cannot even want Nirvana, because that wanting, that desire will block the possibility of attaining Nirvana. For de Beauvoir and Sartre, precisely this attribute is formulated positively and embraced. It is the means by which Man creates meaning and value in a world which is otherwise empty of it.
I wonder if we really have a clue what the hell Man is and what the hell his place is in the world, whatever the hell that is...OK, OK, I'll take a deep one. But it isn't going to stop me from thinking and learning and trying to understand, komme was wolle...
This first philosophical essay of de Beauvoir is significantly less jargon-laden than the later Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté and reaches out much more deliberately to the reader. Granted, there is a good deal of "throwing oneself into the future," and "transcendence" takes a bow again and again,(***) but de Beauvoir takes pains here to explain most of her points with concrete illustrations. I have a feeling she might have taken some flak for that from her peers.
(*) Of course, Cineas' intention was rhetorical, persuasive, not what de Beauvoir makes of it. But just as Camus would do in his essay on Sisyphus, de Beauvoir takes a classical story as a starting point to make an modern philosophical point.
(**) Sartre did not occupy himself much with ethics in the texts published during his lifetime, though there exists a posthumously published Cahiers pour une morale that I want to read in the near future.
(***) In F.E. every time an individual makes a decision and acts upon it to make a change in the world, "transcendence" takes place...
Rating
http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/975...
January 28, 2019
Bókin fær fjórar stjörnur en þýðingin þrjár og hálfa fyrir smámunasemina í mér — það fór eitthvað í taugarnar á mér að "l'autre" hafi verið þýtt sem "hinn" en ekki "hið aðra" sem fangar það MIKLU betur. Nei, ég er nú að gantast. Þýðingin var mjög góð og verkið auðlesið, áhugavert og hrífandi. En við hverju öðru býst maður svo sem af Simone de Beauvoir?
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August 6, 2025Masterpieceeeeee
Read this for my research—maybe even better than EA
Read this for my research—maybe even better than EA
August 2, 2019
felsefi olarak tartışılan tüm büyük kavramlara dair kendi fikirlerini paylaşmış, oldukça etkileyici. Flaubert'e dair kendisiyle benzer düşünüyor olmamıza ayrıca çok mutlu oldum. Asım Bezirci'nin tertemiz çevirisi kitabı okumayı kolaylaştırdı.
December 10, 2013
Yazar kitapta varoluş üzerine denemeler yazmış. En ilgi çekici olan düşüncesi, insanın sürekli bir kendini aşma halinde olduğu. Bir amaç uğruna yola çıktığımızda ve o amaca ulaştığımızda, bir süre sonra başkasını düşlemeye başlarız. Bizim için gerçekleşmiş olan şey yolun sonu olmaz asla hep ilerisine gitmek isteriz. Yani inançlılara göre en büyük amaç cennete ulaşmak ise, bu tamamen bir yanılgıdır. Çünkü cennet sonsuzluğun sonu gibi bir durumdur ve insanoğlu bunu istemez. O cenneti de aşmak ister.
Bir başka örnek ise komünizmi isteyen bir devrimci isteği gerçekleştiğinde ilk başlarda belki tatmin olacaktır ama sonra başka türlüsünü istemeye başlayacaktır. Varoluş bir varış değil sürekli aşma durumudur yazara göre.
Dünyada öznel olarak değil de nesnel olarak var olabildiğimizi öne sürüyor. Başkalarıyla birlikte olabildiğimiz kadar varız diyor. Deneme türünü pek sevmesem de yazarın dili akıcıydı gayet, felsefik düşünce açısından yararlı bir kaynak.
Bir başka örnek ise komünizmi isteyen bir devrimci isteği gerçekleştiğinde ilk başlarda belki tatmin olacaktır ama sonra başka türlüsünü istemeye başlayacaktır. Varoluş bir varış değil sürekli aşma durumudur yazara göre.
Dünyada öznel olarak değil de nesnel olarak var olabildiğimizi öne sürüyor. Başkalarıyla birlikte olabildiğimiz kadar varız diyor. Deneme türünü pek sevmesem de yazarın dili akıcıydı gayet, felsefik düşünce açısından yararlı bir kaynak.
January 18, 2026
This essay sets the scene for the rest of SDB’s work (and French existentialism as a whole) quite well, all while being easily readable and creating discourse with her predecessors. The essay doesn’t posit any revolutionary ideas, but succeeds in laying the groundwork for her future projects, even with some changes to her personal doctrine.
February 18, 2024
This piece of writing is like Sisyphus but better.
