Sartre:
"A French philosopher, a writer, a literary critic, and a social and political activist, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) is most widely known as the leader of the existentialist movement of philosophy. Along with André Malraux, Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, and Albert Camus, Sartre was one of the "writers born between 1900 and 1915 whose experiences of war and revolution deeply affected French literature between 1945 and 1970."2 He contributed over 35 works to the body of philosophical literature in his time, as well as a number of important philosophical premises.3 The span of time from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s is considered his classical period, in which the bulk of his writings were produced. Sartre’s prestige as a philosopher peaked during the latter portion of this time span "when a philosophy of freedom and self-determination fitted the mood of a country recently liberated from the Occupation."4 Because of this timeliness and his popularity, Sartre was considered by many as the "spokesman of the postwar period." 5
Sartre’s literary contributions come in many forms. A great philosopher, Sartre took care to deliver his philosophical tenets through novels, short stories, and plays, as well as through the more academic treatises. A brief description of a selection of Sartre’s works will help to clarify his place in the existentialist movement. L’Imagination (Imagination), a history of the theories of imagination ending with the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, and La Transcendence de l’ego (The Transcendence of the Ego), Sartre’s phenomenological account of consciousness, were some of his first works, printed in 1936. 6 Just two years later La Nauseé (Nausea) was published. One of Sartre’s most famous publications, La Nauseé follows the main character Roquetin on a metaphysical journey of discovering his being and aloneness in the world. These realizations give rise to anguish and nausea in Roquetin, who must struggle with the problem of meaningful existence. L’Etre et le Néant (Being and Nothingness), Sartre’s major philosophical premise, printed in 1943, served to fully explore Sartre’s phenomenological theories of being, consciousness, and relations with others. "
2 ìJean-Paul Sartre,î Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture, 1998 ed. .
3 Christina Howells, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Sartre (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992).
4 ìJean-Paul Sartre,î Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1998 ed. .
5 Oreste F. Pucciani, The French Theater Since 1930 (New York: Blaidsdell
Credit:
size=4>http://honors.org/AHR/AHR00/sartre.html
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