Sartre, Jean-Paul

(1905-1980)

   philosopher, writer, critic

   The leading exponent of existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris to a liberal Protestant bourgeois family and was raised by his mother and grandfather, a relative of albert schweitzer. Early in his life, Sartre developed his attitudes about himself, life, and society, and his vocation as a writer (Les Mots, 1964). While attending the École normale supérieure, he questioned with several of his classmates, including paul nizan, the values, privileges, and traditions of the bourgeoisie. He taught for a time at the lycée in Le Havre then, while a resident student at the French Institute in Berlin (1933-34), he developed his philosophy, combining the phenomenology of German philosopher Edmund Husserl, the metaphysics of Hegel and Heidegger, and the social theory of Marx into the single view of existentialism. His first philosophical writings (L'Imagination, 1936; Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions, 1939) made these thinkers, especially Heidegger, better known in France. During the World War ii, Sartre served in the military and was captured, then released. He taught for a while and served in the resistance. At that time, his major philosophic work, L'Être et le Néant (Being and Nothingness), was published (1943). He also wrote a play, Huis clos (1944), in which he states "Hell is others," affirming the existentialist view presented in earlier works. He continued to develop his philosophy in such works as L'existentialisme est un humanisme (1946). Sartre's writing include La Nausée (1938), Le Mur (1939), Les Chemins de la liberté (1945-49), Réflexions sur la question juive (1946), Baudelaire (1947), Saint Genet, comédien et martyr (1952), and Situations, a collection of articles (1947-65). His plays and adaptations have also known a wide audience (Les Mouches, 1943; Morts sans sépulture, 1946; La Putain respectueuse, 1946; Les Mains sales, 1948; Le Diable et le Bon Dieu, 1951; Kean, 1954; Nekrassov, 1955; Les Séquestres d'Altona, 1959; and an adaptation of Euripides' Trojans, 1965). Sartre, in a later philosophic work, Critique de la raison dialectique (1960, 1980, second edition), moved his emphasis from existential freedom and subjectivity to Marxist social determinism. Never joining the Communist Party, he remained free to criticize it and the action of Communist regimes. Sartre profoundly influenced the intellectual youth of the postwar era. He never ceased to question the contemporary world in the name of humankind and freedom participating in Bertrand Russell's tribunal, taking part in anticolonial struggles, refusing the Nobel Prize in literature in 1964, acting as director of La Cause du peuple, then of Libération until 1974. His last great work is an attempt at an integral biography of gustave flaubert (1971-72), and his correspondence revealed invaluable documents on the details of his life and relationships, notably with his companion simone de beauvoir (Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, 1983).