Jean-Paul Sartre
June 21, 1905 – April 15, 1980
Also known as: Jacques Guillemin
Jean-Paul Sartre was a French novelist, playwright and essayist. He refused to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964.
Jean-Paul Sartre grew up in the house of his maternal grandfather. During his university studies, he met his life partner Simone de Beauvoir, also a writer. After his studies, he was a professor of philosophy in Le Havre, Lyon and Paris.
During his study stay in Berlin, Jean-Paul Sartre became acquainted with German philosophy, which influenced his views especially with Heidegger's existentialism.
Together with Merleau Ponty, Aron, Paulhan, Leiris, and Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre founded the magazine Les Temps modernes in 1945. Under his leadership, he became the pinnacle of existentialism, but he also focused on political and social issues.
For a while, Jean-Paul Sartre embraced the idea of Marxism because, in his view, it responded to the needs of the time. At the same time, however, he condemned Soviet communism for its military interventions in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
At the end of his life, Jean-Paul Sartre suffered from serious health problems and lost his sight five years before his death.