Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980

Jean-Paul Sartre was a 20th-century French philosopher, playwright, novelist, and political activist, the leading public exponent of existentialism in the post-war period. His major philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, develops a phenomenological account of consciousness, freedom, and the situated character of human existence. The 1946 lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism summarises his central thesis that existence precedes essence, and his plays and novels, including No Exit and Nausea, dramatize existential themes for a wide audience. He turned increasingly toward Marxism in his later work, attempting to integrate existential freedom with historical materialism. Sartre declined the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964 and remained a prominent voice in French political life throughout the post-war era.