Beauvoir's first philosophical essay, written under the Occupation and published a few months after the Liberation — the shorter, earlier statement of the argument The Ethics of Ambiguity would work out at book length three years later.
Simone de Beauvoir's Pyrrhus et Cinéas (1944) is her first published work of pure philosophy. Under a hundred pages, structured in two parts, it uses the ancient exchange between King Pyrrhus and his adviser Cineas — which the reader knows from Plutarch — to ask why anyone should begin a project when every goal leads to another question: what next? Beauvoir's answer works out an ethics grounded in concrete projects and other people, not in a final resting-place. The essay was written under the Occupation and published by Gallimard in September 1944, and it is the earliest of the philosophical writings that would culminate in The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) and The Second Sex (1949). It is short, it is unusually direct, and it establishes the argument the whole rest of Beauvoir's career worked out.
Beauvoir wrote Pyrrhus et Cinéas between the spring and autumn of 1943, alongside her novel The Blood of Others. Gallimard published it in September 1944, the first Beauvoir title released after the Liberation. It was her first commercial success — the small print run sold out within weeks — and it was widely reviewed as evidence that a distinct philosophical voice was emerging alongside Sartre's. Marybeth Timmermann's English translation appeared in the University of Illinois Press collection Philosophical Writings (Simone de Beauvoir Series, 2004), which is the standard English edition. There is no widely-available standalone English printing.
The essay opens on the anecdote it takes its title from — Cineas the adviser asking his conqueror-king Pyrrhus what he will do after Rome, after Carthage, after every named conquest, until Pyrrhus finally says he will rest. 'And why can't we rest now?' Cineas replies. The essay is Beauvoir's answer to Cineas: because rest, when it is achieved as the endpoint of a project, is not the same thing as the passive rest one already has before beginning. Human beings are the kind of being for whom the difference matters, and any ethics that does not begin from that fact will end in either the endless expansion of Pyrrhus (which cannot rest) or the passive retreat of Cineas (which cannot begin).
The essay is the first place Beauvoir works out the specific problem that would occupy the rest of her career: how does one act in a world already occupied by other free human beings, without either reducing them to tools of one's project or being reduced to the tool of theirs? The argument is not yet complete — she would spend The Ethics of Ambiguity three years later filling out the answer — but the shape of it is here. Every project needs other people; other people cannot legitimately be reduced to tools of that project; the affirmation of others' freedom is what makes one's own freedom worth having. Pyrrhus et Cinéas is a hundred-page compression of the philosophical work of the next thirty years.
Part I, 'Every man is bounded,' takes up the anecdote and works out its philosophical implications. A human being is a project-making creature; without a project there is no life, only vegetation. But every project reaches a limit — the reach of one's own body, the fact of other people, the fact of mortality. The Cineas position (why begin at all if we are bounded?) is one Beauvoir refuses.
Part II, 'Every man is a beginning,' works the other side. Since every project reaches its limit in other people, and since a project's continuation past one's own life depends on those other people, ethics is not what one owes an abstract humanity but what one gives the specific other people through whom one's project will continue.
The essay closes with the argument that other people's freedom is the condition of one's own — a claim The Ethics of Ambiguity would work out in three parts three years later, and The Second Sex would apply to the specific situation of women five years after that.
In passages discussed and quoted by Karen Zoppa, Beauvoir distinguishes reaching an end from reaching a final state beyond all further activity. Pyrrhus's return would not erase what his journey meant, because conquest, not simply coming home, is the purpose he has chosen. The exchange therefore tests a misleading measure of action: the demand that a project justify itself by ending the need for projects altogether. This answers the charge of futility without, by itself, settling whether the particular project is ethically defensible.
The garden is not simply a refuge whose boundaries have already been settled. In the passages quoted by Zoppa, Beauvoir connects what belongs to a person with that person's active engagement, then uses the Good Samaritan to describe neighborliness as something made through action. Read together, these examples shift the emphasis from possessing a private space to establishing a relationship with the world. The gardener illustration can thus suggest a chosen commitment rather than withdrawal: the meaningful attachment lies in tending and responding, not merely in claiming a plot.
It is the concise first statement of Beauvoir's ethics of projects, limits, and other people.
Read it immediately before The Ethics of Ambiguity, which expands the argument and addresses oppression directly.
Beauvoir's first philosophical essay, published in 1944 — the shorter, earlier statement of the argument about individual freedom and the other person that The Ethics of Ambiguity would work out at book length three years later.
