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 (The Wall and
other Stories), 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.
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Jean-Paul Sartre died on April 15, 1980.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1964