Not many works deal with the philosophical import of Beauvoir’s autobiographical work. We shall examine the link, specific to existentialism, which Beauvoir establishes between life and philosophy under three headings : as a documentary source to understand her essays and the original philosophical stand she takes therein, as a manifestation of the reciprocal relationship between philosophy and life, on the practical and epistemic planes, at last as a means to compensate for the flaws inherent in philosophy when it expresses itself in the third person – only a literary evidence is able to promote a singular universal end owed with the capacity to reveal, for instance, the tension between situation and freedom.