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Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980)

Sartre was the most famous philosopher of the twentieth century, which annoyed him and suited him in roughly equal measure. He wrote plays, novels, screenplays, political essays, and a thousand-page biography of Flaubert. He turned down the Nobel Prize. His central claim was that human beings have no fixed nature, that we are what we do, and that pretending otherwise is bad faith. He lived accordingly, for better and worse, in full public view.

Concepts

absurd, agency, alienation, authenticity, freedom, loneliness, meaning, oppression, praxis, solidarity

Quotes (7)

“Existence precedes essence. Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surg...” — Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is respon...” — Being and Nothingness (1943)
“Hell is other people.” — No Exit (1944)
“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness ...” — Nausea (1938)
“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.” — Situations (1947)
“Commitment is an act, not a word.” — What Is Literature? (1947)
“We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are — that...” — Being and Nothingness (1943)