The Greek king (319–272 BCE) whose costly Italian invasions of the 280s BCE gave English the phrase 'Pyrrhic victory.' In Beauvoir's essay, he is the figure who cannot answer Cineas's question about what he will do after each planned conquest — the personification of a life organised as an endless sequence of projects that never arrives at rest.
The Greek orator and diplomat (c. 4th century BCE) who served as Pyrrhus's chief adviser. In the Plutarch anecdote, he asks the king what he will do after each conquest, and finally — when Pyrrhus says he will rest — why he cannot rest now. In Beauvoir's essay the question is what her argument works out.
The Greek biographer and essayist (c. 46–c. 119 CE) whose Life of Pyrrhus preserves the exchange the essay is built on. Beauvoir does not name him in the essay text but takes the anecdote from him.
Spring–Autumn 1943
Beauvoir writes Pyrrhus et Cinéas in occupied Paris, alongside her novel The Blood of Others.
September 1944
Gallimard publishes Pyrrhus et Cinéas in Paris, one month after the Liberation.
1947
The Ethics of Ambiguity, the fuller statement of the argument, is published by Gallimard.
1949
The Second Sex applies the same ethics to the situation of women.
2004
Marybeth Timmermann's English translation appears in Philosophical Writings (University of Illinois Press), the standard English edition.
Modern editions
Éditions Gallimard reprint Pyrrhus et Cinéas in the Folio essais paperback series.
Beauvoir's 1947 essay giving existentialism the ethics Sartre never got around to writing — the philosophical statement of the argument She Came to Stay had put in a novel and The Second Sex would put in a thousand pages two years later.
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Beauvoir's first novel: an established Parisian couple's promise of freedom is tested — and shattered — by the younger woman they invite into their lives.
Read our takeIt is Beauvoir's first published philosophical essay — a hundred-page argument taking off from the Plutarch anecdote of King Pyrrhus and his adviser Cineas. Cineas asks Pyrrhus what he will do after each planned conquest, and finally, when Pyrrhus says he will rest, why he cannot rest now. Beauvoir's answer is that rest achieved at the end of a project is not the same as passive rest before it, and that human beings are the kind of creature for whom the difference matters. The essay establishes the ethics she would work out at length in The Ethics of Ambiguity three years later.
Gallimard published Pyrrhus et Cinéas in Paris in September 1944, one month after the Liberation. It was the first Beauvoir title released after the Occupation. Marybeth Timmermann's English translation appeared in the University of Illinois Press collection Philosophical Writings in 2004.
King Pyrrhus of Epirus (319–272 BCE), whose invasions of Italy in the 280s BCE gave English the phrase 'Pyrrhic victory,' and his adviser Cineas of Thessaly. The anecdote is preserved in Plutarch's Life of Pyrrhus and has Cineas questioning the king about what he will do after each proposed conquest. Beauvoir uses the anecdote as a hinge for her argument, not as a historical study.
Pyrrhus and Cineas (1944) is the shorter, earlier statement of the argument The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) will develop across three parts and a hundred and sixty pages. The essential claim is the same: individual freedom depends on the freedom of others, and any ethics that ignores this either collapses into endless expansion (Pyrrhus) or passive retreat (Cineas). The Ethics of Ambiguity adds the political section — the analysis of oppression, of when violence is justified, of the specific figures who evade freedom — that Pyrrhus and Cineas leaves out.
Its 1944 publication came in the first weeks after the Liberation, when readers were hungry for anything new from writers who had been silent under Vichy. It was widely reviewed, sold out its small print run quickly, and was cited as evidence that Beauvoir was doing original philosophical work alongside her partner Sartre. She was thirty-six.
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View authorThe sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Pyrrhus and Cineas, its publication, and its place in literary history.
Scholarly discussion with primary quotations in chapter 5, pp. 160–163. Both additions identify this mediation; no new full-essay collation is claimed.
Publisher record used to verify the 2005 Philosophical Writings hardcover edition, ISBN, and collection details.
Scholarly chapter record used to verify Marybeth Timmermann's English translation and the essay's placement in Philosophical Writings.
Used to place Pyrrhus and Cineas within Simone de Beauvoir's published work and verify its bibliographic context.
Used for independent biographical, archival, or historical context surrounding Simone de Beauvoir's career and the period in which Pyrrhus and Cineas appeared.
Used to cross-check authorship, chronology, and the work's place in Simone de Beauvoir's wider catalogue.
Used to verify Simone de Beauvoir's bibliography and place Pyrrhus and Cineas within the broader chronology of Simone de Beauvoir's career.
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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