A characteristic of Beauvoir's oeuvre is the way her philosophy diffuses throughout her many works, to the extent that it can be hard to point to neatly formed theories on specific topics, particularly in terms of aesthetic experience. Michèle Le Doeuff regarded Beauvoir's philosophy as being ‘tremendously well-hidden’ and asks ‘what definition of philosophy’ we should apply when reading Beauvoir's work, especially as Beauvoir saw herself more as a writer than a philosopher (Le Doeuff 2007: 139). Margaret Simons addresses Beauvoir's own misrepresentation of her philosophical innovation, identifying her self-censure beginning in her first biography, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (2005). When comparing the posthumously published Wartime Diary (2009) and Letters to Sartre (1991) to earlier works, a different Beauvoir emerges – a highly original philosophical thinker with a complex sexuality (Simons 2009: 3). There are a few ways to situate these indeterminacies and fluidities in Beauvoir's work. Firstly, to acknowledge that Beauvoir's style of philosophy is dispersed across her writings, often changing its voice, recognising the fluid and evolving character of her thinking; and secondly, to recognise that Beauvoir's philosophy is precluded from disciplinary recognition as a consequence of epistemic sexism, which indirectly highlights the importance of situation both as a phenomenological concept but also as a determinism of philosophy itself.

As one reads through Beauvoir's enormous catalogue of writing, it becomes abundantly clear that her ideas regarding aesthetic experience received different considerations in various forms, housed in different literary modes of writing, especially her novels. Her re-evaluations of previously held philosophical notions and political positions are often highly emotive (particularly in her autobiographies and letters) and she revisited concepts in later works that indicate how her thoughts on aesthetic experience were constantly evolving. It is clear that Beauvoir's own philosophies embraced a certain kind of ambiguity within them.

For example, The Ethics of Ambiguity is rightly lauded as a work that puts forward a theory of existentialist ethics based on Beauvoir's philosophy of ambiguity but it is not often discussed as an early philosophy on existentialist aesthetics, even though the ‘writer-artist’ is fundamental to Beauvoir's argument on how one faces and assumes responsibility for an ethical freedom. In fact, her critique of the aesthetic attitude not only sketches out an alternative phenomenological approach regarding aesthetic experience, but it also forms the basis for her notion of reciprocal recognition, the importance of relationship with others and the role emotion plays in facilitating such connections.