JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
AND EXISTENTIALISM
Biographical basics
Born in Paris, 1905
Father’s death (when JPS was 1) had
significant effect
Intellect > physical unattractiveness
Early writer (and never stopped!)
Sociable to peers, rebellious
against authority (grandfather,
school officials, military conscription)
JPS and Simone de Beauvoir
Met at Ecole Normale Superieure – tutor for exams
Passionate, intellectual, lifelong relationship
Never married; often apart; accepted affairs
Influence of WWII
Served for France; captured in June, 1940
Put in German prison camp
Escaped in March, 1941
Joined French Resistance movement
Post-war years
Existentialism takes off as a philosophy
Sartre himself moves to the left politically
JPS wins Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964,
refuses it
“A writer must refuse to allow
himself to be transformed into an
institution.”
No Exit
Written in 2 weeks in 1943
Literal translation = the French
equivalent of the legal term in camera,
referring to a private discussion behind
closed doors
In addition to No Exit,
English translations
have also been
performed under the
titles In Camera, No
Way Out, Vicious
Circle, Behind Closed
Doors, and Dead End
Basic Existentialism
FIRST we simply exist – THEN we create the
nature of who and what we are
FREEDOM
RESPONSIBILITY
CHOICE
Humans are at their best:
rebelling against impersonal society
taking responsibility
not making excuses
5 Fundamentals of Basic Existentialism
1. Mankind has free will
2. Life is a series of choices, creating stress
(a.k.a. “dread,” “despair”)
3. Most decisions have at least one
negative consequence
4. Some things are irrational or absurd,
without explanation (i.e., no real objective truth)
5. If one makes a decision, he or she must
follow through
Existentialese 101
Bad faith
to see ourselves as determined by an outside
influence: our nature, our body, the physical
world, and/or the expectations and pictures
others have of us
Being-in-itself: inanimate objects
(observer creates “essence”)
Being-for-itself:
human consciousness
(one chooses his/her “essence”)