Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre was born on the 21st of June 1905 in Paris as the only child of Jean-Baptiste Sartre and Anne-Marie Schweitzer. His father died when Sartre was two years old, leaving him to be raised by his mother and grandfather. Charles Schweitzer, a teacher of German, introduced young Sartre to mathematics and classical literature at an early age. The family moved to La Rochelle when Sartre was twelve after his mother remarried. He faced frequent bullying there due to his wandering right eye, a condition known as sensory exotropia.
As a teenager in the 1920s, Sartre found himself drawn to philosophy through Henri Bergson's essay Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. He attended Cours Hattemer, a private school in Paris, before entering the École Normale Supérieure. There he earned certificates in psychology, history of philosophy, logic, general philosophy, ethics, sociology, and physics. His 1928 MA thesis under the title "L'Image dans la vie psychologique: rôle et nature" was supervised by Henri Delacroix. At ENS, Sartre developed a lifelong friendship with Raymond Aron and befriended Paul Nizan, whom he considered his alter ego during university years.
Sartre became one of the fiercest pranksters from his first years in the École normale. In 1927, he co-wrote an antimilitarist satirical cartoon that particularly upset director Gustave Lanson. That same year, he organized a media prank following Charles Lindbergh's successful New York City, Paris flight. Sartre and his friends called newspapers claiming Lindbergh would receive an honorary degree from their school. Thousands gathered on the 25th of May, unaware they were witnessing a stunt involving a look-alike. The scandal led Lanson to resign.
In 1939, Jean-Paul Sartre was drafted into the French Army as a meteorologist. He was captured by German troops in Padoux in 1940 and spent nine months as a prisoner of war in Nancy and finally Trier. During this confinement, he wrote his first theatrical piece, Bariona, ou le fils du tonnerre, a drama concerning Christmas. It was also during this period that Sartre read Martin Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, which later became a major influence on his own essay on phenomenological ontology. Poor health, including claims about his eyesight affecting his balance, led to his release in April 1941.
After returning to Paris in May 1941, Sartre participated in founding the underground group Socialisme et Liberté with writers Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Toussaint Desanti, Dominique Desanti, Jean Kanapa, and École Normale students. In spring 1941, Sartre suggested at a meeting that the group assassinate prominent war collaborators like Marcel Déat. De Beauvoir noted his idea was rejected because none felt qualified to make bombs or hurl grenades. The British historian Ian Ousby observed that French people often had more hatred for collaborators than for Germans themselves.
Socialisme et Liberté soon dissolved, and Sartre decided to write instead of engaging in active resistance. He then wrote Being and Nothingness, published with Gallimard, along with plays like The Flies and No Exit. These works were not censored by the Germans. Throughout the occupation, German policy involved plundering France, creating food shortages as most countryside food went to Germany. Sartre lived on a diet of rabbits sent by a friend of de Beauvoir living in Anjou. The rabbits were usually in an advanced state of decay, full of maggots, yet Sartre once threw out one rabbit as uneatable.
Jean-Paul Sartre's primary philosophical idea is that people are condemned to be free. He explained this paradox: condemnation normally constitutes an external judgment, but here it refers to human existence itself. Human beings have no essence before their existence because there is no creator. Thus, existence precedes essence. This forms the basis for asserting that since one cannot explain actions by referring to specific human nature, they are fully responsible for those actions.
Sartre illustrated his position using the example of a paper cutter. If one considered a paper cutter, one would assume its creator had a plan or essence for it. Human beings differ because they exist first without any predetermined purpose. We are left alone without excuse. Our past is always separated from us, allowing us to act without being determined by it. Death draws the final point when we cease to live for ourselves and become objects existing only for the outside world.
Authenticity consists in experiencing the indeterminate character of existence in anguish. It involves giving meaning to our actions and recognizing ourselves as authors of that meaning. An inauthentic way of being means running away and lying to oneself to escape anguish and responsibility for one's own existence. While influenced by Heidegger, the publication of Being and Nothingness marked a split between them. Heidegger remarked on this divergence in Letter on Humanism.
In July 1950, Sartre wrote about his attitude toward the Soviet Union in Les Temps Modernes. He held that the Soviet Union was a revolutionary state working for humanity's betterment, criticizable only for failing to live up to its ideals. Critics had to consider that the Soviet state needed to defend itself against a hostile world. By contrast, failures of bourgeois states stemmed from innate shortcomings. The Swiss journalist François Bondy noted a basic pattern: social change must be comprehensive and revolutionary, with parties promotable charges criticized only by those identifying completely with their purpose.
