Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (June 21, 1905 – April 15, 1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, dramatist, novelist and critic.

Sartre and literature

During the 1940s and 1950s Sartre's ideas remained much in vogue, and existentialism became a favoured philosophy of the beatnik generation. Sartre's views were counterposed to those of Albert Camus in the popular imagination. In 1948, the Catholic Church placed his complete works on the Index of prohibited books. Most of his plays are richly symbolic and serve as a means of conveying his philosophy. The best-known, Huis-clos (No Exit), contains the famous line:

Related Topics:
Existentialism - Beatnik - Albert Camus - Catholic Church - Index - No Exit

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"L'enfer, c'est les autres", usually translated as "Hell is other people".

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Besides the obvious impact of Nausea, Sartre's major contribution to literature was the Roads to Freedom trilogy which charts the progression of how World War II affected Sartre's ideas. In this way, Roads to Freedom presents a less theoretical and more practical approach to existentialism. The first book in the trilogy, L'âge de raison (The Age of Reason) (1945), could easily be said to be the Sartre work with the broadest appeal.

Related Topics:
World War II - Existentialism - The Age of Reason - 1945

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