Jean-Paul Sartre

About the author

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) stands as one of the defining intellectual figures of the twentieth century — philosopher, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, biographer, and literary critic, all at once. Born in Paris and raised by his mother and grandfather after his father's early death, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure before becoming the foremost champion of existentialism and a proponent of Libertarian Marxism. His principal philosophical work, Being and Nothingness (1943), made 'bad faith' a household concept.

He famously refused the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, insisting a writer must never become an institution.