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Jean-Paul Sartre, (1905-1980) born in Paris in 1905, studied at the École
Normale Supérieure from 1924 to 1929 and became Professor of Philosophy at Le
Havre in 1931. With the help of a stipend from the Institut Français he studied
in Berlin (1932) the philosophies of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. After
further teaching at Le Havre, and then in Laon, he taught at the Lycée Pasteur
in Paris from 1937 to 1939. Since the end of the Second World War, Sartre has
been living as an independent writer.
Sartre is one of those writers for whom a determined philosophical position is
the centre of their artistic being. Although drawn from many sources, for
example, Husserl's idea of a free, fully intentional consciousness and
Heidegger's existentialism, the existentialism Sartre formulated and popularized
is profoundly original. Its popularity and that of its author reached a climax
in the forties, and Sartre's theoretical writings as well as his novels and
plays constitute one of the main inspirational sources of modern literature. In
his philosophical view atheism is taken for granted; the "loss of God" is not
mourned. Man is condemned to freedom, a freedom from all authority, which he may
seek to evade, distort, and deny but which he will have to face if he is to
become a moral being. The meaning of man's life is not established before his
existence. Once the terrible freedom is acknowledged, man has to make this
meaning himself, has to commit himself to a role in this world, has to commit
his freedom. And this attempt to make oneself is futile without the "solidarity"
of others.
The conclusions a writer must draw from this position were set forth in "Qu'est-ce
que la littérature?" (What Is Literature?), 1948: literature is no longer an
activity for itself, nor primarily descriptive of characters and situations, but
is concerned with human freedom and its (and the author's) commitment.
Literature is committed; artistic creation is a moral activity.
While the publication of his early, largely psychological studies,L'Imagination
(1936), Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions (Outline of a Theory of the
Emotions), 1939, and L'Imaginaire: psychologie phénoménologique de l'imagination
(The Psychology of Imagination), 1940, remained relatively unnoticed, Sartre's
first novel, La Nausée (Nausea), 1938, and the collection of stories Le Mur
(Intimacy), 1938, brought him immediate recognition and success. They
dramatically express Sartre's early existentialist themes of alienation and
commitment, and of salvation through art.
His central philosophical work, L'Etre et le néant (Being and Nothingness),
1943, is a massive structuralization of his concept of being, from which much of
modern existentialism derives. The existentialist humanism which Sartre
propagates in his popular essay L'Existentialisme est un humanisme
(Existentialism is a Humanism), 1946, can be glimpsed in the series of novels,
Les Chemins de la Liberté (The Roads to Freedom), 1945-49.
Sartre is perhaps best known as a playwright. In Les Mouches (The Flies), 1943,
the young killer's committed freedom is pitted against the powerless Jupiter,
while in Huis Clos (No Exit), 1947, hell emerges as the togetherness of people.
Sartre has engaged extensively in literary critisicm and has written studies on
Baudelaire (1947) and Jean Genet (1952). A biography of his childhood, Les Mots
(The Words), appeared in 1964.
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