Knowra Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, and political activist who developed influential forms of existentialism and declined the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Existentialism : A philosophical movement emphasizing existence, freedom, responsibility, and the formation of meaning. Sartre became its best-known French advocate, though the movement includes thinkers who rejected his conclusions.
Being and Nothingness : Sartre’s 1943 philosophical treatise on consciousness, freedom, nothingness, and relations with others. It gives his most systematic account of the concepts underlying his existentialism.
Simone de Beauvoir : A French philosopher, writer, and feminist whose works include The Second Sex and The Ethics of Ambiguity. Her lifelong intellectual partnership with Sartre shaped debates about freedom, ethics, and public engagement.
Nobel Prize in Literature : An annual international literary award established by the will of Alfred Nobel. Sartre declined its 1964 award, insisting that writers should not become institutions.
Phenomenology : A philosophical approach that describes structures of experience as they appear to consciousness. Sartre adapted phenomenological methods to analyze imagination, emotion, and human existence.
Existentialism Is a Humanism : Sartre’s 1946 lecture defending existentialism against charges that it encourages despair or immorality. It presents his claims about freedom and responsibility in a concise public argument.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty : A French phenomenological philosopher known for emphasizing the embodied character of perception. His early collaboration and later political break with Sartre illuminate their different accounts of history and commitment.
French Communist Party : A French political party founded in 1920 and historically aligned with communist movements. Sartre’s changing relationship with the party reflects his uneasy efforts to reconcile Marxism and individual freedom.
Being-in-itself : Sartre’s term for the dense, nonconscious mode of being characteristic of objects. It contrasts with the self-aware consciousness Sartre calls being-for-itself.
Nausea : Sartre’s 1938 novel about Antoine Roquentin’s unsettling encounter with existence and contingency. Its fiction makes the contingency of ordinary things palpable rather than merely theoretical.
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