Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre, born in Paris on 21 June 1905, was a French philosopher, political activist, and writer who became a central figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. He was a key thinker in existentialism and phenomenology, and his ideas shaped sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he tried to decline it, explaining that he always refused official honors and believed a writer should not become an institution.

Sartre’s father, a French Navy officer, died when Sartre was two, likely from an illness caught in Indochina. His mother then raised him with help from her father, Charles Schweitzer, a German teacher who taught him mathematics and classical literature. (The theologian and physician Albert Schweitzer was a cousin.) When Sartre was twelve, his mother remarried, and the family moved to La Rochelle, where he was often bullied, partly due to his blind right eye. As a teenager in the 1920s, reading Henri Bergson’s *Time and Free Will* sparked his interest in philosophy. He attended the private Cours Hattemer in Paris and later studied at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS), earning certificates in psychology, history of philosophy, logic, general philosophy, ethics, sociology, and physics, as well as a master’s degree. His 1928 thesis, supervised by Henri Delacroix, was titled “L’Image dans la vie psychologique: rôle et nature.” At ENS, he formed a lifelong, sometimes contentious friendship with Raymond Aron and a close bond with Paul Nizan, whom he saw as his alter ego. A major influence on his philosophical development was attending Alexandre Kojève’s weekly seminars for several years.

Sartre was known as a fierce prankster at ENS. In 1927, he co-wrote an antimilitarist cartoon in the school revue with Georges Canguilhem, upsetting director Gustave Lanson. That same year, with Nizan and others, he staged a media hoax after Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight: they called newspapers claiming Lindbergh would receive an honorary degree from the École. Many papers, including *Le Petit Parisien*, announced it for 25 May, drawing thousands of journalists and onlookers, only to find a Lindbergh look-alike. The scandal led Lanson to resign. Around 1928, Sartre tutored the Japanese philosopher Kuki Shūzō in French. It’s sometimes thought Kuki, who studied with Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl in Germany, first sparked Sartre’s interest in phenomenology, but Sartre’s engagement with Husserl actually began later, in 1932, when Raymond Aron, just back from Berlin, mentioned the topic during a discussion at the Bec de Gaz café.

Sartre had an open relationship with fellow existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Together, they challenged the bourgeois assumptions of their upbringing in both lifestyle and thought. A central theme of Sartre’s early work was the conflict between oppressive conformity—what he called *mauvaise foi* (bad faith)—and an authentic way of being. This idea is central to his major philosophical work *Being and Nothingness* (1943), and he introduced his philosophy more accessibly in the lecture-turned-book *Existentialism Is a Humanism* (1946).

Sartre was deeply politically engaged. During World War II, he was drafted, captured, and later released, after which he co-founded the resistance group Socialisme et Liberté. Though it dissolved, he became an influential voice in occupied France, writing for underground publications and plays like *No Exit*. After the war, he co-founded the journal *Les Temps modernes* and used his platform to advocate for causes: he supported anti-colonial movements, condemned French policies in Algeria, opposed U.S. intervention in Vietnam, and at times aligned with Marxism and Maoism. Even as his health declined, he remained active in activism and debate until his death on 15 April 1980. His funeral drew 50,000 mourners.