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Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905-1980 |
During the early post-war years he wrote a number of novels and plays which made him a figure of world renown. As one of the founders (with Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty) of Les Temps modernes, a review devoted to the discussion of political and literary questions from an existentialist point of view, he took an active part in the ideological controversies of his time. In 1951 he unsuccessfully attempted to found a new political movement that was to be radically to the left but noncommunist. Sartre's political activities, which provided numerous disputes with his friends Albert Camus and Merleau-Ponty, led him into periods of cooperation with the French Communist Party, of which he was often highly critical. His last major philosophical undertaking was the Critique de la raison dialectique (1960; Critique of Dialectical Reason), of which only Volume I ever appeared, was a restatement of Marxism that is intended to show its underlying harmony with modern existentialism. In 1964 he was awarded, but declined to accept, the Nobel Prize for literature. In the later 1960s he became closely involved in opposition to American involvement in Vietnam, and expressed support for student rebellion in 1968. Sartre died in 1980 and was buried with all the honors of a French national hero. Further exploration | The History Guide | | copyright � 2000 Steven Kreis |
The French existentialist,
dramatist, essayist and novelist, Jean-Paul Sartre, was
both in Paris in 1905. He studied at the �cole Normale
Sup�rieure from 1924 to 1928. He taught philosophy at a
number of lyc�es, both in Paris and elsewhere.
From 1933 to 1935, he was a research student at the
Institut Fran�ais in Berlin and at the University of
Freiburg. From 1936 on he published a philosophical
novel, La Naus�e (1938)), and a collection of
stories, Le Mur (1939; The Wall), as
well as a number of philosophical studies. At the
outbreak of war in 1939, he was called up by the French
Army and in 1940 was captured by the Germans. Released
after the armistice, he returned to Paris, where he
continued to teach philosophy until 1944. During these
years he completed L'�tre et le n�ant (1943; Being
and Nothingness), his major philosophical work. He
was active in the resistance, and at the end of the war
he emerged as the dominant figure in the existentialist
movement.