Jean-Paul Sartre
French philosopher and writer
Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright and novelist and a key figure in existentialism. He wrote Being and Nothingness.
2 summaries 31 min of listening
French Born 1905 in Paris, France Died 1980
Influenced by Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger
About Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was born in Paris and studied at the École Normale Supérieure, where his interest in philosophy took hold. He wrote philosophy, plays, novels and criticism, and he won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, though he tried to refuse it. During World War II he was drafted and captured, and after his release he co-founded the resistance group Socialisme et Liberté. Once the war was over, he helped start the journal Les Temps modernes and used his public voice for political causes, among them opposition to French policy in Algeria. Being and Nothingness (1943) is his principal philosophical work. Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946) began as a lecture and serves as his own introduction to his philosophy.