April 13, 2025
Read for my ‘Simone de Beauvoir as a Phenomenologist’ class (the first of our readings) and I think it was definitely a good start to the course because she introduces a lot of the concepts she goes into further detail in in later works, like being with and before others, projects, ambiguity, etc. I really liked her section on devotion and think she does a good job of turning things that are widely accepted as ‘good’ without much scrutiny, on their heads - I can’t give it a 5/5 though because I’m not sure if I’ll like the political implications of her saying there is nothing one can do for or against another. I get what she’s saying about how we can only affect the situation of the other, not his intrinsic freedom, and in a sense, I agree, but right now I’m inclined to say that line of thinking would be too easily utilized by those who ARE seeking to inflict harm…we’ll see if she later expands upon this, though. I also grew to prefer her conception of the human condition as ambiguity, to Sartre’s conception of this condition as freedom; while we are free, this freedom is bound by our being situated amongst others (who are also free) and this is something we must navigate. Their conceptions are similar, but I’d say Beauvoir’s is more nuanced and for that, she deserves her flowers.
May 12, 2014
Bitireli uzun sure oldu ama zaman bulup degerlendirmemi yazamamistim. Okurken kesinlikle sıkılmayacaginiz, varolus uzerine fikirleri iceren kitap tadi damakta birakan lezzette...
Her seyin sonsuz oldugu dusuncesinin vurgulanisina ise bayildim... :)
Her seyin sonsuz oldugu dusuncesinin vurgulanisina ise bayildim... :)
June 5, 2021
Varlığın bir çember oluşu, her hedeften sonra başkası için yürümeye başlayışımız, inançlarımız, kendimizi kandırışımız. Güzel düşünceler, çok güzel çeviri. Maalesef deneme okumaktan pek hoşlanmayan bana çok farklı bir şey hissettirmedi.
December 26, 2018
Simone de Beauvoir, insanlığın en mühim sorunlarından biri olan; "İnsanın aşkınlık arzusu" problemini birçok açıdan ele alıyor. İnter-disipliner bir deneme dizisi olan Pyrrhus ve Cinéas, insana birçok açıdan nice çözüm yolu sunmakla kalmayıp, düşünsel manada boğulanlar için ab-ı hayat oluyor. Bu kitapla ilgili bir diğer mühim nokta da çevirisinin güzelliği. Bu yıl içerisinde okuduğum en iyi çeviri. Kitabın yazarını bilmesek Asım Bezirci kendisi yazmış dememek elde değil. Muazzam bir Türkçe ile etkileyici bir metnin simbiyozu olan bu eseri düşünsel hayatlarına capcanlı bir damar kazandırmak isteyen bütün okuyuculara tavsiye ediyorum.
August 14, 2019
Ég las þessa í íslenskri þýðingu í ritröð Lærdómsritanna. Tilvistarstefnuleg siðfræði, nokkuð feitt. Ég var með á nótunum framan af en týndi þræðinum í seinni hluta bókarinnar. Samt setur de Beuvoir kenningarnar í ferskan búning og tekur myndræn dæmi. Kannski bulla ég bara en mér finnst hugtökin sem fylgja handanveruleikanum ekki þýðast nægilega vel yfir á íslensku, samt er ekkert út á þýðingu Móeiðar að setja, textinn seytlar áfram nokkuð áreynslulaust.
August 10, 2015
Oldukça genel başlıklarla Simone'dan beklemediğim kadar hiç kadından söz etmeden "kadın'a" ithafıyla yazdığı denemeler.. Ahlak ve özgürlük sarmalında varoluşçu insan incelemesi de denilebilir. Çok genel başlıklarla fazla derine inmeden düşündürücü anektodlardı da diyebilirim.
July 21, 2025
"[...] við viljum til einskis og það er frelsið." (bls. 111)
Frábær heimspekibók sem ég mæli mikið með! Systir mín gaf mér hana og ég naut þess að lesa hana löturhægt og las margar síður aftur og aftur. Þýðing Móheiðar Hlífar er góð, skemmtilega hefðbundin og ljóðræn. Ég mun pottþétt glugga í hana af og til, til að minna mig á að: "Augnabliksupplifunin er það eina sem er til." (bls. 45) til dæmis.
Simone (Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand - svakalegt nafn maður! - ) de Beauvoir er heimspekúlína af bestu gerð: hugrökk og gáfuð. Í bókinni fjallar hún að mestu um tengsl einstaklingsins við umheiminn; umhverfið, "hinn", tímann og veruna. Að tilvera okkar réttlætist í hinum, sjálfsfórnin sé óumflýjanleg og að við séum frjáls um leið og við tökumst á við endanleika okkar. Mér finnst mikið til í þessu!
