Jean-Paul Sartre

existentialism

'Existentialism Is a Humanism': his famous lecture of 1945.

💡 Did you know? Sartre became the face of existentialism: a philosophy of radical freedom and responsibility.

existence precedes essence

There is no given human nature: first man exists, then he makes himself what he is.

💡 Did you know? „Existence precedes essence“: the human is not fixed by a nature but first makes himself into what he is.

to be free

Even not choosing is a choice: man bears full responsibility for himself.

💡 Did you know? „Man is condemned to be free“: we can never escape choice and bear full responsibility for it.

Hell is other people

Meaning the petrifying gaze with which others pin us down: not flat misanthropy.

💡 Did you know? „Hell is other people“: he means the gaze of others, which pins us down and judges us.

Being and Nothingness

Written after reading Heidegger in German captivity.

💡 Did you know? „Being and Nothingness“ is Sartre's main philosophical work: dense, difficult and over 1,000 pages long.

Simone de Beauvoir

They met in 1929 at the École normale supérieure: no marriage, but a lifelong intellectual pact.

💡 Did you know? With the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre had a lifelong, open partnership without marriage or a shared home.

He declined the Nobel Prize

A writer must not allow himself 'to be turned into an institution'.

💡 Did you know? In 1964 Sartre declined the Nobel Prize in Literature: he did not want to be „turned into an institution“.

Nausea

Its hero Roquentin experiences the naked, contingent existence of things: existentialism as literature.

💡 Did you know? His novel „Nausea“ depicts the existential dread in the face of the meaningless, sheer existence of things.

bad faith

His famous example: the waiter who 'plays' the waiter so perfectly that he denies his own freedom.

💡 Did you know? „Bad faith“ (mauvaise foi) is Sartre's term for the excuse that one has no choice: the flight from one's own freedom.

Albert Camus

The public break of 1952, after Camus' 'The Rebel', was never repaired.

💡 Did you know? Sartre and Albert Camus were first friends, then split publicly over their attitude to communism.

his indulgence of the Soviet Union

He also campaigned against colonialism and the Vietnam War: the 'total intellectual' erred as loudly as he thought.

💡 Did you know? At times he sold banned Maoist newspapers in the open street.

around 50,000

He lies next to Simone de Beauvoir in the Montparnasse Cemetery.

💡 Did you know? At Sartre's funeral in 1980 around 50,000 people lined the streets of Paris: a farewell for a people's philosopher.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre was the best-known representative of existentialism: his philosophy of radical freedom shaped the 20th century.

💡 Did you know? In 1964 he became the first writer to voluntarily decline the Nobel Prize in Literature.