Jean-Paul Sartre


Jean-Paul Sartre (June 21, 1905 - April 15, 1980) was a French existentialist
philosopher, novelist and critic.

His longtime companion was Simone de Beauvoir, whom he met at the ƒcole
Normale SupŽrieure in 1929.

There were two main periods in his career. The first period was defined by
his work Being and Nothingness. He believed in the fundamental freedom of
human beings and reflected on what he saw as the unbearable nature of that
freedom.

In the second major period in his career, Sartre was known as a politically
engaged intellectual. He embraced Communism, though he never officially
joined the Communist party. Sartre spent much of his life attempting to
reconcile his existentialist ideas, which claimed that one must
self-determine one's existence, with Communist principles, which taught that
socioeconomic forces beyond one's control play a critical role in
determining the course of one's life.

Major works:

   * Nausea (La NausŽe), 1938
   * The Wall (Le Mur), 1939
   * Being and Nothingness (L'Etre et le NŽant), 1943
   * "Existentialism is a Humanism"
   * Anti-Semite and Jew
   * Critique of Dialectical Reason (Critique de la raison dialectique)
   * No Exit (Huis-Clos), 1944
   * The Words (les Mots), 1964 - autobiographical
   * The Flies, a play (Les Mouches), 1943
   * "Preface" to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth

Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, but refused it.

He is buried in Cimetiere de Montparnasse, in Paris, France.