Svo er eitt sem á sérlega vel við í heiminum í dag:
"Ef það er óþarfi að gráta ókunnugan dreng, hvers vegna þá að gráta bróður sinn?" (bls. 37)
En hvað er málið með þennan titil? spyrð þú kannski. Hverjir eru Pyrrhos os Kíneas? Ég get sko sagt þér það næst þegar við hittumst! :-)
Frábær heimspekibók sem ég mæli mikið með! Systir mín gaf mér hana og ég naut þess að lesa hana löturhægt og las margar síður aftur og aftur. Þýðing Móheiðar Hlífar er góð, skemmtilega hefðbundin og ljóðræn. Ég mun pottþétt glugga í hana af og til, til að minna mig á að: "Augnabliksupplifunin er það eina sem er til." (bls. 45) til dæmis.
Simone (Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand - svakalegt nafn maður! - ) de Beauvoir er heimspekúlína af bestu gerð: hugrökk og gáfuð. Í bókinni fjallar hún að mestu um tengsl einstaklingsins við umheiminn; umhverfið, "hinn", tímann og veruna. Að tilvera okkar réttlætist í hinum, sjálfsfórnin sé óumflýjanleg og að við séum frjáls um leið og við tökumst á við endanleika okkar. Mér finnst mikið til í þessu!
Svo er eitt sem á sérlega vel við í heiminum í dag:
"Ef það er óþarfi að gráta ókunnugan dreng, hvers vegna þá að gráta bróður sinn?" (bls. 37)
En hvað er málið með þennan titil? spyrð þú kannski. Hverjir eru Pyrrhos os Kíneas? Ég get sko sagt þér það næst þegar við hittumst! :-)
January 18, 2026
I find myself rephrasing Simone on the daily, her ideas speak to me and how i think of the human conditions myself. She so intelligently explains her ideas, making it simple and yet revolutionary. What we can and cannot control, what i can and cannot do as a person, what is my freedom, existentialism is an awareness of the responsibility of creation and choice. Creating our
Stating the obvious, creating a environnement where we readers can think, alongside Simone. Seeing our own lives pan out before our eyes. The sentences are threaded with hope.
Stating the obvious, creating a environnement where we readers can think, alongside Simone. Seeing our own lives pan out before our eyes. The sentences are threaded with hope.
March 18, 2018
Premier essai à la fois incroyablement bien écrit et très accessible, Simone y explore les relations de l'être humain à son environnement, l'impact de ses actions ainsi que leur raisons premières. Comment trouver sa place dans son époque et auprès de ses pairs, voilà comment on pourrait résumer très trivialement ce livre à la fois court, extrêmement "fluide" dans son déroulé, et dense.
August 12, 2020
“The paradox of the human condition is that every end can be surpassed, and yet, the project defines the end as an end. In order to surpass an end, it must first have been projected as something that is not to be surpassed. Man has no other way of existing. It is Pyrrhus, and not Cineas, who is right. Pyrrhus leaves in order to conquer; let him conquer, then. “After that?” After that, he’ll see.”
March 9, 2023
I read many snippets of P and C, my favorites being 'The Instant' and 'Action.' I read this for my Existentialism class, and Beauvoir's writing style makes excellent sense. I hope to reread this year to enjoy the fruits of her thoughts without the painstaking labour of studying.
August 23, 2023
kitabın ikinci yarısı çok zorladı beni. bazen anladığım şey acaba anlatılan mı diye çok sorguladım. ama çok güzeldi kesinlikle. keşke ne demeye çalıştığını daha iyi kavrayabilecek felsefi düşünce yetisine sahip olabilseydim
October 13, 2020
DU LOURD !!!
April 28, 2021
Un essai existentialiste qui se rapproche de l'absurde de Camus. Je le recommande.
June 20, 2021
Özgürlük kavramı üzerine okunabilecek bir kitap. Açıkçası benim çok keyifle okuduğum, üzerine bir sürü okuma yapılabilecek, düşündürücü bir kitap oldu. Çevirisi de gayet akıcıydı.
March 8, 2022
Too much for me right now
May 2, 2022
Réflexions fascinantes, I love it.
August 13, 2022
Lecture aride et nébuleuse
March 1, 2023
"la transcendance transcendante peut être transcendée à son tour"
faut pas avoir peur des répétitions hein
faut pas avoir peur des répétitions hein
Want to read
December 29, 2023
April 23, 2024
‘dunyanin hicbi kosesi yok ki insan guvenle ben buyum diyebilsin’ 😔😔
January 18, 2026
Re-read for Beauvoir class.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews