Sartre

Author: Li Lijun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century and a key figure in French atheistic existentialism. He was also an outstanding writer, dramatist, critic, and social activist. Sartre was born into a naval officer family in Paris. He lost his father at a young age and grew up with his maternal grandfather. He began reading a large amount of literary works at a very young age. During his secondary school years, he encountered the works of Bergson, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and others. In 1924, he entered the école Normale Supérieure in Paris to study philosophy. In 1929, he obtained a teaching qualification for high schools and middle schools and subsequently taught in secondary schools. In 1933, he went to the French Academy in Berlin for further studies in philosophy, where he was influenced by Husserl's phenomenology and Heidegger's existentialism. After returning to France, he continued to teach in secondary schools and published his major philosophical works, including On Imagination, The Transcendence of the Ego, Preliminary Exposé of the Theory of Emotions, and A Fundamental Concept of Husserl's Phenomenology: Intentionality. In the autumn of 1943, his philosophical masterpiece Being and Nothingness was published, which established the foundation of Sartre's atheistic existentialist philosophy.