Nausea (1938)
La Nausée: novel in which Antoine Roquentin, in the town of Bouville, is overwhelmed by the contingency of existence
Philosophy
Jean-Paul Sartre
1905–1980 · French
Existentialism; phenomenology; Marxism
Jean-Paul Sartre was the leading figure of French existentialism, a philosopher, novelist, playwright and political activist. In Being and Nothingness and the lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism he argued that humans have no fixed essence and are radically free and responsible for what they make of themselves. He declined the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964 and was a lifelong partner of Simone de Beauvoir.
How to spot them
- ▸"Existence precedes essence"; "condemned to be free"; bad faith (mauvaise foi)
- ▸"Hell is other people" (L'enfer, c'est les autres) from No Exit (Huis clos)
- ▸Being-in-itself and being-for-itself (en-soi / pour-soi); the Look; Roquentin in Nausea
- ▸Refused the 1964 Nobel Prize; Les Temps modernes; quarrel with Camus; Café de Flore
Key works
Being and Nothingness (1943)
L'Être et le néant: "essay on phenomenological ontology" on consciousness, freedom, bad faith and the Look
No Exit (1944)
Huis clos: three dead characters locked in a room in hell conclude "Hell is other people"
Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)
L'existentialisme est un humanisme: popular 1945 Paris lecture declaring that existence precedes essence
Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960)
Critique de la raison dialectique: attempt to reconcile existentialism with Marxism
Words (1964)
Les Mots: autobiography of his childhood, published the year he declined the Nobel Prize
Key ideas
- Existence precedes essence: there is no pre-given human nature or divine plan; people first exist and then define themselves through their choices
- Radical freedom: we are "condemned to be free", wholly responsible for ourselves, and in choosing for ourselves we choose an image of humanity
- Bad faith (mauvaise foi): self-deception by which we deny our freedom, as with the café waiter who acts as if he were nothing but a waiter
- Being-in-itself (être-en-soi) is the solid being of things; being-for-itself (être-pour-soi) is consciousness, defined by lack and nothingness
- The Look (le regard): under another's gaze I become an object, which grounds shame and the conflict at the heart of relations with others
- Commitment (engagement): writers and intellectuals should take political responsibility
Quick-fire facts
- •Came first in the agrégation in philosophy in 1929; Simone de Beauvoir came second, and they became lifelong partners
- •Studied Husserl's phenomenology in Berlin in 1933–34
- •Was held as a prisoner of war by the Germans in 1940–41
- •Co-founded the review Les Temps modernes in 1945 with Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others
- •Declined the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964, saying a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution
- •Broke with Albert Camus in 1952 after Les Temps modernes savaged Camus's The Rebel
- •Wrote the Roads to Freedom novel trilogy and plays including The Flies and Dirty Hands
- •Tens of thousands of people followed his funeral procession in Paris in 1980; he is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery
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Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Jean-Paul Sartre
- Anthony Kenny — A New History of Western Philosophy