As an anti-colonialist, Sartre took a prominent role opposing French rule in Algeria and condemning torture and concentration camps used there. He became an eminent supporter of the FLN in the Algerian War and signed the Manifeste des 121. Consequently, he became a domestic target of the paramilitary Organisation armée secrète, escaping two bomb attacks in the early 1960s. In 1959, he argued each French person bore responsibility for collective crimes during the Algerian War of Independence.
Sartre's novel Nausea appeared in 1938, followed by The Wall collection of five short stories in 1939. The Roads to Freedom included volumes like The Age of Reason and The Reprieve, both published in 1945, and Troubled Sleep in 1949. An unfinished volume titled The Last Chance appeared later. His plays ranged from Bariona in 1940 to The Trojan Women in 1965. In 1948, the Catholic Church placed Sartre's œuvre on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, listing prohibited books.
John Huston asked Sartre to script his film
Freud: The Secret Passion. However, it became too long, and Sartre withdrew his name from credits. Nevertheless, many key elements from Sartre's script survived in the finished film. Despite similarities as polemicists, novelists, adapters, and playwrights, Sartre's literary work has often been counterposed pejoratively to that of Albert Camus.
In October 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature but declined it. He was the first Nobel laureate to voluntarily refuse the prize and remains one of only two to do so. According to Lars Gyllensten, in Minnen, bara minnen published in 2000, Sartre or someone close contacted the Swedish Academy in 1975 requesting the prize money, but was refused. In 1945, he had already refused the Légion d'honneur. The Nobel prize announcement came on the 22nd of October 1964; on the 14th of October, Sartre wrote a letter asking to be removed from nominees, warning he would not accept if awarded.
On the 23rd of October, Le Figaro published Sartre's statement explaining his refusal. He said he did not wish to be transformed by such an award nor take sides in an East versus West cultural struggle by accepting an award from a prominent Western institution. Though his name became a household word alongside existentialism during the tumultuous 1960s, Sartre remained a simple man with
few possessions. He stayed actively committed to causes until life's end, including May 1968 strikes in Paris where he was arrested for civil disobedience before President Charles de Gaulle pardoned him.
He had not wanted burial at Père-Lachaise Cemetery between his mother and stepfather, so arrangements placed him at Montparnasse Cemetery. At his funeral on Saturday, the 19th of April, fifty thousand Parisians descended onto boulevard du Montparnasse to accompany Sartre's cortege. The funeral started at the hospital at 2:00 p.m., then filed through the fourteenth arrondissement past all Sartre's haunts before entering the cemetery through the gate on Boulevard Edgar Quinet. Initially buried in a temporary grave left of the gate, his body was disinterred four days later for cremation at Père-Lachaise. His ashes were reburied at the permanent site in Montparnasse Cemetery right of the gate.
Continue Browsing
Common questions
When was Jean-Paul Sartre born and where did he grow up?
Jean-Paul Sartre was born on the 21st of June 1905 in Paris. He grew up in Paris until his family moved to La Rochelle when he was twelve years old.
What happened to Jean-Paul Sartre during World War II?
Jean-Paul Sartre was drafted into the French Army as a meteorologist in 1939 and captured by German troops in Padoux in 1940. He spent nine months as a prisoner of war in Nancy and Trier before being released due to poor health in April 1941.
Why did Jean-Paul Sartre refuse the Nobel Prize in Literature?
Jean-Paul Sartre refused the Nobel Prize in Literature because he did not wish to be transformed by such an award nor take sides in an East versus West cultural struggle. The Nobel prize announcement came on the 22nd of October 1964, but he had written a letter asking to be removed from nominees on the 14th of October.
How did Jean-Paul Sartre die and how many people attended his funeral?
Jean-Paul Sartre died and his funeral took place on Saturday, the 19th of April with fifty thousand Parisians attending. His body was initially buried in a temporary grave left of the gate at Montparnasse Cemetery before being disinterred four days later for cremation.
What is the main philosophical idea presented by Jean-Paul Sartre?
Jean-Paul Sartre's primary philosophical idea is that people are condemned to be free. Human beings have no essence before their existence because there is no creator, meaning existence precedes essence.