Sartre

Author: Li Lijun (Compiler)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-10-01
Features: Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, is 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 and lost his father at a young age, growing up with his maternal grandfather. He began reading a large amount of literary works at a very young age. During his middle 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 the qualification to teach philosophy in secondary schools and subsequently taught in middle schools. In 1933, he went to the French Academy in Berlin to further his studies in philosophy, where he was influenced by Husserl's phenomenology and Heidegger's existentialism. Upon returning to France, he continued teaching in middle schools and published his major philosophical works, including On Imagination, The Transcendence of the Ego, Preliminary Exposition 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, establishing the framework of Sartre's atheistic existentialist philosophy. This book introduces the life of Sartre, including his father's early death, his childhood like a play, his bond with books, two worlds, the beginning of writing, his sacred mission, and his enrollment as a child prodigy. His mother later remarried.