Pyrrhus and Cineas is Simone de Beauvoir's first philosophical essay. It was published in 1944, and in it, she makes a philosophical inquiry into the human situation by way of analogy from the story of when the king Pyrrhus was asked by his friend Cineas what his plans were after conquering his next empire. Cineas's question is a sort of infinite regress that only stops when Pyrrhus admits that after the last conquest, he will rest. Upon receiving this answer, Cineas asks why Pyrrhus does not rest now instead of going through all the trouble of conquering these other empires when the final result will be rest anyway.