For de Beauvoir, as for her partner Jean-Paul Sartre, the "ethical imperative to create our own life's meaning," precedes any pre-existing meaning to which we might attach ourselves, and which might lead us to deny freedom to others. "A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom," she wrote, "must be denied." We might think of such a statement in terms of Karl Popper's paradox of intolerance, but the idea led de Beauvoir in a different direction-away from the liberalism Popper defended and in a more radical philosophical direction.